4 Day 4 Night Primitive Survival Challenge. Debris Shelter. Raised Bed. Venison Jerky. Foraging.

[Music] hi folks and welcome back this week I'm down in Wiltshire I'm taking part in in a challenge a sort of primitive wilderness survival challenge if you like I've got very minimal kit knife saw Billy pop some paracord and a few sort of essential safety items we all arrived at the main camp last night and spent the night there under tarps and set out at first light for the woodland it's a huge woodland and we have quite a big area area at our disposal for collecting materials for building our shelters and firewood but also for foraging food wise on this challenge we're provided with meat in the form of a deer a dead deer which we need to butcher and divided up between the people in the group there are four people in my group obviously today fresh meat that's good but then the meat will need to be dried to preserve it for the route for the remainder of the of the challenge we had a bit of a walk in to get to the woodland this morning a couple of miles I haven't eaten anything since last night there was no breakfast or anything this morning it's part of the challenge it's about nine o'clock now and there is heavy rain forecast for about two o'clock this afternoon so pressure is on I need to get somewhere dry I need to make a shelter need to fetch it but most importantly I need to get a fire going and I think actually that's going to be my first priority this morning before I even get the shelter finished I might just make a start on it get some basic poles up for the shape and then that will determine where my fire is going to go this is a hazel coppice this woodland so loads and loads of hazel and as I'm sure you know hazel benefits from being coppiced so I'm going to take poles there are live poles from from the tree but it doesn't do the tree any harm obviously cutting all my poles from one stand of hazel wouldn't be a good idea but there are so many stands about I can I can be selective and cut poles or suit my needs [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I've made a very basic start have kind of got the the shape that I wanted lean-to just a simple lean-to I do need to make a bed a raised bed in there so before I get too carried away and fill that all in I need to do that otherwise it's very difficult to drive the stakes into the ground to hold the bed together but actually before I do any of that I want to get fire going time is pressing on and as I said earlier that is the priority today I collected a bit of tinder on the walk-in today there was some dry grasses that have been drying drive by the wind which I picked up and I've got some dry Bracken as well I've also got a little bit of birch bark but it is quite wet so I'll scrape it and see if I can do anything with that but additionally to get some firewood collected make some feather sticks just to help things go and yeah bow-drill if any of you have watched my previous videos with attempts at bow drill you know it's not my strong point I'm going to go for hazel on hazel because that's what I've had success with in the past and there's loads of it here I just need to find a nice dry bit of dead standing for my spindle that's nice and straight about inch thick just under an inch thick and a bit that I can split into a half board and yeah we'll try and get we'll try and get violet [Laughter] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Laughter] I'm really happy to have got my fire going it took quite a bit of effort I just I was getting loads of powdery material you know but it just wasn't I wasn't getting it into Ember and it took me three notches before I got that final elusive little bad boy got my fire going so I'm absolutely thrilled I've obviously got a lot to do on the shelter still I've just been cutting some components for my race bed and but I need to stop what I'm doing now and head down there's like a central area at the bottom of this woodland where our food ration is there's a deer sitting down there and hand washing facilities after we've butchered it and as a group we're going to meet up in a few minutes and we've got a bunch of that deer I'm not going to film that it's not everybody's cup of tea and you know if you want to watch as you want to watch stuff on butchery there's loads of videos on YouTube you know I'm just gonna I will I will show you the finished product a great big pile of meat hopefully enough to last me I last me the rest of this this challenge the water source is right down at the bottom of the wood as well whether we're the deer carcasses there's a bit of a trek down there and then I track back up again so I thought I might as well save collecting water until I go down to do the deer so I'm really looking forward to getting that done getting back up here and getting some water onto boar so I can have a drink because I'm I'm really thirsty it's it's about 1 o'clock in the afternoon and I haven't had anything to drink since last night so I am as you can imagine pretty thirsty we had a big walk in I've been busy out collecting wood cutting doing physical stuff and sweat so I've been you know losing precious fluid I need to replace it [Laughter] so I've got my meat the bowl I've got returned unfortunately there is a couple of things down there for to help us with butchery know are some bowls and some cutting boards and things like that and means to wash our hands but there we go that is my portion that is a quarter of the deer it was a small row deer quite small but enough for four of us and that's obviously got a last for the whole challenge in here I've got this piece here which is one of the back steaks I'm going to have that for my dinner tonight and then the rest of this all jerky so I'll cut that up really thinly later on I'm making a drying rack over the fire and dry it off so I can use it for the rest of the week also collected some water while I'm down there so I'm going to get this on to boil now I can have a well-needed drink of tea [Laughter] Gohan either this I just want to go up it down but of course it's boiling water yeah I'm definitely dehydrated hunger wise I feel alright actually yeah had a handful of blackberries on the walk on the way in which was lovely really really super sweet and ripe and then I've just had done hazelnuts I've had quite a few days almost and they've been keeping keeping my hunger at bay a little bit actually I'm just good yeah I could get this drunk and then I'm really need to get this shelter finished off well as you can hear it is peeing to help and my shelter isn't very watertight it's better than not being in it but it is dripping and making me wet so obviously it needs a lot more I knew it did anyway it's just I could only get done what I could do in the time I had [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Oh [Applause] that's really good well this rain is just getting worse I'm wet my shelter leaks all my jerky is getting wet but I'm going to need to put the camera away because the camera is also getting wet I think it's gonna be a long night because my shelter leaks it needs more work it's dark now it's not a lot I can do about it I just need to hunker down there's no blankets or sleeping bags or anything like that allowed on this challenge it's just literally the clothes I'm in and my fire and hope for the best [Applause] but the venison was really good I've just drank that whole Billy can of water and feelin really good for that yeah so I'm gonna sign off for tonight and I'll see you guys in the morning good night morning folks I've just been out for a little walk this morning to gather some bits to have for breakfast I um I saved some of the deer meat some of the venison last night when I when I was making the jerky and put it in the pot with some water and stood it up last night so it was just ready to heat back through this morning with some fresh bits and pieces so I've just put some blackberries and some nettles in there just just to give it a bit of something else and a bit of flavor hopefully the blackberries the flavor the blackberries are going to the water which would be lovely give it a bit more flavor I slept reasonably well the heavy rain we had last night sort of petered off by about I don't know 10 o'clock last night I suppose and although the rain stopped the shelter carried on dripping for some time afterwards because it was wet obviously but yeah once once that rain had stopped I managed to dry out just from the heat of the fire I kept the fire going all night so I was up every every hour or two just stoking the fire and putting some more wood on but that's the way it is you know when you were when you haven't got any any insulation that's what you got to do you know but despite that I still feel quite rested this morning but I am in need of some food and and something to drink there is more rain unfortunately due today later on heavy rain again so I really need to plug up the gaps in this in this shelter in the fetch get some more bracket on it get some more leaf litter on it and try to make it a bit more comfortable I also need to get more firewood I didn't quite get through all my firewood that I collected from last night but there's not a lot left so I'm going to have to have a a bit of a fire wood collecting session this morning and if I can get those those two things done I'll be happy I might go and do some foraging this afternoon then so I can make a nice stew this evening with some of the jerky and and whatever wild edibles I could find the jerk you came out really well I just left that left that on there I kept turning it every every couple of hours on the on the rack and once that raid had stopped had a chance to properly dry out and it's it's done quite well actually I'm pleased with it I think one or two bits it's still a bit of moisture in them but I'll pick those out and heat those ones first yeah that is that is it I'm going to make some fruit leather as well there's a big Hawthorne bush huge Hawthorne bush down at the bottom of this woodland and it's absolutely laden with fruit so I'm gonna make a fruit leather it's quite easy to do with Hawthorn there's so much pectin in it it kind of naturally wants to set anyway and then I can finish off the drying on my rack that I dried the venison on [Applause] so I'm just going to put these in my belly pan my Billy pot stalks and all it doesn't really matter there you go got about half a billion there so I'm just going to put a little bit of water in not a lot and then it's just a matter of getting your hands in there squishing all that till you've got something that sort of resembles that sort of horrible gooey mess seed stalks skin the lot now the idea is with this is that you spread it out as thinly as possible so it dries so you need something to spread it on I'm going to use my dry bag which I used to carry all my gear in I'm just going to squeeze it through the mesh and scrape off all of the sort of flesh if you like that comes through and spread it out on this bag and I don't suppose this is going to make very much but we'll see well the effort of going to get all that Brack and earlier on and putting a load more fetch on the shelter has paid off it is absolutely horsing it down with rain really heavy and yes there are some drips in places one just written down here but it's a lot better than it was yesterday definitely absolutely definitely [Applause] yeah quite cozy in here and the fire helps as well you know just having heat right there you know last night I was wet and uncomfortable but I stayed pretty warm on the whole well I'm just back from a long walk I've been out a couple of hours and walked quite a long way using up valuable energy that I haven't really got an attempt to try and find some stuff to eat to supplement the venison and the stuff that I can forage for local to where I am but what I was really after was dandelion and this is all I managed to get dandelion root is packed full of carbohydrate and my plan was to put some in a stew this evening just to give me a bit of energy but yeah that's all I found it's better than nothing but it wasn't worth the effort I we used up way more energy finding these and digging them up than I did actually you know what then I'll get from them I did however come across a whole load of acorns which I'm going to process into a flower now acorns aren't edible as they are they're just too full of tannin way too bitter and the problem we have here is that there's no running water in this woodland or no natural water source at all apart from the the small artificial pond which you saw me filling up from before so I wouldn't be able to leach those tannins out of the acorns being in this woodland so Joe who runs the course who runs this challenge has offered to take them away and leech them I need to crack the shells off so I need to roast them crack the shells and pound them up into a into a mush and then he'll take them away and he'll leach them changing the water and then he'll give them back to me leached as if I had been able to do it in a in a stream or a river which I can't do because there isn't one who so I mean so it's not really cheating you know if if I really was a hunter-gatherer I would be staying somewhere where there was a water source you know but obviously Joe is limited to where he can run the course and there isn't one here so that's just the way it is these are the dandelions that I picked earlier and all I'm going to do is just cut the greenery off and put that to one side and the roots I'm just going to roast a bit and a lot of it but it is galleries and their carbohydrates which I haven't had any of two days and add them in as well and I'll just put that on to boil hopefully that lovely smoky flavor from smoking it will come out into the into the stew as well which would be good a bit of extra flavor while the stews doing I'm just going to carry on peeling these eight horns so like I said earlier I've given them a roasting by the fire just cuz that makes it a lot easier to take the shells off it's still not easy to take them off but it does help and then just giving them a bash with it with a rock there's also like a membrane on here which is really really bitter that's got to come off as well but I'm going to scrape that off with a knife later on there we go I've got about a third of a billion I suppose of well a cornmeal I suppose you'd call it there are still a few lumps in there a few stubborn bits that wouldn't break I have no idea whether that's milled down enough probably not but I'm knackered so I'm going to get myself ready for ready for sleeping put my wool shirt on underneath this one and just have a little bit of a tidy up here and get some sleep unfortunately the wind has changed directions and it's really gusty ER than whether you can hear behind me in the trees and it's blowing right into the shelter so I'm just going to be getting all that smoke while I sleep which is not good but I'm going to roll over so that my back is to the fire rather than my face and hopefully that'll help a bit yeah well we'll see I'll see you in the morning good night [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that massive great big branches they're just fallen but there is crashed to the ground that's what HIPPA there there's my shelter [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Simon, a bloke in the woods

Views: 176,296

Rating: 4.8519635 out of 5

Keywords: bushcraft, survival, primitive survival, primitive living, primitive shelter, debris shelter, wilderness survival, wilderness survival skills, wilderness living, joe oleary, hunter gatherer, hunter gatherer challenge, drying meat, jerky, foraging, wild food, wild edibles, acorns, hawthorn fruit leather, fruit leather, dehydrating meat, primitive bow, flint knapping, flint arrow head, tbs boar, bahco laplander, zebra billy, friction fire, bow drill

Id: MqVYHlcZ4ag

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2019