SKINNING: Now is where a small, sharp skinning knife will come in handy. Basically, from the gut incision, cut out to inside of the four legs, ring around just above the knee joint and begin to pull the skin away, using your skinning knife to separate the skin from the meat. Mostly it will just pull away with the occasional touch of the knife. If you can skin a rabbit, you can skin an elk, it just takes longer. The hide will come off just like an overcoat that buttons down the front. Be careful skinning as you will probably want to use the hide for clothing, bed, rug, window shade or whatever. Once the hide is free of the animal, sprinkle the inside with salt, roll it up and tie it in a bundle. Place it in a cool place until you can get back to it.
BUTCHERING: Small animals, fish and birds may be cut up or roasted whole as you please. Cut them up sort of like a chicken or half them or chunk them for a stew. You will develop preferences. The larger animals will have to be butchered or cut into manageable pieces. This is where you will find that hacksaw that you have been wondering about handy for cutting through bone. If you have read your animal anatomy books, you will know about the major joints and where they are. These are good places to separate the meat as those joints can be opened with your knife or even a sharp rock if necessary. Usually, a larger animal is quartered for carrying back to camp a quarter at a time. If the animal is really big, the cut it in smaller pieces. The main thing is to keep your meat clean, free of dirt and insects.
TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT: Always eat meat immediately or let it cool before eating it. Usually, hanging it overnight will do the job nicely. This gives the blood a chance to dry up and the meat to pass through rigor mortis and once again become edible. Hunters often eat the livers of the larger ruminating (grass eating) animals such as dear and elk right away as they won't keep and are an excellent source of vitamins, minerals and protein. Never eat the liver of a carnivore (meat-eater) such as a lion, cat, wolf, fox or dog as they are full of vitamin A and deadly poison. Bear liver is OK. Carnivore meat, however, is acceptable, though cat is often a might stringy and horse a might sweet for my taste. By-the-way, never starve for fear of eating a horse, donkey, jackass, mule or dog as they are perfectly good to eat and highly prized in certain parts of the world. The western world shuns them because most think of them as pets. It is best to shy away from rodent (rat) meat unless you are raising them for food. Their meat is perfectly good to eat, but they do carry diseases such as Bubonic Plague and Hanta Virus. They breed fast, so once you have raised a generation of them in cages away from their wild siblings, they should be OK to eat as long as the offspring seem perfectly healthy.
FIRE: If you want to warm yourself up or cook your food you'll need a fire. In the wild, wood or brush is usually available for fuel. Try not to cut down living trees. Instead look for dry brush, dead limbs, dead trees or even standing dead trees. You can spot these because they are dry and brittle, void of sap. You want dry wood because it will burn easily and smokes very little. You do not want smoke as smoke attracts attention, and you do not want to attract attention. Therefore, use dry wood and build small fires. The Indians say that the settlers of old built big fires and froze all night while they built small fires and stayed warm all night. How could this be? Well, they used reflectors and placed themselves between their small fire and the reflector. That way, both sides of their body stayed warm. Simple. A reflector could be anything from sheet metal to a pile of rocks. One can be made by driving two stakes into the ground and lashing logs or brush to them. Almost anything will do.
THE EASY WAY: Starting a fire can be easy or hard. There is a trick to laying a fire that is easy to start and is based on the principle that small is easy and big is hard. The right way to lay a fire is to scrape away the mulch and grass down to bare earth in a suitable area for your fire. Make the bare spot larger than you plan to build your fire so that you will not set the forest or plain ablaze. Out of control fires are annoying. Always look up to make sure that no overhanging branches are above your fire as they will surly ignite, causing you great chagrin. When possible, build a ring of rocks to make a fire place or ring to contain your fire and proceed to gather small twigs and sticks, medium branches, and 4" to 6" logs of appropriate length, usually 16" to 24" in length. Your ax and bucksaw will come in handy here. Use the bucksaw where possible as it will cut a length of log faster than any ax. It is safer too, as a bad stroke with an ax can ruin your day. Oh yes, be sure that the head of your ax is on tight as a flying ax head will almost always hit someone. If the head is loose, drive in a wedge of wood or metal. Soaking an ax head in water or light oil will also swell the wood for a tighter fit. The oil lasts longer.
Next, procure some tinder. Most woods people carry a tinder pouch in which they keep anything that will burn easily. This can be fiber, down, rotten wood, wood shavings or anything of the like. They collect tinder where they find it, as tinder might not always be available at a fire site. That is where the saying, "Keep your tinder dry," came from, as wet tinder will not start a fire. Anyway, place a dry leaf or piece of bark on the bare ground, and place a little tinder upon it. Then build a little tee-pee of tiny twigs over it, followed by larger and larger twigs and finally branches up to 2 inch pieces on the outside. Now put a match or burning twig to the tinder, and your fire will quickly leap to life. The little stuff catches then dries and ignites the bigger stuff all in succession. Once this base fire is burning well, add larger and larger logs until you have a proper blaze established.
IF ALL ELSE FAILS: Now there are other ways to light a fire sans matches. An easy one is focusing the beam of a magnifying glass on some tinder. This works great as long as you have strong sunshine. Another way is to strike a piece of flint with a piece of steel or the back of your knife. A hot spark will be generated that will ignite your tinder. Of course, you will have to gently blow on the tinder to fan it into flame. Another possibility is to rub two sticks together fast enough to make enough friction to get one of them burning or use the bow method. This method includes a pointed, straight stick or dowel, a wooden block with a hollow carved out to hold the tinder, a palm stone or another piece of greased wood to act as a bearing and a loosely strung bow made from a bent branch and a length of string or cord.
The principle used is to spin the pointed, straight stick against the wooden block fast enough to create enough friction to ignite the tinder surrounding it. Tinder is placed in the hollow, the pointed stick is placed in the center, the bow string is looped once around the pointed stick and pressed down by the bearing. One hand creates the pressure, the other draws the bow back and forth. The pointed stick rapidly rotates first one way and then the other, creating friction and heat. Soon, the tinder will catch at which time the user will blow upon it until it leaps into flame. At this time, the person will add fine sticks and or other dry material to the tinder until a flame of adequate proportions is created to start the main fire.
IT'S BETTER TO LIGHT JUST ONE LITTLE CANDLE: A candle is also handy for starting fires. It will save you lots of matches and cussing. Simply light the candle with a match, lighter, flint or tinder and carry it to the main fire. Once the main fire starts, put the candle out and save it for next time. Often a small amount of volatile oil is carried as a fire starter in an emergency such an inclement weather. Such cheating can save the day during a downpour. Finally, when traveling, always put your fire out when you leave your campsite. Either douse it with water or shovel dirt over it until it is smothered. As before mentioned, forest fires are inconvenient and sometimes down-right embarrassing.
COOKING: Outdoor cooking mostly consists of frying, baking, roasting, or stewing. All are possible and there are outdoor cookbooks available that go into great detail on the subject. However, cooking upon an open fire does take some experience as you can't really control the heat and smoke. The trick is not to place your food directly over the fire as you will ruin it by char and smoke. Most cooking is best accomplished over hot coals instead of flames.
FRYING: Rake some nice, red coals away from the main fire for frying. A small grille is handy for this purpose or the pan can be set upon three rocks. Three legs are more practical in nature than four. Think I'm wrong? Just try to level four legs. I rest my case. Oh yes, potatoes and corn can also be baked in the coals, insulated by ashes.
HOT ROCKS: Be careful of rocks around your fire. You see, rocks often have a bit of water within, drawn in through cracks or at formation time. Should you get the rock hot enough, the water will turn to steam and cause the rock to explode. This could do great injury to you or yours. People have been cut, pierced, blinded and outright killed by exploding rocks or chips. Be careful! However, much cooking can be done with hot rocks. Rocks hold heat for a long time, and this is the secret to pit cooking. A fire is built and rocks are heated. Meanwhile, a pit is dug. When the rocks are hot enough, the bottom of the pit is lined with some of the rocks. Damp leaves are then placed on the hot rocks, food is placed over the leaves, more leaves are placed on the food, more hot coals are placed on the leaves and finally, dirt is shoveled on to seal the pit. Several hours are allowed to pass while the family is out doing its chores then the food is dug up and eaten. Nice. The wet leaves make steam and insulate the food from the hot coals.
ROASTING: Meat can be nicely roasted on green sticks off to the side of the fire. Again, you control the heat by the distance from the flames. As an experiment, hold the palm of your hand about two feet away from a small cooking fire and see how soon it gets too hot for comfort from the radiated heat. The same heat will roast your meat. Small game can be roasted whole in this manner or on an improvised spit, turned every few minutes. Resist the temptation to stick your food directly into the fire to speed the cooking process as you will only burn it on the surface, leaving it raw inside. A little experience with marshmallows and hot dogs will be a great teacher.
BAKING: Baking can be done in an iron skillet or Dutch Oven. Just prop the skillet up near the fire and watch the dough. Control the heat by the distance from the flames. Often, a reflector behind the skillet will speed the process and allow the bottom to get done. If necessary, just flip the dough and brown the other side. The Dutch Oven can be buried directly in hot coals to make excellent biscuits or bread. Check out some good sour dough recipes. Pan breads or soda breads such as biscuits, pancakes, and corn bread are popular with campers and travelers as no rising time is necessary as with yeast breads. Simply mix up a simple batter and apply heat until brown on one side, then flip. A simple recipe is to make a thick paste of mostly flour, a squirt of oil, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, a spoon of baking soda and a little water or milk. An egg, wild or domestic, will improve the taste and texture too! Oh, Don't eat raw flour as weevils and other bugs will collect in it. Just sift them out and go ahead and bake your bread. The heat will kill the microscopic organisms.
STEWING: An old prospector's trick is to Place the ingredients for a hearty stew in a Dutch and then bury it in a hole with some hot coals below and above it. Dirt is then shoveled over it to damp the heat and keep prowlers ignorant of the buried treasure. The prospector then goes out to work for the day. When he comes back to camp, he digs up the Dutch and there is the finished stew ready to eat. The technology is similar to crock pot cooking. Water can also be boiled over or near an open fire, but it's a mess. Better to set the base of the pot in hot coals at the edge of the fire.
