Many people don’t really understand prepping, they hear the word prepper and think hoarding. However, prepping is not about having a lot of food and guns. It’s about building a healthy body, having essential supplies, and developing skills.
Many of these skills are actually the skills our ancestors, hunters and gathers possessed millennia ago. From fitness readiness to weapons’ mastery, here are the top modern hunting and gathering skills preppers need to develop.
Improving the fitness level
Back in the days, a Roman soldier could easily march 40 kilometers in a single day. Modern hunters don’t have to traverse such distances to catch their prey but they nevertheless need to be in excellent shape. As far as prepping is concerned, you should focus not that much on distance but rather the terrain and the gear you carry on your back.
To improve your fitness level, go on marches with a rucksack weighing 2/3 of your body weight the most and choose a mountainous terrain. This exercise will help you build up your lung capacity, as well as making up for a great cardio workout. The end goal is to be quick and strong so you can cover the distance needed to find prey.
Learn to identify different plants
In the wild, the more you know, the better you’ll fare. One segment of a prepper’s knowledgeability is his or her ability to identify different plant species. This is important for two reasons.
Firstly, you must know which species, such as fungi, are poisonous and shouldn’t be used as food.
Secondly, you should know enough about herbs to be able to find the ones that can be used as medicine. For instance, yarrow powder is used to stop bleeding.
Field dressing an animal
Apart from plants, you should know your way around animals as well. Learning to hunt wild animals can be an excellent resource for acquiring food. It’s also important to know how to field-dress wild animals. Animals such as rabbits are loaded with protein and their meat has a low percentage of body fat. From skinning to cooking rabbit meat, you should learn the whole process and practice it several times a year.
Finding a potable source of water
You can go for weeks without food but you wouldn’t last more than 3 days without water. Preppers like developing survivalist skills, so there’s no need to further stress the importance of water. Learning how to locate a source of potable water out in the wild is an essential skill that forms the basis of prepping.
After you learn some provisional dowsing skills, you should also learn how to purify the water. As you are probably aware, you can have the ocean in front of you but it will do you little good because of the salt in the water. As far as water from streams and lakes is concerned, it’s useful to learn the proper time and technique to boil water, making it suitable for drinking and preparing food.
Primitive fire making
In order to boil water in the wild, you’ll obviously need fire. Another useful skill practiced by hunters and gatherers is starting a fire the old-fashioned way, without the use of a lighter. Like dowsing, this skill is essential for surviving in the wild because you can cook food on the open flame, dry your clothes, keep yourself warm, keep large predators away, etc.
If you have failed to bring safety matches with you, there are always primitive methods at your disposal. If you get a piece of flint you can use it to create a spark, thus setting on fire the combustible material you have gathered up before. This can be dry leaves, paper, or a piece of cotton.
Alternatively, if you’re trapped in a desert-like terrain with a lot of sunlight, you can use a magnifying glass to start a fire. Again, you will try to set fire to the same combustible material by holding the magnifying glass over it, trying to focus the sun’s beams directly onto it. It might be a while before you get a plume of smoke, but when smoke appears, the fire is not far away.
Hunting and gathering are invaluable skills for preppers to have. In times of scarcity, when meat is hard to find in the supermarket, the ability to hunt can help feed your family. Consider which skills you don’t want to rely on others for and start developing a new skill today.
Guest Post – Nemanja is an Editor at TheGearHunt.com
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