There is more than just meat to harvest from a big game animal. With a little thought and ingenuity, you can find useful projects that will use many of the other parts of the animal!

The best way to show respect for the big game animal you harvest is to use as much of it as possible.

by Leon Pantenburg

Before the foreigners arrived on the American scene, the indigenous people used virtually every part of  a big game animal.

They had no choice! The carcass of a deer, elk, buffalo, antelope or other game animal was their combination grocery/hardware and home store. A large animal provided the raw materials for food, shelter, weapons and virtually everything else needed for wilderness survival.

Today, a harvested big game animal is still a great survival resource. And, IMO, the best way to show respect and appreciation for the animal whose life you took  is to use everything possible.

To start with, every shred of usable meat should be harvested. That means learning butchering and meatcutting skills to most effectively cut, wrap and preserve the meat. (Every prepper and survivalist should know basic butchering as a survival skill!) Get good tools, and practice cutting and wrapping meat whenever you can. The better you are at butchering, the less meat you’ll waste.

Get a meat grinder or grinding attachment for your blender. I have been using the same Osterizer blender with grinder for over 20 years. By now, it has ground up the meat from a small herd of deer and elk and is still going strong.

The ability to make your own hamburger is cost-effective, and assures you save all the tougher and less flavorful cuts to eat.

Don’t neglect the organs. In October, after a successful elk hunt in Oregon, the intact heart was saved from one elk  carcass. It was donated to  Mountainview High School (in Bend, OR) to be used in the anatomy class for dissection.

Dog Food: My office supervisor is Belle, an 11-year-old Labrador (non)Retriever, and there are no wasted scrap meats at my house.

While butchering, meat scraps are placed in gallon Ziploc bags, labeled, and frozen. Later, the scraps will boiled and used to supplement Belle’s  food. The broth is also saved. Belle’s favorite meal is  boiled elk or deer scraps, with broth, poured over her regular dry dog food.

Dog Liver Treats: If boiled deer scraps are Belle’s favorite meal, then baked liver treats are her favorite food on earth! If you don’t personally like liver, don’t leave it in the gutpile! (Take along a 2-gallon Ziploc bag and it will be big enough to carry a bull elk liver!) Give the liver to someone who will eat it, or use it to make dog treats.

Store  the completed liver treats in a plastic sandwich bag in the freezer until ready to use. If you don’t have a dog, give the treats to somebody who does. I imagine other organ meats could be prepared in a similar manner.

In no particular order, here are some suggestions to make the fullest use of that elk, deer or antelope carcass.

Soap: If an animal has fat, that fat can be rendered into lard, and made into soap. I made some soap one year from a fat whitetail doe, and distributed it to the rest of the hunting club members for Christmas presents. I called it “Buck Rub,” but think about it while you’re while out on stand, and you can probably come up with a better name!

Soapmaking expert Karla Moore, owner of Heart of Iowa Soapworks, regularly makes soap with a variety of wild game tallows. Click here to get her recipe for a basic  bar soap.

Hides: I am too lazy to attempt braintanning a hide like the Indians did.  But the hide can still be kept, rolled up in a garbage bag in your freezer,  until it can be donated to a worthy cause. In many areas, barrels are placed at check stations to collect hides, and local civic clubs process the hides as fundraisers.

In my hometown of Bend, OR, the local taxidermist trades hides for leather gloves. The hide has value, even if you don’t personally want to tan it.

Fishing Lures: If you know a fly tier, give the tail to him or her. The hollow hairs of a whitetail make great lures, and flytiers – good ones, anyway – are notorious, constant scroungers of natural materials such as animal hairs, feathers and other stuff. Play your cards right, and you might get some neat flies back.

Buck Tail jig: One of the finest all-around lures I know of  is a simple leadhead jig tied into a
bucktail. Making one is simplicity itself – all you have to do tie some of the long tail hairs to the jig and go fishing.

Tip the jig with a minnow or a nightcrawler and and you have a very effective rig for catching walleye or northern pike. One of the most effective colors for the jig is the hair’s natural brown.

Antlers or Horns: Talk about a useful material! You can make handles for knives, and other tools, and use them for a multitude of pioneer products.

Saw an antler into thin slices, drill two holes in the center, and you have bone buttons. These become prime barter items at historic re-enactments or mountain man rendezvouses.

I used a piece of horn for the handle of my blackpowder rifle’s round ball short starter. It’s easy to make powder measures out of antler tips. Just cut off the desired length, clamp it into a drill press and start drilling. Pour sand or salt into the hole from a powder measure, and keep enlarging the hole  until you get the right sized hole for the desired volume. When you’re done, check the capacity of the horn with a powder measure and gunpowder. These are so easy to make, you can have several.

Elk Ivory: Every elk has two ivory molars in the back of their jaws. Make sure to take a pliers or Leatherman along.

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Leon Pantenburg at Smith Rock State Park

A woman sprained her ankle at dusk, in the middle of a forested urban park on a routine evening winter run and almost froze to death. A car got stuck in the snow on a rural road only a few miles from a major highway and the driver died of hypothermia and dehydration.  A man took a day-hike on a well known trail, got lost and was never seen again.  These avoidable tragedies happen all the time.

Most people never think about the need to survive anything. But you, the average person, could easily be one slip, journey, natural disaster or crash away from real trouble.

This website, written by Leon Pantenburg, is about proven and tested common sense survival techniques that anyone should learn whether living in a major metropolitan region or recreating in the wilderness.

• Using your common sense to survive any unexpected calamity can turn a dangerous situation into a mere inconvenience.
•  Pack and easily carry the right tools with the confidence to know how to use them and you and your family will survive any emergency.
• Check out the categories on the left hand side of this page to learn how to be completely prepared for anything that life throws at you.

http://www.survivalcommonsense.com

Suppose that significant other isn’t into preparedness. What is the first thing to do to get them thinking about the possibility about the “unthinkable” happening?

Hand them a copy of this book.

Amanda Ripley’s “The Unthinkable” is not about disaster recovery: It’s about what happens in the midst  of one – before emergency personnel arrive and structure is imposed on the loss. It’s about the human reaction to disaster and how you should act if you want to survive.

by Leon Pantenburg

Survival Book Review: The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why

By Amanda Ripley

This is a  fact: Nine of 10 Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquake, tornado, hurricanes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow you may have to make significant decisions to save yourself and/or your family. Or maybe you could have to make those decisions before you finish reading this!

Most Americans live in some area with great potential for a natural disaster to occur.

It may be in an urban or  wilderness survival situation. Or you may have run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk when the earthquake or tornado hits.

Regardless of where or when the incident occurs, you will have to take decisive actions to survive.

But the overwhelming response, of the great majority of people, to that concept is something along the lines of:…I, personally, will not be affected by any of those emergencies…. And even if a disaster happens, it somehow won’t threaten or engulf  me or my family… But if it does, there’s nothing I can do anyway, so there is no need to prepare…

This is denial. If that continues to be part of your mindset, then you have just gotten into the first phase of a deadly, downward behavior progression that could cost your life.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why” Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, writes about the human psychological reaction to disasters. Ripley covered some of the most devastating disasters of our time, and retraces how people reacted. She interviews leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists and other disaster experts. She comes up with the stunning inadequacies of many of our evolutionary responses.

Ripley’s book is not about disaster recovery: It’s about what happens in the midst  of one – before emergency personnel arrive and structure is imposed on the loss.

Ripley describes a “survival arc” everyone must travel to get from danger to safety. The survival arc’s three chronological phases of denial, deliberation and the decisive moment make up the structure of the book.

And while the path to survival may resemble a roller coaster rather than an arc, Ripley writes, it’s rare that anyone gets through a disaster without passing through these main stages at least once.

If you’ve ever thought about a disaster and possible reactions to it, then you’re on the right track. Ripley starts the survival arc process with the thought “I wonder what I would do if…”

Prepare mentally before hand, so when a disaster does occur you'll have a plan of action.

Here’s the survival arc progression, according to Ripley, of a typical reaction to a disaster situation:

Denial: This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening to me. It’s all a bad dream. I’m imagining this. In a moment everything will be all right.

Denial is the most insidious fear response of all.“The more I learned, the more denial seemed to matter all the time, even long before the disaster, on days that passed without incident,” Ripley writes. Denial can manifest itself in delay.  Or it can cause people to freeze or become immobile in disbelief. Many, if not most, people shut down in a crisis, quite the opposite of panic. Denial can paralyze you.

Deliberation: We know something is terribly wrong, but don’t know what to do about it. How do you decide?

The first thing is the realization that nothing is normal. We all think and perceive things differently. We become, Ripley claims, superheros with learning disabilities. At this point, you need to have some training, or prior “What If?” planning  to fall back on. The overwhelming tendency will be for your mind to go blank, and you won’t have clue on what to do next. Let’s hope you learned the STOP mindset  exercise. (See story link below).

Your brain may be like the computer that has lost all its connections. Remember STOP as one of those vital links. Embed the acronym, and how to use it, into your psyche. To get through the deliberation phase and on to the decisive moment, you will have had to rely on your survival mindset and prior training.

The Decisive Moment: You’ve accepted that you are in danger, deliberated the options and
now it is time to make a plan to do something. If you’re in a group, about 75 to 80 percent of the crowd will do nothing, according to John Leach in “Survival Psychology.” Another 10 to 15 percent will do the wrong thing, and only about 10 percent will make the right decisions. And these people who react appropriately will do so because of previous training.

Anybody with a “Be Prepared” mentality hopefully moves quickly through the initial denial phase. We’ll also hope that you have read and studied survival techniques so you will be able to deliberate effectively and move on to the decisive moment phase. But even if you think you’re prepared mentally for surviving a disaster,  “Unthinkable” is a book you need to read.

The book  is not about stockpiling food, tools, weapons or prepping. You must understand what goes on in your head during a disaster before you can use your tools. You’ll need information and techniques to respond correctly. Some of that information can come from “The Unthinkable.”

The book’s information is a powerful survival tool. It should be in your prepper or survival library.

“This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.” St. Augustine.

Click here to listen to earthquake expert geologist James Roddey on SurvivalCommonSense.com Radio

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why

For other great survival book reads, click here.

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The ability build a fire under survival conditions may save your life. The inability may cost your life!

by Leon Pantenburg

I met Peter Kummerfeldt several years ago at the Deschutes County Sportsmans Show, in Redmond, OR after I dropped in during his “Myths of Survival” presentation.

The ability to build a warming campfire, under extreme conditions, could save your life.

With no idea of who this guy was, or his abilities, I sat in on the seminar out of curiosity. (After all, I had a survival kit, and had been knocking around the backcountry for decades while backpacking, hunting and fishing. I knew what I was doing…I thought!) At the end of the hour-long session, and numerous “ah-ha” moments, I followed Peter back to his booth and plied him with questions.

Later, Peter became an expert source for a winter survival guide I wrote for the Bend, OR “Bulletin.”  Since then, Peter have become my friend, mentor, guest contributer for SurvivalCommonSense.com and my main go-to source for any question about wilderness survival. Peter is also on the short list of people I like to hang around with.

With that disclosure, how can I do an unbiased review of Peter’s latest E Book ” A Better Way to Build a Fire”?

Well, I don’t claim to be a wilderness survival “expert,” but I do claim considerable expertise in survival  firemaking. My experience, based on independent research, use and testing over many years, has taught me many things related to building a fire during an emergency. (To read the “best ignition sources” story, click here).

As a Boy Scout survival skills volunteer, I have helped teach well over 10,000 people basic flint-and-steel firemaking skills over the past ten or so years. This instruction has been done during all sorts of weather extremes. I have tried and tested many different firemaking methods, with the goal of being able to recommend the right tools to make a firemaking kit that could save a person’s life.

One thing I learned after all this research and training is this: The average person, even if given matches and gasoline,

Cotton balls infused with petroleum jelly, combined with a metal match, make an effective and reliable firestarting method! If you want to include matches, make sure they are high quality!

couldn’t start a fire under survival conditions! Firemaking, like any survival skill, must be practiced, and you have to start out with the right tools and training.

Our ancestors used an open flame for light, heat and cooking, and everyone, of necessity, was an expert at building a fire. But today, there are people who have never needed to make any sort of fire. They may have some vague idea of what a campfire looks like from the movies, but the idea of making a fire in the rain or snow would be completely foreign to them.

Or worse, they may believe they can just pick up a couple sticks, like the heroes of the “reality’ survival shows do, and twirl up a flame. For beginners, the place to start is with some realistic education.

One of the first, best tools might be the “A Better Way to Start a Fire” eBook. Just out, and available from the OutdoorSafe.com website, Peter starts from the ground up and discusses everything from the theory of firemaking to what tools you should carry with you.

The primary ignition tools are mentioned, as well as the steps to making that initial flame grow into a fire. Natural tinders are discussed, as well as techniques for finding dry firewood under extreme wet conditions.

Butane lighters work fine as long as the conditions are ideal and they are warm and dry.

Peter also introduces the platform and brace method of starting a fire. While the traditional tipi stack or “log cabin” arrangements can and do work well, the platform and brace method of stacking wood to build a fire works particularly well in wet or snowy conditions.

Think all matches are the same? Guess again – Peter discusses the different styles and brands, and why you should shy away from them. I’d already made my mind up that I don’t trust matches as a survival firemaking method before I read this ebook, and Peter’s research reinforces this.

Peter also discusses some of the myths related to survival firemaking. He debunks some of the commonly-accepted, though unproven, practices.

As you look at your survival training, and decide what skills you need to get better at, consider what instructional tools would make a good addition to your library.

Take a hard look at “A Better Way to Build a Fire.” You can download it for $10 from the Outdoorsafe.com website right now, and be reading it in a few minutes. The publication belongs in any wilderness survival training course, and should be in every prepper/survivalist library.

I recommend “A Better Way to Build a Fire” without any reservations whatsoever, and the skills you learn from it could very well save someone’s life.

Peter Kummerfeldt has walked the talk in the wilderness survival field for decades. Peter grew up in

Peter Kummerfeldt has taught wilderness and emergency survival for more than 40 years.

Kenya, East Africa and came to America in 1965 and joined the U.S. Air Force. He is a graduate of the Air Force Survival Instructor Training School and has served as an instructor at the Basic Survival School, Spokane, Washington; the Arctic Survival School, Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Jungle Survival School, Republic of the Philippines.

For twelve years, Peter was the Survival Training Director at the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. He retired from the Air Force in 1995 after 30 years of service.

In 1992, concerned with the number of accidents that were occurring in the outdoors annually and the number of tourists traveling overseas who were involved in unpleasant and sometimes life-threatening incidents Peter created OutdoorSafe.com

He is the author of Surviving a Wilderness Emergency and has addressed over 20,000 people as the featured speaker at numerous seminars, conferences and national conventions.

Check out Peter’s blog at: OutdoorSafe.blogspot.com

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“Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back. I still take my staff along almost as automatically as I take my pack. It is a third leg to me – and much more besides.” – Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III, 1984 (page 78)

by Leon Pantenburg

What would Moses have been without his walking stick?

Most of us don’t give much thought to including a walking stick into our survival preparations. But for many prepper/survivalists, a sturdy walking stick should be a key component in a Bug Out Bag or any emergency survival gear.

Older people might need the stick to serve as a balancing tool. With training, the stick can be a formidable weapon. The stick can serve as one support for a tarp shelter. If you have to cross a stream, a wading staff can keep you from going into the water.

If you are wading out of your house in floodwaters, or picking your way through debris after a tornado, a sturdy stick can be very helpful. If nothing else, you can whittle it up for fire tinder!

Like most people I never gave any thought to using a walking stick, even though I read Fletcher’s books cover-to-cover  several times. I backpacked and hiked more than a thousand miles without one, and never thought I missed anything.

But one of the weapons I studied in the martial arts was the bo staff. A long stick about six feet long, the weapon has been used informally since the earliest recorded history. A martial art called kobudo emerged from Okinawa in the early 1600s that featured this weapon.

Since my idea of a weapon is something that shoots, I was lukewarm at best about nunchucka, exotic swords, twirly chains and the like. But the bo makes sense. It is deadly in the right hands, and,  if I can’t have my first choice rapid-fire weapon, my second pick would be a bo staff.

Only in the past few years have I started using a walking stick when backpacking. That was mostly because I wanted the extra assistance a stick can give when ascending steep trails or crossing streams on stepping stones.

But a knee replacement operation two years ago left my balance severely impacted and for a while, I needed something to lean on when I walked. During the initial recovery after surgery, I was forced to use a cane to get around.

Gandalf won't have been nearly as cool-looking without his staff.

I loathed that damned cane. If I wasn’t forgetting it somewhere, I was forgetting to take it along. And an icy parking lot can be downright terrifying to someone with a new, barely-healed six-inch scar across his knee!

According to my physical therapists, a cane serves two purposes:

• It improves balance by providing a third contact point with the ground.
• It redistributes weight away from an injured  joint or arthritic lower limb.

But, newspaper guy that I am, I had to do some research on canes versus walking sticks. I got this info from “Time Goes By’:

1. The cane places the greatest strain on the smallest muscles and joints (the wrist and forearm). Repetitive use can easily lead to wrist and forearm injury.
2. The quarterstaff (or walking stick) transfers the weight into the shoulder girdle itself. The shoulder joint and its surrounding muscles are much better prepared to handle the load than are the wrist and forearm.
3. Imagine a scene: an older woman using a bent-top walking cane crosses a building lobby, trying to reach the elevator before the doors roll closed. Now imagine the same scene with the older woman striding across the lobby with the aid of a seven-foot, oak quarterstaff. People hold the door open not because of chivalry, not out of a desire to help little old ladies, but rather because she just looks so damned cool. (I’m not sure how true this is, but am in favor of anything that makes us oldies look better!)

Anyway, I had several bos in the garage, and of necessity I started using one as a walking stick on my nightly dog strolls with Belle. Fletcher’s thoughts  on hiking with a walking stick were right on: 

“On smooth surfaces, the staff helps maintain an easy rhythm to my walking and gives me something to lean on when I stop to stand and stare. Over rough going of any kind, from tussocky grass to pockety rock, and also in a high wind, it converts me when I am heavily laded from an insecure biped to a confident tripod…

“It may well be, too, that the staff also gives me a false but subconsciously comforting feeling that I am not after all completely defenseless against attack by such enemies as snakes, bears and men.”

Regardless of your age or physical fitness, a walking stick can be a useful tool and should be considered for inclusion in your survival gear!

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Sometimes it takes a tragedy to focus attention on preparedness and wilderness survival.

Am Altoids tin survival kit is a valuable survival tool, but it does not have everything you need!

by Leon Pantenburg

The idea behind the Survival CommonSense.com Altoids Tin Survival kit started after two fatalities in Central Oregon in late 2006.

In November, veteran snowmobiler Roger Rouse, 53, of Bend, died of hypothermia in Deschutes National Forest, about 10 miles west of Bend. He and his son had intended to only be out for a morning ride when a fierce snowstorm overwhelmed them. (To read the complete story, click here.)

Less than a month later, in December 2006, Californian James Kim, 35, died in the Rogue River Wilderness after leaving his wife and children to get help. The family car was stuck in snow on a remote road. (To see Larry King’s coverage of  the Kim tragedy, click here.)

Shortly after the Kim tragedy, The editors of The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon, asked me to put together a practical winter survival guide.

“Talk to (Deschutes County) Search and Rescue, find out what the trends are, and what gear people need to take with them,” editors said. “Then, come up with a practical survival kit for our readers, based on the experts’ recommendations. This is an investigative assignment. Check out all sources, and test everything.”

The Altoids tin kit is a small piece of that project, and it is by no means all you should carry for survival!!! But you need to have something in your pockets, in the event you are separated from your gear.

This keyring kit is one way to keep some of the basic survival tools with you at all times. On the keyring: LED flashlight, fingernail clippers, whistle, Boy Scout Hot Spark firemaker and Classic Swiss Army knife. The other knife rides in a pouch on my belt, wherever it is legal.

I couldn’t find a pocket-sized commercial survival kit that was worth a damn. In some, the quality of gear was pathetic. In others, unnecessary or cheap filler items were included to flesh out the list of “necessities.”

One kit, I found at the local sporting goods box store is called “The Essentials Survival Can” and retails for $4.99. The components are: one book of “waterproof” matches; three feet of duct tape, four fish hooks, a whistle, and emergency cord.

In January, 2007, I asked the late Dr. Jim Grenfell of Bend to help develop a survival kit that would fit into a standard Altoids mint tin. This pocket kit would be limited in size to an Altoids tin, and weigh about five ounces. (That’s about what an iPod weighs, or my wallet, depending on which side of payday we’re on!)

An incessant tinker, Grenfell was also an Air Force combat veteran and graduate of three Air Force wilderness survival schools. I made an Altoid kit, too, and for the next several months, we added and subtracted gear, and tested, researched and refined the final kits.

Once the kit was completed, two veteran outdoorsmen took the prototype on a backpacking trip for final testing. Their input lead to further refinement. (To read their review, click here.)

The final kit is not cheap to make. It will cost between $50 to $60, depending on the quality of the materials. But I have several, and one rides in my coat or hip pocket at all times.

Carry your Altoids survival kit in a waterproof container for added security.

Here’s the list of what you need:

• Altoids tin

• Five pieces of duct tape, about 2-1/2 to 3 inches long, layered on top and bottom.

• Rubber bands cut out of bicycle tube. They can be used for firestarter, as well as keeping the Altoids tin cover shut.

These items go inside:

1. 12-inch square of aluminum foil

2. Bicycle tube rubber bands on outside of container

3. Two alcohol prep pads

4. Petroleum jelly: use for medical needs, and in conjunction with jute twine and flint stick for fire-making

5. Compass

6. Emergency whistle

7. Boy Scout Hot Spark wrapped in 18 inches of jute twine. Used with petroleum jelly and item 13 for fire-making

8. LED flashlight

9. Glover’s needle and 2 feet of dental floss

10. Signal mirror

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11. 6 feet of seine twine

12. Pills: aspirin, Imodium, Benadryl, water purification

13. Knife — (Swiss Army Classic: contains knife and screwdriver blades, scissors, tweezers and toothpick)

14. Safety pins and nail

15. 12 feet of 19-gauge annealed wire

16. Waxed fire starter

Not intended to be the primary collection of survival gear, the Altoids tin kit is designed to be compact, and easy and convenient to carry. It was never intended to replace a complete survival kit.

For information on making your own survival kits, click here!

 

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Jerky is the original high energy survival/snack food, and maybe you’re thinking about making your own. Here’s some expert advice about a quick, easy method that uses meat from the grocery store, items you already have in your kitchen, and an oven.

Preserving the meat of a big game animal can be a vital survival skill. (Photo by Bob Patterson)

by Leon Pantenburg

Maybe you had a successful hunting season, and ended up with lots of meat to experiment on. Or possibly, the idea is to learn another do-it-yourself skill, so you can make a healthy snack for the kids’ lunches.

Regardless of your motivation, preppers, survivalists and folks looking for a way to preserve meat for long term storage should learn how to make jerky. Like any survival technique, it may be one of those skills that could prove to be vital sometime down the road.

But making jerky can be expensive. First, there is the cost of the meat. (As a hunter, I can attest to this fact: There is no cheap meat!) Then, there is the investment in a smoker or food dehydrator, and the cost of commercial jerky seasonings. When the math is done, it may appear that it’s cheaper to just buy jerky.

This is some very good organic elk meat that has been cut into strips to make jerky. Talk about expensive ingredients!

But you can produce top quality jerky fairly inexpensively, according to one expert, using meat from the local grocery store. All you need to do is watch your grocery store ads for sales, and for equipment, you need  an oven with some sort of wire rack.

“Jerky is just dried meat, and you can make it out of any kind of meat, and many kinds of fish,” says Clem Stechelin, 79, of La Pine, OR. “People have been making jerky forever, and the process isn’t complicated.”

Stechelin is a retired meatcutter, owner of “Clem’s Oregon Trail Seasonings,” and has been making jerky and sausage for decades. He says jerky can be simple to make, inexpensive and doesn’t require an elaborate smoker or dehydrator system. Originally, Stechelin said, primitive hunters who killed a large animal dried meat by solar power.

“They probably hung strips of meat over a bush or on some sort of rack in the sun,” he said. “Some of the different flavorings, like sage, might have started out when they realized meat dried on a sage bush tasted better.”

Later, these hunters figured out they could dry meat faster if they hung it over a smoky fire, Stechelin said, and people acquired a taste for smoked, seasoned meat. Primitive hunters probably smoked and dried whatever meat they had to use, he said, and some of it probably tasted pretty bad.

Today, great-tasting jerky starts with a quality cut of meat.

From start to finish, this jerky took about three hours to make.

“It’s like a computer analogy: Junk in, junk out. If you start with a piece of tough meat with gristle, it will end up as jerky that is tough and hard to chew.” Stechelin said. “You shouldn’t use an inexpensive piece of meat, and expect the jerky to turn out well.”

Some of the cheaper roasts have lots of fat and gristle, he said, which needs to be trimmed off before baking.

“By the time you’re done, there won’t be much usable meat,” he said. “You would have been better buying some London broil to start with.”<

Stechelin recommends watching store ads for meat sales. London broil and top round are on sale for about $1.98 per pound “at least once a month,” he said, and those cuts make excellent jerky. Other, more expensive meat cuts that work well for jerky are top round, bottom round and sirloin tip.

“Probably the best cut for jerky is flank steak, but it is usually pretty expensive,” he said. “When you cut it across the grain and make jerky, it ends up tender, is easy to chew and has great flavor.”

Most of Stechelin’s seasoning customers buy beef to make jerky, and use the oven method. (The jerky seasoning feature all natural ingredients, with no nitrates.) It is the quickest, simplest technique, he claims, and anyone can use it to produce healthy, tasty energy snacks.
Here is what you do:

*Cut the meat, across the grain, into uniform slices between one-quarter and one-half in thick. Rub whatever seasonings you choose into the meat.

* Put the meat on a wire pizza rack or cooling rack for bread. (I tried the polypropylene racks that come with one of Clem’s jerky making kits. You clean them in the dishwasher, and the finished meat, fish or fruit comes right off, with no sticking.)

* Set the oven between 200 and 220 degrees. (Individual ovens vary, so some experimentation may have to be done.) Place the loaded racks in the oven, and put a piece of foil or cookie sheet on the bottom rack to catch any drippings.

Clem Stechelin has been making jerky and sausage for more than 50 years.

* Prop open the oven door with a towel, so the moisture escapes. If you forget this step, Stechelin said, the batch of jerky will bake instead of drying, and the result won’t be good.

* Cook the jerky for about two and one-half hours, or until it looks done.

“Take the meat out when you can still bend it. The meat will still dry a little more after it’s out of the oven,” Stechelin said. “Don’t leave it in the oven until it’s crisp, or it will end up being too hard and tough.”

All that’s left to do then, is let the jerky cool completely and store it. If you’re going to put the jerky in plastic bags, put it in the freezer, Stechelin advises. Otherwise, put the finished jerky in a cloth or paper bag so any moisture completely evaporates. Then hide some for outdoor excursions.

Home-made jerky is a great after-school snack, but be careful if there are teenagers in your house. Snacking on jerky is addictive, and the kids and their friends may wipe out the entire supply before you know it!

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“Have you heard of Damper? It’s an Australian bread that’s made using few ingredients and cooked in a campfire. Stockmen and drovers would make it using their basic camping rations.” from Alex in SurvivalCommonSense.com Comments

Two cups of flour makes a skillet-full of Damper, Australia's survival bread

by Leon Pantenburg

Actually, I had not heard of Damper, but I never need much excuse to experiment with survival foods, and asked Alex for a recipe.

“Leon, I think there are as many Damper recipes as there are cooks, and nobody agrees on what the real one is,” Alex replied. ” The basic recipe uses flour, baking powder, salt and milk, and is cooked in a campfire (either in a pot, or wrapped in foil, or suspended on a stick, or straight on the coals). It’s usually served with jam or honey or something similar.

“My great uncle was a drover, and he used to make it for us when he visited. We never could get his recipe straight – whenever we asked, he’d just grab handfuls of ingredients and say:  ‘You just add a bit of this and a bit of that…’ His came out perfect every time. Ours didn’t.”

Every prepper, survivalist or emergency preparedness enthusiast should have a variety of these simple, tasty recipes as part of their survival kit! Food is a basic survival requirement, but sometimes, even hunger can’t overcome  monotony. Eat the same thing, day after day, and some people might just quit eating.

So survival cooking, of necessity, must be simple and tasty! It makes sense that every region has an emergency-type  ration based on simple ingredients such as flour or meal.

Bannock, that staple among trappers and traders in the Northwest in the early to late 1800s,  probably originated in Scotland. “Ramrod rolls” were common in the Confederate Army because of  a lack of  options. In this recipe, a cornmeal dough was wrapped around a stick or ramrod, and toasted over a campfire.

Fry bread became a favorite among some Native

Hardtack, a very simple, long-lasting survival ration, is very easy to make and has the texture and consistency of a fired brick!

American tribes after they were forced onto reservations and issued flour and salt for rations. Hardtack was a standard American military ration for over 200 years.

Since Australia was colonized by Great Britain, I’d guess Damper is a variation of a popular English bread.

Regardless, Damper is easy to make, and don’t over-think it! In any of the following recipes, mix the dry ingredients together, add the milk or water and form a smooth dough. Don’t knead too much. Then, either make biscuits or a larger loaf, and bake it however you want to. It look really cool (and is a great kids’ activity in camp) when the dough is rolled around a stick and toasted over a campfire. Put peanut butter in the hole, and you have a delicious, warm sandwich.

Another recommended  idea is to amend the flour with one tablespoon of soy flour; one tablespoon of dried milk and one teaspoon of wheat germ per cup of white flour. This combination makes a complete protein of the flour, and turbocharges the nutritional value of the bread.

Here are a few Damper recipes that could work well in your survival kit:

Plain Damper

2 c self-rising flour (If you don’t have self-rising, add 1-1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt to every cup of regular or

Click here: Great jerky seasoning mixes!

all-purpose flour)

2 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

water

Mix dry ingredients together first, then add water to make a soft dough. Knead until the dough sticks together, but not too long or the Damper will get tough. In a conventional oven bake at about 375 degrees about 20 minutes, or  until the edges start to brown.

Standard Damper

2 c self-rising flour

1/2 tsp salt

1-1-1/2 c milk

2 tsp butter

2 tsp sugar

Follow standard cooking directions.

• 4 c self-rising flour
• 1 1/2 c water
• 2 Tbs pecan chips
• a pinch of salt
• 2 Tbs butter
• 1 c grated cheese
• 1 tsp chives
• 1 tsp crisp bacon, crumbled
• 1 small onion

Rub the butter into the flour. Add salt. When it looks like crumbs, add water and the rest of the ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until it is a sticky dough. Turn out on to a floured board and mold into a round. Place in a well-greased cake tin and cut across to make 8 or 10 servings. Bake (at 35 degrees) for 20 minutes or it sounds hollow when you tap on it. Turn out and serve hot with butter. (Recipe courtesy of About.com. camping.)

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The term “Survival knife” starts discussions! A while back, a question was asked about what to carry in the hollow handle of a survival knife. Specifically, what survival items are so important that they should be included as part of the knife?

By Leon Pantenburg

This Jim Grenfell hollow handle survival knife would be a good choice.

This leads to another question: What useful items can you actually put in that handle space? Is having that tiny bit of extra space worth weakening the entire knife? After all, the logical place for the knife to fail is where the blade meets the handle, and some hollow handle knives will break under the stress of hard use.

Then, suppose you do pack the handle with assorted items. Will you be able to get them out under the duress of a survival situation, or will the stuff have shifted and settled into a blob of useless junk? A knife handle is hardly the place to store something fragile!

What Is a Survival Knife?

Any survival knife question should start with yet another question: What do you consider a survival knife, and what do you anticipate using it for?

Rambo, according to the scriptwriters, could carry just about anything he needed in the hollow handle of his survival knife!

There seem to be some extreme views in this topic. The 1980s Rambo movies, starring a steroid-infused, testosterone-exuding Sylvester Stallone, started the whole hollow-handle Bowie-type survival knife cult.

Rambo, according to the “First Blood” scriptwriters, could apparently pack anything he needed for wilderness or urban survival in the hollow handle of his knife/sword. (Remember in the first movie,  when he pulled out that suture from the handle and sewed up his arm? And where’d he get all the stuff to make booby traps? And how about that spear he made with his knife to stab a wild pig?) As the Rambo movies progressed, the knives got bigger.

The Rambo movies spawned a slew of cheap, imitation copies, and some people bought them to include in their survival kit. Don’t mistake the junk for some of the high quality products.

Some excellent hollow handle examples are made by knifemaker Chris Reeve in Boise, Idaho.

Reeve’s hollow handle knives are made of a single piece of steel, so there is small danger of breakage. The workmanship is superb.

Another excellent quality hollow handle survival knife is the Buck-184 Buckmaster. Resembling the Rambo knife, it is a hefty piece of steel and a quality piece of work.

I never bought a Buckmaster, but one of my elk hunting buddies, Phil Walker, did. An incredibly skilled hunter, outdoorsman and great friend, Phil harvested deer and elk every year with monotonous regularity. When Phil sauntered back into camp with that elaborately-casual grin on his face, it meant the rest of us had a meat-hauling job ahead.

Phil’s gear was all top quality, and had been refined over the years so it filled all his elk hunting needs.  Phil’s elk rifle was a Ruger Number 1 in .338 Winchester. The hunting cutlery he carried included an 8-inch Old Hickory butcher, a Wyoming knife
and (Phil being a native Texan) an honest-to-God Bowie knife.

Those wouldn’t have been my equipment choices, but it’s hard to argue with success.

My personal philosophy on survival knives is at the other extreme. I believe that survival knife design isn’t as important as proximity and ease of carrying.

You can’t carry a Rambo knife everywhere, so when (fill in the apocalyptic acronym) happens, that tiny, keychain Swiss Army Classic on your keyring may be all you have to work with.

What design is best?

I was lukewarm, at best, about the hollow handle/storage concept until I was asked to design such a knife. My buddy, the late Dr. Jim Grenfell, of Bend, Or., took up metalworking upon retirement. Jim, a Korean War fighter/bomber pilot, with 43 combat missions, was a graduate of three military wilderness survival schools.

If he thought the idea had merit, I was willing to pay attention. Per my recommendations, the prototype blade ended up being a carbon steel, drop point design, five inches long; 3/16-inch thick, about 1-3/4 inches wide, with a straight taper edge. The handle was taken from a cheaper model and welded to the knife tang.

The completed knife works very well. I gave the prototype to my brother Mike for his 40^th birthday, and it has been used extensively for deer and elk hunting. Jim passed away before he could finish my knife, so I still don’t own a hollow handle survival knife!

Space matters: Suppose you’re considering buying a quality hollow handle, and you want to make the best use of the space. How much actual volume is there?

The knife handle, left, has about as much space as the waterproof match container and Nalgene vial.

A common-sized handle, if such a thing exists, appears to be about one inch in outside diameter. Interior diameter is 7/8-inch and the depth of the cavity is about 3-1/8 inches from the bottom to the start of the threads. The space is big enough to hold about two liquid ounces, or is a little bigger than a waterproof match container.

Based on that formula, ask yourself: What items, along with the knife, would do me the most good? Here’s what I wouldn’t put in the handle:

• Waterproof Matches: I don’t trust matches as a reliable source of firemaking. You can only carry a finite number, and matches deteriorate with time. In addition, the movement and shock associated with being carried in a knife handle would eventually ruin them.
• Fish hooks and sinkers: I tie flies and jigs and make most of my own lures. I probably have too much fishing-related stuff. Even with all that gear, and a genuine enthusiasm for fishing, there are days when a fisherman can’t buy a bite. Don’t waste the handle space on something like hooks or weights you probably won’t use.
• Water Purification Tablets: These are left out because you must have a container to put the water in before it can be purified. Put water purifiers in another kit. Besides, unless properly packed, pills will dissolve, deteriorate or be vibrated into powder.
• A Swiss Army Classic:  Don’t put my beloved dinky, everyday carry, do-it-all knife in the handle! A Classic doesn’t need to be kept dry, and it would take up valuable space. Besides, don’t put all your eggs in the same basket.
• Survival Instructions: If you haven’t learned survival skills by the time you need them, a booklet won’t help. Knowledge is the most important part of your survival kit!

You could include these:

• Drugs, man: If you have special medical needs, this might be one place to properly store the pills. Also, pain or allergy meds or other prescription medications could be literally at hand. (More about storage later.)
• Firemaking tools: Include a Boy Scout Hot Spark or possibly a Spark-It. There should be room for some waxed firestarter, too. Include a few inches of jute twine to stop any rattling around and use that as a firestarter.
• A glover’s needle and dental floss: In an extreme emergency, you could suture a wound with these items. But more likely, the value would be to repair equipment or clothing. . The floss could also be used to clean your teeth, which is an often overlooked sanitation issue.

So, How Do You Pack These Things? Whatever items are in the handle must be accessible. In a survival situation you may be working with cold, numb fingers, or be shaking from fear, injury or shock. You don’t want to fumble with the contents and drop them in the snow or dirt.

This works really well: Get some Nalgene vials.There is a set that chambers in the hollow handle like a shotgun shell into a shotgun. One of the vials is 3-3/8-inch high, so it is a little longer than the handle cavity. Trim the edge of the vial so it fits inside, and leave a small tab you can grab with your fingers. Put all your gear in the vial and carry it that way. The vials also allow you to divide up the space.

Pack your meds, individually in cellophane, in a smaller vial, and pack it tightly with cotton. This will keep the pills from being smashed or powdered. Stack another short vial on top in the space with other meds or necessary items.

The final decision in  the hollow handle debate will end up being if the tiny bit of extra space gained is useful and worth investing in.   In the end, like in most survival-related topics, the gear choice selection will be up to you!

To learn more about choosing survival and hunting knives, check out this SurvivalCommonSense.com blog!

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Survival food is sustenance that can be made easily during a survival or emergency situation using mainly simple, long-term storage food items, cooked outdoors, using off-the-grid methods.

Are you using the storage foods in your pantry?

One piece of preparedness advice is that mossy old saying: “Store what you eat, and eat what you store.”

Food is the fuel that keeps you warm in the outdoors.

by Leon Pantenburg

This philosophy makes sense, since your stored food is an investment. But it’s always a good idea to rotate the stock.

Another thought is to make full use of those stores. Rather than spending upward of a dollar or so for a commercial energy bar, try making your own!

And if you can find a recipe that uses your stored food, that’s a bonus! Not only can you experiment and tweak the recipes, but you can also find a flavor combination that is just what you’re looking for!

If you can bake cookies, you can make your own energy bars, and here is a recipe that uses stored food you’ll like!

Apricot Bar Recipe

Chop in a food processor:

• 1 cup apricots
• 3/4 cup almonds
• 3/4 cup walnuts

• Mix fruit and nuts with:
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 2/3 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons oil

Add: Enough liquid (2 to 4 tablespoons juice) to form thick batter.

Mix well. Press into an 8-by-8-inch square greased pan. Bake 30 minutes or until firm. Cut into 12 bars but leave in the pan to cool. Later, package individually and store in a refrigerator or freezer. Makes 12 bars with 220 calories/bar.

For more survival recipes and cooking tips, check out these blogs: Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes, Survival Pantry, and Survival Recipes and Off-Grid Cooking

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