Photo courtesy of NPS
We’ve come a long way from our hunter-gatherer days…
Or have we?
The skills we need to hunt and gather food from the land are fading into obscurity. Our meat comes prepackaged and our seeds on top of hamburger buns. But I don’t intend to lament their passing. Instead, I’m going to laugh!
Knowing how to obtain food from nature requires knowledge of where resources are, how to obtain them, and how to process them to make them safe to eat. It’s this last skill, food processing, that’s often overlooked by people promoting “wilderness survival skills” on television and the Internet. Yet we still use some of these skills today — in our kitchens!
The video below asks fifty people to filet a fish. This was once a common skill. But today?
The results are predictably hilarious.
What other common outdoor skills are we losing to the mists of time? Let me know in the comments below.
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This could be a regular subject for discussion. Obtaining and processing naturally occurring resources into food, as you mention, may connect to safety and health. Totally interesting set of topics – what a way to add motive to “hiking”!
Thank you for your comment, Mark.
Obtaining food from the environment, while it seems a little unorthodox, is a great way for people to connect with nature. I find it gives them a new appreciation for the importance of a healthy ecosystem, as well as a tasty snack. I try to incorporate wild edible and medicinal plants into all of my guided hikes.
Gee, that picture looks like a beautiful native Eastern Brook Trout. WRONGAROOSKI. It’s not a trout at all. It’s a SHAD.
Thank you for your comment, Pete. Are you referring to the picture at the top of the article? Can you explain for us why you think the fish is a Shad? The fish in the video is definitely *not* a trout. 🙂