Shawn James and the Wooded Beardsman on Camping and The Wilderness Survival Challenge

Description

I interview The Wooded Beardsman about The Wilderness Survival Challenge, and he interviews me, as we camp for three days in Muskoka Ontario in December. http://myselfreliance.com/wild-game-meat-self-reliance/ ?

Your self reliance is substantially measured by your ability to source healthy, readily available and economical food that has little or minimal impact on the environment and, ideally, does not consume a lot of your time and energy to acquire. Wild-crafted foods can be an ideal method to accomplish this, with the not-insignificant benefit of the reconnection and participation in nature and it’s natural cycles. Maintaining this connection is critical, in my opinion, to mitigate the effects of nature deficit disorder, and to remind us that our independence is actually critically tied to our dependence on nature in all of it’s glory.

How many calories and how much protein do we need?

Calculating the macronutrient requirements of the average adult human being suggests that we need about 755,500 calories per year, comprised of roughly 113,00 grams of carbohydrates, 18,250 grams of protein and 25,550 grams of fat. These macronutrients and all of the associated micronutrients that are essential to our health and well being should, be obtained from as wide a variety of sources as possible. Accomplishing maximum variety can be challenging when we stop thinking globally about our food choices and instead focus on local, wild or domesticated flora and fauna. Adhering to this mantra reminds us that our potassium cannot or should not be obtained from bananas, our vitamin C from oranges nor our red meat from a pig factory in south Carolina or a beef CAFO in Iowa (There are roughly 257,000 AFOs in the United States.

Tags: bushcraft,camping,gear,My Self reliance,shawn james,winter camping,Bushcraft,Survival,Primitive skills,Nature,EDC,Camping,Fire,Self Reliance,Firesteel,Ferro Rod,Campfire,Campfire Cooking,Bushcraft Breakfast,Wild Edibles,Foraging,Canoe,Canoeing,Fishing,Hunting,outdoors

Video Transcription

hey guys it's sean james here again I'm here with Chris from the wooded beardsman anyway this is our first trip together never been out I've been following Chris's channel for about a year now does some great stuff for the womanís living challenges more we're trying to live off the land without losing any of our body weight so we have a prescribed period of time that we've gone out and so instead of doing it indefinitely until we quit and give up our objective was to go as long as possible or not as long as possible but to go in it with a certain amount of body weight and then come out with the same amount of body weight without losing anything so try to balance our calories in calories out so that's basically the challenge it sounds simple but it was a lot more difficult than you know we anticipated and we talked Tamiya and say there's stuff about Shawn you won't you won't know but he's actually tried to live off the land and he's telling me interesting stories about the area that we're in right now where he went out as a teenager so if you want to share that story yeah that's some of the stuff you ate no yeah 16 years old and me and three foolish buddies thought we were quite the outdoorsman I guess and we went on a canoe trip through this area it was a seven-day canoe trip actually and we took enough food for probably 25% of our of our calories that we needed for the week and it was all heavy stuff too like total amateurs and you know partway through the week the fishing wasn't going the way we thought it was going to of course which it never does when you're counting on it so we by the end of the week we were basically like sneaking off and catching a little sunfish and cooking them up or the other guys were sleeping or otherwise occupied we we ate mussels almost every day freshwater mussels or clams

you know silt and all until we figure it out and clean them out properly we raided some duck nests it was it was June so we're eating Braganza eggs and frog legs killed a snapping turtle down here in the river and ate that and I just crazy stuff like we were and just starving and at each other by the end of the weekend we were I'm so stressed so the question is did you gain weight on the trip or lose weight on the trip we lost weight like I'm sure at the time we were just boys so I don't know how much weight we had to lose so we were running out of energy quick that's for sure yeah and we found that same issue when we went oh it is yeah and you learn a lot like you're losing weight but you're learning so much about what it takes to survive and you I mean you did it here I don't know if it's any more abundant than where we did it far it's probably eating the same sort of things that by the sizin it's seasonal right so we you know what funny odd berry in June that would be the last day of exams so the end of June you know it's really hard

depending on the season to get enough calories from the wild it's one thing if we had been out in the spring spearing fish or something and and preserving those but very difficult when I was in my early 20s I built a log cabin on five acres I had up north in the fall and lived there for three months and same thing I luckily I had big bags like huge bags of rice and some oatmeal another than that I was planning on living off the land well I've go out and you know if I shot a rabbit I was thrilled or one duck and just didn't even come close to getting enough calories we did some rough math on we'll miss living challenge we figured you're thinking 70 fish 70 some light hounds of pike 70 pounds yeah yeah or two to maintain 3500 calories per pound of body weight essentially is what you need to consume so if you have a 3500 calorie deficit you're gonna lose a pound yeah on average for the average person that jives with my math - but I was surprising that number of fish that you need to get like you can't set 70 fish 70 pounds you can't eat you can't eat you just can't eat that much you it's a full-time job just eating it if it was provided for you well I did some calculations with of a family of four about two girls on the wife figure we need 21 deer to feed us in a year yeah and how is that possible fair wild turkey population here at 8:58 horns squirrels of course the Bears which is maybe not as well known they they fatten up they're eating almost nothing but acorns for the last month or two before they go into hibernation it's it's a very good food source but for us how much ACORN could we I mean if you made flour and make bread or something that if it's not very palatable one yeah you would quickly tire of it before you got enough calories to sustain yourself yeah I mean it's it's it's pounds of it again mm-hmm you need that you need fat you need something you need a source of five yeah I need to shoot that bear that details acorns and we live off you know that few thousand people 30 or 40 thousand calories that you can get out of that bear actually yeah and so what we're looking at on this trip is to look for rabbits gross stuff geese squirrel I'm missing anything no that's pretty much what's available what's in season right now there's also fish but we're not gonna look at fish because fishings a long season anyway so look at things that we can get right now and we really have forgotten you know because we talked about the on the windows limit challenge like you know people think you could just go do it because people have always done it but how do they do it nobody really knows what it date they existence would have a look like it's very where you or people were living on the land you know and and people almost take it for granted that because we used to do it we can still do it but our landscapes changed right I mean this is this is a pretty abundant as far as Natural Resources goal with the acorns and the game and animals compared to where we did it in the North not saying it would be easy here mm-hmm but you know if we just tried to live off of acorns we could maybe make a better go out it just kind of laying low yeah you know processing a quince but it would be a it would be full-time job all the same and people were nomadic but when they ran out of resources an area because they depleted because their population because they were successful that's the irony yeah the population the Brian was successful they quickly deplete the area become unsuccessful there's all the South American cultures for example that they've burnt out as a culture because they were too successful for 80% of what natives ate in this area was corn it was the corn based corn squash beans yeah three sisters and supplemented with game yeah but not certainly not living off the land well we're saying you're saying here on people this is kind of historical would be more of a hunting ground because he it's not arable land you can't plant it's all rock and so we're right on the southern edge of the shield we go like five kilometers five you know three miles south to here were into farmland so that's where the historical villages were set up was on that farm land where they could grow other crops and then they would canoe it up into these areas which is why you know from a Canadian perspective canoeing maybe seems a little unbalanced how often I have canoeing among videos for example but they we were talking earlier it's 250,000 good sized lakes and now Terry if you're not in a canoe yeah how do you travel around this you can't you can't get around right it's the easiest way to bring all your gear I mean if you had to do it by foot you wouldn't go for know exactly thick bush in this area in some areas yeah so the First Nations as well as ourselves canoe into these areas we hunt and fish on the waters and then we go into the to the agricultural lands to get most of our food exactly so what's on on par for today we're gonna go do we're gonna walk which I gets a small game hopefully that turns around we didn't see any ducks yesterday we came in oh wait we hate modern sourced food I asked if we could live off the land and it was kind of tongue-in-cheek because you never know when you're gonna get hated yeah there could it could have been full of ducks but as it turns out we paddled around yesterday and didn't see any and hopefully we'll change that up today yeah it's tough at this time of year where early December a lot of the Ducks turn it this time of year of this ground here which it would should have a foot or two a snow on on it and the lake would be frozen so the Ducks typically have gone so they're gone over to the bigger deeper lakes that aren't frozen yes Georgian Bay just west of here ducks and geese are obviously out there now and get the odd one maybe flying in here so we're not overly optimistic we're gonna shoot a duck or goose today so yeah we're counting on rough grouse burying hair which is a snowshoe rabbit it's what people know them by here and they're in the white phase now turned white so on this brown dirty ground we should be able to see the we should actually build a hit whatever we shoot at we should be able to shoot a rabbit so we're hoping for squirrel rough grouse black squirrel rough grouse and varying Harris

so check out Chris on his channel it's the wood and beardsman yeah I've got a pile of stuff coming up to like it I'm depending when you air this you'll see the rest of the womans living challenge yeah and then I've got stuff to dope until February so great curses are real outdoorsman so he does stuff year-round so you'll see him winter camp I'm sure ya want me we'll get out on a winter trip together or maybe some ice fishing and some snowshoeing and maybe some winter rabbit hunting yeah so stay tuned and you know thanks for watching and like I said make sure you tune in to the wooded beardsman Channel and let us know if you'd like to see us do anything different we're we're experienced outdoorsmen and we do all kinds of stuff that maybe we haven't showcase if you have any requests please put them in the comments below and be happy to do that for you [Music]

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what are you eating there there's hundreds of wintergreen berries let's go into green leaf leaf makes a good tea break that up in water and boil it if you haven't had this which most people have knocked it's basically wintergreen I went to green flavor that's usually in gum that's exactly what the flavor is like eating a piece of gum mm-hmm mix some of these with some pine sap spruce gum yeah we're originated digging of that that's a Lily root tuber and everybody says it's good to eat full of starch it's it's the most bitter thing you can ever do [Music]

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well I think that's it for the 2016 canoe season is or only in Muskoka we're not that far north and had minus 6 or minus 8 or something overnight and this entire Bay which is a the launch area at McRae Lake completely frozen so back from where the Macdonald river flows through that was open of course where the current was but you can see this entire section of the Lake McDonald lake it's frozen over we had to bust our way through all the way all the way from the river to here so push the limit it's December or something six or seventh or something and we had a good long season so we're fortunate to get out get it for another beautiful weekend and then actually get it off the water back to shore where they would happen to go through the bush so thanks again everybody for watching and really appreciate it and for subscribers thank you for the support and if you haven't subscribed yet if you could I'd really appreciate that and I look forward to making the next video for you