A Skilled Survivalist Who Wrote A Book On Survival And Thinks Everyone Should Be Able To Find And Cook Food In The Wild
Dave Canterbury a skilled survivalist, thinks everyone should be able to find and cook food in the wild, and in his new book, “The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild,” provides all the information- and more.
As a hunting guide and former TV survivalist, Canterbury started thinking about what a person should have with them and what they should do in case they became lost or stranded.
“ I’ve always been interested in meat gathering techniques from hunting to fishing and trapping,” Canterbury said. “I firmly believe that if we are to make it to long-term, not matter the reason for grocery stores being unavailable, we will need to have a firm grip on finding food as the hunter/gatherers of the past.”
The book teaches everyone from the weekend hiker to survivalists, how to hunt and gather and preserve the food caught in the wild, along with recipes to make while on the trail complete with a full-color photo guide of plants to pick and not to eat.
“I get lots of questions from people who are disconnected from the sources f their own food be I killing for meat or just foraging for plant material foods,” he said. “Many people also want to know what the best types of food they should take for a short-term camp that won’t weigh or cost a ton. In a world of processed food, the dehydrated meal we have come to know is not the most nutritious or the most palatable.”
The book provides diagrams of makeshift water filters using a two-liter soda bottle as a water filter and layering it with course sand and rocks to slowly let the water filter through. He also has a chapter on preparing unconventional food such as insects and how to cook cheese bread on your car engine as well as how to make a camp stove from a tin can.
Canterbury is the co-owner and supervising instructor of the Pathfinder School in Southeast Ohio, which was named by USA Today as one of the Top 12 survivor schools in the country and has over 1,500 students worldwide. Canterbury is also co-owner of Self Reliance Outfitters, author of The Pathfinder System: Survivability for the Common Man, and has posted over 600 YouTube videos on the Pathfinder School, LLC YouTube Channel. He is also the co-host of National Geographic’s ‘Dirty Rotten Survival.’
Students include families with children. He also provides training for groups such as the state of West Virginia Search and Rescue teams and drug enforcement teams and Fish and Wildlife officers.
Bushcrafting, which also goes by the name of ‘woodcraft,’ appealed to Canterbury when he was younger and doing 18th century re-enacting. He decided the lifestyle was for him.
“We didn’t carry a lot of gear and learning what I could do with each simple piece was eye-opening,” he said. “As I continued to experiment with these not-so-modern tools and began to understand that nature will provide the vast majority of materials needed to build and eat in the wild. It’s the simplicity of it all that really appeals to me as well as the tradition.”
Canterbury thinks that people in the 21st century should embrace bushcrafting which also include blacksmithing to broom-making to build upon several skill sets that will help them become self-reliant not only in nature, but in general.
“Building fires seems to be something that folks struggle with and they only understand matches and lighters,” he said.
Canterbury said that having the skill set to start a fire without modern tools would make people feel much more confident if they were on a canoe trip and the boat tipped over.
“If you were wet and cold and your gear has washed away you would have the skills of woodcraft and bushcraft you can survive a cold, wet night until you could walk out the next day,” he said. “In today’s world I believe we have gotten so far from our American roots, that most would be in very unfamiliar territory should we ever experience something even as simple as a long-term depression ad these skills are the ones I feel should never be lost.”
Canterbury has written a book not only for hard-core survivalists who can shoot and kill their food, but also for people who want to experience- and survive a weekend off-the grid.
Candice Reed
A graduate of Kelsey-Jenny College in Communications as well as a certified grant writer, Candice has written for The Los Angeles Times & The New York Times. She loves entertaining and all things French.
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