Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

CHAPTER XXIILIVING OFF THE COUNTRY—IN EXTREMISAs I said at the beginning, the supreme test ofwoodcraft comes when the equipment has beendestroyed by some disaster. Such misfortunes arenot uncommon; if we seldom hear of them it isbecause they happen in far-away, isolated places,and the survivors are not interviewed by the press.A man gets lost and has to wander for a week,two weeks, or longer, before he meets a humanbeing. A canoe is smashed to bits in a rapid, ahundred miles from the nearest outpost, and themen get ashore with nothing but the clothes theystand m and the contents of their pockets. Andworse has happened. Robinson Crusoe had a prenticejob compared to the actual experiences ofhundreds of men and women whom fate has thrown,destitute of tools or weapons, far from the pathsand courses of civilization.The pity is that such disasters befall, in so manycases, people who have no knowledge of how tomeet them. Helplessness breeds despair. Onewoodsman, at such a time, will rustle more foodthan a company of tenderfoots. At the worst hewill find something to keep him going—somethingthat the others, though starving, would pass bywithout knowing that it could give them energy.In this sort of emergency, needless to say, thereis but one law: self-preservation. Game laws andother rules of sportsmanship are, for the time, nonexistent.The sufferer will kill anything that canbe eaten, in any way that he can get it. If all403