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Cooking Squirrel and Rice

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

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I decided to go with a piece of maple just for down-and-dirty here see how it's going to work now a wood piece of green maple doesn't not out of it right there be a lot easier to get it on there I'm short a trade now remember can always cut the excess off and trim the handle down so the first thing we want to do is want to make sure we got a good fit make sure we get this thing down as far as it'll go on here before we mess around any of that right I really the first thing I want to do if I'm going to worry about messing with making this all nice and fancy and pretty is I want to make sure that first of all it's not going to tear up so you know I'm gonna put on the panel and take a few good swings on a tree with it bury it in there a few times and see how it acts make sure I'm not going to break that thing no matter what I do you can see how things are going deep into that pine go back and click put your pine strap off of that this winter okay that thing's not going anywhere so if I had to I could just carry the blade make a quickie handle on the fly and I still got something I cut with well my friends this is why they call it a squirrel cooker I can adjust that guy anywhere I need to my flames built up a little bit I'm cooking faster now I'm just kind of slow cooking okay so once they've got our fire going here we can start our fire with pine or Residence woods that will help us make a quick fire but we don't want to cook over that type of fire so what we're going to do is we're going to let that stuff burn down to a coal bed like we have here and then we're going to add hardwood on top of that to create the smoke and heat that's going to cook our meat we just want that initial coal bed in there to provide heat but we don't want those resinous fumes coming up and making contact with our meat because it'll make it taste foul so now we're just adding small pieces of hard wood to keep ourselves a little bit of flame and a nice hot coal bed to cook this squirrel and then real easy to turn this dude on this squirrel cooker I just adjusted it down just a little bit there a little bit closer to the fire that's easy to do with this easy to rotate works great for cooking small pieces of meat and small game once we've taken this thing and we've given it a test run and we be on it pretty good we know that handles not going to slip at that point we can start to thin down our handle to something that's more manageable and not so big and bulky and we can take our time doing this this is something we can do around the campfire at night not something we got to be in a big hurry about the advantage to these hand forged tools like this tomahawk head the fro and things like that are that you don't have to carry the handle with you you can carry the tool itself make the handle on the fly which is another reason that I've always advocated wouldn't handle the axes because if you break that handle for some reason you can fabricate another if you have to it's not to say that it's an easy chore to put an axe handle on in the woods because it's really not that easy but it can be done much easier than trying to replace a plastic handle that's broke off you've got the head all epoxy to the top and all of that stuff but now we'll just take our time carving this handle down into something that we don't mind carrying and then we will cut the excess off the top we'll leave about a half an inch up there just in case the head decides to slip up a little bit during use and we'll have ourselves a pretty fine tomahawk and once I've got my squirrel cooked and I'm getting ready to make you know something else to go with it which I'm going to use Pathfinder trail rations here I'm going to put some rice in here mixing rice and squirrel me together but the point is now that I've got that taken care of does matter what kind of wood I put on here anymore because now I'm just heating water so I put something a little resin in there doesn't matter well they get a nice hot quick fire boil this water

there's the thing guys when you're putting stuff in your pack and you're deciding what you're going to carry obviously you living off the land is not something that's so easy to do that you can just afford not to ever carry any food but at the same time your skill level should enable you to obtain some meat sources so if you can bring things with you to put with that food to give you those good carbohydrates and things that you need that you can't get from the meat like rice like breads mix us to make breads like panics and things like that it's exactly what the old-time pioneers did you know they carried some jerk with them in times of famine but for the most part you know cornmeal flour coffee salt those were the things that they carried with them that took up the bulk of the weight of their food stores when they were packing whether it was on their back in a canoe on a horse whatever the case may be they weren't packing a lot of meat you know even long expeditions like Lewis and Clark's expedition they recorded the things that they packed and carried with them but they they took on their expedition and there was no meat in their list of what they took with them but it was recording their journals that if it was available to them the men of the expedition ate nine pounds of meat per man per day now that's a ton of meat more than any of us would ever eat in a day's time now but considering the amount of workload that they had on them the calories that they were burning it's understandable why they would eat that much meat not much protein so that they could metabolize that into energy but in our case we just need to think about what are the sundries or the groceries that we need to include in our pack set up depending on how long we're planning on staying out in a woodland environment if it's just a couple of days maybe just take a little bit of food with you if it's a week maybe you take more things that you can make with other types of food that you can capture or kill like I've got the squirrel I'm going to mix it with some rice these Pathfinder trail rashes were designed exactly for that that's why there are not meat sources there are things that you put with meat to help you enjoy your meal and get more nutritional benefit from your meal and that's what we're trying to do today we're going to mix up this Spanish rice we've already cooked our squirrel we're going to cut it up into smaller pieces of meat and add it with our rice as it cooks down to give us a bit of a rice stew you know there's enough meat on this squirrel when you combine it with something else for more than one meal and that's an important thing to understand too but you've got to be able to preserve meat as well if you plan to do something like that and I'm not cutting this meat off I'm just ripping it off skin and all cook it down with this rice now if I were really being conscious of you know all the nutrients and the proteins and everything that I could possibly get out of this meat I just be cutting the haunches off and boiling them right in that water boiling the meat right off of them but I've got the luxury of not having to worry about that so I can just pull the meat off the bone and throw it in there

okay I wanted to show you guys something real fast here this is that big pine that I tomahawked probably a less than an hour ago and you can see all these droplets of pine sap coming out of that injury already that is great medicine my friends if you needed some antiseptic to put on a cut that's an easy way to get it oh man fellas we are really really looking get it now holy cow starting to cook down boiling that meat in there get all that juice in there man oh man another thing that's great about these squirrel cookers you know you just rotate that thing around in the fire out of fire so you stir it back in the fire again I really like that you know it's a piece of gear weighs a little bit the manager saves you a lot of headaches and chores convenient a lot of ways well fellows I'll tell you what that stuff cooked right down into a really nice hearty stew type meal real hot

for some chicken flavor in that rice I was thinking that was Spanish rice but it's not it's like a chicken flavored rice and almost unfortunately for me maybe fortunate for some people almost covers up the taste of that squirrel makes taste like chicken but I'll tell you there's vegetables rice in there got your carbs you got your new trick nutrients in there vitamins put that squirrel in there you got some protein you got yourself a good hearty meal guys I appreciate you let me have another video today I thank you for your support for your views and comments for everything you do for me for my school my friends sponsors and affiliates I'll be back another video soon as I can thanks guys

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About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

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