Things You'll Need:
- Good attitude
- Awareness
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Step 1
Getting lost in the woods can happen to anyone.Stay calm and assess your situation. Are you near water? If so, great. If not, you should be able to last for at least 4 days without water, long enough for rescuers to find you. Attitude – your mental state – is the best survival tool you have. Stay positive.
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Step 2
Stay put! If you wander, it will be even harder for search and rescue to find you, because they have to “catch up” with you. You can walk faster than they can track in most cases, so do not move from the spot where you first realized you were lost.
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Step 3
Signal for help by drawing an SOS on the ground using sticks or rocks.Signal by shouting, beating a tree with a stick three times, stop, then three more times. Anything in a series of threes is the international signal for help. If there is an open area, draw out an “SOS” on the ground by using sticks and rocks. Should a helicopter or plane come over, make yourself as big as possible. Lie down on the ground and move your feet and hands as if you were making a snow angel. It is much easier to see you from the air if you are lying on the ground. If you have them, blow a whistle or flash a mirror at overhead planes. Smoke is also a great signal if you have the means to make a fire.
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Step 4
Debris hut, the best survival shelter you can build.Make a shelter. This is a must, because hypothermia is the number one killer of people lost in the woods. Hypothermia can occur in relatively mild weather, so don’t think you don’t need a shelter. Make one. Make a pup tent shaped shelter that comes all the way down to the ground on one end. Then stuff both the inside and outside of the shelter with dead, dry leaves (but even wet ones will do), to a depth of about 3 or 4 feet from the “skeleton” frame of the shelter.
All of those leaves provide dead air space, which retains heat and makes great insulation. Make a door or after you get in, pull in a pile of leaves after you. Done right, this will keep you warm down to about 10º F. dressed in just regular clothes. With this shelter, you will not need a fire to survive until you are found. You can survive for 30 days without food, about 4 days without water, but only overnight without a shelter if hypothermia sets in. -
Step 5
Without wandering out of sight from your shelter, look for water in hollows in rocks, catches in tree stumps, or walk downhill to try to find a stream. Another thing you can do is get up early in the morning while the dew is still on the grasses. Take a bandana or shirt and wipe it along the tops of the grasses until your bandana or shirt is soaked. Then hold the material up over your mouth and squeeze this pure water into your mouth.
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Step 6
Making fire with a bow drill.If you have matches or a lighter, make a fire. They lift the mood, provide warmth, and can be used for signaling. I recommend you learn how to make fire using a bow drill just in case you get lost in the woods and have no matches with you.
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Step 7
Gathering cattail roots.Finally, look for food. The most commonly identifiable things in the woods that are edible are cattails (roots or young stalks), oak (acorns), grasses, and pine trees. Pine needles have lots of Vitamin C in them and make a great tea. The inner bark of the pine tree, while not very palatable, is edible. Pine cone seeds are edible as well.
