Stranded On A Frozen Island! | Winter Survival In Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia The Canadian coastline Hundreds of deserted islands battered by de@dly storm systems, gale force winds, and sub zero temperatures. Throughout history, the waters off Nova Scotia have brought down an estimated 10,000 boats or more. Forcing fishermen to abandon ship into frigid waters and a f1ght for their life.
Stranded off the coast of a deserted island, a scenario two of America’s top survival experts, military trained woodsman Dave Canterbury and self reliant naturalist Cody Lundin will experience first hand. The mix that you’ve got here is the most de@dly mix you can have. All over the world boats go down, people d1e.
January off the coast of Nova Scotia where the Titanic went down, that’s hardcore. Dave and Cody are placing themselves in one of the most extreme environments on the planet to show what it takes to survive. We’re going to be trialed, we’re going to be tested, it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be wet, but the experience is a lesson for anyone who God forbid would ever be in this position.
This is a dire situation. Ready or not, here it comes. The wind’s at our back right now. We’re just going to overshoot this island a little bit to get the current to blow us into it. Before becoming a sk1lled h.unter and survivalist, Dave Canterbury spent eight years climbing the ranks to become an Army sniper.
He took that combat experience and turned it into some of the most respected survival videos on the web. You can still maintain your bearing and get where you’re going. His philosophy, the elements are your enemy and only the strong will survive. My training is military. I’m trained to run and g.un, get it done.
You suck it up, you deal with it. This is going to be a test of everything that I’ve got. Let’s keep moving. The only thing we got for generating heat is us moving. Primitive living sk1lls expert Cody Lundin doesn’t just teach survival in the bush. He lives it. His home is far from civilization and each year he takes students into the desert himself and survives right alongside of them.
He’s even written two books about the best ways to survive any situation. His mantra, adapt to the elements or d1e. I pay attention to Mother Nature because she’s the boss. So I’m trying to think with her and not against her. We got to head for those trees at there, Cody. Get this thing out of the wind. They each follow their own survival instincts.
But working with someone else is a first for both. Yes, cold. I mean, it’s fr3aking cold. First order of business, getting warm. This is probably a nine and a half to 10 out of 10 on the worst conditions you could possibly be in to try to survive. For Cody, adapting to his natural surroundings is a practice he’s pushing to an extreme by living the last two decades in only shorts and going barefoot.
Even here, he’s choosing to only wear socks. I just need a few more minutes to regroup here a little bit. Native Arctic cultures have adapted to the cold on a cellular level over generations. Cody is trying to do it in just one. I’ve been going barefoot for over 20 years. It trains the mitochondria, which are small organelles within the human cell that are the body’s furnace.
It makes them train harder and longer, which helps me produce more body heat on a day like today. I’ll be ready in 30 seconds. He chooses not to wear shoes and not to wear pants. It’s bush hippie logic and mother nature stuff that I don’t get. It’s not a gimmick, it’s a pa.ssion I have. I feel closer to the earth. My mitochondria can kick Dave’s mitochondria’s a.ss any day of the week.
We made it to shore. Yeah, so far so good, right? Besides what natural resources the island provides, the only supplies on hand are a few basics from the burning vessel. Guess everything got wet. A knife, a plastic tarp, an emergency Mylar blanket, This is good. and a single rescue flare. Oh, we’ve got an hour and a half worth of light. At the most, yeah.
I want to get in those woods. The best defense from bitter coastal winds and potential hypothermia is to find protection inside the dense woods. Take the path of least resistance. Can we find it here? Straight up through here, probably, Cody. We need to find some place better than this. This sucks. Man, I’m freezing my a.ss off, dude.
As a survival instructor, this situation on the suck factor of death, it’s got to be a 10. Let’s get into this thicket here. Let’s break in here. through here. See what we can find. It’s a combination of wet, raw, cold, and disorientation, and fear, and lack of supplies, and everything is sucking the body heat out of you.
Very scary situation. There’s some stuff That sun’s going down, buddy. We’re just about to get screwed by Mother Nature real fast. left of light. Daylight is short in the Canadian winter. And after sundown, temperatures can drop 20° in just a few hours. What I’m looking for is my nature shelter. I want something that’s as ready made as possible.
Resorting to a natural cover, like thick overgrown trees or brush, saves valuable time. The other issue with this is that we’re starting to go downhill into a valley. Cold air sinks. I don’t like that. Look at this up here. See that? Yeah. Looks like a tree fell over or something like that. Let’s check it out. Let’s check that out.
I don’t know, brother. There’s some water in there, man. There’s water in there, but there’s cover, and there’s a safe place to build fire right out here. There is no perfect shelter spot. That’s only in the survival books, right? Yeah, exactly. How many flares do we have? Just one? We got one. It’s a one sh0t, Neil.
You got to have good dexterity in your hands to be able to make a friction fire, and everything’s wet right now out here anyway, so flare g.un may be the best option. All bets are on that flare g.un. We need to diversify tasks. I’ll get the fire ready. Okay, I’m going to clear out the snow and then get some boughs.
All right, man. Let’s get it done. I’ve got boots on. It’s easy for me to roam this place real quick and find the dry wood to put on the fire with. A lot easier than it is for Cody. So, his task is going to be right there by the camp, so he can minimize his amount of walking through the snow in his wool socks. That way, I’m taking care of him.
And it’s probably going to dip down 20, 25 more degrees as that sun goes below the horizon. It’s going to be cold tonight. Looking for good firewood in this place is pretty bad. It’s tough. Flares contain pota.ssium perchlorate, a powerful oxidizer, but it burns off in just a few seconds. Extremely flammable tinder is the only thing that can catch the short lived flame.
As you can tell, we’re looking around here, this place is soaking wet. Dried moss is flammable and burns quickly, but may not catch long enough to create a fire. I’m going to put some in my pocket and use body heat to start to dry some of it out. Okay, where’s the target area for this flare g.un? I think we’re talking right here in this hole.
Right to the back of the fire bed right here. This flare It’s a wild card. We just need to rock and roll and see what happens. Okay, you got the target area, man? We got it, Cody. Okay, let’s rock and roll. I’ll run down there. I’m ready to run down there. When Dave sets off the flare, they have seconds to ignite their tinder before the flame burns out.
All right, brother. Fire in the hole. Oh. You ready? Damn thing didn’t go anywhere. Get some more small stuff. It’s too wet. Yeah, it’s not dry enough. Too wet, too wet, too wet. Now, I can’t see what I’m doing cuz of the smoke. Get a little man’s beard in there, maybe. Yeah, yeah, let me get this. You got it? It’s too wet.
Come on. I ain’t going to shoot wet back in there. Come on. All right, Cody. Blow her to life. All right, Cody. Blow her to life, baby. Getting that fire started is very much like giving a human body CPR. Cody’s in there just going at it and going at it and going at it and he was wasn’t giving up and he wasn’t letting it go until he got that fire going.
Watch out. I’m going to keep piling the smaller tinder on there as you’re putting the bigger stuff on, man. There’s only three ways that you can heat your body. You can have clothes on, you can eat food, or you can build fire. Fire is like God in a situation like this. So, how are your feet, man? Great.
Why? I got some serious concerns about the fact that you’re like half naked in the in the wilderness. I’m a common sense kind of guy. I have a hard time buying into all this nature, Mother Earth, bush hippie crap. I do it as a personal challenge. I do it to feel more connected to the planet. I do it because hundreds of thousands of other people before me could and did.
I do it because I can. It makes no sense to me. Why would you even think about coming out here with no shoes on in this kind of weather? Are you going to be able to handle this? This is what I do, man. This is the way I live my life. But, if it becomes a problem for me, it’s going to piss me off, man, and we’re going to have words about it.
Why would you even think about coming out here with no shoes on in this kind of weather? Especially in the snow, in the Northern Atlantic in January in Nova Scotia. Are you out of your mind? This is what I do, man. This is the way I live my life. This is called acclimatization. I love your boots, but I don’t need your boots, and I prove that with my lifestyle.
Let me give you a foot physiology 101. If I take a sweaty foot and stuff it into a boot, and I lace it up too tight to impede the circulatory system, and I crush my insulation by standing on it, I’m screwed. That’s why most people have frost nip or frostbite to their toes. Cody’s practice may have merit.
A scientific study compared the feet of modern humans to those of 2,000 year old skeletons and concluded that people had healthier feet before shoes were invented. But for the normal person, it’s ins@ne. Correct. we got to get that straight now. I do not recommend that people do what I do. I don’t feel I need to prove myself to Dave.
I just need to follow my heart and do what I do. If it works, it works, you know? If it doesn’t work, I’ll change. Cody explained his mumbo jumbo and science to me as far as why he doesn’t wear shoes, and I’m still not buying into it, but he’s lasted out the day so far, so we’ll see how he works out. And we got overcast, guys.
Today, it’s pretty windy, and it’s a quite a bit colder than it was yesterday. So, we’re going to have to f1ght that today. I think we need to make a game plan for today. Maybe I can soup this shelter area up, make this perform a little bit better. I’d like to investigate that beach for a signal fire area.
We’ll divide and conquer this whole thing, man. It’s all we can do. The most important sk1ll in wilderness survival, working with what you’ve got. You know, as I’m walking through here, there’s several things that I’m looking for. And I’m looking for sh3ll, I’m looking for stone. All of those things can make tools.
All of those things can make things that we can utilize. You’re a constant scavenger. You know, I’m going to be like a junkyard dog. Obviously, we’re by the ocean. There’s sea life here. Dead mollusks, like clams and mussels, are likely to be infected with bacteria. And it smells like crap. But a good survivalist can find a use for anything.
I can use that later on for bait, carry that out, and make my traps. Any predators that are around are going to be attracted by this. I’m a self preservation type guy, you know? I’m not going to walk through here and not look usable resources, but my main goal out here is to get a signal fire built. A signal fire may be a shipwreck survivor’s only chance at rescue.
But with open water surrounding the island, the fire needs to catch attention from air and sea. Okay, this is a perfect spot for my signal fire. I got wide open shipping lane right here. I got lots of resources over here, and this is the highest point out here for that. This is the spot. I got to go get some dry wood.
A burning ember will need to be transferred from camp. But sparking this signal fire will require something more combustible than dry logs. Hey, that’s exactly what I’m looking for right there. This is a birch bark tree. This stuff goes up in flames like gasoline. It has a lot of oils in it. But I’m going to need a good fresh piece of this.
It’s easier for me to just cut it right off the tree fresh and live and not wait for it to peel off itself and waste my energy. Cody would not like this, but it’ll be a bigger piece. Other stuff is the best fire tender you can possibly find in boreal forest areas like this. Dissipating clouds will release the warm ground level air, which will drop temperatures even more once the sun sets.
Dave’s doing his thing and I’m doing my thing. My thing is to make this a better place to be. I want to revamp this shelter using basic physics and make it 10 times more efficient. If I can make this shelter 75 80° and use 1/10 of the wood, that’s a huge survival savings. So, I’m going to take that plastic that I got from the boat and try to make a bubble like a greenhouse here.
The longwave radiation from the fire will go through the plastic and heat up the inside of this lean to. And as I do that, I’ll have a space blanket, that Mylar shiny blanket, on the underside of this, which will reflect long wave radiation onto us, and it’ll be trapped within a bubble of plastic.
Developed by NASA, aluminized Mylar reflects up to 97% of solar radiation. It’s used to protect the International Space Station from the sun. I needed to somehow figure out how to put a space blanket behind me. And I’m not sure how to do that. I know what I want to do, I just don’t know how to do it yet.
The improved shelter will use less firewood and stay warmer. If it works. And if even after putting up this d@mn space blanket, it’s like I mean where do they hire these people to fold this thing? I mean, look at how many folds are in this thing. Oh, what am I going to do? Now, I’m trying to find the exact location we came in on the raft, so that I can scavenge off that raft any usable equipment that we’ve got left on.
It’s basic survival code to never destr0y a means of escape. I want to leave this raft as totally intact as I can right now. But what’s attached to it can be even more useful. There are some baffles on the bottom of this boat that we can definitely use for containers. You know, there’s a lot of rope on here.
I’m going to take all this rope with me. Um, I can actually carve one end of this broken paddle off and make it into a point and fire harden it, and I can spear a raccoon, a skunk, a possum, you know, there’s a lot of animals out here, small woodland type animals that are edible animals. The two most important things that people need to understand in a situation like this, you have to maintain body’s core temperature and hydration.
Without either one of those, you will d1e. Got a pond here. It’s got cattails growing everywhere. That’s a good sign that this water is fresh. Snow is 90% air and 10% water. Ice is 90% water and 10% air. That’s why I want ice. I’m just sliding around. This ain’t safe. Getting into some good stuff here. I see bubbles right here.
Want to make sure there’s no salt in it. Cuz it tastes like salt at all. Tastes better than bottled water. How you been, man? Been doing. What you got in the bag? Where’d you get the bag? Got the bag off of the boat there. I cut the balance off the bottom. Put some ice in there. Sweet. Talk to me about the shelter, man.
I mean, you got a Lakota sweat lodge, bush hippie party house going on in here. Just explain this to me. fun house that’s going to use like maybe 1/8 of the wood. It is what it is, man. I mean, I don’t understand why anybody would drape plastic over their shelter in front of their fire. You know, if your fire gets too big, obviously it’s going to melt that thing away.
This is not the way that I’m used to doing things. You’ve got to come all the way out of that shelter now to put wood on the fire. Right. So, is that a shift to shift shelter or two people going to snooze in there? Or one guy is just going to have to get up? No, both. And they’re going to be toasty in there, okay? I don’t know if you quite read between the lines about what I really did.
There was some hardcore physics that were going on there. I’ll see you in a bit then. I’d offer you my pants and boots, but I know you’d turn it down. So, it down. Yeah, you know that. Okay. I’m going to liberate Dave’s mind tonight. When he goes in that shelter, I’m going to put too much wood on it, and I’m going to burn his shorts off his body.
Next, I think that’s probably going to burn long enough to get me there and back. Dave Break, survival code. If someone on one of my courses wanted to do something like this, I’d have zero tolerance, zero. Threatening to leave him in the dark. I’m running out time, and I got to haul a.ss. Calories are hard to come by in a situation like this, and this is a big calorie game, whether it’s the wood on the fire or the food in the body, it’s still fuel.
In extreme cases of malnutrition, the body begins a process called catabolisis and breaks down its own fat and muscle tissue to stay alive. I would like to check out the coastline and see if I can get some slow moving protein. Maybe there’s some mussels, maybe there’s clams, maybe there’s crabs. So, right off the bat, here’s what I’m looking for.
This little place here, there’s a breathing hole here, there’s one here. I’m going to just dig, it’s low tide, so the water’s out. Digging sticks were used cross culturally for thousands of years. So, this simple stick doesn’t require any energy to make it, but look how more efficient it is than my hands.
Sometimes these clams can be fairly deep. Just cuz there’s an indicator doesn’t mean there’s supper there. Here’s what we’re after. There’s a live clam. To me, these are easy calories to catch. All you need to do is gather them. This can be eaten raw, just as is. Right out of there. Comes in its own salt brine.
This is rock weed. It is edible. It’s not pizza, for sure, but it’s something to eat. I happen to know this rock weed, but if I don’t know what it is, I don’t eat it because if you’re sick out here, it compounds the problem incredibly. Like a h.unting gathering person, I’m grazing as I’m going and just eating on the fly.
Calories. These calories don’t run. These are periwinkles. They’re just literally all over this little beach. Even though a single periwinkle has minimal meat, the sedentary snails form in dense clusters along shorelines. It’s all a calorie game. When you bring back something, you’ve made that energy you’ve spent worth it.
I’ve seen plenty of tracks. There’s some stuff out here. Dave’s survival strategy stands in opposition to Cody’s gatherer philosophy. I h.unt all seasons. I h.unt all types of game. I h.unt with all types of w3apons from primitive w3apons to modern w3apons to homemade fashioned w3apons. I have to do what I have to do to f1ght Mother Nature because Mother Nature’s unforgiving.
She doesn’t let you survive. If you just laid here half naked like Cody does, you don’t survive. Burning through calories to track game is a gamble. If it takes more energy to find food than it provides, it’s a losing one. Okay, now we got a set of tracks right here. We know what animals are in this area cuz there’s probably porcupines and other squirrels.
So, we can by process of elimination, we can tell these are small tracks. Most likely, this is a squirrel. But, the good thing about this is it’s telling us there’s small game in this area. I want to do some trapping. I want to find something to bring back to the table for Cody. Okay, this is a good spot right here for our de@dfall.
I can see some tracks back in here. I know that there’s squirrel in here. I know there’s rabbits. I know there’s raccoon in here. You know, this is a real simplistic trap. I have these nasty old clams in my back pocket. We’ll just break that nasty thing up. And just put them on the end of this skewer for bait.
Oh, yeah. Put my bait stick in here. Back my de@dfall up in there. A de@dfall trap consists of a heavy log and a baited trigger. The idea is to get that thing just barely pivoting on this trap. The log needs to be five times the weight of the prey to work. All he has to do is move it.
It’s not going to k1ll a 20 lb raccoon, but it will k1ll a small weasel or martin, a squirrel, something like that that comes in here just nibbling around. It’s winter. The animals right now are scavenging for food everywhere. I got to set at least six to eight more if it’s going to produce anything for us in the next few days for me. Got some good1es, Dave.
Got some fresh, wonderful bounty of the sea. She got in there, man. Periwinkles and clams. You know, I’ve never been much on seafood. I got to tell you that, Cody. Just don’t really look at it too close. Just eat it. It’s definitely proteins. These are like, you know, organic clams. I mean, how much would you pay for organic clams? Zero.
[laughter] Oh, well. I think eating periwinkles and clams sucks. I can’t stand the taste of that stuff, but it’s food, it’s protein. Well, he ain’t coming out of there. Dude, I think he jumped out of his sh3ll. He’s not in there. I’m poking him, he’s not coming out. Knock knock. [laughter] He’s saying the lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Wow, dude, there’s like zero fr3aking meat there. Okay. chewing on gristle. I can deal with that. Give me about 150 periwinkles and you can have your clams. Well, if I had to survive on these, I’d be de@d in a week. What you got? You know, those clams were okay and the periwinkles were okay, but I like meat that comes from four legged hairy animals.
That’s what I want to eat. And I figured I think I can make a torch by rolling up some of this birch bark into a real tight ball and shove it under my paddle like this. And you just have to go check a couple of traps that aren’t too far away. What if you take a whipper over a log or something? I’ll scream. I’ll squeal.
You’ll know it. Walking into the dense woods alone and at night breaks a survival team’s cardinal rule. If someone on one of my courses wanted to do something like this, I’d have zero tolerance. It would not be done. Zero. So, you would choose to risk your safety and including my a.ss walking out in the darkness in Nova Scotia to check your traps? Well, I consider the risk to be worth it. You know, it’s your call.
I’ll be eating my words maybe literally if you come back with something in the trap, so I’m just going to leave it alone. Going out into the darkness with an improvised birch bark torch in a survival situation is not the best option. And Dave knows that. I’m going to get this torch done. I think that’s probably going to burn long enough to get me there and back.
Burn time on one of these is probably 6 or 7 minutes if you’re lucky. All right, man, I’m taking off. If Dave goes out tonight and brings food home, then he’s going to want me to eat all of my socks, but I’m sticking to my g.uns. I’m going to be in a little bit of a hurry now. My partner thinks this is certain to try, but my partner walks around in bare fr3aking feet in 10° weather.
That’s certain to try. I’m running out time and I got to haul a.ss. It’s night time in the bitter cold of Nova Scotia. In these woods, wandering out in the dark with a fast burning torch is a risk and goes against survival code. Here’s my trap. Nothing’s in it. I got to haul a.ss back. If someone went out who didn’t need to at night in a wintertime survival situation and got themselves injured, that’s called the gene pool at work.
And better that they not breed. Disorientation in the wilderness can lead to a psychological condition called wood sh0ck. I’m going to be in a little bit of a hurry now. Confusion and vertigo overload the brain, causing p4nic. Yeah, I’m running out time. Where even an experienced survivalist can make simple and de@dly mistakes.
All right, I made it, man. You did make it. Okay, where’s the booty? You got any food? There is no booty. The trap was empty. The torches got there smaller and smaller and smaller. I thought it was going to go out. Don’t want me to sound like the, you know, the little woman here at home, but that was a bad call.
I hope that’s just one little experiment, you know, and that this is not a nightly occurrence. They told me, yes, I can make a torch. Yes, I can sustain it for a few minutes if I need to. And it’s it’s a good lesson learned. You’re trying to prove something to yourself every day by being out here with very little clothing on.
So, there’s a give and take there, I think. To me, this is not taking a chance. This is who I am. This is how I live my life. I mean, it’s snowing now. I wonder if it’s going to snow all night. It’s a long day. I’m about wore out. How about you? Yeah, I’m tired. I’m way excited to check out the super shelter because I know I’m going to be cozy, comfy, use very minimal wood, dry some of this stuff out, and I won’t even have to snuggle with Dave tonight.
So, I’m sure he’ll be happy about that. So, what do you think? How much more wood is it going to take to get that shelter warmed up to warm, man. You’ll be comfortable, Dave, or your money back. Holy cow. Oh, it’s toasty in here. See, I can’t even get close to that. like a sweat lodge, man. Yeah, exactly.
Explain this shelter to me. What’s happening now with the fire is that longwave radiation is coming through the plastic, and it’s being reflected from this Mylar blanket onto where we are right now, and it’s being trapped. So, essentially, we’re in a greenhouse trapping that longwave radiation, but it’s bumping it up because it’s being reflected back down to where we are.
The shelter reaches a comfortable 70° despite 31° temperatures outside. I got to say I’m more than impressed, Cody. This is probably the warmest winter shelter I’ve ever been in in my life. It’s physics. Yeah. Okay, Dave. Night, John Boy. Night. That was the call of the wild for you. [laughter] It’s early morning.
Temperatures are continuing to dip more than 10° since yesterday, and fresh snow blankets the island. Hey. How you doing this morning? I’m a bit whipped. You know, food’s food in a survival situation, but I’ve got to get some four legged furry critters, man. So, I’m going to go out and scout around, do some h.unting. Right.
Um is there any way that you could get that signal fire lit? Yeah, I’ll light it. I’ll get my stuff together and I’m going to head out in just a second. Okay. Cody’s out there h.unting periwinkles and snails and stuff. I want to bring back some big meat sustenance for some fat and some protein. Okay, look up here now.
This is a sure sign that a porcupine’s been in this area. This tree has been ringed out at the top. Porcupine love to eat pine bark in the wintertime. They feed on that stuff voraciously. Porcupines are slow moving animals, but because they spend much of their time in trees, they are difficult to catch. Okay, this is that.
It is bleeding some sap, so it hasn’t been long ago. Problem is, it snowed so much right here, tracks are covered. So, we’re just going to move on, see if we can find some true tracks. Porcupines ravaged that one over there, heavy duty. I can stick him with this point, but he’s not going to d1e immediately that way, not a porcupine because they’re too thick skinned. They got too much hair.
The best thing I can do is just a blunt force trauma. If I can catch him on the ground, one swift crack behind the neck will k1ll him instantly. And that’s the most humane way to do it. If there’s small game I’m tracking, I’ll have to get as close to the ground as I can get because on a flat level, it’s easier to see movement.
I saw a porcupine run through. I’m pretty sure it was porcupine. When I’m k1lling an animal, my first
priority is a clean, humane k1ll. One sh0t, blunt force trauma, behind the neck, practice fine, usually k1lls him immediately. And then I’m going to go in and cut the animal’s head off to make sure he doesn’t suffer at all. And that’s my only goal when it comes to k1lling an animal. Hopefully, Cody’s out here lighting our signal fire.
When he gets back, I’ll have a hot meal waiting on him, and it means everything to our morale. After food, water, and shelter, the ultimate survival priority is an escape route. I’m going to go to light a signal fire. So, this is the only fire we have on the island, so I’m transferring the fire by letting this cattail head.
Essentially, this is compressed fuel. This pipe might burn for hour, hour and 15 minutes in a windless condition. The same amount of fuel if I busted up the cattail would burn within seconds. So, because the oxygen is limited, it burns slow like a punk. Just like this fire has cooked clams and provided warmth for us and melted snow for water, it’s now going to signal for rescue.
There’s a little bit of concern in my mind right now as far as, you know, all the prickles on this dude. So, I’m going to try to avoid the back and just cut it right up the front. I’m trying to stay just underneath the skin with this. I don’t want to break that into that gut cavity because if I end up splitting the gut at all, it can taint the meat and I don’t want that. E.
coli bacteria, which lives in the intestines of all warm bl00ded animals, can cause serious, even fatal, food poisoning. See that hole right there? That’s going to lead to the gut cavity. That’s what I was looking for. This is a jewel right here. That is the heart of that dude right there. Just like your heart, just like my heart.
This is where that animal’s spirit lives. That’s the real deal. Connection with the animal. Inuit cultures rely on organ meats, which are much higher in vital nutrients, to survive in Arctic climates that lack fruits and vegetables. Got some thick hide and a lot of fat and you can actually burn that fat just like a fat lamp.
Like with an oyster sh3ll, you can fill that with tallow, make yourself like a seaweed or old man’s beard piece of cordage for a wick and lay that in there, light it on fire and it would burn for maybe 2 hours. Animal fat can also be used for waterproofing or as a lubricant, but it’s put to the best use when it’s ingested.
Animal fat is what you have to have. If you don’t have fat, sooner or later, you will d1e. There’s a lot of meat on here, which means a lot of calories, a lot of fat, a lot of protein, and a happy hippy when he comes back. Rescue in a survival situation is never a guarantee. You can ask any de@d person. That’s a fact. Always, always, always actively promote search and rescue.
As far as signaling for rescue, you want contrast and movement. So, there’s not a whole lot of contrast if we did white smoke on the sky, but there’s contrast against those spruce in the background. The signal fire’s lit. So, my spirits are up, but then also, again, this is just the beginning of hauling firewood out here.
There’s only 1 hour of daylight left. Once the sun sets, Cody will have to return to camp, abandoning the fire until morning. At least the view’s good, right? It’s real pretty, but it’s just a lot of water, you know, with no one on it. Dual Survival’s Art of Self Reliance. This is a balsam fir tree, and it has these resinous nodules on here, and this resin is highly combustible, and it can be used as a natural first aid antiseptic.
Indigenous cultures also use the balsam resin as a topical paink1ller. You can make self adhering bandage with some old man spirit. Take some of this and wrap it up and it’s good to go. With night approaching on the island, temperatures threaten to drop below zero. Boy. Hey. There are two reasons I’m glad you’re back. What’s the second one? The first one’s obvious, right? What? Cuz the fire is sucking wind because we were gone too long and you have fire material.
Yeah. Second one is I have some meat. What did you get? Porcupine. You’re kidding me. Come check it out. How in the h3ll did you do that? Tunnel. Wow. in an opening. Oh, that’s great. All right, man. Now we got some meat, we got some protein, we got some fat. We’re good. That’s great. Congratulations, Dave.
Thanks, man. Let’s cook it. I saved you half the heart. Half the heart? Yeah. But you probably ate it raw, right? Oh, yeah. Hell no. I’m going to cook mine. Okay, man. It smells really good, Dave. Really good. As long as it tastes better than the clams that I had last night, I’ll be happy. I think that’s a given.
I’m going to consider that you like your heart well done. I do like a well done heart. Looks like it’s just about cooked. Thank you. That’s quite an honor. Porcupine heart. You never k1ll something and chuck it and just eat the meat. You eat the meat, you eat the fat, you eat wh@tever organs you can, you save the entrails for bait, the bones for tools.
That’s so intense, man. Thanks for getting us. Nothing goes to waste in that animal. That’s the right, responsible, sane way, in my opinion, to k1ll something. You honor it, and you use it. You ever had porcupine before? No, I sure haven’t, man. How about you? I think I had a roadk1ll once. How was it? It sure wasn’t this fresh.
How does this compare to clams? Ask me how much I’d pay for this. How much would you pay for organic porcupine? Oh, right now? Everything I have. Organic, free range, spruce fed porcupine. You have to do wh@tever you need to do to keep yourself calm.
And sometimes you just have to stop and think, evaluate your situation, evaluate your resources. Maintaining a calm attitude and good decision making is what leads to the difference between survival and death sometimes. Cody and Dave have been living out a scenario, an experience to prove survival is about the right state of mind.
Survival psychology is everything. The will to live is everything. But the ultimate goal of any survival situation is to stay alive long enough to get rescued. Coast Guard! But for a survivor whose fate is in actual peril, there are still rules to follow. Since the Canadian Coast Guard patrols more than 3 million miles of ocean, even if you can see them, they may not see you.
I’m putting this black rubber off a raft I cut off earlier. This will put the black smoke in the air, attract better attention than just the bells. Black smoke is going to contrast against the gray sky better. It’s best to make a focal point. Now we just got to get this boat in here and go off this island.
And stay put for the rescue. Okay, I see him there. I think the goal in any survival situation, number one, is to adapt to the situation. I always tell my students to improvise, adapt, and overcome, you know? I think that’s It’s a very important three things. I try to pay attention to Mother Nature. I realize that she’s the boss.
She’s neither for you nor against you. She just is. And you try to adapt to her to survive. What we did together here, it was beautiful. It worked out perfect for us. And that’s what it’s all about.
