Extreme Food: What to Eat When Your Life Depends on It
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0062416758
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the tradition of the million-copy-bestseller SAS Survival Guide, former SAS paratrooper Bear Grylls—the world’s most famous survival expert—teaches the necessary skills for eating in the wild.
“There’s no getting away from it; I’ve eaten some pretty extreme things in my time—live tarantulas, raw goat testicles, elephant dung, you name it. In a situation when your life depends on it, you need to put your prejudices aside to keep your stomach filled and your strength up.
Whether it’s mastering the art of foraging and cooking up a tasty feast around the campfire or learning about the more extreme end of wild food (ever tried a scorpion kebab?), there’s a lot to learn when it comes to dinner time in the wild. Extreme Food will teach you all the necessary skills and techniques to get your teeth into meals you might never have thought of as food in the first place—and, crucially, how to recognize plants and animals that might end up doing you more harm than good.
In today’s world, we rarely need to venture beyond the local supermarket and we turn our noses up at the thought of snacking on bugs and grubs. But out in the wild, Mother Nature has provided us with a plentiful supply of nutritious—if not always delicious—food for the taking. And when needs must, we just have to know where to look.
Some of it might take you out of your comfort zone. Some of it might turn your stomach. But it’s saved my life more than once. And one day, it might save yours . . .”—BEAR GRYLLS
toes. Be careful when tracking skunks. You probably already know this, but they spray a foul liquid from their anus when they’re threatened, and the smell can travel for at least a mile and will stay on your clothes for months. If it does get on your clothes, the smell is brutal to have to walk around with – I know from experience! Also, if you get this skunk spray in your eyes, it will hurt and temporarily blind you. If that’s not bad enough, skunks can carry rabies. If you snare one, approach
pitfall trap is very simple. You dig a hole deep enough to catch your target prey – make sure it’s directly in the middle of a trail that you know the animal is likely to walk along – then cover it with a network of branches and dried leaves or moss. To make it more lethal, you can add a ‘punji stick’ to the bottom – a sharpened stick, pointing upwards. I’ll be honest with you: pitfall traps have a lot of downsides. You’ll have to expend a huge amount of energy digging the pit in the first
remains by burning them in the fire. * * * Skinning Skinning a small animal is a lot easier than it looks. If you can, cut off all four feet just above the knees. Now, make a small incision in the hide (the easiest place to do it is around the stomach, at right angles to the length of the body). Be careful with this cut. You want to pierce the body sufficiently to pull away the skin, but not so much that you break into the organs and soft tissue sac. Once you’ve made the cut, insert
cut its throat and hang it upside down to bleed. Alternatively, you can kill it by cutting its throat and so combine the two jobs. Plucking and skinning It’s easier to pluck a freshly killed bird while it’s still warm. Pluck carefully and slowly, otherwise you risk splitting and tearing the skin. You’ll probably find it easiest to start around the breast area then move round. It requires a bit of patience, but it’s worth it. You can make the plucking process easier by submerging the dead
continent’s deadliest animal. But even freshwater crocs and alligators will go for you. So you don’t ever want to be between a croc or gator and the water. Be aware that these creatures can grow to massive sizes. When they do, their skin is almost impossible to pierce, and they are fast. A blow from their tail can be almost as bad as a snap of their jaws. They’re also cunning. They’ll lie in wait for you and watch as you go down to the water to drink. If you go to the same place for a second