S08.E06: Smoked

[dranelittle]

On 7/8/2021 at 11:49 PM, LeighAnne said:

Clay got a standing ovation in my house when he took down the buck.  I'm also happy that the Alone producers now know that the contestants can get big game kills somewhere other than Great Slave Lake.

Bushcraft lessons learned:  don't eat squirrel poop (and, from last week, don't eat your own mucus).  Good to know.

the deer is at MOST 50,000 calories. A smallish porcupine has more food value, since deer have no fat and a 20 lb porkie is half fat. So that porkie is 35,000 calories and you can mix it with 30,000 calories of diced, boiled and fried cambium.  You have to mix cambium with fatty food or it wont move thru your guts. Deer only have fat in their blood, brain and the marrow of their bones. When you kill one with a bow, you probably lose most of that blood and he wasted the brain on tanning the hide. Wth are you going to do with a deer hide, anyway, in freezing conditions and you've got plenty of warm clothing, a rock-solid, air-tight debris/ice quonset-hut,  with lots of debris as insulation. deer vension only offers 600 calories per lb  less than half of a deer's live weight is edible carcass. You need 3500 calories per day to be active in the cold wind so the deer is just 2 weeks of food. You can gain 3 weeks simply by having a shelter that you make and stuff with debris in 2 days, which needs no warming fire.

 

Netting is like traps. You need a LOT of it and you need to know how to use it effectively and you need a stable watercraft with which you can deploy the netting and check it several times per day, removing the caught fish. The 50 sq ft of netting that they let you take is a JOKE.  The 2000 sq ft of netting that you can make out of the cotton rope hammock is virtually a sure win.

Fully HALF of your '5 sq miles" of area is on the LAKE.  your camps' smoke is going to keep big animals at least half a mile away from your camp. so you really only get to hunt 1.5 sq miles of land and you have to walk pretty far to be in potential hunting land. Chilko lake  wont let you take predators nor musk ox, moose nor caribou. You can't snare big game by the foot to drag logs, either.  So I'd not bother to take the bow nor the snarewire to Chilko and maybe not to Great slave lake, either. the odds are very much against your getting a decent shot at a big animal. Roland got lucky with a butt hit, jordan MISSED an entire moose, so his hit was LUCK.  If you take a bow, better take a wooden self bow, so you can scrape down the limbs as you weaken, making it easier to draw the bow. In a month, if you've not been getting other food, you wont be able to properly use a bow that's a 50 lb draw and maybe not 40 lbs. Below a 40 lb draw weight, your arrow probably wont exit a deer, and that means a small blood trail. If the wounded critter gets off of your little allotment of land, you're not allowed to retrieve it. Best to focus on catching 400 lbs of fish, 130,000 calories and mixing it with 60,000 calories of cambium.  Along with the 10,000 calories of rations and 10,000 calories of cambium that you can mix with the cambium, you'll have 210, 000 calories.  That's enough to feed you adequately for 70 days, if you mostly stay holed up in the debris-pile . So you'd lose only 10 lbs in an 80 day stay. Every 100 lbs less fish you catch is another 10 lbs of bodyfat that you'll need in order to win.

Edited January 29, 2022 by dranelittle

[dranelittle]

On 7/13/2021 at 10:36 AM, Whyyouneedaname said:

Has it been discussed on any thread about the items you're allowed to bring? I'm wondering if they can bring a bow/arrows why they can't bring a rod & reel? Yes you can make those but can't you also make a bow? The arrows might be an issue but I don't know maybe you could make those too. I love watching the show and like the others have mentioned, I don't like the starvation part, I like to see them build sustainable shelters, like to see them catching their food. 

if you know to bring the big roll of duct tape, it's very easy to create 2-fletch arrows. Those suffice for bowfishing and taking rabbits to at least 20ft, maybe 10m.  You can fire harden a bow stave in 24 hours and have maybe a 40 lb draw bow. You can make a finger tab out of layers of the tarp and your many layers of clothing form an arm-guard.  They wont let you take barbed hooks, use bait or take a rod and reel cause those items make it too easy for you to feed yourself adequately. Every day that they are out there costs them like 100k, due to the support crew and the liability insurance. So the producers want the challenge to END as soon as they get enough video for a dozen half-assed shows.

None of them has known what to take or do. to have a good shelter OR feed themselves. In 2 days, you can have a shelter that needs no warming fire down to -20F, IF you have brains enough to leave on your 6 layers of clothing and have debris stuffed between each layer, and stuff that shelter with debris. The bottom 1 ft thickness of your bedding-debris can be brush, but the top 2 ft layer and the debris around and above you needs to be small, soft debris, for the needed insulation-effect and the shelter needs to be rock-solid and air-tight. You can build such a shelter very easily out of ice/debris, if you know how and do so in 2 days. The tarp/tent suffices for the first 3-4 weeks, if you have a big pile of debris inside of it.

Edited January 29, 2022 by dranelittle