why is making 2000 sq ft of 3" mesh netting such a no-no on Alone? 7 inner strands,

[jayd]

in paracord. Both the hammock and gillnet offer 1000 ft of paracord, and you'll still have 2000 ft of very strong sheathing to twist or braid for use as lashing, too.

So it takes you a couple of weeks to weave all that netting, so what? Each day's product can be hung as a gillnet, giving you more food each day. The netting can be wrapped around sapling frames, and be baited to catch crabs, mammals, birds, or fish. You can weave netting by firelight, or while sitting in the tree-blind by the pile of fish guts, waiting to arrow a bear.

If you create small brush-piles all around your campsite, all within 50m so checking them is quick and easy, and start baiting them with fresh cambium strips and fish guts, you'll soon have animals using the brush-piles as cover vs weather and predators. Add some grass, etc, to help them vs rain and wind.. Get them associating your scent with food, not danger. Dont waste time and effort on the sort of half-arsed snares that you can make out of the gear that's allowed on this show. Basically, all they do is teach animals to be afraid of your scent. But if you make the boxtrap frames, set them in the brush-piles, and bait them, the animals will soon become comfortable going inside of the frames. Then you add the side netting, and re-bait them. When you see that the critters are entering open-ended trap, you add the x'd stick rear ends to the boxtraps. and re-bait them. When you again notice that the bait is gone, you add the triggers, but don't set them. Just have them present, so that the critters learn to not be wary of them.

THEN, when you see the animals are entering the traps for the bait, you add the sliding doors and set the triggers. Then you wont be teaching the animals anything, cause you'll have eaten them.

Such traps also provide some protection for your catch, vs predators and you'll have live critters. If you hold a rabbit by his hind legs and shake him a bit, he'll squeal, and that noise might well bring you another critter that you can arrow. Remember, those predators are eating YOUR game. So when you eat the predator, you're also saving other animals that you'll be eating later. This is a far better use for your time than making spoons and chopsticks, making an elaborate shelter, making a drum, chair, or dream-catcher.

the contestants ARE allowed to arrow a couple of bears, if they've previously obtained the required licensing and permits. A couple of 200 lbs bears, and a lot of netting will set to it that a team is all set for the win. It's not rocket science, it's not against the rules.

[Rick]

How often have you done this and how successful have you been?

[madmax]

lol........

[jayd]

people are just lazy. Too lazy to do the research and find OUT how third worlders survive (with less gear than allowed on Alone) and too lazy to weave the netting and make the traps. Mark a place (with posts) in a cove, where the water is just a foot deep, all the way across, at low tide. As the tide comes in, bait the apex of the cove with fish and fowl guts. As the tide starts out, tow the 100m of netting across the mouth of the cove. Every fish in that cove now belongs to you. Little by little, force the net and the fish towards some deep hole you've previously found, and pen them up there. That way, you dont have to smoke/salt every one of them. You can keep them live, use a dip net to move them to some other pool, etc.

You SHOULD, of course, eventually, preserve a lot of the fish, and get them hung up in a "food tree", via tarp and tape bags, with traps set all around the tree. Snares on the 45 degree leaning logs, jungle whips on the tree above same, bow traps aiming arrows down at other places. Once you've detected a possum, coon, or bear trying to steal your food from the tree, he'll be very easy to arrow.

[jayd]

more successful than dips just laying around starving, you bet your butt. This shows how easy it really is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUVh-xpHQz8

[Rick]

I haven't done it. I'm just wondering how successful you've been at it.

[jayd]

weaving netting is easy. It's a lot easier to set all this up in a lake, rather than on a sea coast. Fowler really messed up by not doing this in Patagonia. Skinner and the other behaviorists figured out, decades ago how to "shape" animal behaviors. It takes about a month to get animals happily entering net box traps. That's about when you have to get off of the sea around vancouver, , due to storms and flotsom ruining your big net.

[Rick]

So you haven't been successful I take it.

[jayd]

Here's a more illustrative vid about net making, altho I find using a ring more difficult than starting the net along a stick with a lot of notches. It's a lot easier that way to see what you're doing.

Here is how to weave your sections of net into one, larger net, as well as how to repair any holes that get torn in it, or which you have to cut into it to release debris or the catch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oOw4hyOmLM

[jayd]

The main issue, really, is what items you have to give up in order to take the hammock. This season, you really get 13 items, and one 10x10 tarp given to you (as best I can tell) from the silly History channel website.

If you take the duct tape, the Cold Steel shovel, the Crunch mulittool (with the Silky saw blade) a wool and canvas sleeping bag, a big ferrorod, the 5 qt skillet, one of the slingbows with the 6 arrows, 2 of the rations (pemmican and gorp) , the paracord hammock, the paracord gillnet, the fishhooks and line, and the 12x12 tarp, you'll have what you need to win, without being a lucky lard-arse.

So you have to sharpen the shovel with the file in the Crunch, sharpen the knife blade on a rock, boil off seawater to get salt. You'll have plenty to keep you busy when you are sitting by the fire, after dark and when you are trapped by rain.

It's not that hard to make a big wooden mortar and pestle. The kelp is right there in front of you on Vancouver's coast. You need to rinse the saltwater off of it with freshwater before juicing it, of course. Kelp only offers 50 calories per lb, so you have to juice it. Yes, it's nasty to drink, but it's a source of carbs that you need, cause fish and game offer zero carbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-nlhjfteVw&t=735s

[jayd]

You are NOT going there to homestead. You're going there to last 60- odd days and clear 1/4 million dollars. So forget the Paul Bunyan axe bs. You need to average foraging 12 lbs of live weight fish and game per day, to avoid losing weight. 700 lbs in 2 months. Otherwise you'll just be doing what everyone else has done, (ie, starve). Starving slowly is still starving.

[crashdive123]

Yep. Another Youtube wonder and internet expert.

[LowKey]

3" mesh eh? Do you know how small the baitfish are that you are gonna ''trap'' with that rig in a small cove 1' deep?
And somehow we got from making nets with paracord hammocks to "arrowing" bears?
Axes scare you but you like to tick off bears?
Be sure you have your camera on:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2836599/Ever-wondered-s-like-eaten-BEAR-GoPro-camera-left-cage-attacked-zoo-inhabitant.html#v-3893918996001

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

... but you like to tick off bears?
Be sure you have your camera on:



I know! I'd like to see the inside of a real live bear without actually having to go there.

Alan

[kyratshooter]

I saw the inside of one on NatGeo a few days back. Big griz ate a radio transmitting game camera.

jayd, just be sure you wear your orange and the bear bells and keep your bear spray close so they can identify your remains mixed in the bear poop.

[edr730]

I've been following this thread and there is a lot of good infermation in here. I've been studying it pretty heavy. Like everyone else I was thinking how good it would be if you get lots of food but mostly I was thinkin about those bears. I've done fish trapping too and I got ideas on that too.

Bears have lots of fat on them in the fall and it looks like it might be the fall since one program had a salmon run. Fat is good. YOu can render it and fry food and eat it, , rub it on your body to stay warm and make soap from the ashes of th fire.
So, anywhay I was thinking how I know 4 people who had a bear come up the tree after them. One growled real loud, oone had a cub climb above him and the mother came up after him but the other two used a little known bear hunters secret called a fish bomb.

The fish bomb is the real key here because it's the only way you can kill one of those bears without a bow or spear. The relly good part is that all you need is an axe.

First I will tell you how to make the fish bomb. You just get a jug or bucket and put all those fish pieces in it then yiou just set it out in the sun for a few day. Bears just love it when you sprinkle it around and they will go where ever it leads them. It's important to bring it inside your dwelling at night because the skunks or something else might get to it first and waste all your hard work.

The second part of this is how to kill the bear. this is the part that is really easy if you think about it. You don't have a spear or a bow so what can you do? All you need is an axe and you don't even have to use any energy to make anyything at all.

One of the best methods for shooting a bear is just wire a bait to a tree about 6 and a half feet high and when the bear reaches up and moves the shoulders away from his kill zone it leaves a wide open shot to the kill area. You can do this at only 12-15 yards away since the bear unlike the deer will come in close and can't see good and the fish bomb disguises your scent. We're going to do something similar.

Now you have to bring in the bear to the tree. All you have to do is sprinkle of the fish bomb liquid on your shoes and the outside of your shirt sleeves and pants and walk up and down bear trails and always returning to the tree. When you finally climb the tree you sprinkle a little all the way up.

This is the good part. When you get all the way up the tree and you have some good limbs you ccan stand on to swing the axe all you have to do is put your fish bomb jug about 5 feet out on a limb. When the bear gets to that point he will reach out and stretch his head and nose out to that jug. That's when you bring the axe down on his neck just behind his head. That's all there is to it.

I know that there will always be one or may be two people that will feel that this would be too dangerous. But I have thought this though and I have complete confidence that it will work. Or I'm pretty sure anyhow. Anyway I would not be a bit afraid for someone to try it.

[hunter63]

Well, I do declare that is the first tie I have heard of THAT

As a northern charter member of the old guild group........The Fugarweees...well versed in northern woods lore....I have to say.....
I have heard and seen a deer cinch, spark plug fishing, bog spasm, snow snakes, ....but got to say this is the first time I have heard of a "fish bom"

[edr730]

Now now Hunter, I sense a bit of scepticism. I want to assure you that the fish bomb has been a tightly guarded secret among a very few. I'll admit that it is only my weakness to holding secrets that I now reveal it. It's effect on bears is renowned. But, I want to point out that it is a multipurpose scent suppersor or disguiser. With the deer hunter, which I know you are, it can be used and is so effective that it will make your scent virtually invisable to any deer within your eyesight. It's manufacter is very simple, but the application must be strictly adhered to.
Many people do not follow instructions properly and that is my concern. You do not strike me as a person who would do such a thing and that is why I continue.

My recomendations would be 1/4 of fish bomb liquid per side well rubbed in as well as 1/4 on both boots. I know that some of the new hunting clothing materials are more water proof and in these cases I would suggest a bit more. As an added precaution you may wish to slosh a bit on your cheeks if they will be exposed to excessive wind.
You always have to have something to tell the tourists that have read all the hunting magazines and seen all those videos.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

I noticed you alway said sprinkle. I assume a jug of "Fish Balm" will last for some number of years, only intensifying in its effectiveness, before having to be replaced. I also presume that there is no worry of it becoming "rancid" so refrigeration is not an issue.

Alan

[edr730]

Actually, Alan, fish bomb is used for bear to draw them in and hide scent and it does work. As far as using it for deer hunting as I described....you must use it yourself and decide...haha

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

I consider Texas very fortunate in that bears in any appreciable numbers are not present in the state. I fear that using it would only attract flocks of buzzards to my location instead and I doubt if it would disguise my scent from the sharp nose of #1 wife. Therefore, reluctantly, I must pass on this one.

Alan

[edr730]

If that's how you feel Alan, then I can only suggest you might use it the next time you want to go vulture hunting....them birds got a nose like a bear amyhow

[hunter63]

Deer hunting is best served by covering your scent with vehicle exhaust.... as cars and trucks go by everyday...and don't shoot at them during daylight hour.

Now..... my experience with northern Wisconsin bears is they smell like old sweaty socks and a garbage dump.. the dump being a favorite spot to set up your blind....next to all the locals that come out every night to park....drink beer and do whatever you do when parking.

Kinda like the infamous "Submarine" races of old...
The people next to you with the steamed up windows do get all upset, and grouchy, when you touch off a few rounds...and spoil their fun.

That may be an argument for that "sling bow"...but we always to ...Kill the bear...instead of "arrowing it"....but that is just me and my friends.

That said..... I would be willing to try that fish bomb with some one, that is considerably slower that I am.....(getting tougher to find.)