Camp Cooking: Crayfish

Description

In this video we catch and cook some Signal Crayfish around a campfire.

Please note that these are not native white clawed crayfish and its advised that you do not catch native crayfish if you find areas that are inhabited by them.

To learn more about legal trapping Signal Crayfish please see the links below -

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/permission-to-trap-crayfish-eels-elvers-salmon-and-sea-trout

http://www.naturalbushcraft.co.uk/wild-food/signal-crayfish-trapping-and-catching.html

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Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,wood,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game,Outdoor Cooking (Industry)

Video Transcription

hi there guys smite from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another video I've been out doing some hiking today I've really just been following this river through this woodland as it snakes through and while I've been following the river looking along the edge of the actual river you can see a lot of holes burrowed into the side of the riverbank that's a very good sign of a type of wild food that you can find you in you're out on the trail and being this a very shallow River it makes it much easier to identify those kind of burrows and holes and that's from crayfish actually burrowing in and they stay in those little burrows obviously that's where they live and they come out and feed and I found signs of crayfish I found a very young one further down the river and I've also found signs of them eating each other which is what they generally do and there are claws and parts of crayfish kind of scattered along the riverbed actually while I'm sitting here I can see a crayfish now an American signal non-native crayfish quite a large one I'll see if I can move in and get him this is generally the way I catch them I just throw a bit of rotten fish in the water and then lunge in and grab the crayfish

so there we go it's got some pretty good claws on it as well that's not the biggest one I found but that's a pretty good size and the tail and claw meat out of that should be pretty good but you can see why they call it the American signal through these red claws it's very easy to identify it will raise its claws up in like a defensive position really where it's just trying to intimidate that crayfish came out simply because I had some rotten fish scent on my hands and I washed them in the river just before I put the bait down by the side of the river so you can see they've got um an incredibly good sense of smell and if you put rotten fish in the water which is a fantastic bait then they will go straight to it in fact this one never mind me it's moving in for the actual bait to know and it's it's eating it right in front of me but what I'll do is I'll get this one in the bag and we'll see if we can catch some more I'll just take a piece of fish just pop its fish in fortunately it sinks so it's not going to drift away and a lot of the burrows and holes and crevices that they're living in a just downstream of it so hopefully they'll catch the scent and start to come out but it shouldn't take too much to get them out given how scarce food is around here movement should start to occur pretty quickly that should do it we'll just wait

oh yeah

there we go got one more a bit of a small Mon butter sit out to the pile ah

that one's a bit better this area's done I think still plenty more crayfish and get me wrong they're probably quite a few still around here in fact there's a gigantic one just that can just see one of the alphas come out got to be very careful it's not so much the talking that's the problem it's the movement see gone gone just a little bit of movement just a bit of vibration on the ground and he's gone and that one didn't have any claws so it looks like it been in a few battles I've had a pretty good morning anyway got quite a few crayfish but I've just spotted one more very large one underneath the log just laugh as I washed my hands and the scent came off into the water of the fish he came out and now as he saw me setting up the camera went back in again so I'm just going to get a little bit more baiting I've got some wrapped up in the pack get it near him and see if he can come out and I can get him that's not a bad-size that one there got some big claws on him so they'll be plenty of meat in that well quite a bit of meat anyway in this clause so it's quite a good one if they were all like that I'd be great so I've been at this for a while now let's have a look at what we've got there we go so we've got some pretty good sizes there this one's probably one of the small lists and we got some some good sized ones that one there's quite big saves that one very good sizes there got some little ones but being an invasive species I can't put them back so they'll have to be eaten along with the rest of them that's not bad for about an hour's work of just sitting beside the river with some rotten fish throwing it in and picking up what comes out and you just have to be a little bit patient let's get these back in the bag we'll go and get them cooked that was a hell of a walk works up quite a sweat this is a nice little spot a little bit of sunlight got some gravel here by the river so I can manage the fire quite easily and water and there's plenty of fire with the rain I think I'll uh stop hiking and stay around here what I've done here is laid down something called a raft and the ground is very damp and wet and we don't want that to affect the heat of the fire so we lay down dry wood and this wood was all cut from dead standing trees meaning it's dead still in the tree because it's been very torrential obviously all the wood on the ground is sodden and completely soaked so I put a double raft here just to ensure a good bed of embers you can stack them up and up and up and actually light them from the top like a triangle almost a pyramid burning down and they burn for a very very long time but I'm putting this triangle just here and this is an oxygen control triangle and it just puts some distance between the tinder that's burning and the wood that needs to actually catch and become our fuel wood the biggest way that fires are often lost is by smothering smothering them and starving them with oxygen and this really ensures that you can keep that distance and actually control the distance between the bundle and the tinder and it's just a nice little method but I've got some birch bark here and this tinder back some I've gathered the other day while I was out I wish do keep a little bit on me when I'm in very very damp conditions in case things get quite dire and that should really help us get our fire going now this can go on like that you can see it creates a nice little gap and the fuel wood can actually be lit and if we find the flames dull we lift and it will go brighter and brighter but we don't really need to in this case so we'll just leave it like that we have fires rolling we got some water on and sober look at some of these crayfish here

I caught a very very large one on the way down just spotted it it's grabbing on to a lot of different things really so we got quite a few in here there's the big one it's got some serious claws on him so I think we'll start with that one there there's a number of different ways you can use to dispatch crayfish some people just throw them straight in boiling water and they're going alive straight away and if the water is a full rolling boil generally they died almost instantly but a bit of a kinder way he's severing the spinal cord and then actually allows you to remove the waste pipe as well all in one and just put it on the fire either like this on a skewer or straight into boiling water again I actually quite like boiling a lot of the shellfish I catch I just find it a bit more of a sound method but it's not really necessary but I'll show you how to dispatch one so you can take the crayfish just like this there'll be a gap just behind its head there and you can go in sever the spinal cord make sure you get it there still can be a bit of movement afterwards but that should dispatch it pretty quickly just like that like any animal there is a little bit of movement afterwards it's just motors shutting down in that respect and then in the tail there you have like a main fin just in the middle just like that you break that left and right - you hear a click and then pull it you pull it just like that and the entire waste pipe will come out just like this so this is one way of cooking them you can just pop them in boiling water that crayfish has been in the pot for about three minutes so let's take it off have a look there we are Wow look at that okay it's looking pretty good so you take the tail off this one's got a very small tail now we have the crayfish tail there and again that's a very very good bit of claw meat if you want to get really fancy I usually carry some oat cakes with me while I'm out in the field and have the crayfish meat on the actual out cake which is pretty good there's something special when you're out in the woods OOP

hmm

there are other ways of dealing with crayfish as well you can skewer them if you're in a survival situation for example we'll have very limited equipment and didn't have a canteen on you to actually boil it then they can just be cooked over the fire and I'll show you how to do that it's very simple just dispatch them the same way severing the cord there at the back then take the tail again

and that comes the excreta track there and then what you can do is make yourself skewer add a quite a thin piece of wood and just put it up the hole where the actual X waste pipe came out and it will just look like that and then it can be stamped in the ground and cooked over the fire I've always been more fond of foiling than rather than scaring them maybe it's just my my habit really when it comes to shellfish having spent quite a lot of time on the coastline but I find it just more efficient you're less likely to burn them it's a more consistent way of cooking them it's guaranteed heat in all areas and you can cook a batch of them at the same time with very little materials other than a pot and some boiling water and if your communal so there's four or five of you on the trail then you have a communal cooking pot you could be catching them all day long and at the end of the day throw 30 or 40 of them into the pot boil them all and serve them up at the same time and they'll all be cooked to perfection some may argue you lose a bit of flavor but I've really never noticed it I just find it a much better way of cooking these are almost done even though I've got a small partner you wouldn't believe that all the rest of the crayfish that I had in there which was seven or eight of them are in that little pot mass cooking away

there we go so these look really nicely done you can see how just boiling them it's just a quite a simple way of dealing with them and they will cook very consistently and they're ready to be eaten this one here looks like it's going to be the first their tails are actually quite small around here he's a pretty small crayfish in the grand scheme of things but that's why numbers are the key it's fiddly work this not too much so I think it's quite a nice thing in a way it slows you down eating can be a very fast thing he stays but if there were five or six of you sitting around a campfire and then you know it'd be something that you'd be doing for quite a few hours just sitting there and talking and eating and then they're very very easy to prepare really I'm just getting all of the meat off that I want and then I can actually just sit there and eat before I tuck into the rest of these crayfish and have them with my out cakes and I've also got some water as well I'll just point out that these crayfish a non-native they're an invasive species the american signal is an invasive species that you'll find a lot of the waters now in parts of the British Isles and they wipe out the native crayfish they're bigger they're stronger they carry a disease as well and this disease can be spread by spores in the water and it can actually kill the native crayfish these are immune to it are native ones on this is why the licensing process to be able to go out really and do this and to catch them legally in traps small lobster pot like traps is very strict simply because there are notorious for escaping and if you're walking around in these waters where the spores will be you could transfer them back to waters that may have native crayfish in if you live by them then they assess all of this when they effectively issue a license the Environment Agency in the landowners permission is required to be able to do this so if you are interested in doing this kind of thing please see the description below but do be aware that this video is more of a demonstration to everybody out there the people overseas watching a lot of my audiences from the United States and Canada and a lot of people over there have crayfish like this and they go out into the wilderness and there's potential to be able to capture them and add them to the supplies you bring with you or if you're in a survival situation you could leave them as well to actually sustain yourself and live a little bit longer out there it's basically a very very good wild food to be able to find and it uses very little resources from your body very little energy to be able to catch them

so I hope you enjoyed this video thank you again for watching for everybody out there who supports the channel I hope you found this very useful those of you have crayfish arraigns and looking to go out and catch them I'll see you very soon in another video thanks again guys and take care