Food for Survival VII/Foraging

One dictionary definition for forage is; "To wander in search of provisions". I like that definition as well as any I have seen. This covers just about the entire field of finding food in the wild. Foraging, especially for short term survival, may be one of the most important skills a survivalist can learn. When I use the word foraging I include; hunting, fishing, trapping and the search for fruits, nuts, berries and all edible plant life. There is no reason that anyone that is lost or cut off from civilization for any reason should die of starvation. While I will admit that there are areas in this country and times of the year when food is harder to find, there is always something. This country literally teems with wild edibles of both the plant and animal varieties. One of the big problems I see in this country today is that many of our younger people, especially those raised in large cities, do not see any relationship between the cow and the hamburger or even between the apple and the tree. These are just things that you go to the local supermarket or fast food joint to purchase. Several years ago, while I was working for a sporting goods store in the Chicago area, I had a young woman working for me in my department. She was a very intelligent person, about seventeen years old. While we were having lunch on day, I was talking to another department manager about hunting. This young woman spoke up and said she thought all hunting was cruel and that she could never eat anything from an animal that had been killed. It so happened that at the time she was eating a burger from a local fast food joint. When I started to explain how cows are killed and where her burger came from, she got angry and walked away. The next day I received a phone call from her mother who read me the riot act for telling her daughter something so "stupid". She said the world would be a better place and her daughter would be a much better person if things like that were not talked about. A kind of stick your head in the sand approach. There is not much you can do with people like that except to try to educate them if they will let you. The rest of us still have to live and to live in a survival situation may mean foraging: hunting, fishing, trapping and looking for wild plants. There have been many books written on wild plants, by people much smarter that me about it, so I will just give some general guidelines. Again, as I so often advise, if you want more info go to the library or go on-line, the web has many sites on this subject. One thing I would do though is to purchase one good book on plant identification. This should be in a pocket size field guide, to be carried with you now while you are learning,