When you’re out in the wild on your own with only your own equipment and wit to keep you afloat and alive, you’re not going to be exactly picky in what type of food you can eat. In a survival situation, any food is good food, if it keeps your insides running for one more day. That one day may very well be enough to save you and send you back to the safety of civilization or find proper adequate help to bring you away.
When you’re trying to survive in your day-to-day life, you can’t expect to get all of your food sources from one place. Berries, fruit, and other plants will eventually run out. The same goes for fish as well. Larger animals like deer may clear the area because of your presence, while certain predators might eat the fruit that you need to survive.
This is why it is good to diversify your options: If you’re expecting that you’ll be staying put for a good amount of time before help can arrive, then it would be wise to increase your options of what you can eat. Plus, it’ll help your nutrient count too!
This article will focus more on tiny animals. You know, the ones that you see hopping around but probably didn’t think to catch yet.
Rabbits
Ah, the lowly rabbit. Nature’s very own exploratory tiny fluffy ball. Rabbits are very much well known for how explosive their population can grow in such a short period of time. There’s a reason why “breeding like rabbits” is a term.
Rabbits are herbivores and prefer having a steady supply of leafy greens to sustain them over the course of their lives. As a result, you are very much likely to encounter them on places like forest meadows and brushy fields. You are very much likely to find a rabbit if you search in the edge habitat, which is basically the boundary between two ecosystems. In this case, it would be a field and a forest.
If the rabbit population in your area is plentiful, you can have a lot of delicious, cooked rabbit meals, but don’t rely on them solely. This is because rabbit meat is considerably lean, and only has around 8.3% fat. This won’t be a big problem for a while, but eventually you’ll start dipping into protein poisoning, a type of malnutrition that comes from the body eating too much protein and not enough fat.
If you have a firearm and are good at hunting, rabbit meat will easily come on the menu. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on setting up traps like snares to catch them.
Rodents (Rats, Mice, etc.)
Gross, rats? Those things that you see in the sewers and in the corners of dusty and filthy houses? The little thieves that steal food from you if you so much as leave a little bit outside?
Yes, those kinds of rats. But not just rats. Mice, for instance, are also common rodents that are found in the wild, and they are quite as abundant as rabbits are. Swamp rats, meanwhile, can be found in marshes and swamps, and their meat is quite easy to prepare too. Rodents also pack more balanced nutrients than a rabbit does, and most of them rodents taste like chicken too!
But there’s a catch: Rodents are very much susceptible to viruses, bacteria, and parasites. So basically, they’re just like your common house rat in that sense. Cooking them properly will likely kill off most of these microorganisms to not make them a problem, however. You’ll need to make sure that the rodents are handled properly and cooked well done to ensure this.
Snakes
Snakes are also one of the more common animals that one can find in a forest, but they differ from the two animals above by being potentially more dangerous to catch due to them being predators. Some species are even venomous!
Despite what it may seem like, however, a snake being venomous doesn’t necessarily make it impossible to eat. The venom from a snake is only really dangerous if injected into your bloodstream, but otherwise it is harmless, and you should be fine even if you might accidentally swallow some.
That said, the most frightening part of choosing a snake as a meal is probably trying to catch and kill it before it can strike and poison you. The last thing you need in a survival situation is requiring medical attention when there is no proper treatment available nearby.
If you really want to catch snakes, you’ll want to be wearing a lot of thick and protective clothes, just in case the snake catches you off-guard and tries to go in for a bite. Next, you’ll want to be equipped with a long stick, preferably one with a forked top, to keep the snake’s head as far away from you as possible. Finally, you can go in for the kill using a knife or a blunt object like a rock.
Congrats! Now you have a dead snake ready to be eaten! But your job isn’t finished yet, actually, because you still need to cut off its head. This is because that is where the venom glands are located, and a good rule of thumb is to cut two inches below their head. Oh, and be careful. Snakes are known to survive being beheaded for hours and may actually try to bite you if you aren’t careful.
Now you can finally make a meal out of it. You can slit the belly open and remove whatever is inside for trap or fish bait. Remove the skin and wash the meat. You can then choose to cook the snake as is by skewering and roasting it over an open fire or cutting it into smaller sections to be cooked as a soup or stew.