“And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Food and Game rarely get mentioned in survival courses. Knowing that most people can go 3 weeks without food, depending on conditions, pushes water and hypothermia to the fore of peoples minds. Foraging and hunting have been a way of living for human kind for thousands of years. We want to embrace this richness and dive into learning about our environment in a truly intimate way through gathering and hunting our food. In learning to hunt it is not just learning how to kill, as many folks might see it. To be successful you have to have intimate knowledge of your quarry, its daily and seasonal habits, where and what are its food sources, what terrain and habitat does it prefer. This can be said for plants as well as animals. In learning all these details to be successful you gain a greater appreciation and respect for your prey. It becomes an intimate tangle that is shared by all prey and predators. It is primal. 10’000’s years old bond.
With a successful hunt or forage it doesn’t end at the procurement. How to prepare and preserve your harvest is the next most important part. Preserving food for winter months or times of shortage is a seasonal struggle shared by all living things. Our bodies have a system to survive without food for a period of time. We can’t hibernate. Although a recent study does say that Neanderthals may have had the ability to enter a state of torpor like bears. This has long been since been lost in our genetic make up. So we must store foods and it most often times adds flavor character and importantly longevity.
