This little pig was dinner!

 One item we have as a stable on our "Survival Weekend" is the cleaning of a freshly killed wild hog.  You can see the farm hand Doll (That is what he goes by) cleaning our little piggy for the boys to learn the basics of meat preparation.

 Here is all the guts and innards coming out.  The whole thing is really clean and simple.  Doll said he will skin anything that he can eat the meat off of.  He did say that cleaning fish is for the kids, and I agree.  That is why god created catch and release.  One thing about wild hog cleaning is to make sure the fur ever touches the meat.  There are oils and stuff that will give the meat a gamy taste to it if that happens.

 I know alot of you are like "teaching the youth of America how to clean animals is wrong" well just think of how many thousands of dollars you don't have to spend because these hogs are killed.  Hogs are a nuisance and a bad one at that.  They root and tear up farm and cattle land resulting in higher prices for vegetables and meat in the grocery store.  On my ranch when it rains the hogs come up from the creek and root and tear up everything.  Killing them saves money.

 Doll was like a surgeon with his buck sheath knife.  When you know how to clean an animal properly it is really an art more than a butchering.  You can see here the legs (hams) and the spine (pork loin and pork chops) still on the rack.

 The feet were so cute and I brought one back for my wife.  She is a science teacher and has an ever expanding "Death Collection."  The one thing she said to me when I brought it to her was that how you never think the pigs had pads on their feet.  What says "Love"  more than a fresh hogs foot?  I also brought her back a cow skull and a giant turtle shell with the bottom still attached. 

You can see that this was a smaller hog and she did not have much bacon on her back nor did we pull the loins off.  I like how Doll uses his trusty pruning shears to take the feet off of the legs.  The meat will sit in this ice chest with ice on it for about four days.  Each day the water and blood will be drained and fresh ice put on top.  This gets the blood and the game taste out of the pig.  Last year one of the gentlemen had the pig turned into tamales and they were great.

I still think of those poor people that went mushroom hunting and got lost and had to stay in a hollow log.  Then they almost ate their dog.  How bad of a mushroom hunter do you have to be to almost have to eat your dog?

Shelter

I thought this was a nice fire ring.  This is a six foot diameter water Culver thingie.  The bad part is getting a fire started in it (without excelerants) is tricky but once lit the fire ring is nice.  I was thinking how you could add a grill on top or even some sort of kitchen.  Maybe down the road I can do something like this on my land.

Here I am surviving the Texas winter.  Yeah right it was a good high 40's to low 50's that night.  More of an inconvenient nights sleep in our shelter.  Have you ever seen a happier diabetic than me?

This is a two man shelter that we started with some wood we found in a pile.  While we were digging in the pile of wood I came across some barb wire and used it to tie the support beams up.  Then once we had the frame up and sturdy (the barb wire was a little rusty so we went back and double wrapped everything) we put down wood to frame out the shelter. 

Here is our door we compromised since our fire was at the front.  The first thing I always do when building a survival shelter is to see where the wind is coming so that you can make sure you are protected from it.  Well this might not have been the best place for the door because the wind shifted on us and started coming in through our door.  At night I put my poncho over the hole to stop the wind.  We built the wall about two feet tall and in a more severe climate the wall would be taller.  I used my Gerber axe and made some stakes then layed the logs on it.  No one says you have to survive at the minimum.  I want to survive in style.

To protect us from moisture I cut down a couple of pine trees and used the branches with the needles to act like shingles.  Then later we cut a bunch of palm style yucca that actually if we had more time would have been great to use instead of the pine branches.  The location of our shelter is at the opening of the woods and a couple of feet down a hill.  We wanted to use the woods and the hill as a wind break. 

I always get people who tell me we are crazy for spending a night in the winter with no sleeping bag and just our survival pack.  Then I hear stories like the one below and I thank god for all the things people have taught me how to survive.  If I am ever in a survival situation I want to be prepared as possible.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017435084_missingmushroomhunters06.html

How to survive 101

 What a perfect weekend for a survival campout.  Well, it was good on certain aspects and we had certain aspects that had good survival aspects.  We stayed on a ranch that had lots of Angus cows on it.  The owner was a real nice gentleman and the cows sun bathed in the nice 70 degree winter weather.

 OK, I know that a picture like this makes me look like a fool.  I was helping my son with a "how to build a survival shelter" class.  Living in Texas and being as prepared as we try to be,, there are not alot of situations that give us a chance to practice our survival skills.  My son was showing the class how to do a basic debris shelter and he just did not take alot of the "weather" variables into his demonstration (70 degree weather is kind of hard to tell someone why you need to build a shelter).  His original shelter was 6 feet tall and was real random on the construction.

 We took down his original design and then we looked at our variables, wind direction, materials, location, trees, and supplies.  This "half baked" shelter is low so that you do not waste space and material.  Then it is built with my feet pointing towards the general direction of the wind so like the roof of your house it naturally deflects the wind.  The the sticks that are layered on the support beam act like the shingles on a roof and naturally wick any moisture away.  Remember this was just a demonstration and we would have layed some sort of pine needles or leaves on the bottom as insulation and protection from ground water.  Then we would have also covered the top completely with branches to fully protect myself from the rain.  Don't I look cute with my head on my arm and tree?  Kind of looks like a survival calendar shoot.

The last thing I love to do with my shelter is to place a small fire nearby for warmth.  A fire also gives you something that builds confidence you are going to survive and also it acts like a TV and you can just sit and stare at it instead of thinking of how bad things might be.  I like to do a wall behind the fire to deflect the heat back to myself in the shelter.  The wall also helps block wind and rain.  This fire would not be your signal fire because it is small and is used as heat.  You would build a signal fire in an opening where people can see it.

I always hear people say "practice makes perfect" and that includes your survival skills.  Just think about the last time you used your spare tire?  You might not even have air in it or be able to change the tire.  It is always good to practice your work on changing a tire in a safe place then when you need to know how you are ready.  The same thing goes for anyone who camps out.  You need to practice using your survival gear so that if the time comes you are competent and capable of using them.  My son had the know how, of building a survival shelter but he needed some guidance from me to show him the elements he was not thinking of so later that day when we took the boys out to build and stay the night in their shelter they were comfortable building them.