Woodland Free Food

[Scythe13]

Hi g79,

Thanks for the feedback. In response to what you've noted

(28 April 2012, 21:25)g79 Wrote: So your food for 24hrs consisted of Grass,dandelions and nettles.How long do you think you can live on just that?

Did you not find any plantain,blackberries, beech leaves and nuts or acorns?

As a simple trial into the woods, to find food, I found loads of those things. Nettles have lots of protein, and are thus a pretty good staple of a diet. Also, I was only going by what was covered in my book, so maybe the book was crap and covered very little?

I didn't check out the acorns, beech leaves, or plantains. Was looking for the different things in the book, but because of the weather, I didn't want to get my book wet and ruined. Blackberries are not in season are they? I did look, but couldn't find any.

(28 April 2012, 21:25)g79 Wrote: The food you think was O.K. for 24 hrs would only last you a couple of hours at best,you need a more varied and bigger quantity than you found,you probably used more calories finding and preparing it than you actually got out of it.

Considering I'd managed to find food, and LOADS of it, I'd completed the challenge I set out to do!
No you didn't ,you found some food that you didn't like and not enough of it to live on.

Please check the pictures to see how much of those plants I found. More than enough to feed at least 10 people for over a week! Also, considering I wasn't looking for meat, I managed to find deer, and cows on the same area as me and get close enough that anyone with a bow and arrow could make a fatal shot and get meat. Anyway it's not hard to find worms so if you're that desperate for protein, there's an easy option.

Granted I didn't like the taste of the food, which is why I didn't bother eating all of it. The thing is, when in a survival situation flavour isn't the highest concern.

(28 April 2012, 21:25)g79 Wrote: I think you have just shown how badly prepared you actually were along with the fact that a bit of wind and rain had you bugging out back home.Is your BOB still not up to scratch?

Spot on, a bit storm is going to send me home. Yes I stopped. I'm not going to be risking my life when I don't need to. An idiot would have stayed out and 'braved the storm'. And you're right, the BOB is still not up to scratch. I never said it was and I always comment saying it's an ongoing process of refinement.

(28 April 2012, 21:25)g79 Wrote: Not an entirely wasted night out though ,you have shown how difficult it is to find food(you didn't find enough for 1 man for 1 day) even though you think you did.

Please refer back to the photos to see how much I actually found before saying that. You'll see that such a comment is totally unfounded and far from true. Of the plants I found, they were bountiful!!!

(28 April 2012, 21:25)g79 Wrote: You have also proven once again that you still think can do these things while actually you cant.

I set out to prove I could find enough food, and I did. If you check the photos, that I keep referring to, then you'd see that I did find enough food to live off. The fact that I didn't sit around and gorge myself on stuff when I firstly didn't need to (it wasn't a real survival situation) and secondly didn't want to (the idea was to find the food. I found it, ate it, it was palateable, and thus am able to find food and prepare it).

Granted there is a great amount I can improve on! I'm not an expert and I'm going off a couple of hours of book reading as well as some prior understanding of some herbs. At what point did I ever say I was an expert? I believe I said it was going to be a hard challenge? Regarding experts, even Ray Mears says he's always learning new stuff!!! If he's still learning, then thats an encouragement for me to keep trying and progressing.

If you note, I said it would be a difficult challenge, and it wasn't that difficult at all. Finding food is easy, finding lots of food is easy. There's fields and fields of rapeseed plants, which have loads of protein in their pollen. If you just went to one of those you could eat like a king for ages!!!

If it was a survival situation, I would have picked more of what I found, I would have set traps, I would have dug up worms, I would have broken open rotting wood to eat grubs and maggots. My mission was to find food for 24 hours. There was lots of it. I tried it, it wasn't delicious, but I could cope and would get used to it.