Do you think so? It is certainly more energy-dense but I wonder if the fact that meat runs away and hides from you makes it more difficult to base a short-term survival diet on.
I don't have TV but the couple of encounters I've had with the Les Stroud show left me with the impression that you might be eating a lizard every other day for meat, whereas if you had extensive plant knowledge, maybe in five hours you could harvest five thousand calories worth of food.
While plants don't run away from you, for the most part they do lack 2 very important (especially in a
long-term survival situation) components - fat and complete protein. Most plant (wild and domestic) foods have incomplete protein, so you have to combine plant foods- those with shortages of certain amino acids with those with an abundance (this is grossly oversimplified but hopefully makes the point).
It used to be thought that this had to occur at each meal, but more recent research has determined that the balance has to be struck daily. Vegetarians have to consider this when trying to come up with a healthy diet, and they're
not in a survival situation.
Try finding edible plants in the winter, especially if you live in an area where the ground is frozen (like here
) Also most wild edible plants have little in the way of calories and quite likely you would expend way more energy in gathering them then you would realize from eating them. As a supplement, both for variety and nutritional requirements (think vitamins and minerals) they are excellent but as a main source of energy, a losing battle.
There's another survival consideration and this point has been made by John McPherson. It's so much quicker to learn to hunt and trap, than to learn all the wild edible (and poisonous) plants.
Granted he doesn't seem like an especially skilled hunter and unlike us, he can't be carrying snares into the bush for his shows so maybe it would be pretty easy to get yourself a couple of squirrels a day, and around here I know I could pull a good trout a day out of a lot of rivers without working too hard...IF I had the fancy equipment civilization has given me access to. If I fell off a train in the middle of the bush without guns or snares or fishing tackle I think I would do pretty poorly for meat
But isn't this one of the reasons to practice wilderness survival/primitive skills - to learn how to make snares and traps from what nature provides; rabbit sticks, fish spears, etc.
As just one example, even if you don't know Stinging Nettle from Basswood, if you have clothes on, you can probably spare a little off the bottom cuff of your pants, or shirt sleeves, whatever, to make up some snares or a fish line. I'm sure everybody recognizes the following picture as blue denim from a pair of jeans.
A web belt:
The cordage from both of these examples were strong enough to use (and were) as the bow string for bow drill fire making.
Sure, I know that in a survival situation you may not want to use any of your clothing for this purpose, but it is just an example.
IMHO, everyone who is seriously concerned about learning wilderness survival should be placing more emphasis on skills such as this (cordage making) and less on equipment from the store, because with enough equipment, you're not surviving, you're camping.
I apologize to every one for jumping on my soap box, but sometimes I really worry when I see how much emphasis and reliance is placed on the latest fire making gadget or hi tech knife (and I like toys as much as anybody). If for some reason, you're separated from them and you have no back up skills, YOU'RE SCREWED! And isn't this how people find themselves in a survival situation in the first place - all of a sudden, for whatever reason, they find themselves removed from the very things they think they need to survive.
Whew! Now I have to lay down.
Please understand that the preceding rant was not meant to offend or upset anyone, but rather to encourage skill development.
Doc
