Wilderness Survival Handbook: Primitive Skills for Short-Term Survival and Long-Term Comfort

by Michael Pewtherer

Overview

An essential guide to everything you need to stay sheltered, fed, healthy, and safe in the backcountry

Organized around the six essentials of survival (shelter,water, food, fire, comfort and health, and navigation),Wilderness Survival Handbook covers 100 skills and techniques, including preserving fire, building pit shelters, toolmaking, stoneboiling cookery, and trapping and hunting animals with handmade tools and weapons. By mastering these skills, you will be able to survive with few tools or provisions in any wilderness setting--forest, plain, desert, ortundra--in nearly any part of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780071484671
Publisher:	McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date:	03/19/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	847,606
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.14(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Mike Pewtherer has been practicing and teaching wilderness living and survival skills for over 15 years. Coauthor of Wilderness Survival: Living Off the Land with the Clothes on Your Back and the Knife on Your Belt, he is founder of Woodland Ways, a company teaching wilderness survival, rites of passage, and living skills to youth and adults. He has taught in venues ranging from private high schools to conferences. Mike also teaches blacksmithing, tracking, woodwork, and ceramics. Mike has traveled widely and studied with native tribes in North America, Fiji, and Australia, and has acquired and practiced survival skills in military settings as a combat engineer, in Australia's Outback, and with various wilderness instructors across North America. He has also worked with the National Parks Service on the Wilderness Rescue Squad in numerous back-country settings, assisted on black bear studies, and worked as a hunter of feral hogs in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xv

Part I Seven-Day Survival

Chapter 1 Preparing to Survive 3

Clothing 3

Survival Kits 6

Chapter 2 Shelter 13

Location, Location, Location 14

Types of Shelter 15

Finding Shelter 16

Woodland Shelters 17

Snow Shelters 25

Desert Shelters 37

Chapter 3 Water 43

Finding Water 43

Purifying Water 44

Springs 44

Digging 45

Dew Gathering and Catchments 46

Solar Stills 46

Sap Gathering 48

Chapter 4 Fire 51

Materials 51

Tipi Fires 52

Fire Pits and Rings 53

Chapter 5 Navigation 57

What to Do if Lost 57

Basic Direction Finding 59

Map and Compass 61

Using Map and Compass Together 68

Declination 70

Following a Bearing 74

Planning a Route 76

Chapter 6 Medical Emergencies 79

First Aid 79

Heat-Related Problems 82

Cold-Related Injuries 83

Physical Injuries 85

Part II Beyond Survival: Primitive Skills for Wilderness Living

Chapter 7 Shelters for the Long Term 91

Pit Shelters 91

Thatched Huts 94

Chapter 8 Fire-Making Tools 101

Bow Drill 101

Hand Drill 106

Fire Saw 109

Fire Plow 112

Long Match 114

Chapter 9 Food and Drink 117

Eating in the Wild 118

Flavored Drinks 120

Meal Preparation and Cooking 121

Pit Cooking 129

Rock Boiling 132

Storing Food 132

Preserving Food 133

Chapter 10 Fishing 139

What Method? 139

Hand Fishing 140

Spearfishing 142

Hook and Line 144

Fish Poison 147

Chapter 11 Trapping 149

Set Locations and Baits 149

Types of Traps 150

Chapter 12 Hunting Weapons 157

Rabbit Stick 157

Thrusting Spear 159

Throwing Spear 160

Bolas 161

Atlatl 162

Field Bow 168

Arrows 173

Chapter 13 Hunting Methods 181

The Mental Game 181

Moving and Seeing 183

Preparing Yourself 185

Camouflage 187

Carcass Care 189

Chapter 14 Rawhide, Tanning Hides for Buckskin, and Sinew 195

Rawhide 195

Tanning 198

Sinew 205

Chapter 15 Cordage and Crude Cloth 207

Harvest and Storage 207

Spinning Fibers into Cordage 210

Splicing 211

Weaving 212

Chapter 16 Other tools and Materials 215

Working with Stone 215

Working with Pitch 219

Hand Tools 220

Chapter 17 Containers 229

Baskets 229

Bark Canteens 233

Cooking Containers 235

Primitive Pottery 237

Chapter 18 Comfort and Cleanliness 253

Camp Layout 253

Hygiene 255

Appendix: Recommended Reading 257

Index 261