Catching and Preparing Food
The saying “Beggars can’t be choosers.” can be reworked to “People who want to survive in the wild can’t be choosers.” when it comes to food. You’re going to have to eat some things you’d never even think of as food to survive. The good news is that you don’t have to eat that much – you can survive for quite a long time, months even, as long as you get some calories in on a regular basis.
Here's a list of things you’re going to have to eat, even if you don’t like them; insects, worms, fish, snails, shellfish, various types of grasses and edible plants, nuts, roots and tubers.
Here’s a list of things you most definitely shouldn’t eat, no matter how hungry you are: raw meat or fish, mushrooms of any kind (unless you’re an expert on mushroom identification), berries, vegetables, and fruits you can’t identify. Before we take a look at how to find food, let’s talk about berries and mushrooms, which are two easiest ways to get food poisoning in the wild.
A mushroom you can’t identify is probably going to be the last mushroom you’ll ever eat, because it will kill you. Do not ever, under any circumstances, eat mushrooms in the wild unless you’re a "mushroomhead" and you’re absolutely certain you can positively identify them.
Berries are less dangerous, but there are still species out there that can at the very least cause stomach trouble, and at worst hit you with a high-grade fever. If you’re that desperate for food and the only thing you can find are some berries, stick to the ones similar to blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries – but even in that case, don’t risk it if you don’t have to. Do not ever eat any white berries, while it’s also best to avoid any berry similar to blueberries or cherries.
There’s a check you can perform for vegetables, fruits, and berries that you don’t recognize; it may sound silly, but you smell each part of the plant – if it smells bad, throw it away. If you touch it and you develop a skin reaction after about ten minutes, throw it away. If you kiss it and your lips start burning, throw it away. Then, take the tiniest bite possible – if the food is soapy or bitter, throw it away. If the food passed all those tests, and after an hour you still feel fine – you can eat it. Everything said up until this point refers to questionable foods, but now let’s turn to foods we can safely eat.
Fish is generally your safest bet. Even though some people hate fish, they’re very easy to catch (even without a fishing rod) and prepare, while they usually pack quite a caloric punch. Game, such as rabbit or deer, would obviously be better options calorically (although rabbit is quite chewy, speaking from personal experience), but they’re much more difficult to kill.
If you have a fishing line and a hook, you can catch pretty much anything in the water. However, if you’re missing that, you can use rocks to build a water tunnel that leads fish to a dead end. Fish are, quite frankly, dumb, and they won’t be able to find their way out. You can then simply grab them out of the water – if you’re too slow, hit the water with a stick, this will shock the fish and they’ll momentarily stop moving.
To catch small game such as squirrel, rabbit, hedgehog (surprisingly feisty and very difficult to prepare), you’ll need to build a trap. The easiest trap to build is a simple snare that you can hang over a footpath in the woods (animal footpaths are easy to recognize, you’ll know it when you see it by the tiny beaten path and animal feces).
There are also animals that you should never try killing: bears, cougars, boars, badgers, alligators, or anything else that might kill you easily. Snakes are, surprisingly, edible, but if it’s a venomous species you have to cut the head off (the risk of getting bit, however, isn’t worth it).
You’re going to find snails all over the place, worms are often found if you roll logs, nuts can be found both on the ground and on trees, while you’re going to have to dig for tubers.
When it comes to preparing food, you should always cook meat and fish over a fire, while you might as well cook the worms – you’ll lose on caloric value, sure, but they’ll taste better. Do not consume blood – make sure to gut and clean fish and game properly before cooking.
After cooking, dig a hole in the ground (preferably a deep hole) far away from your camp and bury the remains there. The smell might attract predators, and you don’t want them near your camp.
