4. Camouflage
Camouflage is used for hiding supplies, escaping detection, or hunting and stalking your prey. Knowing how to properly use camouflage can keep your supplies hidden from looters or help you to catch food to feed your family. Learning to blend into your surroundings is a critical tool for your survival both in the woods and in urban environments during post-SHTF. Watch this video to know more:
5. Hunting
Hunting is any method of catching animals for food. Sure, hunting with a rifle seems easy but you also need to know how to do it without one. You need to learn a variety of skills such as tracking, using a bow, the importance of baits and scents, reading animal signs, setting traps, tying knots and cordage, as well as properly cleaning and cooking your game.
6. Fishing
Just like hunting, fishing involves the use of tools. Rather than relying on the traditional rod, reel, and hook, bushcrafters practice many alternative methods for catching fish, mainly by making fish hooks and setting up traps. Make your own fishhooks by carving a spear or hook from a stick with a sharp knife.
7. Trapping
Learning how to make snares and traps is very beneficial for hunting and fishing. There are different types of traps that you can make and set, depending on the animal you are targeting. if you’re going to bug out to the wilderness, you need to secure food quickly and by expending as little energy as possible.
8. Cleaning your catches
Once you have successfully caught your prey, the next thing you need to do is to clean them. In cleaning your chase, hang its head up to prevent the gut from breaking. Cut it from the sternum to the groin. Remove the entrails and clean from top to bottom. For fish, it should be scaled from the tail to the head except for catfish which are scaled from the head down.
9. Building a cooking tripod
After cleaning your game, the next thing to do is to cook them. You will need to build yourself a tripod to make outdoor cooking easier. All you need is three pieces of wood (of roughly the same length, preferably green saplings), cordage, and a cutting tool.
10. Foraging
Foraging is different from hunting. It is involves knowing how to identify wild plants and differentiate between the edible and poisonous ones. Knowing how to positively identify edible wild plants ad how to cook them can come in handy when there’s shortage of game or you can’t build a fire to cook them on. It also helps to be able to identify and use wild plants for medicinal purposes.
Tip: if you’re thinking about eating mushrooms from the wild, forget about it. It’s very risky, even when they look exactly like the ones in your books.