Finding Food While Hiking

Video Transcript

"Hi. This is David Jackel on behalf of Expert Village. And, I'm here to talk to you about finding food if you get lost when you're hiking. Now, even if you brought food with you and you still have some left, you're going to have to find more food at some point unless you expect to be out of there in no time. So, you've got to look around and get food. Well, the important thing to remember here is that food gives you energy. So, it doesn't benefit you to waste a lot of energy finding more food. It's like driving around for a long time so that you can find gas. The easiest kind of food to find is probably not something you're going to want. And, that's bugs. But, if it's bugs or nothing, you're better off with bugs. To find them, you can look under logs. Usually under a wet log you're going to find bugs. If you're more adventurous or you're not really in the mood for bugs, then you can hunt small animals and you can go fishing. Fishing isn't all that difficult. If you can find running water, the you can use a sharpened stick to go after a fish. It'll take you awhile, but if you're lost, you've got plenty of time to learn. You can also actually use a piece of clothing to reach into the water and use it as a net to scoop out a fish. Maybe take some food that you do have to use as bait to put on top of the water. If you want to hunt small animals, what you do is dig a hole in the ground. Put some sort of bait inside. Wait for an animal to come along like a squirrel or a chipmunk or something like that. And then, again, you can use a sharpened stick to get yourself the animal. If you're looking for plants, be very careful and make sure you don't eat anything that you can't recognize. Sometimes people will eat bark if they're lost in the wilderness. That's fine, bark, moss, stuff like that. But, beware of berries particularly small red berries which happen to be poisonous. As a general rule, if you don't know what it is, do not eat it. And, remember, the point of getting food is to keep you going, not that you spend all your time looking for food."