3 Days Camping & Foraging in Arctic - Fishing, Hunting & Edible Plants

Luke here at the outdoor Boys YouTube channel and for the next three days I'm hiking and camping in the tundra of Alaska I'm catching fish hunting birds staring down wolves and exploring places few people have ever seen [Music] well I've been driving all day and I'm getting a little hungry I think I need to catch some dinner it's a little green caddisplay just landed on my glasses I think that tells me what I'm going to be using as a fly so that right there is an Arctic grayling little skinny one a little bit runny to eat I think we'll put them back there you go pretty fish all right extended there oh there we go there we go I haven't seen any real big ones yet but there's a bunch of them in here oh there we go there's another one as soon as the sun comes out you can just see Caddis is flying all over the place there we go that's a nicer one proper Grayling right there it's a little Artic Grayling it's probably the biggest I'll take this one for my dinner probably landed half a dozen Grayling and lost a half a dozen more in about 30 minutes there's just tons in this pool and the water's so clear a bit if I put the GoPro underwater we can see them [Music] foreign I think we need to pull over and make camp how's this for a camping spot it's not too shabby it's already pretty cold so I think I'm gonna get a fire going and get some dinner made gotta let that fire mature a little bit before I can start cooking and look around see if we got any berry bushes oh here we go crowberry oh oh I love crowberries [Music] look at that mushroom I'm pretty sure that's an edible mushroom I'm like 60 sure I am not at 100 sure some blueberries not a bad little spot about 10 minutes of picking and see I got a fair amount of berries there got some boiling bag rice I gotta think of Indian coconut curry we're gonna sit by the fire let that warm up it's only about 40 degrees right now and you can see right up there there's snow on those mountains oh fall is here I can hear a pack of wolves starting to howl way out in the distance that's way cool [Music] there we go chickpea coconut curry and a fried Grayling oh it's all warm it smells so good it's pretty cold out here so I'd like to make some tea I'm just gonna go ahead and boil up a bunch of blueberries you waste so much meat trying to fillet a fish these little guys you just cook them whole pull the backbone out and all the ribs and why Bones come with it don't lose any meat all right oh I have so many berries in my herbal tea it's kind of like a watery hot jab it's good well it's getting dark and it's very cold outside it might get down to freezing tonight so I gotta get my shelter ready and get my bed made foreign I drove about seven hours today and we're just about to our destination but I've got to get up early in the morning and I am exhausted so I'm gonna turn off the camera I'll see you guys in the morning oh there's a lot of things I want to do today if you breakfast I'm gonna fill up my water bottle while you got a chance all right well I'm gonna go for a little bit of a hike check this out these are rose hips they're really common up here in Alaska and they're really good these ones are perfectly ripe oh look there's a bunch of them right here Rose Zips have kind of a mushy texture and they're not that sweet but there's a lot of meat on them a lot of vitamins in them if you mix them with something else sweet like a blueberry they're really good another nice thing about rose hips is the berries don't fall off in the fall even if there's snow on the ground you can find rosehip bushes with rose hips still on them I brought my 22 rifle with me I'm really hoping to get a chance to shoot a tarm again tarmigan are kind of like a wild chicken they're absolutely delicious and they change colors they're brown in the summer and white in the winter so they're really well camouflaged but they're kind of noisy so I'm keeping an ear out for tarmigan calls there's also a ton of wild berries and edible plants out here in the tundra I'm going to point some of them out to you so like this right here this is Labrador tea and you can use it to make an herbal tea this right here is Fireweed and it's already gone to seed in the late summer they get these beautiful pink and purple flowers that are edible and in the springtime you can eat the Fireweed shoots I believe these are leaned in berries though they could also be wild low Bush cranberries they pretty much taste the same and look the same crowberry bushes down here crowberries are really underrated they play second fiddle to blueberries and you almost always find them where blueberries are so people Overlook them they can also be really hit and miss with their flavor I think a good crowberry it tastes better than a good blueberry but a bad craberry tastes a lot worse than a bad blueberry so all this vegetation we got here is what we call Tundra it's this Mossy spongy vegetation mixed in with Willows and a few trees large portions of Alaska's interior look just like this Ptarmigan like to swallow rocks and store them in their crop in their neck to help them digest their food but when winter comes snow and ice covers up all the rock in the early morning in the fall the tarmigan will come out to these trails to pick up rocks for their crops in preparation for winter time so hopefully I'll find the tarmigan doing just that foreign too I bet I can hear a bald eagle I can hear some Little Tweety Birds I can hear a tarmigan way down the hill it's amazing how many more animals you hear if you just don't make as much noise starting to hear my stomach rumbling oh look here's a nice little Blueberry Patch berries are still good but they're a little tart I think it's because we had such a cold wet year just heard a bunch of explosions there's a bunch of fighter jets overhead doing Maneuvers they keep breaking the sound barrier and there's this big Sonic Boom oh fox has pooped right on this rock to mark his territory foxes wolves and coyotes will often walk a circuit through their territory following almost the exact same path every time so when you see a spot like that where the fox is marking his territory you put a trap there when the fox comes back to Market again you get them kind of keep losing the path in this section if you're ever in that scenario always go up because it's a lot easier to spot the path from High Ground than it is from low ground it sure looks like there's a path right there maybe it's a good Berry Patch oh there's so many blueberries probably smashed a gallon of blueberries just walking oh yeah all right oh I'm gonna have the blue twosies today totally worth it you know it's always a good idea turn around and look backwards from time to time burn into your mind what the trail looks like when you're heading the other direction that's bear poop right there as long as you have good visibility you don't have to worry too much about bears only when you surprise each other that things get really nasty do this right here this is a plant called Arctic Lupine it's one of the few poisonous plants here in the tundra in the summertime it gets this beautiful purple flower foreign bones probably like a baby Caribou or something oh look at that man that is a gorgeous River there's got to be Grayling in there I figured I'd bring my gun or my fly rod but not both ah if I drop my pack and go quickly I can probably go back to the car get my fly rod and be back here in three hours this big gravel patch is a nice easy Landmark so I put my bag right there I see it's right at the foot of that mountain it's next to that Lone Pine Tree at the foot of that Ridge there's some wolves there are two wolves on that Hill right there those wolves were following the same Trail I was that seemed to scare off that wolf because wolves were not afraid of me if I had a real gun I could have shot those three wolves I could have used those pelts too I don't know how many wolves are in that pack but I saw at least three oh I can smell them like a dog kennel hopefully I scared him away I don't want them circling around me and getting my pack smell the Wolves again wolves have a very interesting way of hunting they're very good at long distance endurance so they'll just follow a herd and trot behind it and push the herd and push the herd until the weak and the sick and the young can't keep up and then they get them oh I just realized I forgot my griddle in the car I guess it's good I came back for the fishing rod hey another fly ride now we go back well the Wolves didn't get my backpack oh my God I'm tired probably eating a liter of blueberries but I think I'd like something a little more substantive a little date on a stick there a little bit of cheese here uh-huh the winds died down and it's warmed up just a hair now the bugs have come out and the mosquitoes are bad but the gnats are so much worse they land on you crawl up in your clothes and bite you give you these little welts even with the bug repellent they can get so nasty that you have to wear a hood but a little bit of wind or cold weather will wipe them out so this time of year they're only a problem in the middle of the day if the sun comes out and the wind dies down but the campfire smoke is helping keeping them away all right I think it's time to rig up my fly rod and find out if three hours of hiking was worth it [Applause] I had to put my coat on and pull up my hood because the bugs are so bad but hopefully the fishing's good man it looks like this should be loaded with grayling there's got to be something in here I just can't believe there is a grailing in here I'm not skunked but that's not what I was intending you don't usually see the little baby Grayling and the big ones hanging out in the same places so that's that's not a good sign looks like the wolves have been busy I think I'm gonna climb on top of this Ridge here and allow me to get a better view of the river it's a lot easier walking up there as well all right carmigan right there I hope you guys appreciate how hard it is to stalk and shoot a bird while holding a gun one-handed in the camera in the other there we go now right there's the willow Tom again the Alaska state bird you can see how it's brown and then starting to turn white I saw about six of them fly over there oh hunting Target with the 22 ain't easy but it sure is fun hard part is catching them out in the open so you can get a good shot at him I used to be pretty good at shooting on the wing with the 22 but it's been a lot of years I've been following the stream looking for a deep spot I can see where it dumps into the lake oh that sure is pretty tell you what you'll be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful campsite I think this is where I'm gonna camp for the night this ground is nice and soft too I'm gonna go down to the river get some water see if I can't catch a fish how do I get down here without breaking my neck oh there we go that's not a big Grayling but that's an actual edible one going Downstream seemed to pay off oh there we go that's an even better one now it's a very skinny Grayling but that's a proper size fly fishing for Arctic grayling has got to be one of my favorite types of fishing just seems like Grayling are always in the mood for a dry fly got another one little guy I'm gonna let him go oh got another one oh that's a pretty one ah you know what I'm gonna let him go I think I landed about eight or ten Grayling in a pretty quick period of time but uh I think I need to get back off that hill and get Camp made I got food to cook up all right I'm gonna let the little guy go I'll keep the big one all right got a fish got some water I think it's time to go make some dinner now the tough part I gotta get back up that hill it's nice and warm out here but man the bugs are getting intense yeah it's time to set up the tent and I'm liking this little spot it's flat level soft and you got a little bit of depression so the wind isn't hitting the tent [Music] I'm gonna go ahead and filter the water I took from the river and go ahead and put my bottle in this Parky squirrel hole gravity pulls the water through the filter and into your bottle all right I think it's time to get serious about picking blueberries ah the the hazards the blueberry picking but I got about two pounds of blueberries here so that's not bad at all make sure to do this downwind from your camp otherwise you'll have feathers in everything this is what was inside the tarmigans crop blueberry leaves make sure I throw all the guts way down the hill I don't want these anywhere near my camp there we go there's the Grayling and tarmigan all cleaned and dressed it's not a ton of meat but it'll make a good meal all right I'm gonna pour about half the blueberries into this bag yes it does adds some water to the blueberries and all the sticks and leaves will float and you kind of just skim them off all right we go got some clean blueberries foreign I'm making a little blueberry sauce to go on the tarmigan and it's super easy just throw in a bunch of clean blueberries just put a dash of water in the bottom of the pan boil everything until it's the consistency you want well I didn't know whether I was going to get any tarmigan or not today so I brought some lamb steaks just in case I think I'm gonna eat those too I walked 12 miles a day I earned it all right well it's starting to rain I think I better eat my dinner quickly all right I'm gonna put some blueberry sauce on our tarm again that's good that's really good that's not bad I didn't overdo it that was good but this rain and wind is getting me cold I think I need to get inside it was really cold last night I am going to go ahead and put on some adhesive body warmers you know what I have them and I don't like being cold might as well right got my stretchy pants on I'm gonna put my legs in the sleeping bag and I'm gonna eat lab in bed it's been a good day and a good meal I'm gonna finish it off with a coconut flavored chocolate covered macadamia nut so good and for second dessert melon flavored KitKat straight from Japan absolute favorite KitKat flavor um well it's late and it's getting cold I think I'm gonna boil a bottle of water to put in the bottom of my sleeping bag foreign ERS of boiling water to put down in my bag I'm doing well but it's late I'm going to bed I'll see you guys in the morning oh man it rained I raid a lot last night well it seems we survived got this just Add Water muffin mix and we use it to make some fresh blueberry muffins I'm gonna add some blueberries might not look like a lot but that's like three muffins worth we're gonna let those muffins cook in the Steam for about 20 to 30 minutes and if the water level starts to get too low we're gonna add a little bit more water to it there we go steamed muffin you can tell the steamed muffin's done because it'll start to crack at the top but when you give it a little slap it doesn't slosh around and jiggle oh it's just like it's baked in an oven only softer and it's got fresh blueberries oh that hits the spot well it seems like I got a little break in the rain I think I need to get this party cleaned up and we need to hit the trail I got a long way to get back home so we're a little wet last night I put them in the bottom of my sleeping bag up next to that water bottle and they're nice and dry now well I'm all packed up but my fingers are freezing it is so cold out here we are this close from getting snow instead of rain my fingers are frozen oh this has been an awesome campsite but we've got several miles to go to get back to the car and there is no Trail here's the car here was the lake by the car okay and here is the trail I followed and I followed the trail until it disappeared and then I kind of went cross country and I stumbled upon the river okay then I followed the river along we camped there is I'm gonna go this way now there's no trail and I don't have a map but I know that there's a big mountain right here and there's a mountain right here so if I just stay to the top of the two mountains I should be able to make it back to the car got to be really careful picking my way I don't want to walk through a brush and get my pants soaking wet that's an important part of backcountry survival don't wet your pants so if I'm not mistaken I think that should be the first Hill I need to follow to get back home if I'm wrong I'll be able to see you the right hail from the top of that one so either way I'm getting on top of that mountain yeah I think I'm on the right Hill well I hope you enjoyed watching this video as much as I enjoyed filming it if you want to see more videos from the outdoor Boys YouTube channel don't forget to click subscribe alright I'll see you next video If you like this video don't forget to check out the outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this and don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning and hit that Bell button you'll get notifications thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Outdoor Boys

Views: 9,953,335

Keywords: Camping, fishing, hunting, foraging, berry picking, edible plants, tundra, arctic survival, camping Alaska, alaska, ptarmigan hunting, grayling, catch and cook, catch and cook ptarmigan, hunting catch and cook, fishing catch and cook, survival camping, survival foraging, survival food, cold weather camping, camping in Alaska, fishing alaska, hunting alaska, bird hunting, survival hunting, survival fishing, bushcraft camping

Id: XRDfETqZvJM

Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023