Low1 wrote:
Even cattails aren't as common as you'd suspect. Depending on the time of year, there's lots of berries, and many ripen at different times of the summer, from early summer strawberries to lowbush cranberries which are ripe pretty much right up to snowfall.
How is the sedges and reeds (
Scirpus and
Phragmites) up there? There is some starch and sugars in their roots (sugar in the
Scirpus, so don't boil the roots, throw away the water and eat the rest).
As to berries, remember that at least lingonberries and bilberries will give you an upset stomach well before you have had a full days calories (imagine eating a bucket or two of bilberries...)
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Reindeer moss is a staple, I'll pick it and eat it raw on a hike. Not so good if it's bone dry, but if it's growing and moist it's taste is kind of like a cross between mushrooms and what you would expect moss to taste like. I kinda like it.
I like to prepare my lichens in a bit; clean, make sure it is fairly wet, add some berries (etc) if you have them, wrap in an outer layer of wetish sphagnum moss, lets cook overnight in a pit. The lichens have a bit of a bitter taste, which is gone after the night in the pit.
There is the cambium layer of pine and spruce (even the small ones count...).
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Personally, I'd have some means of fishing, even a coil of line and a few leadheads, and a rifle, and if I don't have snare wire on me, I know have to make some with willow bark or spruce roots (although a small coil of brass wire is extremely useful for many things). I like my protein and fat while in the bush.
Definitely fishing and hunting is the way to go for any long term survival. In real life situations one can go for a couple of weeks without food, so most of us will nevetr have a dire need. The friendly folks in Northern Ireland (i,e, the hunger-striking prisoners) gave mediccal science plenty of data on how long a human can survive without food (a
long time, much increased in the ones that ate their vitamains).
One thing I often carry is "gäddsax" , basically a special trap for fish generally used for ice-fishing. Fish grabs the bait, spring-loaded points snap shut over their head. Not sporting, but a few of those can catch fish while you sleep (might work on hares and squirrels as well, but that would not even be remotely legal over here, not that that would matter in a true survival situation).
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