Wildlife

Wildlife can be your best friend or your worst enemy when it comes to survival. If you know how to hunt, kill, skin, and cook the wildlife its going to be your best friend. But, if you can't tell the difference between a poisonous snake and a non-poisonous one, you might be in a very bad day.

Hunting for animals when you are lost out in the woods can be extremely tiring and demotivating. What are you hunting them with? A spear? A knife? Do you know how to set traps and snares? Traps and snares are your best bet for killing small game in the wild. Once you have them set, you can leave them until the next morning or afternoon. You just don't want to ignore them too long, or else the meat might spoil. If you are the type of person that carries fishing equipment in your survival kit, then you also need to know how to set the lines so you don't have to sit there all day waiting for a fish. (I'll cover that in a later post.) Depending on what part of the world you have found yourself surviving in, killing small game and gutting them can also attract larger game. Dress your game in an area away from your shelter and discard what you won't use. (You should try to use as much as you can.) Remember that even small insects can provide you with lots of nutrients to keep your body and mind going. Ants, grubs, crickets, grasshoppers, etc are all edible and can provide you with a small snack while building your shelter or waiting for you fish to bite your line. Even if you can't catch or kill a large animal, thats okay, because you really don't have a way to cure or store the meat. (Yes, there are ways to make a field craft smoker, but we'll get into that later.) Another benefit of animals in the wild is how you observe them. If you see a deer grazing in a meadow, its a pretty safe bet to say the area doesn't have to many predators around. You might be able to lift your spirits when you see a bald eagle soaring overhead, or a moose drinking out of the lake. You can also watch the birds and see what berries they are eating to determine if they are safe for you to eat also. Waking up to birds chirping should bring good news for the simple reason that you survived the night and you get the chance to hear them chirp again.

The downside to wild animals is the dangers they pose against the untrained person. If you think you can catch that snake and cook it over your fire, only to have it turn on you and be a venomous snake before you realize it. Now you have to treat yourself for a poisonous snake bite. Do you have the medical supplies and experience to treat a bite? Probably not. What if you're in bear country? I would hate to waste all my time building shelter and finding food, and then have a huge grizzly wander into my area to steal the squirrel I spent so much time snaring, skinning, and cooking. If you are in a tropical location, there are so many poisonous snakes, insects, and plants it would take a book to explain them all to you. Do I know them all? No. But I will watch what other animals are doing to continue their existence. Even if you are in a natural disaster situation, dogs can become vicious and bite, or maybe the wild animals are fleeing and you get caught between a mother bear and her cubs.

No matter what situation you find yourself in, you need to have some kind of general knowledge of wild animals and vegetation. Even if its as simple as being able to tell the difference between a venomous snake and a non-venomous one, atleast you won't die from a snake bite because you tried to catch a copperhead. There are hundreds of books out on the market about wildlife and vegetation. Take a little time and read some of them. That will bring you a little closer to being prepared to live and see tomorrow.