in an emergency?
Thoughts anyone?
chipmunks
In an emer. you can eat anything that don’t eat you first. From experience.
Not bad
but kinda stringy and you need a lot of them. Like eating a little squirrel. Robins are pretty good also and a larger meal per. If you’re in the far north keep the fat (if there is any). Now, about mice…
Got a good plan for catching them?
A deadfall trap would do it.
Having Fun
thinking of a few exceptions to that rule.
extream measures
if your realy woried about it, you could carry a survival rifel. a friend of mine has an ar7. it is a .22 that is extreamly light, compact, and best of all for kayaking, floats.
extreme measures
would include the use of a firearm,in which case a well placed round from my always present 3" 629 would also work.
The AR-7
"used" to be pretty unreliable and jammed frequently when dirty or wouldn’t feed. Perhaps they’ve gotten better. The old Remington Nylon 66 was a tank if you can find one. Light, reliable, accurate and inexpensive used - you can’t wear one out. Lived a portion of a summer in Alaska thanks to one of them I baught from a slaughter house (very used) for $25. Took an amazing amount of abuse and kept on keepin’ groceries on the table (so’s to speak). - Jamie
Sounds optimistic to me
I took a mammal-study class in college, where we spent two days in northern Wisconsin trapping small mammals. We mostly surveyed mice, voles, and shrews, but we brought about a 15 larger traps (snap rat traps) to catch chipmunks and red squirrels. With all those traps, we managed to get only one chipmunk even though it was Mid-September, which is prime food-hoarding time for chippies. Even if you ignore the low catch ratio that we had, chipmunks are quick enough to get out of the way of any standard deadfall, so you’d have to put some serious time into making specialized traps. Then considering the fact that the bigger species of chipmunk barely exceeds a total body weight of four ounces (the other species is only half that size) I’d sure hate to rely very much on chipmunk trapping for food! Nevertheless, I’m sure the ones you do catch would be tasty!
Pressure cooker
is really the only way to make red squirrels passable.
The energy expended…
The energy expended in obtaining enough chipmunks to make a meal would probably
offset the nutritional value obtained from the meal. I think I would focus on not getting myself into situations where I depended on chipmunks for survival.
Could they be eaten? No doubt. First you have to catch em! Back to energy expended.
BOB
Yeah, but …
– Last Updated: Jan-10-05 7:38 PM EST –
chasing them around would probably keep your mind off of your tummy growling ... ;^)
Seriously though ... you would probably be much better prepared if you studied eatable native plants and carried a good reference guide with you on your wilderness trips.
Happy Paddl'n!!
>:^)
Mick
I thought they were all suppose to taste
just like chicken, except for squirrels that is. I think they taste gamey! ;^)
Hey Jamie! How have things been? You making the spring Rendezvous?
Happy Paddl’n!
:^)
Mick
Laughing…too…hard!!!
Anyone else thinking of the scene in “Never Cry Wolf”?
Jim
From the book or the movie?
– Last Updated: Jan-14-05 10:06 PM EST –
I rented the movie a few years ago but I can't remember much about it. I read the book when I was a kid, and can remember several funny scenes.
Are you talking about the time his Eskimo friend dropped by unexpectedly just after he decided to finally stop putting off the analisis of his huge collection of wolf poop? (Yes, this does have something to do with the "chipmunk-eating" topic). His friend was scared enough as it was after seeing Mowat with a gas mask on his head, but when Mowat tried to explain the basic purpose of the disssection gear by opening a book on human anatomy, the poor guy took off running as fast as he could go.
Or how about the time one of the wolves he was watching wandered through his mousetrap field? The result was sort of like tying a tin can to a cat's tail (I've only heard about that trick, not done it).
Movie
I do not believe it followed the book exactly.
The scene I am remembering is where he tests his hypothesis that wolves are surviving on mice by cooking up a pot and living on them for a number of days.
Jim
Vaguely remember that part…
…in the movie (I seem to remember him gingerly putting a whole cooked mouse in his mouth?). In the book, he came up with several mouse recipies, and I think his favorite one was called “creamed mouse”. No, I don’t remember the recipie, but I do remember that the mice went into the pot guts and all.
I read the book as a kid, and can’t promise that an adult would enjoy it as much as I did back then, but I’m reasonably certain it would still be an entertaining story. I do think the guy had quite a sense of humor.
Farley Mowat
Was a true classic. One of the saddest books I ever read was “A Whale for the Killing”.
Yeah, you remember the scene correctly. Mouse gruel. MMMmmmmmmmmmm.
Jim
Test
Test,
Thanks,
Alvin