THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

The link to the figure 4 trap doesn't work.

Personally, for small game, I think I'd use a Trigger Spring Snare.

They're easy to construct, and highly effective.

DigForVictory

Link fixed & trigger snare researched - the range of trigger possibilities looks like fun to experiment with.

My concern would be that snares that leave animals hanging may not be legal - however that link was cautious in 2011 & Wales & Scotland may have changed their legislation further.

Come TEOTW I think it likely that the legalities of snaring will slip a bit, but in the meantime, experimentation should be careful. Also be careful what you snare - rabbits are one thing, deer something quite else...

GreyQueen

:eek: Blimey, I've ben reading about the Oroville dam and the emergency spillway (which they've been using for the first time in 48 years because of the tiddly pothole in the regular spillway) is just earth.

Seriously. You could not make this stuff up; what they call a spillway is just the hillside.

mardatha

GQ I thought the same, very odd looking.
JK0 oatmeal porridge is best cooked long and slow, and the double boiled stops it sticking and ruining the pot.
I have a great breakfast system... I sit in the livingroom at the stove drinking tea, and the butler stands in the freezing cold kitchen making the porridge, then brings it through to me.

thriftwizard

Going back to my favourite "what our ancestors did" theme, it was actually pretty rare for them to eat any kind of grain without at least soaking it, and often lightly fermenting it first. This is reputed to reduce the phytates that make the grains hard to digest, and make the nutrients more "bio-available" i.e. your digestion gets more of the goodness out of them. I have no idea whether this actually true, but I do know that it generally makes everything taste better & smoother!

I'd always wondered why the porridge my landladies made in Scotland was so much nicer than the lumpy, glutinous stuff my poor old Mum used to try to get us to eat before trotting 2¾ miles to school. I've realised now that they made it up with water & salt the night before, then placed it over the pilot light of the gas stove, so so it was warm all night, possibly slightly pre-cooked & probably lightly fermented by the natural yeasts present in the grains and the air. And delicious, even without milk & sugar; I don't get on with milk & don't have a particularly sweet tooth. Now I make ours by soaking with water & salt the night before and placing on the shelves on top of our boiler, which has an integral small tank of water kept continuously at 60℃, so I'm able to use the shelves to keep things warm or dry small bunches of herbs, chillies and the like. Then I just add more water & heat up in the morning. I eat mine with apple butter or crab apple jelly & a dab of cream; OH piles on the sugar & drowns it in milk. Each to his own, and that's what works for us!

mardatha

Water and salt here, with a glug of single cream on top

mardatha

Thriftwizard, I'd love to know more about what we did long ago.. if you think of anything to share then I for one would love to hear it

DigForVictory

Dad raised on porridge soaked overnight.
Made sure us daughters could catch (using a swingeing cheat of a line, link to follow URL="http://mustad-fishing.com/eam/product/6-hooks-coloured-mackerel-feather-trace-t7/"]a bit like this but with more branches(?!) & hooks & no feathers[/URL) & gut & cook mackerel - his childhood included not just the fishing but then baking on driftwood on a biscuit tin lid & eating barehanded.
Mum was not quite so permissive - we were to bring our caught & gutted mackerel in to be cooked on the stove, rolled in oatmeal, then eaten from plates using the proper cutlery.
Last day of the holiday, we woke early, sloped off, fished & while one sis gutted, I got the hazardous privilege of waking my father with the news we needed him to cook the just-caught mackerel.
A very happy morning.

jk0

Someone linked to this on that forum I mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_5udzKfLQM

OMG, it looks like one of those p*ss-take retro videos they come up with on The Simpsons sometimes.

DigForVictory

Careful study of t'internet suggests we used handlines, from a boat, into the sea (but in a sheltered bit, too small to really be a harbour but a small bay).
This is a bad photo of something I think is the right idea. Long line, yep. Marble size weight at the bottom, yep. About 2m up from marble, "branches" off (here clip or on fancy "mount/dismount" malarkey) - the thing I used was definitely home knotted and intended for the blinking novice & the idiot mackerel. If you were to hold the marble & pull the line straight, you'd see at least 3 branches knotted across, ending in a hook. Thus 6 hooks, one weight, wound around something you can hold easily (tougher than a carrot - mackerel can be heavy-ish.)
(Dad asked at the pub where mackerel shoaled. It was all a bit Swallows & Amazons - if you could see the church spire, the post office & the house on the headland, you were above a lot of very foolish mackerel.)
We were told to let the string unwind until the marble hit the bottom, then wind it up a couple of passes. Then we'd sit there, in the little motorboat (less voom, more putt-putt, with oars in case), and pretend to be oil derricks. We lifted that handline up & down, up & down. Splendid for the arm muscle, along with the sea air, & just as well we caught mackerel as we definitely came back with an appetite. As we hauled, you'd feel a change in weight, in the resistance. "Got one!" Haul the lot up, identify mackerel (lured & baited solely by the pretty bright hook - stupid delicous animal), administer the last rites, unhook & check the whole line over the side again.
Repeat until you have enough mackerel to feed the household (& cat), then haul in & head home. Carefully winding the line back around the handle & being still more careful not to let the hooks catch cold wet hands. (Mum had a generous way with the iodine.)
My learning-not-to-be-a-vegetarian sister turned out to be the best of us all at gutting a fish, whereas my brute strength made me the most pious user of the Priest. M'father was always the best at cooking them, but we could all rinse them under a tap, roll them in porridge oats & fling them in a frying pan, just his tasted better - not burned, or a bit dubious anywhere.
No idea as to storage times. We caught them to eat as soon as we got them back (combining fires & boats seeming a bit dubious, what with the Scottish waters being dashed chilly & anyway the occasional jellyfish made swimming as exercise a tad less fun.)