It doesn’t matter for what reason you ended up in the forest - went for mushrooms or berries, went hunting or went on a hike, you must know how to survive in the forest. Many, of course, will say that it is very easy to survive in the forest, but in fact it is not so - you need to know and be able to do a lot, because your life depends on it. No matter how well you navigate the forest, you always need to be prepared for the fact that you can get lost and get lost. And this is where this survival knowledge will come in handy.
It should be remembered that even if you consider yourself the toughest survivalist and expert in the forest, you must definitely go into the forest prepared, even if you just decide to take a small walk in the forest, you should always have with you such elementary things as a fire pit - matches, a lighter or flint, a knife and a bowler , a supply of water and food, a tent or an awning. You simply must take at least one of the above, because it will greatly facilitate your survival in the forest.
Let's say you get lost. The most important thing is that you don’t need to panic, try to get out of the forest at random, because you risk wandering even further into the forest and completely losing all hope of getting out. In general, to avoid this, you should always have a compass with you, and in our age of modern technology, it is advisable to get a navigator. Then you can easily find your way home.
But if this is not the case, then you need to determine your location in the forest with some landmarks for yourself. You can make notches on trees. This is done in order to remember where you have already been - if you come across the same place a second time, you should recognize it. As soon as you realize that you are lost and after vain attempts you could not find a way out, do not despair. If you have your phone with you, call someone right away and let them know you're in trouble, don't put it off until later because the phone's battery might run low, you might be out of mobile coverage, or the phone might get wet and not work. will work.
If you do not have a means of communication, then you can shout or take some kind of stick and knock on wood, it is possible that someone will hear you. Listen to the forest yourself - perhaps somewhere nearby there may be a freeway or a railway, you can also orient yourself by the sounds of a train and cars. If a search party is already looking for you, to make it easier for them to find you, you need to build signal fires, and not just one, but as many as possible.
If it is nearing evening and it is already quite late, then you should stop all attempts to get out of the forest on your own, because in the dark your actions will not bring any benefit. This is where the very process of survival in the forest begins. You must take care of a place to sleep. If you have a tent or an awning, then this greatly simplifies the arrangement of the camp for the night. But if you went to the forest for mushrooms, then it is unlikely that you took a tent with you.
While it's still light, take care of the firewood. Drag more dry branches and spruce legs to the place of lodging for the night. If you do not have an axe, you can break large dry trees by sticking the thinner end between two trees growing side by side. The more firewood you prepare, the better, you won't have to do it later when it gets dark.
The temperature at night is always lower than during the day, the fire will serve as heating for you. It is best to build two fires - one for cooking like a "hut" or "well", the other for a rooming house like "nody" or "taiga". You can read about how to properly light a fire and what types of fires are here .
Now about subsistence in the forest. Perhaps, until the moment when you leave the forest or the search party finds you, the supply of food that you took with you on the road will be enough for you. Or maybe this is just the case when you, like a real extreme, went into the forest without food, maybe you were just sure that such a misfortune would never happen to you. Doesn't matter. Now you need something to eat to survive. After all, your stay in the forest may be delayed, you may have to survive here for several days, or even more than one week.
You don't have to wait for the moment when you are exhausted from hunger, the body needs calories to move, so you should not disdain even earthworms, which are a good source of protein. Before eating earthworms, rinse well in running water. They can also be boiled or fried - in this form they are best consumed.
Many plants are also edible. For example, stinging nettle. No wonder it is called vegetable meat, it has a very high nutritional value. From young leaves you can cook delicious green cabbage soup. Just by scalding with boiling water, you can make nettle salad. Nettle blossoms can be brewed instead of tea. Dandelions - you can also eat them, they are found everywhere, they grow in forest clearings and edges, along forest roadsides. Bitterness is easily eliminated if washed for an hour in salt water or boiled.
Burdock - its root crop can replace carrots and parsley. Burdock roots can be eaten raw, as well as boiled, baked, fried, stewed and used in soups instead of potatoes, fry cutlets from them. In the forest, burdock roots should be thoroughly washed, cut into circles and baked in a fire. That is, as you can see, nature in the forest has already made sure that a person who gets lost does not die of hunger.
Particular attention should be paid to the extraction of water. If you find some spring or stream in the forest, then there are no problems, but what if there is neither one nor the other? It seems to be not a desert, you say, there will always be water, and you will be wrong. In summer, the forest can be very dry, especially when it has not rained for a long time, it is hard to get water in such a forest. If you have not found a natural source of water, there are several ways to get water. If you have a piece of polyethylene with you, then with the help of it you can collect the required amount of water in case of rain.
If there is no package, you need to collect smooth stones, put them in the shape of a pyramid in a small hole in the sand or earth. Cover the bottom with polyethylene. During the night, a sufficient amount of moisture is formed here to quench thirst. You can also use a cloth to collect water. The fabric should be tied around the ankles of the legs and walked on wet grass. Then the only thing left to do is squeeze out the water.
In any case, the water must be boiled to disinfect it. You can also use ordinary potassium permanganate or iodine to purify water. If you neglect water purification, then you may have problems worse than thirst. So if possible, at least boil it.
Basically, that's all, in short we told you about what you need to know when you need to survive in the forest. We also recommend watching a video on the topic “Survival in the Forest”, perhaps in this video you will learn more about everything.
Hello, I am Alexander, the mastermind behind the blog.
In terms of career and free time, I connected my life with the forest. How else, when you live in Karelia! In this blog, I am responsible for the hunting, hiking and equipment sections. Welcome to my world!