Field and Stream - Other Survival RSS

More on Preppers

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:10:50 -0400

by David E. Petzal

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on.

The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on a Ruger Number One single-shot which, despite its many splendid qualities, is not what you’d pick to blast the mob at your door. Another managed to shoot off several fingers during a practice session. Yet a third, a resident of the Oligarchy of Bloomberg, took lessons in knife fighting because he was unable to get a gun, ignoring the fact that everyone in the Oligarchy of Bloomberg who wants a gun has one, or several, and when the pistol-waving mob comes to this fellow’s apartment I don’t think that he and his knife will last long.

A dose of reality was interjected into prepping recently when a resident of Washington State, one Peter Keller, shot his wife and daughter to death and then retreated to a heavily fortified bunker which he had spent 8 years digging into a hillside in the woods. The cops found his hole and waited him out. Then, after a 22-hour standoff, they brought in a breeching team and blew the door off his dugout. Inside were copious guns, ammo, body armor, and everything else a good prepper should accumulate. There was also the body of an apparent suicide whom the police believe is Mr. Keller. There went 8 years’ hard work in the time it took a couple of blocks of C-4 to go off.

I have nothing against prepping. I think a certain degree of preparedness is not only worthwhile, but necessary. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, ice storms, and Congress are facts of life that are all too real, and we must be able to deal with the havoc they wreak.

But if you have visions of accumulating tons of .223 ammo and dried corn and toughing it out by yourself after Life as We Know It ceases to exist, I suggest you watch a film called Threads, which was made by the BBC in 1984, and shows what life after a nuclear attack is bound to be like. You will not want to be around after the Big One arrives, your 5,000 rounds of 9mm ammo and food dehydrator notwithstanding.

Hunting, Fishing, and Camping Tips from Field & Stream Readers

Online Editors — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:08:57 -0400

Some of the best hunting and fishing tips that appear in Field & Stream every month don't come from the editors or writers at the magazine. They come from you, the readers. We get so many good tip submissions, in fact, that it's sometimes tough to select the winners for our "Reader Tips" section. But there were never any doubts about the tips in this gallery.

If you have a good Reader Tip for the magazine, e-mail it to fsletters@bonniercorp.com, or post it on The Tip Board. If it appears in the magazine, we'll send you some great outdoor gear—free!

How To Avoid Freezing to Death by Finding Dry Firewood

Online Editors — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:10:09 -0500

Shortly after I moved to Montana, two local elk hunters froze to death in a snowstorm. The drainage was a place I’d hunted only days before, and the tragedy registered so deeply in my psyche that for years I avoided the area. Today, the ill-fated trip floods back to me in a series of images: two hunters, stumbling lost through a forest; friends, overcome by panic, splitting up in the dark; two human figures, curled dead on a cold breast of snow.

It’s a story that is repeated with minor variations every year, and searchers commonly discover spent matches and charred sticks where the hunters, hikers, or fishermen failed to build a fire big enough to keep body with soul. The failing is seldom one of neglect; most of us pack fire--sparking tools and tinder. Rather, it is being unable to find dry wood to feed a flame in wet weather. The irony is that it is within sight, and that those two Montana elk hunters would be alive today if they had only known to look up.

Find the Fuel
In any forest, the driest wood is the dead underlimbs of green trees, the insides of standing dead trees, and fallen trunks propped on logs, safe from earth rot. If you happen to be stranded where there are lots of the first, you are lucky indeed. Otherwise, your job is to render finger- to wrist-thick kindling “splits” from a trunk’s core, the darkly colored heartwood that is most resistant to rot.

How quickly you accomplish the task depends upon the tools at hand. By far the best for felling a tree, blocking the trunk into 20-inch sections, and then splitting those blocks, is an ax. One whose handle fits under your armpit when you hold the head in your hand is a good compromise length to strap to your pack, and in my opinion the most versatile of all survival tools. Know your ax and you ought to be able to drop a pine snag, block it, and get a fire roaring within 40 minutes.

Use Your Knife
But what if, like many hunters, all you carry is a knife? You can still save your butt if you know how to make wood wedges. To shape a wedge, place the edge of the knife at an angle against a log or broken limb and pound on the spine with a heavy stick. Your goal is to slice off a piece of wood that is roughly the shape of a small ax head, 1⁄2 inch or more wide at the top, tapering to a sharp edge.

Because you cannot make blocks with a knife, you’ll have to crack off sections of dead tree trunks or limbs and split them lengthwise. Most downfall has natural crack lines. Insert the wedge in a crack and pound on it with a stout stick. Things will go a lot faster if you insert several wedges a few inches apart along the crack line and pound alternately on them. Once you’ve split off a piece of wood, you can pound on the wedges or the back of your knife to crack that piece into splits. Don’t try to split the block in half each time, but work from the outside in, cleaving off smaller splits from the edges.

Save Your Life
Once you have a good bundle of splits, clear an area of snow, lay down your tinder, and start a tepee fire from the splits. Keep adding wood until the fire has dried the ground beneath and is hot enough to start burning wet and green logs. Only after that can you rest assured that, by looking toward Heaven for the source of your salvation, you’ve managed to stay out of Hell at least one more day.

British Outdoorsman Attempting 1-Year Survival Challenge Found Dead in Scotland

Sarah Smith — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:53:55 -0500

--Chad Love

A British survival enthusiast attempting to live off the land for a full year was recently found dead in Scotland.

From this story in the (UK) Daily Mail (hat tip to the Southern Rockies Nature Blog for the find):

A man found dead in a remote mountain hut was an adventurer who had planned a year-long Bear Grylls-style survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness. David Austin, 29, from Derby, was found dead in a 'bothy' by a track worker near Corrour, a remote railway station in Highland Perthshire, on December 31 at 9.50am. His body is believed to have been lying there for several weeks when it was discovered. A post-mortem found there were no suspicious circumstances behind his death, which is understood to have been as a result of hypothermia.

In November, Mr Austin had told his family he was heading north to live rough off the land - something for which survival expert Bear Grylls has become famous. He is believed to have attended several courses in outdoor survival and bushcraft skills over the past couple of years in order to realise his dream, despite being urged by family and friends to reconsider his plans. It is thought Mr Austin had not even taken a mobile phone with him, leaving him entirely at the mercy of the harsh winter. A number of personal possessions including a knife and a daily journal were found next to his body.

We all like to think we're consummate outdoorsmen and that we'd survive where less experienced others wouldn't, but are we really? Putting aside the question of whether this was a smart thing to do in the first place, do you think you'd fare any better in the same situation?

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: Calculating Weight vs. Mileage

Sarah Smith — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:17:06 -0400

It’s the Big Question: How much gas do we need? Too much gas is definitely better than to little gas—to a point. If you carry way too much, you will stress your machine and you are more likely to run into mechanical problems. Good jerry cans are key, or you may have to deal with spillages and leaks, which will definitely knock back the miles you travel. At the end of the day you will have to narrow it down as much as possible until you have to make an educated guess.

The main reason I was successful at bringing the right amount of gas was because I did not just ask the Big Question to myself—I asked everybody I met who had traveled part of the route. How much gas did you bring? If there is a precise equation to figure this out, I don’t know it. Besides, I doubt it would be very accurate. There are just too many variables that affect your gas mileage.

Here are some things to mull over before you have an answer to the Big Question.

• Call the manufacturer to get the exact gas mileage of your machine.

• Is your machine new? New machines burn more gas.

• How much weight are you towing? The more weight you pull, the more fuel you burn.

• What king of country are you travelling through? The flatter the country you are traveling, the less gas you’ll burn.

• Are you using a two stroke or a four stroke?

• How tough will this area be to navigate? Will you travel off your route for a length of time or have to choose a longer route if you find your initial one is unsafe?

• How fast are you planning on going? The slower you go, the less gas you burn.

• Ask people who have traveled your route or parts of it about their experience with mileage—how much weight they had, how fast they drove, how much gas they burned.

• Bring some communication equipment in case you run out. You never know what may happen, you could loose your toboggan or travel the wrong way a couple of times.

Jim Baird's Arctic Adventure: Keeping an Eye on Your Buddy

Sarah Smith — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:18:02 -0400

We were making good time over the hard-packed drifts on Great Bear lake . I had to focus all my attention on the drifts I was hitting; I got air on a few of them. Meanwhile, Ted’s toboggan lashing had broken and needed to be retied so he stopped. He watched me ride into the distance and disappear. We got split up another time on the trip, too: Ted said he was going to drive over land. I said I was going to follow the coast. We both took off thinking the other one was following. It was pretty scary. With the muffling effects of the helmet, combined with the noise of the machine, and howling winds, it’s tough to hear a word anyone says. There are a few key things you can do to avoid getting split up and steps to insure that you will reunite if you do.

Plan. Part of the stress of being separated is wondering what the other person would do. Are they going to the finishing point? Would they have gone back to last night’s camp? Are they driving around aimlessly looking for me? If you start out with a solid plan your worries become far less.

Communicate. I didn’t carry walk-e-talkies on this trip, but I will on the next one. This can be all it takes to very easily find each other especially if you both have a GPS device. Yell. No one can hear you over the noise of the machine, you have turn the machines off or scream.

Signal. Go over some hand signals. You don’t have to learn sign language or signal like a baseball coach—just a few basic signals like a water skier uses will go a very long way and will be easier on your voicebox.

Follow the route. Before you start the trip make sure you’re both on the same page. If you do get separated you should be able to follow your trail back to the point where you split up and then begin following your buddies trail until you find him. If both of you are doing this you will be reunited faster.

Know the destination. Whether you have walk-e-talkies or not, both people should know where the final destination for that day is. It would also help if you have a rendezvous spot picked out half way to meet at incase you get separated. Make sure you both know where to meet if you get separated.

Turn around. As you travel, look over your shoulder every few minutes. You have to stand up and rotate your body to see behind you, which is kind of annoying, but it’s an important safety measure. If your buddy is far behind wait up a bit. Everyone will be safer if you stay closer together.

Navigate. Carry a GPS, map, and compass in both machines. This way if you get separated, you’ll both have the means to navigate confidently.

Search Continues for 7 Missing Americans in Mexico Boating Accident

Online Editors — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:14:42 -0400

--Chad Love

U.S. and Mexican authorities are still searching for survivors after a chartered fishing boat carrying 44 passengers and crew capsized after being caught in a storm off the coast of Mexico.

From this story on ABC News:
The U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy are scouring the Sea of Cortez by boat and helicopter in a continuing effort to locate the seven U.S. tourists still missing after the sinking of a charter boat off the coast of Mexico Sunday. One U.S. tourist died. The Coast Guard will be using a larger aircraft in its search today that is capable of covering greater distances, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Pamela Boehland said. The Coast Guard expects to be up in the air over the Sea of Cortez around 10:30 a.m. PT. The Mexican Navy is expected to deploy the same two helicopters it has been using.

Seven Americans are still missing, according to Mexican officials. The identity of the dead man has yet to be released. The boat, carrying a total of 44 passengers and crew, capsized when it was hit by two giant waves, according to Capt. Benjamin Pineda Gomez of the Mexican Navy. Twenty-seven Americans and 16 crew members were on board the 115-foot-catamaran, which was called the Erik and was operated by the tourism company Baja Fishing. The vessel was supposed to take the group and crew on a week-long vacation -- an annual Fourth of July outing for a group of friends from Northern California -- but it was caught in a thunderstorm and capsized around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, about 60 miles south of San Felipe, in the Mexican state of Baja California.

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: How To Rope-Rig a Toboggan for the Open Ice

Dave_Maccar — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:29:17 -0400

At the beginning of my snowmobile expedition in the communities of Tulita and Delene, Ted and I learned that the tow bars on our Equinox Boggans probably would not last for the duration of the expedition. We saw a graveyard of broken steel tow bars in Tulita. It was recommended that we use ropes to tow our toboggans, because the steel tow bars would have broken when pounding along on the hard packed snowdrifts of Great Bear Lake. So that’s exactly what we did.

How It’s Done: First, you’ll need to drill holes in the steel brackets on each side of the toboggan —just in front of where the tow bars hook into them. Clip a carabiner to each hole. Next, tie the ends of a 60-foot-long length of rope to each carabiner. Then, tie the middle of the rope to the hitch of your snow machine. Make sure each side of the rope is an equal length (as shown in the video).

The setup worked excellently and outperformed the tow bars. When using ropes to tow your toboggan, the tow bar can remain attached and left up for use at another time.

Now, all of this isn’t to say that you should never use a tow bar. Here’s a list of pros and cons to help you decide which towing system is right for you and your environment.

Tow Bar
Pros:
- Good for tight turns
- You can control the toboggan while reversing
- It will stop when you stop and not crash into the back of your machine
- It will not catch up to you if going slowly down a steep hill

Cons:
- They break
- They put more stress on your machine when braking
- They do not stretch or give
- They will cause the body of your toboggan to take more of a beating
- They will drag your toboggan into the ice if your machine goes through
- They can dig into the sides of your toboggan and cause damage to it if turning tightly with a heavy load, especially in rough conditions

Tow Ropes
Pros:
- They have a little stretch in them and allow for a smoother ride on hard packed drifts
- They can be cut to save your toboggan before it goes through the ice
- Easier on your snowmobile

Cons:
- Tougher to maneuver in tight places
- Will cause your toboggan to slam into your machine if you stop at a high speed.
- Can fray from wearing on the front edge of the toboggan if each side of the rope is not an equal length.

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: Why I Did The Trip

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:45:41 -0400

Why did I do this trip? That’s a question that I don’t actually have a solid answer for. There are several reasons, but I always find myself sputtering when asked. I know that sounds a little odd. I traveled 755 miles through the frozen Arctic by snowmobile while camping out in sub-zero temperatures with polar bears, dangerous ice conditions, and blizzards all constantly looming, and I can’t think of a solid reason why.

George Mallory said it beautifully when he was asked: “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” His reply: “Because it’s there.” Mallory died attempting to climb the mountain. I am not a mountain climber and I can’t relate to his fate. It does remind me to stay safe. I can relate to his answer, though, and I’m going to roll with it.

Why? Because it’s there—the Arctic with its punishing winds and spans of treeless wild country and its challenges and mystique. Being part of it makes me feel alive in a way I think few will ever experience. The 50-pound lake trout are there and waiting to be caught in one of the most massive and beautiful lakes in the world. The pure water is there, and while I was there I drank straight from the Great Bear several times. It’s a great feeling to eat fish out of that lake while sipping ice-cold water straight out of a cup you dipped through a hole in the ice. To me there is nothing so pure.

Why? Because I wanted to spend more time with the people of the North who taught me a little bit about their way of life and the lives of their grandfathers. I’m intrigued by the stories of survival I hear. There are a lot of skills that can be learned from people who rely on hunting and fishing for food and not sport. One of the reasons I decided to go to Ulukhaktok was to meet up with my friend, Pat, a hard-core Inuk landsman who always has a story of a successful hunt to share. He is a wealth of knowledge and was the one who spawned the idea of this snowmobile trip.

Why? Because this trip gave me the chance to do something that very few people have done. Few people get to witness Arctic scenery as I did. The towering cliffs on western Victoria Island with a sparkling dusting of snow on them, the sun setting over the frozen Coronation Gulf as winds blew snow past seemingly endless snowdrift formations, or the herds of muskoxen running across the frozen tundra.

The icy grip of winter can be beautiful. Few people ever cast their eyes on such things or understand the feeling of satisfaction I got from being able to complete a trip of this magnitude. Few will learn what I learned, feel what I felt, or live as close to the land as I did.

But I’ll do my best to share the experience. Over the next few weeks I’ll share a series of video clips that’ll give you a good look at the wilderness I traveled and the lessons I learned along the way.

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: Cliffs in the Dark at 40 Below

Online Editors — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:58:29 -0400

With the trip winding down, Ted and I knew we’d have to make a long push through the night to reach Ulukhaktok in time to spend a few hours with our friend Pat and, more importantly, catch our flight home. Fortunately, the weather was good enough for such an aggressive travel plan, and Ted and I left Rymer Point and headed straight overland, northward for Prince Albert Sound.

We passed many herds of musk oxen, including one that was 17 strong. In the late evening, Ted and I stopped to do some fishing in a spot where we were told the ice was thin and the fishing was good. But the ice was not as thin as we’d hoped, and we drilled through 6 1/2 feet straight into rock and damaged our auger blade. The dull blade made second hole we drilled was quite difficult and required every bit of strength Ted and I had to get through the ice. We fished for a while, but got skunked. Overall, the fishing on the trip wasn’t nearly as good as we’d hoped.

By the time we got back on our snow machines, it was pitch black and the terrain got rougher. We began traveling up and down some huge hills. At times it was a bit unnerving because you’d crest a hill and see nothing but darkness before the headlights picked up the grout. Ted warned to be careful not to fly off a cliff

He was right.

We were following a river—the final pathway to Price Albert Sound—and to save time, we drove over the bank to cut off a large bend in the river. Then, all the sudden, I saw a huge canyon in front of me. I turned away just in time.

I jumped off my machine and waved to Ted for him to stop. He pulled up and stopped beside me.

“What,” he asked.

I pointed to the canyon below us.

“Holy s---!” This is crazy. We shouldn’t be traveling at night like this.”

It was a good thing I wasn’t blindly following my GPS—or we would’ve plummeted over the 100-foot canyon wall...with the end of our journey in sight.

***

While we crossed Prince Albert Sound, the sky lit up in the east as the sun started to rise. As big as Great Bear Lake was, traveling on the sea ice is more daunting. There is no cover, the weather is colder, and the ice conditions are less reliable. This leg of the trip was the coldest yet—40 below zero, not factoring the wind chill. The sweat in our base layers from auger-drilling hours earlier chilled us to the bone. Ted started to shiver, and I wasn’t far behind. As the winds howled, we broke into our clothes bag and dug out some sweaters and fleece pants. Ted even took of his boots to stick a foot warmer in there.

None of this helped. He started to worry about frostbite on his toes, while I could start to feel it on my nose, cheeks, and ears. But once the sun got up, and the temperature rose, it got a little warmer. We turned west to follow the northern shore of the Sound, putting the strong east wind at our backs.

***

As exhausted as we were, we kept pushing. We stopped to refuel 100 miles from Ulukhaktok and called Pat to let him know we were close. We made good time on the last leg of the trip as we passed through the Safety Channel. The scenery was dramatic: Rugged, snow-sprinkled cliffs shot straight up out of the sea to our right and to our left we could see the horizon on the frozen Amundsen Gulf between the islands of the Channel. Finally, 26 hours and 225 miles after leaving Rymer Point, we could see Ulukhaktok.

It’s tough to describe the feeling of pulling up to a community like Ulukhaktok. Where everyone is so friendly and helpful. Where people are immediately interested in you and make you feel welcome. Where visitors are a big deal.

Pat and his wife, Jean, came out to meet up and brought us into their home. We told them all about our trip and ate delicious muskoxen until our bellies were full. Pat shared a couple amazing stories about how he had avoided death. Jean joked that he has nine lives. It was nice to share my stories with Pat—a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. I wish I had longer with him, but Pat would leave for a hunt late the next morning; Ted and I later that afternoon. I think Pat was proud of us for making the trip. We had traveled a very long distance and completed an epic journey through a land that has claimed the lives of many travelers. Very few people can say they’ve accomplished what we did, and I wonder if anyone has ever done the full route in one shot like Ted and I did.

When took off from the ice runway in Ulukhaktok to begin our string of flights back home, I thought about the deep satisfaction I felt when we first saw Ulukhaktok. We’re going to make it, I thought. And we did. We made it. —Jim Baird

Jim Baird’s Arctic Adventure: Crossing the Arctic Circle

Online Editors — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:56:42 -0400

When we got to Hornby Bay on Great Bear late in the afternoon, we were surprised to see snowmobile tracks. We followed them for a couple minutes until we saw a few walled tents in the northeast corner of the bay. We went over to check it out and met several people. They were mostly high school students, lead to Great Bear Lake by a few older men from Kugluktuk. The kids were learning traditional ways of hunting, fishing, camping, and navigation from the older guys.

We mentioned the route we planned to take to Ulukhaktok once we reached Kugluktuk. Two of the men in the group, Gerry and Isaac, were very experienced travelers and told us that the route we planned would not work. There would be open water on the ocean at the mouth of Prince Albert Sound and our fiberglass toboggans would never make it on the rocky overland section we had planned to cross. Isaac drew a different route out on our topo maps, and we’ve decided to follow his advice. The new route will make the trip longer but hopefully much safer. That night the Northern Lights danced in the sky over the route to Kugluktuk we planned to take in the morning.

The next day we woke up to the sound of a howling wolf. We fished all morning with no success, although the previous evening one of the older guys had landed a couple lake trout. Our plan was to leave for Dismal Lake that afternoon but by the time we packed up, tightened our suspensions, fixed a broken hitch, and chatted with everyone, it was evening already. Gerry gave us a whole caribou leg before we left and we were very grateful for the good meat. We left Hornby Bay under overcast skies, knowing we would be traveling well into the night. After climbing a large hill we got a final look at Great Bear Lake. About 10 minutes later we crossed the tree line and cut a standing dead tree, which we strapped to our sled for emergency firewood. Winds howled and snow fell causing whiteout conditions as we crossed the Arctic Circle. It was almost dark and it was very difficult to follow the blown-over trail. The horizon was barley visible to the east and west but non- existent in front of us. We had left traditional Dene territory and were now in the realm of the Inuit.

Soon we came into the rugged canyon terrain of the Theshierpi River that we would follow to Dismal Lake. The canyons cut the wind and although it was dark we could see that the country was beautiful. Wolverine tracks crossed our trail and we followed them in the darkness on foot for a while, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive creature.

It was pitch black out for a couple hours when we stopped to add oil. We were out of the canyons, traveling over a large hill nearing Dismal when the winds began howling again. It was freezing. We’d hoped to stay in a small cabin we heard was at Dismal Lake. The tracks left from the group at Hornby Bay became much easier to follow once it had gotten dark because of the shadows my headlights cast.

We rolled onto Dismal Lake around 2:30 a.m. and a light went on in the cabin. Larry and his son, who we had woken up, came out into the wind to greet us and invited us into the cabin for some hot coffee. We gladly accepted. He and his son had been out wolf hunting—they got two, one being his son’s first wolf. We set up camp on the ice and the wind died down.

The next morning Larry went towards the Kendall River to look for more wolves. Ted and I wanted to fish for char that are in the lake. Dismal feeds the Coppermine River and Arctic char often spend the winter in lakes connecting to the Coppermine. Our auger plus one extension couldn't make it through the ice and we had to add another extension. The ice was almost 7 feet thick and we could barley pull our auger out of the hole. Finally we dropped line only to realize the water was less than a couple feet deep below the ice. This wasn't the end of the world though because we knew people in the area often fish in shallow water. We jigged for a couple hours and caught nothing. With our tails between our legs we began to break camp. Larry came back from his hunt, no wolves, but his son got a caribou. They escorted us back to town and we were able to go between 35 and 45 kph through the open country. We stopped to meet with another few guys who were on their way to visit their dad at Hornby Bay. It was nice to meet other people; we were surprised that we saw anyone.

We made it to Kugluktuk by 9 p.m. and began to prepare for the second leg of our journey. We will travel across the Dolphin and Union Straight to Victoria Island, then overland to the Wollaston Peninsula to Prince Albert Sound. Then we'll cross the sound to follow the north shore, through Safety Chanel all the way to Ulukhaktok—longer but much safer route than we had originally planned. --Jim Baird

Jim Baird's Arctic Adventure Diary: Ulukhaktok or Bust!

Online Editors — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:40:43 -0400

The adventure has begun! Well, kind of…

My brother Ted and I are stuck in Deline.

First, we were waiting on the auger to arrive. When that got here, we thought we’d be ready to hit Great Bear Lake, but then we had a slight glitch with one of our snow machines during the first leg of the trip. Now we’re just waiting for the mechanic to make the repair and then, fingers crossed, we’ll be on our way.

This delayed start gives me a chance to show you the route Ted and I will be taking. We’ll travel across a few different landscapes: spruce forests, massive Great Bear Lake, mountainous northern shield country, treeless barren lands, and the frozen Beaufort Sea ice finishing the trip in the stark but beautiful landscape of the Arctic Islands.

Here’s a breakdown of our trip, stop by stop:

Tulita: The expedition started in Tulita, a small community on the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories. Ted and I landed Tulita earlier in the week, and we organized our gear for the first leg of the trip—a 65-mile winter road trek to Deline. The ride took a couple of hours and was tough at first. But then, toward the end of the leg as the sun was setting, we came over this hill and got our first glimpse of Great Bear Lake. It was one of the most beautiful sights of my life. We rode the ice rode in the rest of the way to Deline.

Deline: It’s actually a blessing that our snow machine trouble happened when it did, because we’re still in “civilization” where we can easily get mechanical help. That won’t be the case after we leave Deline and head out on to Great Bear Lake, heading east toward the McTavish arm and Hornby Bay. On this 190-mile stretch we’ll take our time, stopping to fish for trophy lake trout in Great Bear, the ninth largest lake in the world. The average March temperature for the area is 2 degrees below zero—and temperatures below 40 degrees are common.

Hornby Bay & Dismal Lakes: Just the name of this place is unsettling to me—especially because it’s at the head of the most difficult part of our journey. The Bay was named after John Hornby who starved to death while wintering in his remote NWT cabin. We will navigate this stretch by following creek beads and riding over large hills to make our way through the mountainous terrain. Trees will be sparse and by the time we reach Dismal Lakes they will be well behind us. At Dismal, and other lakes on this route, we will ice fish for Arctic char that spend the winter in the headwaters of tributaries of the mighty Coppermine River just east of us. We’ll cover 93 miles on this part of the journey.

Kugluktuk: We’ll refuel here for our final 200-mile push to Ulukhaktok. Fifty miles of this trek will be overland before we head out on to the Dolphin and Union Straight of the Beaufort Sea. There won’t be a tree in sight, and we’ll be camping right in the middle of the ice—so if a blizzard hits, we’ll be very exposed. We’ll also be right in the hunting grounds of polar bears.

Ulukhaktok: At the end of our trip, we’ll reunite with our friend Pat Ekpakohak. Ted and I first met Pat about four years ago when we were exploring the Kuujja River. He invited us to his home, and before we left I bought a musk-ox hide from him that I brought on this trip. Pat is an expert in the ways of Arctic travel and survival, and we will spend a couple days with him. Hopefully he’ll show us how to build an igloo or take us out on his trap line. By the time we reach Ulukhaktok, Ted and I will have travelled 548 miles.
That’s if we were to travel our chosen path exactly.

How to Make Ice Spikes and Use Them to Crawl Out of a Frozen Lake

Dave_Maccar — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:06:34 -0400

In a previous post where I willingly broke through the ice...twice...I noticed a question from MissMuley in the comments section about the ice spikes I used to pull myself out of the frozen lake.

It’s a good question, because without them I’m not sure I could’ve crawled out. Here’s how I made mine:

Step 1: I started with two 5-inch nails (Phillips-head screwdrivers would also work) and a length of strong cord (p-cord works great) slightly longer than my wingspan.

Step 2: I wrapped the cord around the nails and secured them with strong knots. And to be sure the knots stay put, I ran a lighter over them to melt them together. I also taped some foam to the to 2/3 of each nail for a better grip—and so they’d float.

Step 3: Wear the spikes underneath your coat with the cord running up your arms and around your shoulders—just like you did with mittens when you were a kid. Let the spikes dangle from your sleeves (or tuck them in your sleeves, if you prefer) when you’re on the ice.

If you break through, try to exit from the same direction from which you fell, because the ice there was strong enough to support you—at least until you go too close to the thinner area. Get a good grip on your spikes, then reach your arms out of the hold as far as you can and dig the spikes in...hard.

With the spikes in the ice, float your body to the surface while pulling yourself out. Keep driving the spikes into the ice, pulling yourself forward, until you’re away from the hole. Once out, roll away from the hole. This will distribute your weight on the surface more evenly than standing up on likely thin ice.

Now, be happy that you were smart enough to carry ice spikes. They may have just saved your life.

Video: How to Survive a Fall Through the Ice and Prevent Hypothermia

Dave_Maccar — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:39:57 -0500

Spoiler Alert: You are about to see me carve a hole in a frozen lake and jump in the freezing-cold water—twice. After both jumps I’ll take the necessary steps to pull myself out, change clothes, and start a fire to get warm as fast as possible.

I performed this stunt last weekend (in a controlled environment where help was close by) because this is exactly the type of survival scenario I could encounter on my upcoming snowmobile adventure. After I cross Great Bear Lake, I’ll be traveling on stretches of rivers as I make my way to the Arctic Coast. If there’s one section of the trip where I’ll be most at risk of falling through the ice, it’ll be on these rivers. Frozen rivers are the most dangerous to cross because they’re the most unpredictable.

With that out of the way, enjoy the video and be glad you aren’t the one getting dunked.

What I Learned:

1. How my body reacts to the initial shock of freezing-cold water, so I know what to expect if it happens for real.
2. How my body reacts to the cold, so I have a better understanding of how fast I’d loose my core heat.
3. That I would have been OK if I had been in the ice water longer, because, although I was very cold afterward, I was not shivering.
4. That my ice spikes work. It would have been very difficult to crawl out of the water without them. They could be a lifesaver.
5. That fleece, although better than most fabrics, doesn’t do a great job of insolating you when wet; my legs were freezing cold under my fleece pants.
6. That it would be much tougher to get out of the hole if the surrounding ice was weak; I put a good amount of pressure on the ice while climbing out.
7. That I can survive. Being able to think rationally in a situation like this is what saves you, and after this test I gained confidence knowing that I could rescue myself if this happens for real.

Survival: How To Make A Coal Bed

Online Editors — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:45:17 -0500

Have you ever seen Jeremiah Johnson?” David Cronenwett asks me between strokes of his saw.

The Robert Redford movie about the legendary mountain man is one of my favorites, but I nod uncomfortably as Cronenwett renders firewood from cottonwood logs for our camp. I have an idea where the question is going.

“You're going to ask if I remember the coal-bed scene, right?”

Now it's his turn to nod. The scene we're thinking about is the one in which Johnson's mentor, Bear Claw Chris Lapp, teaches him how to sleep on a bed of dirt heaped over wood coals. After not putting enough dirt down, Johnson later comes roaring out of the bed tearing at his clothes, smoke rising from his back.

Cronenwett hands me a stout stick. “Don't worry,” he says. “This will be fun.”

A former instructor at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Utah, where training required wandering alone in the desert for days, Cronenwett has made a career out of teaching hunters and other outdoorsmen survival basics. He customizes classes for individuals as well as groups, and invited me to come along with him on a mid-August day for a crash course in the Montana wilderness. Last month's column (“Death by Survival”) discussed the importance of hands-on survival training. Today, the classroom is the Middle Fork of the Teton River, and although I have endured many three-dog nights myself, it turns out I could use a refresher course. As we begin to dig a trench for the coal bed, I conjure visions of myself going up in flames later in the night. But one thing I've learned after a day under his tutelage is that Cronenwett knows what he is doing.

Or, as Cronenwett would say, he is doing what he knows. “Theory is great,” he'd said earlier. “But in a survival situation, what we do is what we know. You wouldn't trust your life to a doctor who has studied medicine but never practiced it, would you?”

Life Skills
Cronenwett, a naturalist at the Pine Butte Guest Ranch outside Choteau, Mont. (406-590-8070; pinebutteguestranch.com), defines bushcraft, which emphasizes expertise with knife, axe, and saw, as “high skill, low tech.” Throughout the day, he has instructed me on the finer points of blocking logs with a collapsible bucksaw (“saw like a married man—long, slow strokes”), splitting wedges from the blocks with my knife (“pound on the back of the blade, don't hit the handle”), and splitting the blocks by pounding the wedges into them. Shaving feather sticks is a critical skill, but my first attempt resembles a stick splintered by lightning, whereas Cronenwett's is carefully shaved into paper curls so thin that they ignite with sparks from a fire steel.

Once the fire burns down and Cronenwett is satisfied with the bed of coals, we kick the 8-inch layer of dirt we'd excavated back over the bed, then cover it with a springy layer of pine-needle duff. Lying down only inches from Cronenwett, I accept that my performance level at basic bushcraft skills rates a B minus. I know what to do. What I'm lacking is the practice to do expertly, efficiently, what I know.

Vowing to improve my skills before rifle season, I soon succumb to the radiant heat of the bed, and don't burn up after all.

Close Calls: Hunter Attacked By Bear

Online Editors — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:09:20 -0500

A group of my friends wanted to get their first bear, so I brought my Plott and Walker hounds to help. When they opened up and started running, I knew they sniffed something big.

We caught up with them 30 minutes later under a pin oak, where they were barking up three bears. My knees give me trouble, and I needed a rest. I knew that you shouldn't ever get under a treed bear, so I walked to an old deer trail that I thought was a safe distance from the action. Meanwhile, my friend shot and hit one of the bears. After another shot, the bear suddenly jumped from the tree, cleared my friends, and bounded straight for me.

I tried to pull myself up from where I sat, but it was only a moment before he was 6 feet away and rearing up on his hind legs. I threw up my hands to protect my face, and the bear latched onto my arms with his teeth and claws. Then I heard a bang. My friend Charlie had shot the bear in the head.

What happened next is a blur. I remember blood running to the floor of my friend's truck as he doubled the speed limit to the nearest Forest Service station. Next thing I knew I was in a helicopter, with tubes coming out of my arms. Then I fell into blackness.

Photo by Bill Husa/Courtesy of Chico Enterprise-Record

I awoke two days later in the Sutter Roseville Medical Center. The doctor told me that if I had arrived one hour later, I would have died. I had lost 4 pints of blood. The bear, which weighed

almost 300 pounds, had broken my left arm in four places. Even after therapy, my left thumb is partially paralyzed and a shooting pain comes and goes. It's a reminder of how powerful these animals are. I was done for the season, but I'm not done forever. I'm just going to watch where I sit.

Close Call: Stranded, Fisherman Battled Hypothermia, Ate Fish

Online Editors — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:49:06 -0500

I had always wanted to check out some of the remaining streams in northern Colorado that still have native cutthroats. So I drove up on a Friday, about 50 miles north of Steamboat, and camped for the night.

The next morning I fished in a remote side canyon of the middle fork of the Little Snake River. As I waded, I noticed that a lot of the rocks had recently fallen off the walls and the footing was unstable in places. Around 1 p.m., I was fishing a pool that was about 3 or 4 feet deep when—just as I was going to unhook a rainbow—I slipped. I just flat out took a dive, slamming my knee on one of the submerged rocks. Right away, I knew that my leg was broken.

My car was less than a half mile away, but it was on top of the canyon, and I couldn't bear any weight on my leg.

So there I sat…in the middle of the stream, on these medium-size rocks. I considered making it over to the bank, about 20 feet away, but it was really nothing more than a muddy shelf, a kind of false refuge. I didn't want to risk falling and getting soaked and maybe not getting up. My strategy was to stay put, where I was visible. I always leave my itinerary with my neighbor. Someone will come looking for me, I thought. A couple of times an hour I would bellow without effect.

The days were warm. But this was August in Colorado; when the wind blows down that canyon at night, you're shivering the whole time. Each night I would just hunker down. I was wearing hip boots and a windbreaker, and I had two emergency blankets. The rocks kept most of my body out of the water.

I was able to catch fish, which I filleted. Colorado sushi.

The sound of the water helped me meditate. I let myself go into a state of contemplating and not worrying. I prayed.

By the end of the fifth night I was delirious. I was facedown when the search-and-rescue team found me. My body temperature was 86.

I was in the hospital for 33 days, 15 of those in the ICU. The early part was very much in the realm of dream. I was treated for hypothermia and pneumonia. My tibia was broken in three places, and they placed five screws and a titanium rod in my leg.

I'm grateful for a second chance. The key if you get in trouble is to assess your situation as unemotionally as you can, and once you've made a decision, stick with it.
—AS TOLD TO TOM TIBERIO

Build A Bad-Weather Fire

Online Editors — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:24:25 -0500

It's an axiom of survival that when you need a fire—really need it with the snow blowing and the evening drawing down like a burial shroud—you need it now. And you need it big.

No futzing around with a bow drill. No trying to spark fire with a rock and a hunting knife. No miniature sparking wheel that will fumble out of your numb fingers. What you need are no-b.s. methods to ignite fire, utilize tinder, render kindling, and gather enough fuel to keep hypothermia at bay. And you need them in the opposite order, because the secret of generating a warming fire is to build it from the outside in.

Start Big
First order of business is gathering fuel. Doing so will warm you up so you have steady hands to actually start the fire later on. Plus, it will be harder to find once it's dark. How much? For an all-night fire, a stack of logs as long as you are tall and waist-high. With an ax, you can lay in a supply by toppling one standing dead tree. No ax and you'll have to haul in deadfall and break it into reasonable lengths by wedging the ends between two trees and pulling. Don't neglect burned stumps, which are full of pitch, and for every three dry logs haul in one green one. It will burn once the fire is established.

Tip: Pack pigskin work gloves. Wool or fleece hunting gloves will shred under the demands of gathering fuel, leaving you with mangled fingers to try to start a fire.

Get to the Heart
Gathering kindling can be as simple as breaking off the dead twigs and branches that quill the lower trunks of spruce and pine trees; these stay dry because they are protected by canopy. But in country where you hunt in your rain gear, the only dry source of kindling will be the heartwood of standing dead and propped logs. Saw or chop the trunk into sections and then split the dry inner wood into sticks ranging from pencil- to wrist-thickness. You'll need a bundle of splits about as big as you can hug to your chest to establish a fire hot enough to burn larger fuel.

Tip: No ax? Pound on the spine of your knife to split off a wedge of wood. By placing a series of wedges in a crack that runs lengthwise along a log and pounding on them with a stout stick, you can split the trunk to expose the dry interior.

Sweat the Small Stuff
A snowstorm is no time to look for fungus or dry grass. Bring tinder with you. Cotton balls smeared with petroleum jelly are as good as anything you can buy. Make a softball-size nest of bark shavings, rusted pine needles, and feathered wood from your kindling splits, place the tinder on it, then loosely cover the tinder with more needles and shavings. Build a tepee from your kindling around the tinder, starting with the tiny twigs and working your way up to kindling as thick as your thumb.

Tip: For insurance, I pack a finger-size stick of resin-soaked fatwood (pine). It provides long-lasting tinder for igniting kindling in wet weather.

Light It Up
Forget those windproof matches that require a chemical reaction to ignite. Gum up the striking strip and they might as well be toothpicks. The best sources of ignition in really bad weather are a butane lighter that provides a tall, strong flame and a sparking steel that will throw a shower of white-hot sparks and the wind be damned. Carry both.

Tip: The sparking steel I use includes a magnesium rod and is set into a wooden handle, both of which can be shaved off and used as tinder.

Once you have the tepee fire blazing, cross it with your wrist-thick kindling and start to add larger fuel. A warming fire should be as long as your body and backed by a wall of logs or rocks to reflect the heat back at you. Once it's established, add a few green logs, which burn with fewer BTUs than dry logs but last longer, ensuring that you will outlive the moon for at least one more night.

Close Calls: Bitten By A Brown Recluse

Online Editors — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:52:25 -0500

It was the second-to-last day of West Virginia's muzzleloading season, and I spotted a buck grazing in an open field 120 yards away. Hidden in the brush, I shot prone and dropped the buck clean. I think I can remember a sting. But I was so focused on the deer that I'm not sure.
After I field dressed the buck, I noticed my calf throbbing. Did I nick it with my knife? When I pulled my pant leg up, I saw a bite like I'd never seen—a red spot 3 inches wide with a black hole in the middle. It looked like a sting where you'd pull a stinger out, but I couldn't see anything but dark, pooling blood.
As if I didn't have enough to worry about, my wife called and said a snowstorm was on its way. She was worried I wouldn't be able to make it the two and a half hours to Charleston. I could have driven to a closer hospital, but I wanted to get home no matter what.

I was miserable on that ride. The snowstorm turned the highway to one lane. I drank water to stay cool and keep my composure, but I could feel a deep ache in my leg. When I got to the emergency room, the swelling was above my knee. The doctor said that even though we were outside of its normal range, this had to be the work of a brown recluse spider.
The surgeon found where most of the poison was concentrated and cut out the decaying tissue. Two days later, he operated a second time to cut out a section of my leg 10 inches long, half an inch wide, and half an inch deep. I spent 16 days in the hospital, including Christmas.
The whole ordeal really took a lot out of me, but it could have been worse. My circulation was strong because I run every day—the doctor said that if I'd been out of shape, I would have lost my leg. It was my heart that saved me.

Hunters And Heart Attack

Online Editors — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:06:55 -0500

WHEN YOU ARE HUNTING ELK, the hammering of your heart is most noticeable in the silence before dawn, when you stop for a breather on the mountain. It is a sound I have heard since I was a boy, but not until last season, when I strapped on a heart monitor, have I ever bothered to count the beats or take measure of their meaning.
Although opinion varies, many doctors caution that exercising at a level higher than 85 percent of a person’s maximum heart rate increases the risk of heart attack. For men, maximum heart rate is calculated by subtracting your age from 220. For me, the equation reads 220 - 56 = 164. Eighty-five percent—my red-flag number—is 139. Throughout big-game season, I found myself battling to keep my heart rate in the safe zone, especially while hunting elk. Oct. 25 was a typical logbook entry. Fifteen minutes after starting up the west face of Garnet Mountain, I had already exceeded my 85 percent maximum by eight heartbeats.

The Killing Season The elevated heart rate came as a surprise to me—I attained a season high of 168 while pulling an antelope on a game cart that had two flat tires—but it echoed the results of a study conducted by Michigan’s Beaumont Hospital. Published in 2007 in the American Journal of Cardiology, the study involved fitting heart monitors on 25 middle-aged hunters, 17 of whom had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease. During deer season, all but three exceeded the maximum rate they had achieved on a treadmill test. Dragging downed game raised heart rates to the most dangerous levels, but several men experienced jumps into the red zone simply from spotting or shooting at a deer.
According to coauthor Dr. Barry Franklin, the strain hunting puts on your heart muscle can be attributed to three factors: hunting’s strenuous nature, the epinephrine (or “excitement”) response upon seeing game, and environmental stresses including cold weather and altitude.
“It’s a perfect storm,” he says. “Each year I read about hunters having heart
attacks upstate. Most could be prevented.”
Franklin also notes that many hunters in the study group exhibited life-threatening heart-rhythm irregularities that had not been apparent on EKG readouts during laboratory
treadmill tests. This was a disturbing finding, for heart arrhythmia is the trigger for cardiac arrest, in which the heart suddenly stops beating.

Pump Protection So what can you do to keep your heart working during the R months?
First, get a stress test. Treadmills and EKG monitors can reveal arrhythmias and arterial blockages that put you at risk for heart attack. If you are diagnosed with heart disease, your doctor may prescribe nitroglycerin tablets, which dilate blood vessels that may be constricted. A pacemaker that detects irregular heartbeat and shocks the heart back into rhythm may be an option for patients at high risk. Always carry an uncoated aspirin tablet in a pocket. Chew and swallow it to thin your blood at the onset of chest pain.
Once you have the green light from your doctor, buy a monitor (many include alarms that can be set to your maximum safe rate) and embark upon an exercise program. Aerobic exercise that keeps your heart working between 65 and 85 percent of your calculated maximum (the fitter you are, the harder you can work your heart) increases the capacity of the muscle to pump the blood and oxygen needed for the rigors of hunting, while reducing the chance of dangerous jumps in pulse rate. Exercise in the target zone for 20 minutes at least three times a week. I have yet to figure out how to keep the digital
readout in the safe zone while backpacking 60 pounds of elk meat up a mountainside, but during most of my hunts, staying under the maximum was basically a matter of taking more climbing breaks and trying to avoid dragging a downed animal by myself. Hauling game is what horses and game carts are for. Just make sure you pack spare tires.

How Accurate Are Survival TV Shows?

Online Editors — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:55:47 -0400

When Richard Code left the Toronto, Ontario, suburbs and began to hitchhike north toward his death, he carried little more than an axe and a desire, born of books and reality TV shows, to spend several days honing survival skills. He was dressed in thin clothing that was no match for February temperatures that would plummet to 10 degrees F. He wore hiking shoes that would become soaked after he thumbed his last ride, as he postholed through deep snow toward the shoreline of Horn Lake, in the Muskoka woodlands. Besides the axe, his meager defenses against the elements included a compass, a lighter, a space blanket, and a multitool. He had no tent, no sleeping bag, and no food.

Most important, he lacked formal survival training. Instead, family and friends reported that Code relied heavily upon instructions from Survivorman, the TV show starring Les Stroud, and from Stroud's book, Survive! Code's body was found a week later.

Among other things, this tragedy calls into question whether reality-style shows paint an accurate portrait of wilderness survival. Survivorman, which aired from 2005 to 2008 on the Science Channel, and the Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild, starring Bear Grylls, each pit one man against the elements. So earlier this year I plunked myself down in front of the tube to watch back-to-back seasons over the course of a weekend, seeking answers to several questions I would later put personally to Stroud. (Questions e-mailed to Bear Grylls, who was unavailable for a telephone interview, were unanswered by the time of publication.)

A Safety Net Behind the Set

From the opening sequence of Man vs. Wild, in which Bear Grylls swings on a vine, bites the head off a snake, eats a scorpion, clings perilously to the face of a waterfall and leaps into a churning pool, it is clear that the 36-year-old former UK special forces paratrooper is, above all, a showman. It also should be noted that he has been accused of being a charlatan. In 2007, widely published reports of Grylls sleeping in hotels, receiving off-camera assistance building rafts and bridges, wearing a safety harness to descend chasms, and feasting on animals that were conveniently provided by others prompted the show's producers to re-edit some early episodes. A disclaimer was added stating that Bear and his crew “receive support when they are in potentially life-threatening situations.”

Photo by Discovery Channel

Stroud's Survivorman is more documentary than contrived drama, with the misery, hunger, and depression of solo survival standing in stark contrast to Grylls's thrill-a-minute gymnastics. Like Grylls, however, Stroud has backup. As such, the psychological aspects of survival, specifically the tendency to panic, are kept in check, a fact that Stroud readily admits. It's one thing to start a fire with a single match when, if you fail, you can call for the cavalry. Without the safety net, your fingers might shake a little more.

Different Philosophies
The skills Stroud demonstrates are bedrock solid, clearly presented, and potentially of life-saving value. Although Grylls, a former survival instructor, can also offer practical information, the fundamental difference between their approaches is set forth in the antagonistic title of Grylls's show—Man vs. Wild. In the “Arctic Circle” episode, Grylls goes careening downhill on makeshift ski gear; breaks through the ice of a frozen Arctic river, soaking himself from the waist down; and jumps from a ledge onto the top of a tree, using his weight to bend the tree over and cushion his fall. Had he truly been in a survival situation, a mishap during any of these stunts could have been his death sentence. Grylls never goes around a cliff if he can rappel down it, and never walks if he can run, jump, or otherwise risk cracking a limb.

When Grylls eats deer pellets in the “Alabama” episode and opens wide to show you a mouth full of dung, it struck me as a metaphor for the overall value of his advice.

If Grylls's attitude toward nature is “attack, attack, attack,” Stroud's can best be summed up as “prepare, cooperate, persevere.” When Stroud must cross water in one episode, he states that the situation allows “no room for bravado or carelessness.” Had Richard Code closely watched Season One's “Plane Crash,” he would have noted that Stroud chose to wear wool to combat the frigid Ontario winter weather. Striking off into the bush farther south in the same province, Code wore thin cargo pants and a jacket. Stroud used stone and an axe to expertly spark a fire as long as his body. Code managed only a meager fire on his first night and no flames on his second, after which he succumbed to hypothermia.

His tragedy highlights the instructional limitations of any survival show. For example, Stroud says it took three months of practice before he was able to start a friction fire in the wilderness. On-screen, it takes him about three minutes. Magazines, including this one, are also sometimes guilty of oversimplifying. I can explain the basics of starting a fire with a bow drill. What's harder to convey is the difficulty of mastering the skill.

Crawl Before You Walk
Reached by phone recently, Stroud said he reacted to Code's death with “great sadness.”

“I would never recommend soloing in the bush without much hands-on instruction,” Stroud told me. “It's not like I jumped into this business. Learning survival skills is a process. First you train with a group, then you solo but with other students [also on their own] nearby.”

He offered the following analogy: “I can watch all the NHL hockey I want, but that doesn't mean the first time I step on the ice that I can play hockey—I would get hurt. Survival is in itself a higher-end skill—it can't be approached casually. What's missed is the practice stage required.”

For Stroud, the practice stage has included more than a year of intensive training under some of North America's best survival experts, including Gino Ferri, the director of Survival in the Bush Inc., an Ontario-based outdoor-skills school. While praising Survivorman for its verisimilitude, Ferri maintains that most survival shows “abstract the stress and ugliness of wilderness survival” and give viewers an inflated sense of their abilities. To prove the point, he filmed a show called TV Made Me Survive with two neophytes whose only outdoor training came from watching episodes of Survivorman, Man vs. Wild, and the BBC survival series presented by the British bushcraftsman Ray Mears. Both men, Ferri says, went into the woods confident they could prevail. One lasted seven and a half hours; the other, one and a half days, before they gave up due to bugs and bad weather.

A False Reality

No one will ever know all the factors that contributed to Richard Code's wandering unprepared into the bush, or staying there when he could have backtracked to safety. But it would be unfair to hold Les Stroud responsible. Doing so would be like blaming Jeff Gordon for the death of a NASCAR fanatic who crashed after putting too much foot to the pedal of his Kia.

Still, I can understand how viewers like Code come to idolize wilderness survival stars. I, too, admire Stroud and aspire to his minimalist aesthetic as a tonic against the times. Watching the videos, I was kneeling right alongside him while he struck sparks from his axe with a rock. I helped him set a snare that caught a rabbit. I even allowed myself the luxury of thinking that I could have done better than he did with primitive gear in the Amazon and in Alaska. What I had to keep reminding myself was that it's easy to survive when you're sitting in an armchair.

That's something we should all keep in mind before throwing down the remote and plunging into the wilderness with a knife between our teeth.

Eating Insects For Survival

Online Editors — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:44:26 -0400

THE FIRST TIME I floated Montana's Smith River with John Hirvela, the only food we took was a sack of potatoes and a shaker of salt. My friend assured me this was all we'd need. We'd cook trout and round off every meal with watercress salad gathered at a spring about 10 miles into the five-day float. · It was the kind of plan that sounds better at home than it does once you've launched your canoe. Especially when it rains and the color comes up on the river. I caught a brown at our first camp, but midway through the second day the water turned to creamed coffee, and then to espresso. By the time we reached the spring, it was apparent that our only source of protein would be the hordes of scuds and other aquatic insects that clung to the watercress.

Your First Course Insects are the most abundant life form on earth and, except during winter, are the first foods anyone should turn to for sustenance upon becoming lost or stranded. Not only can bugs be found in large quantities, but they are highly nutritious, being rich in fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. The main caveat is that people who suffer from shellfish allergies should avoid them.

Grasshoppers are easy to pick off grass stems at dawn, when the nip in the air has caused them to go into torpor. Crickets, beetles, and grubs can be found under rocks. Other good places to search include behind loose bark, in decaying stumps, and inside seed pods. Earth mounds often betray insect activity underneath.

For sorting through loose soil and rotted wood, it helps to use a digging stick. Another excellent tool for insect collection is a seine, which you can jury-rig by tying your shirt or handkerchief between two poles. Use it to catch active bugs such as flying grasshoppers, or in a stream for aquatic insects.

On the Menu The best edible insects include crickets, cicadas, and grasshoppers, along with termites, ants (which need to be cooked), moths, and butterflies. Some arthropods, including scorpions and tarantulas, are also edible. Nearly all aquatic insects can be eaten in both adult and larval form and, in my experience, are generally more agreeable than their landlubbing brethren. Grubs, worms, leeches, and beetle larvae have a slime factor that can cause a gag reflex and should be either swallowed without chewing, or mashed into a paste and cooked crisply.

While most insects are O.K. raw, they are more palatable after being cooked. Boiling or roasting (wrap the insects in leaves) kills any bacteria, as well as renders the proteins more digestible. Remove beady heads, hard carapaces, wings, barbed legs, and antennae to reduce the “crunch factor,” ease swallowing, and eliminate any parasites. With a grasshopper, twist off the head—the guts should come with it—before swallowing the abdomen. I have often picked mayflies off the river surface and nibbled their abdomens, which taste like, well, mayflies. However, because the water that clings to aquatic insects can be contaminated, it's safer to cook them. On our Smith River trip, we tried boiling our “greens and grubs,” but the bugs had a brighter, nuttier taste eaten raw, and the tang of the watercress, along with a precious few swallows of Scotch, helped subdue the aftertaste.

What to avoid? Pass on bugs that are covered in fuzz. (Bees and wasps are safe to eat if you remove their stingers.) Beware of brightly colored insects, or for that matter any slow-moving insects that you find in the open; they don't give a damn about predators because they know they're poisonous. Disease-carrying species including flies, mosquitoes, and ticks also are to be strictly avoided, as is any bug that emits a strong odor.

As for the rest, open your mouth and close your eyes. Bon appetit.

Cavers Rescue Trapped Coonhound in Illinois

Online Editors — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:51:09 -0400

An Illinois coonhound gets rescued after being trapped in a cave for three days.

From this amazing story in the Chicago Tribune:
Dogs are renowned for loyalty to their owners, but sometimes it works the other way, too. Just ask Jared Gamboe, who stood vigil outside of a cave that he believed his dog was trapped inside for three days.

An avid raccoon hunter, Gamboe went out to the wooded area near Indian Lake Road in Delhi last Sunday night to hunt with two of his buddies and four dogs altogether. When the hunters unleashed their dogs, two ran off in one direction and two ran off in another. Gamboe's 2-year-old Treeing Walker coonhound, Threat, was one of the dogs that boldly ran off in pursuit of raccoons. "Within 15 minutes, I knew something was wrong, because I lost the signal from Threat's GPS collar, and Paul (Young) lost contact with his dog, Cassie, at the same time," Gamboe said.

Resolved to find Threat or at least to find out what happened to him, Gamboe returned to the area just a few hours later. Gamboe calculated that Threat could have gone only approximately 200 yards before the signal dropped, so he focused his rescue efforts within this radius. While combing the area, he noticed dog tracks, so he followed them up a ditch to where he discovered a small cave. The cave was hidden from view by a rock overhang, leading into a narrow tunnel. "I thought he was probably gone, but I wasn't ready to give up on him," he said. "I had read on a website about a dog who lasted 14 days in a cave, so I was going to keep going back for two weeks." Against all odds, Gamboe finally heard a muted yelp from inside the cave on Wednesday morning. Gamboe immediately called his wife, screaming over the telephone the good news that Threat still was alive.

Calling his friends for help, Gamboe once again tried to go down into the cave to rescue his beloved dog, but he couldn't reach him. Although both the Jersey County fire and police departments came to the scene, neither was able to help, because they only can participate in the rescue of humans from cave entrapment...Jim Sherrel, president of the MMV Cave Club, called to offer help. He sent out e-mails and called fellow cavers, who responded to her anguished plea immediately. Because she was the smallest caver, Kristin Nicolussi was the only volunteer who could reach Threat, crawling some of the way on her hands and knees, but mostly inching forward on her belly in the confined space, some 2 feet wide.

"When I got down there, I could see the white part of his belly moving," Nicolussi said. "His head was lodged between the top of the cave and a rock, and he was lying on his belly with his front paws caught and his back legs splayed out. He couldn't move until I freed his head." Nicolussi said that Threat whined a bit while she was freeing him, and that once he realized he could move, he pushed past her to get out. To everyone's surprise, Threat walked out on his own power, picking up his pace and wagging his tail the moment he spotted Jared Gamboe.

Camping With An Electric Bear Fence

Online Editors — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:39:29 -0400

WHEN YOU'RE CAMPING on a sandbar pock-marked with Alaskan grizzly tracks, the last words you want to hear are “We've got company.” Especially when the bear that prompted them is within 20 yards of the raft you've pulled to the shore. One sniff of the fish slime on the net in the raft, one swipe of that catcher's-mitt paw, and my brother and I would be staring at a 50-mile hike downriver to the nearest Indian outpost.

It was then that I realized that the electric fence we had strung around our tents would have been better served protecting our gear. As it was too late for second guesses, I jacked a shell into my shotgun and fired a warning shot when the bear had approached to 40 feet. He shook his head and shuffled into the willows.

A Backcountry Fence Although Alaskans have used electric fences to protect smokehouses and meat poles since the 1930s, compact models have become widely available only during the last several years. John Gookin, research director for the National Outdoor Leadership School—who worked with Mark Matheny of UDAP Industries to design the one my brother and I used on our float trip last summer—tested a prototype on the grizzlies in Katmai National Park. It was trial by fire; Gookin set up his tent a mere 100 yards from where “Grizzly Man” Timothy Treadwell spent several seasons before famously meeting his fate in the jaws of a bear in 2003. After the first night, Gookin awoke to find one of the corner poles of the fence bent, with a clump of brown hair on the top.

Knowing the fence had worked was reassuring. “I have to admit I slept better after that,” he says. Later tests at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Mont., determined that some of the bears could actually feel the electrical charge in the air. Most shied away before contacting it; those that got shocked left the area.

Bear Necessity? The Bear Shock, produced by UDAP ($250; pepperpower.com), weighs 3 1/2 pounds and encloses a 27x27-foot area. (UDAP also markets a beefier fence designed for food caches.) Gookin says that during their trials, they've never had a bear get inside when human error wasn't to blame.

Like most electric fences, the Bear Shock relies on a capacitor to up the voltage, delivering a charge of 6,000 volts on just two D-cell batteries. Setup takes about as long as erecting a couple of tents. You place the poles, wrap the wires (two live and one ground), clip them off to a corner post, and set the switch on the energizer. During our trip, we found the daily routine of unwinding and rewinding the wires a bit tedious (a crank would have helped), but when every gravel bar you camp on is heaped with bear scat, you don't tend to complain.

Bear fences won't work everywhere, or in all weather. In weedy sites, you have to cut down growth that contacts the wires or the charge will be diminished. Heavy rain or snow could also cause failure. Under no conditions should you consider fencing a substitute for properly storing food and keeping a clean camp.

Conditions aside, I'm sold on electric fences in grizzly country, if only for the peace of mind. After the close encounter on our Alaskan float, my brother and I looked at each other, shrugged, and crawled back in our sleeping bags. But for the rest of the trip, we kept the raft inside the charged wires.

Fact Or Fiction? Top 8 Survival Myths

Online Editors — Sat, 15 May 2010 17:53:20 -0400

MY GRANDMOTHER INEZ used to stuff towels under her bedroom door whenever I came to visit. Steeped in Appalachian folklore, she believed that hoop snakes rolled downhill, that a milk snake would crawl into a crib to suck the breath from a newborn's mouth, and that a baby rattlesnake—“three times more poisonous than its mother”—possessed the devil's tongue. My fascination with the scaly creatures was a witch's curse in her eyes, and she was deathly afraid that a serpent would crawl from my pocket and strike her in her sleep.

“God knows,” she'd say when I dismissed her beliefs as so much mythology. “God knows the truth.”

But what exactly is the truth? Much of the folklore surrounding nature and survival is transparently false. Let's examine eight commonly held beliefs and separate fact from fiction.

1 Folklore: If a bear attacks, play dead. Fact: That depends on the bear. Grizzly attacks during daytime are prompted by invasion of territory; the bear will usually stop once it realizes you don't pose a threat. Playing dead can save your life. In contrast, black bear attacks are a predatory response. Fight back to stay off the menu.

2 Folklore: In order to disinfect water so that it's safe to drink, boil for at least 10 minutes.

Fact: Bullpucky. In the time that it takes water to reach a rolling boil, any disease-causing organisms will die, regardless of altitude. Beyond that point, you're just wasting fuel.

Photo by Donald M. Jones

3 Folklore: Baby rattlers are more dangerous than adults.

Fact: Grandma wasn't entirely crazy. As juveniles, most American venomous snakes have little control of their venom glands and always inject a full dose. Adults may inject a partial dose or, in some cases, none at all.

4 Folklore: If you're dying of thirst, drink your urine.

Fact: It's one thing to drink dilute (pale) urine, which is 95 percent water. But the more times you pass it through your system, the more toxic the effect on your kidneys. Still, at what point it does more harm than good is a gray area.

5 Folklore: In a desert, you can drink water from a cactus.

Fact: The pulp from prickly pear and various barrel cacti contains some nontoxic fluid, but its chemical content can induce diarrhea and vomiting, which hasten dehydration. You're better off seeking water in rock crevasses.

6 Folklore: Moss grows on the north side of a tree trunk.

Fact: In shaded forest or near water, mosses may grow on all sides of a tree. Aspens, which exude a powdery natural sunscreen that will whiten your palms, are a better indicator. The powder is heaviest on the trunk's south side.

Photo by Colin Monteath/Minden Pictures

7 Folklore: To treat frostbite, rub the frozen tissue with snow or immerse it in cold water.

Fact: Use body heat (but do not rub) or immerse in warm water. But only when you're certain there's no chance that the tissue will refreeze, increasing the risk of permanent damage.

8 Folklore: Always seek high ground to avoid hypothermia.

Fact: Creekbottoms and hollows are cold-air sinks, and if you can find shelter on an elevated bench, the air will be warmer. But if going high means exposure to wind, stay low. Windchill saps body heat more quickly than low air temperatures alone.