Bushcraft Expo 2015

There's a bushcraft expo on in early march in Co Meath, here's hoping to see a few new faces there

http://e70n.empirl.com/bcexpo.htm

Pheasant Chilli

When out with Davy recently he graciously produced a pot of Pheasant chilli which he finished with saffron rice over the fire, I didn't have a spoon with me so a simple bit of improvisation took place

 

 

 

a split piece of green ash, quickly and roughly whittled (and I mean quickly, less than 5 minutes!)

 

 

 

and the feast was ready to devour, as for the recipe, you best asked him yourself on the Buzzard Facebook page.

 

 

Simple Survival Protein Source

Animal Protein is always one of those things that's hard to come by on a survival situation, fish and birds being more numerous than ground game are generally what tends to be targeted first, but there is another source used by many indigenous people that we tend to ignore.. insects and their larvae. They tend to be plentiful and not require a lot of searching to find enough for a small meal

 

 

One of the best larvae types to look for are beetle grubs, they tend to be large and plentiful, find a rotten log and you can normally get a handful for very little work

 

the one thing I have problems with is people eating these raw, any insect or it's larvae should always be cooked before it's consumption otherwise you're just inviting sickness or disease.

Beetle larvae cook very quickly when roasted and with each grub providing between 10 and 20 calories depending on size you can see why they are a useful addition to the wild food larder.

 

The problem people have with eating them tends to be more psychological than anything, the thought of eating these critters puts people off but to survive you need to get over that, and actually, they are incredibly good..

 

They taste like pork scratchings!!

 

Simple Winter Tinder Tip.

At this time of year a lot of tinders ( I suppose technically they should be called kindling) are soaking wet and hard to light, but if you find dead standing hogweed stems they tend to dry out exceptionally quickly in light winds and produce a very acceptable tinder for fire lighting.

what we are after are the tiny flower stems left on the plant after it has died back,

these are tiny and much finer than most people can carve feather sticks so it makes sense that they will easily produce flame.

and here's the trick, if you just try and light them with your ferro rod, the sparks tend to fall through and fail to ignite the tinder, but if you pick off the dead flower stems and make them into a birds nest then hit them with the ferro rod they will light very quickly, be warned they burn very fast so as soon as they catch light make sure you have the rest of the dead stems close by to throw on top to keep your fire going and get good flame.