Survival On The Run

By Kevin Haney

Published in Wilderness Way magazine, Vol. 9, Issue 2, p. 34

To some, the very idea of a primitive survival kit is an oxymoron.  The modern-day aboriginal, so the reasoning goes, should be able to survive anywhere, without carrying any tools with him, just making what he needs as he goes along and living off of what he may find.  While the ability to do this is certainly useful and to be highly admired, most self-respecting true aboriginals would never embark upon a journey of any length without a basic survival kit at their side.  The Ice Man carried a fairly extensive survival and tool kit.  After all, if you’ve gone to all that trouble to make a bunch of survival tools, why handicap yourself by leaving them at home when you go somewhere?

Choosing to explore this later line of reasoning, I set myself the task of outfitting a primitive survival kit that would fit in a small shoulder bag.  You never know when “circumstances” might necessitate a quick retreat into the wilderness without the time to fully provision oneself.  So it would be nice to have that survival/tool kit ready to go at a moment’s notice, so all you have to do is sling it across your shoulder and hit the trail.

When deciding what to put in your primitive survival kit, perhaps the most useful approach is to consider what is sometimes called the “Sacred Order of Survival”, which states that in order to survive in the wilderness, you need four things in the following order of importance – shelter, water, fire, and food.  Most important is being able to find or build a good shelter to shield you from the elements.  Unfortunately, there’s not much you can carry in a shoulder bag that will assist you with your shelter building. 

When it comes to water, however, a necessary item is some kind of container to store and transport the water.  While it may be a romantic notion to just carry your noggin at your side and dip a drink from the streams you cross, this is not always a practical strategy.  Much more sensible is to have some kind of water container so that you can carry enough with you to see you through those inevitable dry stretches.  Indeed, it could be a matter of life and death under some circumstances.  This approach allows you the freedom to explore those remote areas away from a stream or other water source.  While one would ordinarily want to carry a good, sturdy gourd or clay canteen, a dried animal bladder (deer, buffalo, elk, etc.) makes a convenient emergency water container (see pic 1 – this shows a buffalo bladder). It can be easily stored dried in your kit and if needed, inflated and put into use.  A leather or cordage lace around the opening can be used to cinch it closed and either tie it to your belt or make a handle to carry it.  It also helps to have a wooden plug to stop up the opening.  Be careful, though, because carrying around a bladder full of water is like carrying around a full water balloon—it can get a little tricky!

Pic 1                                                              Pic 2

When it comes to fire, the third element of the Sacred Order of Survival, it is here that a properly stocked kit really shines.  You should include materials that will enable you to make a friction fire under any circumstances, including tinder material, coal extenders, bow drill components (the most important being the bow cordage and handhold), and even a flint and steel if you are not aiming for total abo authenticity.  A good habit to get into on your wanderings is to collect tinder, coal extender, and drill materials whenever you find them and take them with you, because you never know if they will be around when you get ready to make a fire.

The last item in the Sacred Order of Survival, food, is directly addressed by taking some food (duh!), and indirectly addressed by including snare, trapping, and fishing materials, and tools that would let you make a rabbit stick or bow and arrows if you were in a longer-term survival situation.  However, trapping with deadfalls and snares and fishing are perhaps the most efficient ways to primitively procure food of the finned and footed varieties.  If you want to take a little food with you, my usual choices are some jerky stored in a small deer hide parfleche and a gourd container with some flour to make ashcakes.  This will be enough to last you several days while you settle into your survival routine.  By then, you should be harvesting all of the bounty that Nature provides!

My personal survival kit is contained within a badger shoulder bag which, by the way, makes a good pillow when stuffed with something soft (see pic 2).  Any kind of carrying container will do, and it helps if there’s extra room inside for unexpected finds and harvesting raw materials and food along the way.  Within my bag is a gourd container that contains all of the other items except for the turtle shell tinder container.  The gourd provides you with both a bowl and plate, as well as a convenient container making sure that all of the other items are safely and securely stored.  A canteen gourd with a thick shell is best, since thin-shelled gourds are very easy to break.  The turtle shell tinder container (see pic 3) is constructed by gluing the bottom of the shell to the top, gluing pieces of leather inside to block up the leg holes, and gluing a leather hinge on the front part of the bottom shell.  This lets you close up the shell and renders its contents fairly waterproof (see pic 4).

 Pic 3                                                     Pic 4

To house all of the items that I will describe, you will need a canteen gourd of about 7-8” in diameter.  Clean the outside by scrubbing and then mark a cut line all the way around the gourd at the level that would create a good bowl and plate combination (about ¾ of the gourd height for the bowl and ¼ for the plate).  Leave a little lip on the bowl piece (see pic 5).  It only has to be ¼” tall, but such a lip will let you lock the bottom and top together and bind them securely to ensure that nothing “gets away”.  You can either have one lip or two lips on opposite sides to make it symmetrical.  The neoabo way of cutting the gourd open would be to score around the cut line with a sharp flake or knife until you cut through.  The best modern way to do it is to make a small initial slice along the line with a stout, thin-bladed knife and then use a pad saw (a small woodworking saw with a thin blade) to carefully saw all the way around the gourd at the cut mark (don’t forget to saw out the lip or lips).  Then you should clean out the inside of the gourd using rocks, flint flakes, or sandpaper to smooth out as much of the interior as you wish.  If you intend to use the gourd to hold water or wet food items, you should scour away all of the soft material you can--that will make clean up a lot easier.  You should NOT, however, touch the rim of the bowl or the plate.  If you sand the rims down to make them smooth, the two pieces will not lock together very well. 

Pic 5

Here are the kit ingredients that go into the gourd, along with the different uses they can be put to (you may have caught on by now that it’s a good idea to choose items that can serve more than one function):

[Items in brackets can be added or substituted for the listed items.]

1)  Gut, 20’ length

Hafting material, bow string material, and other cordage uses.  Also serves as last resort emergency food.

 

 

2)  Basswood cordage, 6’ length, tied up with fine dogbane cordage [any other strong cordage such as yucca, nettle, milkweed, or dogbane]

Heavy-duty cordage for bow drill, snares, and other heavy uses.  The fine dogbane cordage can be used for snares, sewing, etc. 

 

3)  Leather lace, 3’ length

Heavy-duty cordage for bow drill, snares, bindings, and other heavy uses.

 

4)  Rawhide, pieces of various sizes

Can be cut to size to make cordage and bindings.  Another last resort food supply.

 

5)  Fishing kit - See pic 6. [hawthorn gorges]

15’ length of stinging nettle cordage, bone gorges and hooks of various sizes, snapping turtle shell hook on a nettle leader, shell lure, all contained in a small rawhide pouch

 

6)  Moose antler handhold (or a stone or hardwood handhold)

Bow drill component

 

7)  Flint and steel

Backup fire starting method if bow drill or hand drill fails.

 

8)  Char cloth container  [cane vial]

Mini-gourd container for char cloth, to use with flint and steel

 

9)  Turtle shell tinder container [gourd or bark container]

Used to keep tinder and coal extenders dry.  Also a good place to store a backup bow drill string.

 

 

10)  Tinder

Cattail down, jute fibers, shredded cedar bark

 

11)  Coal extender

Cracked cap polypore fungus shavings for making fire in difficult situations

 

12)  Antler flaker

Pressure flaking tool, awl, burnisher, arrow point

 

13)  Sewing kit – raccoon leg bone awl, bone needles, and sinew in a dogbane stem vial.  See pic 7.

For those little repairs to clothing, equipment, skin, etc.

 

14)  Knife and arrow points in piece of leather --  See pic 8.

Points that can be hafted to serve as a knife and arrowheads.  The leather serves as a knapping pad and can be cut up for a tourniquet or used for a sling cradle.

 

15)  Small neck knife in sheath – See pic 9.

Emergency backup for the larger knife you should be carrying.

 

 

16)  Obsidian preforms

Can be made into a knife or whatever tool is required.

 

17)  Flint chips

Flake tools for cutting game, cordage, shaving wood, beard, etc.  Can use with steel for fire making.

 

 

18)  Animal bladder

Water container, food container.  Store dried and folded so it fits in your gourd. 

 

 

19)  Hide glue and pine pitch sticks, tied with fine dogbane cordage

Sticks for hafting knives and points and equipment repair.  Cordage ties used for snares.

 

 

20)  Piece of thin brain tan or chamois leather

Towel, washcloth, bandage, pouch material, bandana, use to wrap up and protect preforms and stone flakes

Pic 6                                                                         Pic 7

Pic 8                                                        Pic 9

Pic 10

With the above tools and supplies, you should be able to go out and survive in the wilderness fairly easily.  Easily, that is, if you also know how to build a good shelter, have good fire making skills, can make basic stone and wood tools, can reliably procure game and fish, and harvest edible plants.  Unfortunately, that kind of knowledge and experience can’t be contained in a survival kit—it can only be contained within your brain after putting in many hours of dirt time!  So, upon reflection, I guess the moral of this story is that even though they help a lot, just having the right tools does not a good aboriginal make—you also have to know how to use them!

Kevin Haney is the Coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group.  For more information about them, see their web site at www.mapsgroup.org or call Kevin at 301-271-5023.

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