Local library video and desert survival

I checked out the video Stay alive! a guide to survival in mountainous areas from my local library.

Random comments after watching:

• According to the host, Preston Westmoreland, if you have ever heard the idea that you could add whiskey to water to clean the water than that is not true.  Ummmmm, I have never heard that, in fact if one googles adding whiskey to water what one discovers is that most feel this is a waste of good whiskey.
• The video visits with Peter Bigfoot, which is awesome because I really like that guy.  Bigfoot covers the edible plants of the desert.

July is the best time to eat Saguaro fruit.

• Peter also eats the hedgehog, he mentions it is better with salt,  hey that’s what I said!  The hedgehog cactus might be a quarter of its size in summer.
• Some plants are poisonous for some of the year and then not poisonous for other parts of the year.  Great.
• 90% of prickly pear plants are poisonous, yikes, only eat the fruit, that was the next plant I was going to try so I am glad I watched the video first.
• Mesquite is the “mother tree” of the desert.  He does not elaborate on why it is the mother tree.
• To clean water use 2 drops bleach per quart.
• If one ever needs to make a fire to signal for help while stranded in the desert, the black tubing in your engine makes for good black smoke.
• Thank god tube socks are out of fashion.

Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbit

Reader’s Beware:  Some of you vegetarians and snuggly animal lovers will not like the following post.  It involves dead bunnies.

We made sticks.  Heavier on one end and lighter on the other end.  You carried two.  The idea was to throw it at a rabbit, preferrably a cotton tail and not a jack rabbit, hit the rabbit with the stick and hopefully kill, but if not at least stun it.  If only stunned, then the second stick came into effect.  The idea was then to bludgeon the rabbit with the remaining stick.

This is not as easy as it sounds.

First, it is very difficult to be accurate with a stick you just carved out of juniper.  In fact, “First” should be the mere fact you have to carve a stick out of juniper.  This is a huge pain in the ass when one is hungry for meat.

Second, Bunnies are a fickle bunch.  Not only are the very easily distracted, their first instinct is to scatter.  So after the long slog of walking  in circles to finally find spot a rabbit and (if the chance of meat does not overwhelm you) plus being patient enough to get within 20 feet, the cute little hunk of protein scatters.  Out of desperation you throw the stick, but flat-lining adrenalin on an empty stomach makes you throw the stick horizontally and the rabbit jacked-up-on-pure-rabbit-speed scatters.  Tiny little fluffy clouds of dust in the dusk wind.

Below: Practing with the stick.

It has been said that men have run down a rabbit.  No way in God’s Green Earth I could.  Those things move fast and wild.  They go through bushes of desert plants while you have to run around them.   I was lucky enough to find two that I even had the chance to try to run down while wildly waving inefficient sticks in the air.

At one point, I had a clean perfect shot at one, a tiny little bunny cottontail.  ”This is my chance to redeem myself in front of these men,”  I quietly told my self,” If I can bring back meat after all my failings with the dead traps, the ability to track, the spoon carving, the mis-diagnosed poop identification, then I will be a hero.”  I breathed in, I breathed out.  I threw the stick with all my attention, and it missed by a wide 7 feet.  The rabbit sprang.  With my second stick I gave good hunt.  But the rabbit’s fast ability to change directions dramatically got the better of me and left me panting over a stick. I retuned sans rabbitt. Alas,we did not have meat that night for our stew.

Below: The Hunt.

Surviving Survivor School

This last weekend I took the Complete Survivor Class from Ancient Pathways.  I picked up a whole series of skills to practice. Notice I said “practice” because, good lord, just cause I did these things once doesn’t mean I am actually competent at any of them.   We set traps, snares, tracked, snacked on plants, made jerky and stared at a whole lot of poop.

The class had many manly men and two lovely ladies.  I think it is fair to say that I was generally the least competent at just about everything.  Except for smoking bowls, this I was good at, and by smoking bowls, I mean making a bowl out of fire.

One of the first things we learned that weekend was to whittle out a spoon. Which was handy as I had forgotten to bring a spoon, and only had a fork and knife. My spoon was incompetent. I routinely watched, for the rest of the weekend, as people whittled out far superior spoons and then pitch them in the fire.

I was a bit nervous at the start of the weekend.  First, I wasn’t sure if I was in the sort of shape to survive such a thing.  Second it snowed the night before in Flagstaff.  I was not expecting snow in mid-May in Arizona.

This had me concerned.  In assessing my clothes the first cold morning of the class I realized if the cold held I would not be able to stay warm without looking perfectly ridiculous.  First rule of survival is PMA (Postive Mental Attitude) which is hard to do when one doesn’t look good while doing it.  O.K., maybe the first rule is only the PMA part and I just added the looking good part.

The warmest thing I had was a thick wool poncho that I had bought years before in Mexico.  I was planning on using it for a blanket.  I have only worn it on stage for comedic relief,  and I am sure the ex-military men would have met it with scoff.    Luckily for me, things warmed up.

The first thing after setting up our tests was a walking tour of the property.   Tony Nester, our instructor, pointed out the various rat and mice nests around.  Of course, I had set my tent up right beside a big pack-rat’s nest.   Once he pointed it out, it was bluntly obvious.  I never moved my tent.  I figured if I had gophers in Phoenix, I could share space with a pack-rat.

Below:  My tent and pack-rat nest.

The weekend was simply packed with new knowledge and things worth mulling over.   Here are all the shots from the weekend. As I reflect on lessons learned and go over my half-filled notebook, I will be making a series of posts about this weekend.

What I learned about feral cats and a defense of phoenix

Up North, where there is winter, only the strong surivie.  In Michigan, a cat can have about one litter a year.  Here in Phoenix they can have three.  So Phoenix has a feral cat problem, much larger than cities outside of the sunbelt.  Lets assume that a feral cat living on wits alone is like living in the apocalypse.  The fact they can have three litters a year versus one provides further evidence that Phoenix is not that bad a place to be after the Apocalypse.

How to make cordage out of agave

Thank you Tommy Cannon for showing me how!

Survival schools or update to what I should do on my vacation

As part of my research on how I should spend my vacation time, I have been checking out what survival schools I could sign up for.

The one I ended up settling on is the Ancient Pathways’ Complete Survivor class near Flagstaff, AZ. The class covers edible plants, deadfalls, snares, and game preparation. What I am most excited about is making jerky, I love jerky! Who doesn’t? (I mean, besides vegetarians. Sidenote: How do you find a vegetarian at a cocktail party? Don’t worry they will find you. ) At first the cost for 4 days of instruction seemed a bit steep but looking at other survival courses it is not so much. I have to get a hunting license for the class.

There are other options out there.  Here is what I have found so far:

Cody Lundin in Prescott, AZ is famous from being on the cover of Backpacker magazine, Discovery Channel, and Dateline NBC which has also added to the tab for his courses.   If money was no object I would take his Self-Reliance Symposium class, 7 days at $1790 which covers all sorts of stuff, and prepares one for living off the grid.

Another good option available for folks in AZ is the Reavis Mountain School, run by Peter Bigfoot.  The prices are more reasonable.  I took his wild medicinal, edible and useful plants class a couple of years back and enjoyed it.  Over many years Peter has experimented with about every type of plant one could find in the Superstition Mountains.  Years of trial and error (and he has plenty of error stories) made it so he knows what each plant’s nutritional and medicinal uses are.     My favorite quote from the weekend was someone asked “Peter, what plant confused you the longest?”  His answer, “MJ.”

He also has classes on “off the grid” living and other survival skills.  Bring your own coffee, he doesn’t believe in it.

Another local is the AZbushman.  I have not taken any of his classes, but I really like his videos on youtube.

The person probably best known in the United States for wilderness survival skills is Tom Brown.   For example he was the technical advisor for the film The Hunted starring Tommy Lee Jones.   His Tracker School has the longest list of classes, but his website could use a little work.   It was tough to figure out which classes were actually happening.  Plus the classes are in New Jersey, which I also find a little funny.  I figure I should take classes in AZ, because that is where I will be when the SHTF.  Wikipedia has a good links of articles he wrote for Mother Earth News.

I ended up going with the Ancient pathways because their site does not emphasize one man.    Wilderness survival should be about how anyone can do it, and by empasizing one person detracts from this in some subtile way.  Plus I am a little jealous of how manly all their names are.  My parents told me that they were going to call me “Adam” and my grandmother responded, “What?!? Adam!  As in Adam and Eve?  What else you got?”  In the moment of panic they said “Kevin”.  I think I would have been taller if they had stuck with Adam.

Above: Kindling I tried to use at my first attempt and building fire with two pieces of wood.

Feral Cats

I want to keep the three black cats who have claimed my backyard for Spain.  I think they help with insects, plus they keep the plants company.

Altered Tails has a Trap-Neuter-Return program for  Feral cats,  which means I trap the cat, schedule an appointment, remove the cats special purpose, and finally release the cat back into the hood.   It is either that or kill them, and I don’t know about you but assassinating a family of black cats seems like bad mojo.

Plus it will give me a little experience of how to trap and animal without killing.   Do pacifists make for bad hunters?

Update on the edible cactus

Above:  A recent shot taken of the hedgehog.

The hedgehog cactus I ate about a month ago seems to be doing fine.  However, several people have told me the cactus I ate had yellow needles not because it was the wrong cactus, but because I ate one covered in coyote pee.

How to survive a bear encounter

As Alan Weisman demonstrates in The World Without Us, no one really knows what animals will thrive after we pesky humans are gone. I figure if one knows how to deal with a bear then you would hopefully be OK with any other wild animals. The presentation is the result of watching multiple videos on you tube.

 

The barter system just grows on trees

The Arizona Desert Botanical Garden is going to have their spring sale on March 18 and 19th.   I am getting ready by figuring out what plants they will most likely have that would be good to have growing in the backyard for when civilization conks out. 

Thanks to itsadisaster over at the American Preppers Network Forum, I found the great Desert Harvesters website.   Along the left side of the Desert Harvesters site is the list of trees that provide food and also tons of great information.  

I will be looking for..

• Ironweed
• Mesquite (already two in the backyard).  The Velvet Mesquite is the best type of mesquite tree to plant.
• Palo Verde.  The Foothills Palo Verde has better tasking (sweeter) seeds than the Blue Palo Verde.
• Prickly Pear (good for fruits, but this plant is so easy to find, do I really want to use precious space in the backyard on it?)

 

shots from 4 years ago, trees purchased at last sale I went to.