Whether your culinary skills are honed enough to make the Breakfast Bacon an art form, or perhaps you're just accomplished enough to make "waddin'", you're going to have to acquire your resources first. The first rule of thumb is to separate sport from survival.
With sport hunting and fishing, you are fenced in by rules and realistically, your life is not what you would call, "on the line". This is not the case with survival hunting or fishing. In fact, not only is your life on the line, but you must take advantage of every opportunity to put the odds in your favor if you're going to have a chance at a meal. Real life survival ain't the movies. The sad truth is that the majority of folks who think they can make it, can't. But then, that's why you're here. You're one of the few, relatively speaking, who are looking to increase your odds, and in the process of gathering knowledge, experience and gear, you will!
The trick here, as laid out in the book "6 Ways In & 12 Ways Out" is to have several snares working for you while you are performing other methods of food gathering. Taking this one step farther, imagine that instead of fishing while your snares are working in your favor, you have an automatic fishing reel.....or perhaps several of them.....fishing for you while you are hunting, gathering edible plants, spearing frogs or catching crayfish. Now you've got some workable odds!
You might as well hone these skills while you have the chance. If you haven't noticed by now, any time you find yourself in an unfamiliar setting, folks tend to gravitate toward anything familiar first. In a survival situation, it's definitely to your advantage to be familiar with what it takes to make it home. The crayfish in these photos were caught while the family was at a park. The creek was available and the crayfish were plentiful.
For those unfamiliar with just how delicious crayfish are, well, you're in for a treat. Of course, you'll need to learn to clean them first. To start, pick up your crayfish just behind their pinchers. Grasp their tail and snap it off. That's the part you're after.
Next, you find the center fin at the end of the tail. Bend it backwards until it snaps. You then twist it 90 degrees in either direction, "like a key", as I was told when I was young. Then simply pull on the tail fin and you will remove what's known as "the mud vein". If you don't remove these from your crayfish, you can get really sick. That's the last thing you want when your life is on the line.
Once you've got your collection of tails, discard the upper bodies back into the creek. They will be eaten by the other crayfish. Then take and rinse your tails really well. For every fresh change of water, get your hands in there and really move them around. It'll usually take 5 or 6 changes of water to rinse these guys. Remember, they are scavengers and are all over the bottom of the muddy creek. Once your tails are thoroughly rinsed (presuming you're not in a survival situation) add a little salt to the water and put the pot on to boil. When you add heat, the tails and little legs will twitch a bit.
Bring your pot to a rolling boil. The crayfish tails will turn red, just like tiny lobsters, and begin to float when they are cooked. I usually let them go a minute longer. By this time, they are starting to smell like first class seafood. Because they are scavengers, I don't use the boiling water for soup stock. I dump it out and rinse them once to cool them off enough to touch them. If you aren't in a survival situation, now is the time to get some butter melted. As the butter is melting, crack and peel the tails. Once done, you're ready to enjoy a treat.
Water first is a good rule of thumb in a given survival situation, with regard to setting yourself in a good position. After securing your core temperature, seeking water is your first priority. Not only will water secure your hydration and sanitation needs, but it will further increase your odds of procuring food. There are many creatures living in the water as well as those who live around the water and feed on those creatures. If nothing else, it's a watering point for many animals.
You can further increase your odds by carrying a few artificial flies in your D.E.W.C. You can seal the deal by carrying some bait scents to attract your breakfast bacon! A dab of this can really make the difference between you or your dinner getting away.
The items sold on this site are chosen first for their potential return for time and money invested should the need arise. The next consideration is how small and light they are. Face it; the best gear in the world will be left behind if it's too heavy....you can only carry so much. As the majority of people browsing this site are by no means beginners, they have lots of gear already. The very reason they come here is because they know the value of stuffing extras like these in their rucks, BoBs and GOODs and that they're always needing more as they hone their skills. The final consideration is multi-purpose. Doing more with less is the name of the game and the object is to increase your odds by stacking the deck.
The ideas and methods expressed on this page are just a taste of the multitude of ways of increasing your odds for obtaining the Breakfast Bacon, and in fact, barely scratch the surface of what's out there as far as real survival knowledge. The intent and purpose of this page is to put necessary focus on filling your stomach in the wild, as much of your time spent in the wild will be devoted to it. It's so easy to watch Hollywood's "Reality T.V." from the couch after a large meal and think how easy it is to survive. Real-world survival is vastly different. Tantamount to survival is continuing your education of survival skills, as anything that can happen, will happen.
The truth is, you'd better have more than one way to "skin the cat" in your black bag of tricks. Though you aren't guaranteed the top slot in the food chain, you're still on the menu.
Breakfast Bacon; It's what's for dinner!
