Your Practical Guide To Self Reliant Living
Small game hunting is a time-honored tradition, and it’s the perfect way to get first-time hunters into the woods. Squirrels are everywhere, and they don’t require specialized equipment, scent maskers, hunting blinds or 4 am wake up calls. They also don’t require half a day to clean and dress. With a little practice, you can clean and gut a squirrel in under a minute.
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As a mother of two young children, I’m always looking for ways to get them outdoors and engaged with nature. My daughter in particular is excited about hunting, and I want to do everything I can to encourage her passions in a safe and supportive way.
At just after her second birthday she witnessed her first hunt, and jumped right in to help when it came time to clean and process the meat. Hunting may not be appropriate for every child, but where the passion exists, it’s a perfect opportunity to teach self reliance, responsibility and respect for nature at an early age.
Regardless of how you feel about guns, we hope we can all agree that teaching children about gun safety, while instilling a healthy respect for something that can easily take a life, is a great way to look out for their wellbeing in a country with over 300 million guns.
With that in mind, I’m happy to introduce Jon Sutton from Outdoor Empire, the author of this guest post on getting kids started with hunting. Each state has different regulations, as well as specific programs to get kids started hunting. This article provides examples from my home state of Vermont.
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If you’ve ever tried to catch game with your bare hands you already know that the ability to hunt at a distance can mean the difference between a meal and disappointment. Most the time anyway. I have an old Vermonter neighbor that routinely brags that he hunts deer with a knife. He has a lot of stories, and this one seemed about as believable as any of them when he told it.
I’ve tried to approach the deer on our land, and I was amazed that moving slowly, most of the year I can get within 20-30 feet before they skitter off. They usually only bound a dozen yards before looking back to see if I’m chasing and then resuming their meal. We have some very trusting deer, and clearly, there’s not enough hunters in our neck of the woods to put the fear of the freezer into their minds.
Even at 20-30 feet away, with our very trusting deer, I’m not fast enough to hunt one with a knife. At that range, even the most primitive bow and arrow would be mighty handy. Fortunately, homemade arrows can be made surprisingly quickly with very few tools.
Two homemade Bone primitive arrowheads attached with pine pitch and sinew.
Arrowheads can be made out of just about anything workable and durable, including glass, scrap metal, coins, rock or bone. Flintknapping rock requires both the correct type of rock and a great deal of skill and time. Glass can also be flint knapped if treated like obsidian, and while it’s widely available, it still requires a great deal of skill to learn to shape successfully. Metal or coin based designs often require power tools, high heat or specialized hand tools.
One of the simplest and most durable designs is made from bone, worked against a rock for shaping, no special tools required.
Start with a relatively large broad bone, such as a pelvic bone or shoulder blade. These should be accessible from a local butcher for a cow or pig, or by finding a large road-killed animal like a deer.
Clean the bone as best you can, and then leave it outside for a few days to a few weeks to allow insects to do the rest. It’s best to cage the bone in some way to prevent it from being carried off by large animals but in such a way as to still allow small beetles and ants to work off all the flesh and debris. Try setting it in a “have a heart trap” with the door closed.
Once nature has completely cleaned the bone for you, it needs to be broken into reasonably sized pieces. This can be done by bashing it between a few large rocks, or with a hacksaw or band saw if you have one available.
Mentally plan out your arrowhead, ensuring a good taper to a point, as well as space for notches near the base to attach your arrowhead to a shaft.
Begin working your piece of bone against a large stone, using a bit of water as a lubricant. You’ll be surprised at how easily and quickly you’re able to shape the bone into just about any size of an arrowhead. Both of the arrowheads above were made in about an hour each.
For tutorials on other types of arrowheads requiring more skill, time or tools, try these guides:
Making Arrow Heads: The Art of Flint Knapping
Primitive Ways Flint Knapping Videos
Arrow shafts are simple to make, especially if you have access to the right type and size of wood. Thin, straight saplings make excellent arrows. Recently cut trees will often coppice, meaning that they’ll send up small quick shoots trying to regrow. The stump of an ash tree cut in late winter or early spring may send up a dozen arrow shaft sized coppices, each reaching several feet long by summers end.
Other good materials include saplings, Red Osier Dogwood, Blueberry Shoots, Elderberry shoots and many other readily available natural plant materials.
Regardless of the natural material you find, it’ll need to be:
Start with the straightest piece you can find, and gently peel off the bark with a knife. Rub it down with some form of oil or fat, and then hold it over a fire. Your goal is to warm it to make it more pliable so you can work it straight.
The oil helps the wood heat without drying out and keeps it pliable. Gently heat your arrow shaft, and work it against a convenient surface (table, rock or your leg) until it’s completely straight. This is by far the most time intensive part of arrow making.
You’ll notice that the shafts in the picture above are not completely straight. These arrows were made a few years ago, and arrow shafts gradually warp over time. Historically, a hunter would have honed his arrow shafts over the fire each night after the hunt, correcting minor imperfections and helping to ensure a successful hunt the next day.
Fletching your arrow is relatively simple. Split feathers will be wrapped onto the shaft with a thin piece of animal sinew. The sinew itself is naturally sticky if you moisten it with your saliva. The trick is, to have a piece of sinew, you need to have already had a successful hunt. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem when you’re building your first arrow.
If you’re looking for practice creating arrows, you can start with a bit of artificial sinew which will get you a lot of arrow practice for just a few bucks long before you’ve had your first successful hunt.
Start with a large primary flight feather, and use a very sharp knife to split it down the middle vein (We use this one). Line up three similarly sized feathers at equal distances around your arrow, and wrap in a spiral pattern with a piece of sinew.
Before you begin wrapping, moisten the sinew by chewing on it for a bit. The enzymes in your saliva help to break down the sinew slightly, making it sticky on the outside.
Wrap the sinew around 10-20 times at the base of each feather (arrowhead side) and then work slowly to the back end of the arrow, gently sliding it through the feather fibers in a spiral pattern. Finish with another 10-20 wraps around the arrow shaft. The tackiness of the sinew moistened with your saliva should glue it in place.
To complete your arrow, carve a knock into the tail end so that it can rest on your bowstring. You’ll also need to carve a U-shaped notch into the head of the shaft to allow the arrowhead to attach. The size of your notch will vary depending on the size of your arrowhead, but it should be roughly 1 centimeter deep and about as thick as your arrowhead.
The arrowhead will be attached with sinew and pine pitch resin, which is a glue made my melting pine sap and mixing it with a small amount of charcoal. Apply a dab of hot pine pitch glue inside your notch and insert your arrowhead. Add a bit more pine pitch glue and make sure it’s firmly attached. Wrap sinew around the notches and around the head of your arrow shaft. Be sure you’ve chewed the sinew to moisten it and make it sticky so that when you finish with a final twist around the shaft, it glues down to itself to finish your arrow.
If you’ve finally bagged that woodchuck that’s been plaguing your garden all summer, this is a great way to honor the little guy on your table. Woodchucks, also known as groundhogs, are vegetarians and they’re not too much different than rabbits. A bit slower running, and solitary, but they’re basically just big wild rabbits.
This buttermilk fried groundhog recipe is based on my extra crispy buttermilk fried chicken recipe, but I’ve added in a few herbs to complement our grass fed friend.
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You’ve finally managed to get the woodchuck that’s been plaguing your garden all season, now what? It seems a shame to waste good meat, especially when it’s been well fed on the food that was supposed to be on your family’s table.
Groundhogs are not only edible, they’re tender and delicious if properly cleaned and prepared. They live on a completely vegetarian diet, and cary no life threatening diseases for humans. Groundhogs are similar to rabbit in taste, and most recipes for groundhog have you prepare them in the same manner.
The main difference between rabbit and groundhog is the scent glands. Groundhogs have scent glands that can impart an off flavor to the meat if not removed promptly. The scent glands are small kernels a bit smaller than a pea just beneath their skin, located around the back, armpits and tail.
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On a cool fall evening in my early 20’s I found myself sitting around a fire with a group of new friends. We were sitting in front of a makeshift home fashioned into a hillside with mud, leaves and straw on a woven stick framework. In total it was perhaps 10×10 on the outside, and the ceiling on the inside was no more than 4 feet at it’s highest point. That was Max’s house, where he’d already lived for 2 full years even through some of the coldest Vermont winters on record.
Max was a primitivist, who made his own clothes and everything he’d need to survive with his own two hands. All his tools where stone or wooden tools he’d made himself. His meals were all food he’d foraged, and included a lot of scavenged roadkill. On this particular evening, the meal was roadkill coyote with acorn polenta.
I’d never had roadkill, or coyote, but I wasn’t about to turn down a meal from a friend who I know had spent literally that entire day foraging and preparing it. Max wasn’t used to company for meals, and was obviously a bit self conscious.
Imagine the trepidation of hosting a dinner party for new friends, and then add to it the fact that your home is made out of mud and you’ll be serving them roadkill coyote.
None the less, he was an impeccable host. That day he’d also taken the time to find birch bark sheets for plates for his guests.
The coyote on my bark plate was moist and fatty, but quite tough. I tore off tiny pieces with my teeth to cut down on the long job chewing each tough piece thoroughly. So what does coyote taste like? I have to say it didn’t taste like much of anything in particular, good or bad. Perhaps that has to do with a lack of salt or seasoning.
The guys in this video do a much more careful job roasting a coyote, and they describe it as a fatty rich meat, that you’d have trouble telling apart from pork in a pulled coyote sandwich.
It was protein, and thus it was satisfying after the hike in, and for that reason I’d eat it again if I were hungry. When I got back home to my computer, a bit of research informed me that so long as it’s thoroughly cooked, just about any meat is safe to eat.
What about rabies you say? Can you get rabies from eating roadkill? Rabies and other pathogens are rare, but either way, they’re destroyed in thoroughly cooked food. The main risk, if pathogens are present, is to the person processing the raw meat of the animal.
You can read more about that from the Louisiana Department of Health or the New York Department of Fish and Game. Both state that rabies is completely destroyed by cooking, and that processing the animal and coming into contact with the raw tissue, especially spinal fluid and salivary glands, is the main risk.
In Vermont, modern primitivism is taking hold and I’ve found more and more of my friends taking to the woods for a rather extreme break from modern society. As a way to spend a misspent youth, primitivism beats just about any type of rebellion urban teenagers might dream up in my opinion.
What about you? Would you be willing to try coyote? What about roadkill? Leave a note in the comments below.
