Category: Food for Survival

Posted on

How to Make a Primitive Fish Hook from Deer Bone

How to Make a Primitive Fish Hook from Deer Nasal Bone

primitive bone fish hook from deer maxilla
A bone fishing hook made from the upper jaw of a deer skull. These can be made in about 20 minutes once you know how to make a primitive fish hook from deer bone!

I’ve had a few requests from people who want to know how to make a primitive fish hook from bone. I have seen them made out of deer toe bones (phalanges), but that style takes a lot of work. The way I show you here, making them out of a deer nasal bone, is much easier since the bone doesn’t need much work to get it the right shape. Here is another article on making these.

step by step making of a deer toe bone fishing hook
This image of David Wescott’s hooks shows the progression of making hooks from deer toe bones. It’s a lot of work compared to the hook I show you here.

Step One in Making a Fish Hook from Deer Bone

Often the hardest thing to do when you’re ready to make a fishing hook from deer bone is finding a deer head. Here in Wisconsin there are a lot of roadkill deer and I remember where they are so I can come back a few months later after the scavengers have picked the head clean. You can also get heads during hunting season from butchers or hunters.

The part of the head that you want is the end of the upper jaw. Since it’s kind of confusing where the bone you want is, the pictures here zoom in on the correct bone, which is actually the maxilla.

Deer skull with exposed maxilla
This deer head from a roadkill has been eaten away enough that the nasal bone is exposed.
closeup of a deer maxilla used to make a fish hook
A closer look at the end of the upper jaw… the part you want for your fish hook.

Step Two in Making a Primitive Fish Hook from Deer Bone

You need to remove about 3″-4″ (7.5-10cm) of the end of the upper jaw for your hook. I used a hatchet to carefully chop this bone off, but if you do it with blunt force like I did here, be careful! This maxilla bone is fragile and can shatter easily. It’s much safer to saw the bone off the skull. Or, you can notch the bone and snap it off at your notches.

how to make a primitive fish hook cutting off the maxilla
I carefully chopped the end of the upper jaw bone off with a hatchet, but it’s better to use a saw to get the bone off the rest of the skull.
maxilla taken off the skull to be made into a primitive fish hook
The end of the maxilla fish hook after a bit of cleaning. Note that since I hit this with the hatchet, I only have one good side left.

Step Three in How to Make a Fish Hook from Deer Bone

Now that you have the tip of the upper jaw bone off the head, decide which side of the bone has the best hook in it. The two sides are often symmetrical, but if you smacked it with something, you might only have one good side left!

Cut through the center of the little bone in the middle so that you save your good side.

cutting the deer jaw bone to get a good fish hook
When making a fish hook from a deer jaw bone, cut off the bad side of the hook.

Step Four in How to Make a Primitive Fish Hook from Deer Bone

Cut the middle bone off at an angle. Make sure you leave enough bone to shape a hook out of. I cut the one in the picture off too short and had to start over with a whole new deer head to show you a good finished hook!

cut the fish hook off at the right length
Cut the part of the bone off to get a good shape to your hook. I cut this one off too short and had to start over to finish this tutorial.

Step Five in How to Make a Fish Hook from Deer Bone

Shape, thin and sharpen the hook. Bone isn’t nearly as strong as steel, so your finished hook is going to be bulky compared to store-bought hooks.

I put little notches in the hook’s shank to hold the string. And I’m not sure if it really matters, but I tie the string on so the knot is exactly in line with the hook. My thought here is that when I pull the line, the hook will pivot at the tie-point and catch better, but I really don’t know if this is true or not. I do hook a lot of fish though.

last step in how to make a primitive fish hook from deer bone is to shape and thin the hook
A finished fish hook from a deer bone. I make my shanks thick so they are stronger.

Thickness is a tradeoff between strength and wanting a small hook the fish doesn’t feel. In my experience, it’s better to error on the side of bigger and stronger. It’s awful losing a fish because your hook snaps! I often fish using offal from mammals that I’ve trapped, and I bury the hook in a mass of meat. Fish like catfish will suck the whole thing in with no problem. Panfish baited with worms are a different story though, they steal my bait almost every time!

I’ve tried to put a barb in these hooks but the hooks have broken off below the barb where they’re thin, so I no longer put a barb on them. You just have to let the fish take the hook down to its stomach, or keep constant pressure on the line when bringing the fish in to land it.

Learning how to make a primitive fish hook from deer bone like this is really easy and if you have an extra deer head laying around, making a fishhook from bone is a fun little project!

I love getting comments, so if you have questions or have ideas, let me know in the comments below.

Go here to check out more articles on finding survival food.

Posted on

Eating Nettles Wild Edible Plants

Wild Edible Plants: Eating Nettles

Cooked stinging nettles are a great edible wild plant
Cooked nettles on a green ash plate. Nettles cook down to about half their volume.

I love eating nettles early in the spring as they pop up from the cool ground, sometimes when there is still frost in the mornings. Nettles are one of the most nutritious edible weeds you can find.

Nettles are easy to identify and common throughout the US. Nettles can be dried and used later in soups, to make tea, or as a vegetable dish. This is an edible wild plant well worth knowing how to harvest, store and cook.

How to Identify Stinging Nettles

Stinging nettle identification
Nettle plants are great to eat, but you have to get past the hairs on the stalk and under the leaves.

Stinging nettle is pretty easy to identify. The plant has tiny hairs made of what is basically glass. These hairs penetrate your skin and break, releasing a burning acid. It sounds much worse than it is and for most people, the pain is gone in about 30 minutes.

Nettles usually grow in well-established patches of two to 10 square feet. The plants are usually about 4 to 8 feet tall.

They  grow in moist, rich wooded areas and places where the soil has been disturbed. I usually find them along rivers and streams growing in the shade.

The plants have simple, serrated leaves that come off the plant opposite one another. The underside of the leaves have the same tiny, stinging hairs found on the stems.

Honestly, just take a look at the pictures on this page to see what they look like.

How to Collect Nettles Without Getting Stung

Barehanded picking of wild edible plant nettle
Picking stinging nettles by hand is often easier than wearing gloves if you have calluses.

A pair of thin gloves will protect your hands from getting stung by nettles. But, I prefer to harvest nettles without gloves and don’t get stung very often. I find gloves are a bother and too cumbersome to mess with.

If you have calluses on your hands, you can probably collect nettles barehanded as well. The key is to only let the plant touch the palms of your hand. Most people, myself included, have tender skin on their wrists and the backs of their hands and get stung there.

Eating Nettles

harvesting wild edible plants like stinging nettles is easy in the spring.
Harvesting stinging nettle tips in a birch bark basket

Nettles are delicious, nutritious and you can eat them all spring and into fall if you harvest them throughout the year.

In my various outdoor skills courses people often ask me if you can eat nettles. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Nettles are one of my favorite wild edible plants. There are two edible parts of the stinging nettle plant, both require cooking. The beauty of that cooking process, no matter how you do it, is that it renders the plant totally harmless. The stinging qualities of the nettles disappear.

The first edible part of the plant is the young shoots. These are best when harvested when they are around 6″ tall, I typically collect the top three or four leaf pairs. These nettle shoots can be steamed or boiled for a few minutes and eaten with a little butter and salt, or plain like I do.

The second edible part of stinging nettles is the tops of the plants throughout the season any time before the flower heads develop. If it’s later in the growing season, I usually only take the top two or three pairs of leaves. Sometimes I get the top four pairs but the lower leaves can be a bit stringy.

The key to having nettles to harvest during the summer and fall is to pick (and eat) the top 4 or 6 sets of leaves on the plants after 10-20 sets of leaves have grown on the plant. When you pick the tops of the nettle, the plant will send out new leaves at each spot along the stem where the leaves come out. These junctures of leaves are called “nodes.”

After a couple of weeks, you can harvest the fresh, new leaves the plant sends out at each node. And, you can continue to do this well into fall. It is mid-August as I write this, and I am still harvesting young nettle leaves from plants that sent new leaves out from the nodes.

stinging nettles are a great wild edible plant all season if you eat the new growth at the leaf axis
Nettle plants send out new shoots at each leaf axis if you pick the top off the plant.

How to Prepare Stinging Nettles

Samuel Thayer has a great section on eating nettles you can see his site here.

Eating Nettles Wild Edible Plants by steaming
Steaming stinging nettles is a great way to cook them. I often fry them for a bit after I steam them.

You can cook nettles the same way you prepare spinach. Either steam or boil it. Nettles will cook down to half their olume, so use more than you think you’ll need. Once the plant is cooked (or dried), it can no longer sting you.

My favorite way to make nettles is to put a little water in a pan and steam the leaves for a few minutes with the pan covered. Then I take the cover off and let most of the water evaporate. Next, I add some olive oil and fry them for a few more minutes. Eaten with a little butter, they are delicious. Most people who say they don’t like edible wild plants love nettles prepared this way.

Frying stinging nettles after steaming them is a great way to eat nettles.
I think frying nettles after steaming them makes them even better.

I’ve also made great quiches substituting nettles for the spinach. Eating nettles in dishes you’d normally cook is a great idea. In fact, you can use nettles as a substitute for spinach in any recipe for a healthier dish.

Making Nettle Tea

There’s not much to making nettle tea. The key is actually in drying the leaves in preparation for making tea later. You want to dry the leaves spread out in the sun. At home I use screens, in the wilderness I put the nettles on dark rocks. Take the leaves out of the sun as soon as they crumble in your hand. Then store them for later use. I usually put them in Ziploc bags that are cracked open about an inch and this works great for me.

To make nettle tea all you do is boil nettles with water for a few minutes. It turns a rich, dark green in a few minutes. I always eat the leaves leftover from the tea whether I am using fresh or dried leaves. You will find that nettle leaves are almost as good after they’re dried as when they are fresh.

The dry leaves can also be powdered and added to just about any dish to add color, heartiness and nutrients. You can even make a broth by adding salt to the dried, boiled leaves.

Preparing and eating nettles is easy and fun. This is one plant you will want to add to your wild edible plant knowledge base.

You can find more on using plants for food on my wild edible plants page.

Posted on

Eating Black Soldier Flies

Black soldier fly larvae cleaned and ready to eat!
These black soldier fly larvae are delicious!

I’m not sure if you’ve heard me talk about it other places on the site, but I raise worms to make my garden grow better. I feed my worms organic fruit and vegetable scraps I get from nearby groceries.

Well, earlier this year I started getting a ton of black soldier fly larvae eating the extra worm food that I put down. For months I’ve been taking the larvae out and putting them in a bin for the birds. Which has been great for the birds and I have counted 18 different species of birds at the house. And that’s amazing because when I moved in 8 months ago there were only pigeons and house sparrows!

Anyway, yesterday I went to write an article about them for my worm website and I Googled them to find out more about them. Well, it turns out that the first page of Google has links to articles about PEOPLE eating black soldier flies.

I couldn’t resist and I clicked on a few of the links. Within an hour I was out in the garden collecting the larvae for dinner. 🙂

And let me tell you, I’m excited about the possibility of actually raising black soldier flies because they are a great source of fat and protein. Those are the two main nutrients my vegetable garden doesn’t give me. It would be amazing to get 80% or more of my food from the garden and eating black soldier flies might make that possible!

I took pictures of the process and you can follow along as I prepare them.

Black soldier larvae in the garden.
Mixed in with dirt and my worm food, these larvae have to be washed before I make dinner out of them.

Here are a few black soldier fly larvae in the garden. They eat just about any plant or animal. In my garden they only get the discarded fruits and veggies from the local grocery stores, but there is a video of the larvae eating 2 trout on YouTube that is both fascinating and horrifying.

Even though this is the first time I’ve harvested black soldier flies to eat for myself, I’ve been collecting them for the birds for 8 months. The first thing I do is scoop up a bunch of fly larvae along with some dirt and sift them so the big chucks of worm food get filtered out.

sifting the larvae to get the big stuff out.
First I sift the soil to get the big stuff out of it. The larvae will crawl through these 1/4 inch mesh.

The container below this tub has 1/8 hardware cloth, and most of the black soldier fly larvae can squeeze right through that if I give them 15 or 20 minutes. That makes it easy to separate the bugs from the dirt in the tub above them.

Washing the fly larvae in a bucket of water.
Next, I put the larvae in a strainer and washed them in a 5 gallon bucket.

After I separated out the flies, I put them in a strainer and rinsed them. Since they live in my garden soil, they had a lot of dirt on them. I’ve learned that you can raise black soldier fly larvae in sawdust though. If I end up doing that, I won’t have to worry so much about rinsing them.

Black soldier fly larvae in a tub.
I put the fly larvae in a tub while I got things ready in the kitchen.

Once I rinsed them off, I dumped them in a white tub while I got things ready in the kitchen. I discovered that they poop a lot. So I left them in the tub longer than I needed to so they’d poop more, then I rinsed them again.

Now it was time to cook them.

Frying up some yellow bell peppers.
Now for the cooking. First I fried some yellow bell peppers.

In the kitchen I sauteed some yellow peppers first since I figured they’d need to cook a while.

Frying up the soldier fly larvae.
Next I added the black soldier fly larvae.

Then I added the worms. It was interesting. They smelled absolutely delicious, kinda nutty. But when they got too hot or cooked too much, I’m not sure which, they started popping like popcorn! You can see one that exploded out of the pan in a later picture.

Adding tomatoes to dinner.
Adding the tomatoes to the fry pan.

Next I added some tomatoes.

Everything in the pan and just about ready to eat!
Finished meal of black soldier fly larvae!

Here’s the finished meal after adding some pre-cooked noodles my roommate had in the fridge and a bit of Cajun spice mix.

Dinner is served. The main component of this meal is the larvae.
The meal of black soldier fly larvae in my favorite (only) bowl ready to eat.

Here’s the finished product in my bowl ready to eat.

Me having a spoonful of insect dinner.
Taking that first bite… it smelled delicious, but you never know.

Trying the first spoonful.

Eating black soldier flies with a satisfied smile as I get a good taste of the bugs.
I am really happy with the way this turned out, as you can tell by that dopey grin.

That is amazingly good! Every bit as delicious as it smelled while cooking.

Overall, I’d say this was a huge success and I really enjoyed eating black soldier flies. This was a great meal and I’m definitely going to try some other recipes with these little bugs.

Return to the main wilderness survival page.

Posted on

Eating Insects in a Survival Situation

Edible insects at a market in Southeast Asia.
In Southeast Asia, eating insects is normal. This is at a typical market.

Eating insects isn’t all that popular in the United States, but I’ve eaten a lot of bugs in my travels. It’s interesting that in the US we only think of eating insects in survival situations, but arthropods are served as main dishes or side dishes in many countries.

When I taught high school biology back in Wisconsin, I had one of my classes make mealworm cookies. (I think the Home Economics teacher is still pissed at me for using her ovens.) I got the idea from the Food Insects Newsletter, which is no longer published, but the archive is in the link above. I can’t say the lesson was a big hit, but some kids really liked them. It opened the kids’ horizons just a little bit. I still get comments about that 15 years later.

I’m fortunate that as a kid out on survival stays I used to eat slugs and worms because I didn’t know what else to eat. I say “fortunate” because after eating chewy, gritty, hair covered earthworms, eating insects seems like a treat. They are delicious! They taste great. And sometimes when you bite into one, you get an explosion of flavor. It’s incredible.

Disadvantages to Eating Insects in a Survival Situation

One drawback to eating insects is that they almost always have to be cooked. I’ve seen people eat grubs raw, and that might be okay. But insects carry diseases and to be on the safe side, it’s better to cook them.

eating insects like this grasshopper while out on a survival stay can really make you feel great. It is amazing how a chewing little food can change your perspective.
This grasshopper, roasted on a grass stem over a tiny fire was incredibly good.

Another thing about eating bugs is that you can’t always find lots of them at once. And the few you find at a time don’t really make a meal. Although I’ve been in situations where a single roasted grasshopper felt like a full meal.

Anyway, regardless of what I’ve read on other people’s websites about how you can “find hordes of grasshoppers or piles of grubs”, I usually find them one-by-one. So, they usually get added to a soup or stew. Sometimes I’ll roast them and eat them alone or power them into a tea for a little extra nutrition.

Regardless of the need to cook insects and the fact that it’s not always possible to find lots of them at once, bugs are GREAT when you’re out on a survival stay.

Great Things about Using Insects for Food

First of all, you don’t need a license to kill and eat them. This seems silly but on a lot of the survival stays I do, I can’t take mammals, fish or birds. I’d love to eat rabbit, raccoon, deer, bass or grouse. But if they aren’t in season or I don’t have a license, I can’t harvest them. That’s not the case with bugs. You can legally harvest and eat as many as you please. That’s a enough of a reason to learn how to gather and prepare insects.

Another advantage to eating insects is that you don’t need special equipment to gather them. No traps. No snares. No knife to build a deadfall. No tools to make a bow and arrows. No fish hooks. No nets. None of that. As long as you can walk, you can harvest insects. Sometimes this fact alone makes it incredibly practical to eat insects on your survival stays!

These grubs are a great to roast over the fire or add to stews in a survival situation.
I like the taste of grubs found in trees better than grubs gathered in the soil. All are delicious though.

Also, insects are incredibly nutritious. They typically have a high fat and protein content. Fat can be especially hard to get in a survival situation. Insects supply a lot of fats, especially grubs and other larvae. In fact, black soldier fly larvae are 35% fat (and 42% protein)! That’s a lifesaver if you’re in a dire situation.

Here are the articles I have done on eating insects. Not all of these are in a survival situation, since it’s kinda fun to make them at home too.

Eating black soldier flies

Here are some more articles I want to write for you. I just need to wait for the right season to get pictures and video before writing them up for you:

Cooking grasshoppers in a survival situation
Gathering and eating insects around lakes, streams and rivers
Gathering and preparing grubs in a survival situation
Catching and eating cockroaches
Back to the main food page with everything you need to eat well in a survival situation

Here are my Wilderness Survival articles.

Posted on

How to Make a Rabbit Snare

This rabbit snare is set in a feeding area.
Setting your rabbit snare with a bigger loop in a feeding area or a lay will increase your catches.

Rabbits are common in many areas and knowing how to make a rabbit snare can be the difference between eating and not eating in a lot of cases. In this article I show you how to set a survival snare for rabbits.

Where to Set Rabbit Snares

The key to placing any trap or snare is knowing areas the animals are in. For rabbit snares, most people put them along trails. I think that’s a mistake for two big reasons. One, it’s easy to catch non-target animals (though you can eat anything). And two, you don’t have as many opportunities to snare rabbits on a trail because they jump along a trail rather than walk along it.

I prefer to set my rabbit snares and traps where they are feeding, in hiding spots, or in their lays.

If you’ve spent much time watching rabbits, you’ve seen them bolt to a hiding spot. That’s a great place to set your survival snares. The rabbit is less cautious when bolting and its head is in a predictable spot.

In the snaring video on this page, you’ll see that I set the rabbit snare in a feeding area. The rabbit is walking through an area like this. Sometimes, like the area that I picked in the video, the rabbit will both feed and use an area for cover.

This rabbit was caught in a survival snare set in a feeding area.
This rabbit was snared in a feeding area that doubled as a hiding spot with good cover.

I also like placing at least one rabbit snare in their lays. Lays are areas that rabbits sit and rest in. They are used over and over and well worn. You’ll see a bare spot or a rabbit-sized area where the grass is flattened. Lays are often found in thick cover or on fence lines.

Snare Loop Size and Ground Clearance for Rabbits

I think most people make their snare loops too small when snaring rabbits. I prefer to make them about six inches in diameter. What I do there is allow for the rabbit’s ears to get into the snare without the snare twisting or falling off to the side. It doesn’t do you any good if the snare doesn’t get around the rabbit’s neck.

I set my snares about 4 inches off the ground. You want the rabbit to get its head into the snare without stepping through the loop. That means that you’ll put it a little higher than what I see a lot of other people recommend. Maybe it works for them, or maybe it just doesn’t matter.

If you have any questions about how to make rabbit snares, either check out my other articles or send me a message.

Talk soon- John