Subscribe to Outdoor Life
Get 1 Year for Only $10
Curling up with your pet to stay warm certainly does work, just ask the authorities of Elgin, SC, who have recently credited one family dog with keeping a missing 2-year-old boy safe and warm as he spent a night lost outside with temps in the 40s.
How do you know which plants are the right ones to pick and eat? Well, here are a few guidelines that will help you.
 | Bear Attack!GRAPHIC IMAGE WARNING! While hunting on Kodiak Island Matthew Sutton stumbled into a... |
 | Make a Signal FireRemember that there is a fine line of control when lighting and maintaining big fires.... |
 | The Survival ExpertsLet our survival experts teach you the skills you need to stay alive |
 | Leopard Attack!Cape buffalo, lion, grizzly—none are more dangerous when wounded than the... |
 | How To: Survive in the WildernessThey key to wilderness survival is mastering the basics. |
 | Why Bears Target HuntersTom Smith is one of the few people who can analyze the patterns contained within the... |
If you are fortunate enough to live within the native range of birch trees, then you have a lot of interesting survival options at your disposal. Birch can provide you with firewood and containers, and the right species of birch can even be turned into a tea and sweetener.
Fire
For friction fire building with birch, you can use the dead and dry branches for your drill and fire board. These materials are effective, but not quite as easy to use as willow or cedar. By far, the best fire related use of birch comes when you burn the papery curls as your fire starter. This birch paper is like a stepping stone between tinder and kindling. Whether wet or dry, these birch bark curls will burn strong, creating a black oily smoke. Any birch species that produces papery bark will be useable, but the white birch (aka paper birch) is the most effective. You’ll need an open flame like a match or lighter for best results in lighting the bark. Spark-based fire starting methods are not particularly effective for lighting the bark strips. [ Read Full Post ]
Celebrity survivalist Bear Grylls tweeted yesterday: "Our man vs wild producer suffering from a brutal snake bite -- fighting the injury with courage,” with the gut-wrenching photo shown below.
Since then, the photo (which shows the skin rotting away from producer Steve Rankin's foot) has gone viral and is creating quite a stir in the social media world. [ Read Full Post ]
When you think about bow fishing, you might naturally jump to the idea of shooting harpoon-tipped arrows attached to a reel of line. Sure, that’s how most folks do it, but there’s another fish bow out there. This one isn’t for arrows, but in fact, it’s an improvised spool to store your fishing line. [ Read Full Post ]
Dan and Kate Suski, along with an unnamed captain and first mate, are counting themselves lucky after they were forced to swim for their lives for more than half a day in the Caribbean waters off St. Lucia.
The brother and sister from San Francisco had chartered a boat to do some fishing last Sunday. When the 31-foot fishing vessel began to take on water, the siblings and crew had no choice but to abandon the boat. They put on their life jackets and jumped into the open water.
“It was completely surreal watching the boat stern go down, go subsurface underwater,” Dan said. [ Read Full Post ]
My instinctive reaction to the headlined question is, “No, I don’t believe I want to see a wardrobe-less survivalist trying to do perform survival skills on a deserted island.” The whole thing stinks of gimmicks and exploitation.
But I had to make myself watch at least one episode of "Naked Castaway" (Sundays at 10 p.m. on Discovery) before I made my decision. [ Read Full Post ]
The maddening itch of poison ivy is something that most outdoor lovers know all too well. Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac are all capable of torturing us at some point during the course of the year. But the shiny, oily springtime leaves of poison ivy seem to be the worst of the bunch. [ Read Full Post ]
Oregon authorities, along with search-and-rescue crews, have been looking for an Oklahoma teenager who is believed to be in trouble in a remote area of southeastern Oregon.
Dustin Self, 19, decided that he wanted to live off the land after watching the movie Into the Wild. A dedicated vegetarian, Self reportedly wanted to see if he could live in a wilderness area subsisting only on wild foods, other than meat. The teen had also mentioned that he wanted to investigate some “churches” that practice a South American religion that uses a hallucinogenic tea as part of their religious practices, one of these groups being in Oregon. [ Read Full Post ]
| Page 2 of 30 | « First | ‹ Previous | 123456789… | Next › | Last » |
