Survival Camping with 4 yr Old - Trapping, Knapping, Friction Fire & Campfire Cooking

Me and Jacob here we're getting on a plane for five and a half hours to fly to Oregon to do a survival school. You ready to learn how to survive in the woods? Hey, good to meet you too. We're here with Joel Vanderloon and he runs a survival school here in Sisters, Oregon. Me and Jake are going to learn to survive. And you know what, if we don't die then we know we were a success, right? Well, I watched a couple of videos. Seems like you've got some skills already. Oh well, you know, good editing makes anyone look good. All right, we'll hop the car and we'll follow you. Perfect, we'll see you there. Oh, this is a pretty spot. Oh, look at this, we got a little dog. Yeah, this is Harley. Hi Harley. Have you seen these z-pack tents? No. That's a two-man tent. No way. Yeah, yeah, is that crazy light? That is unreal. That's like, I mean, that's the most lightest, that's the lightest tent I've ever built. It's waterproof. Is this what you're setting up? Yeah, that's what I set up. I can't All right. Oh, look at that, that's gorgeous. There's a good chance we'll end up sleeping in a shelter we build ourselves, but just in case, I like to have the tent. That way, Jacob always has a place to get to take a nap if he gets tired. It's hot out here, Jake. We got to make sure you drink enough water. Make sure to drink some water, bud. Well, I got camp set up and Jacob taken care of. First order of business, we're going to learn a little bit about animal traps. We're going to try to catch some dinner. So I think we should make up a Paiute Deadpool trap. Okay. But ideally, flat surface so that we can pancake the animal. The longer and the wider, the better so that they have less chance escaping. Five times the body weight is what we're shooting for. Oh, is that the Squirrel Squisher 2000? That's like ideal. You see how flat that is? Yeah, yeah. We're looking for three rocks, we're going to make three traps. That looks pretty decent. Beautiful. The post piece, generally, I kind of go with the palm of the hand length. The hinging piece, we're going to go about double the length of the post piece. Yeah, just get out of one stick. It's going to increase the chances. A nice little like Phillips head screwdriver. Yeah. I'm just going to cut in a little V-notch. This guy fits in here. I'm going to wrap that around the back right here, and then I'll get this nice and tight, and we'll measure how much we need. There's a nice little toggle piece. It's kind of like the thickness of a pencil, really. I'm pushing the hinge piece down until I wrap this toggle around, and then once I've got the toggle around, I can transfer. I should be able to transfer weight into the toggle alone, and now I'm going to take a little bit of a measurement where I want this to be cut off. This is how you do all of this with just like one-handed, and it should hold up. Oh, that is... I can see what you mean. That is just delicate. Where we go and set up our traps, we're going to sit on top of a log. We want hard surface on hard surface to kill them. So you're saying you want to put them between a rock and a hard place. A rock and a hard place. All right, got it. I'll start pawing at the bait, and when they do... Squish. Squish. And then we have a squirrel pancake, Jake. Yeah. I'm not much of a hunter, but you know, I know with fishing, it's like 10% equipment, 90% location, you know. A hundred percent, and hunting is the same thing. I mean, you can make the best trap in the world, but if you're not sitting where there's a lot of animals, it's not going to do any good. That's the... Yeah, that's the right edge, right? It's light, and then also, you know, you can use it as bait. Peanut butter is a classic squirrel bait, and here in Oregon, the squirrels prefer the organic, non-GMO, locally sourced peanut butter. It has to be. Look at this. I think that's an old ground squirrel den. You see it's got all this junk in there, so maybe it wasn't used too recently. They like to dig the burrows under those big rocks, then a bear or a fox can't dig them up easy. There's another old burrow right there. We got a sighting. We've seen a squirrel. We're in the right place. It's right there up in the tree, the little pine squirrel right there. We'll have one here, and then we'll move down that way. We'll set a couple down there. There's so many differences. All right, we got some peanut butter right in there. We're going to see if we can't catch a little bit flat squirrel. This is where a squirrel comes up here and perches, and they'll sit there and eat the pine cones to get the seeds out of them. Might be too slick, and then... All right, I think... I think we got it! It's a trap! That, folks, is how you set a Paiute deadfall trap in under 12 hours. So I'm going to go set my camera by the trap, and we're going to see if we can't film it. And then the board was just like... And I went... Hey, okay. Oh, there we go! Jacob, did you pick your nose? Did you pick your nose? Oh, don't eat your booger! Don't eat your booger! Oh, wait, that was peanut butter. Oh, we're good. Phew! Hey, Jake, are you hungry? Yeah. Okay, I'll get you some lunch. Do you want some pupusas? Sure. While I'm getting lunch ready, Joel set Jacob up with a little bow and arrow here. The other side. There we go. Aim. All right, guys, the food I'm making is pupusas. It's food that's traditional down in El Salvador and parts of Central America. They're absolutely delicious, super easy, and something you can do on campouts really easily. All I got is a little bag of corn flour here, some refried beans, and you get some either mozzarella cheese or white Mexican queso cheese. Just going to add a little water. Anyone in your house has celiac disease, this is gluten-free too, so nice little food you can enjoy. You want to add just enough water where it starts to feel like play-doh, but it doesn't stick to your hands. Filling is so simple. It's just one part beans to one part cheese. If you want, you can also add jalapenos or hot sauce, but it's easy. Just kind of make a little pocket and then grab all the excess and then just squish this thing into a disc. I can just feel all the Latina grandmas out there cringing at my lack of skill. Try to make them a little flat. They'll cook evenly if they're flat as opposed to domed. Hey, it looks like Joel's family arrived. Joel has a son about Jacob's age, so we thought we'd do a little survival play date. Can I get a handshake from you? What's your name, sir? Talon. Is Talon like a bird, Talon? Eagle Talon. There we go. Got some little pupusas there. Do you want to grab one of those? It's kind of hot. Sure. You're going to split those with your boy and I'll split this one with Jake. Oh man, look at that. Cheese is just melting up. Yeah, give it a go. That's excellent. Really simple for three ingredients, right? The corn flour is great. In El Salvador, they eat pupusas with pickled cabbage. I really wish I had some right now, but this ain't bad. Oh, what you got there? You got some veggies and tofu there? Just a bunch of veggies and some tofu. In fact, that squash there's from our garden. Oh, nice. Oh, yeah, yeah, ginger. That smells good. Well, that was a great little lunch. So good. Jacob, you've been held still long enough to eat some stuff. All right, we finished up lunch. Now we're gonna go check those traps. I got a feeling we got some squirrel on the menu. Oh my goodness. Definitely going. Perfect. Good human kill. Daddy, his head is pretty flat. All right, Jake, should we go find the other trap? Yeah. Let's go find it. All right. Oh, here's the camera. Flashback. End of flashback. Oh, swing and a miss. Is there any squirrels over there? Oh, yeah. Two hours, three traps sprung. That's a lot of squirrels. You want to go and eat your chipmunk? Uh-huh. I'm going to name him Little. Little. We should call him Alvin or Flat Stanley. Okay, what I'm going to do is have you put your fingers under it. All right, we're going to save the chipmunk guts for a crawfish trap we're going to put out tonight. Hey, a little bit of chipmunk meat. This is going to be interesting. May not look like a lot of meat, but that'll feed 20 picky eaters. Joe's put together a little cooking stand here. What happens is when you put this cross beam on, it just gets wedged in place, held in place, and then what we can do is tie a rope over here with the toggle that fits in the pot lid. Get a place of honor. Perfect. All right, what are you thinking? What do you want to do? I'd like to do friction fire. I'd like to learn more about making fire with friction methods. It makes a lot of sense because now we've got food, we've got to cook it. I've got stuff to do bow drill, and I've got stuff to do hand drill. I'll do hand drill. You can't just go find any old straight piece of stick and start a fire. So ideally, it should have a hollow or like a pithy soft center. It should be really lightweight and dried out. There's various types of reeds and stalks that work really well. Some of them would be like mullein, and seepwillow, and dogbane, and sycamore. The fireboard has to be very, very soft. Bow drill, you have a lot more forgiveness, a lot more room for error, but not with this because here's the thing is you have a few attempts before your hands are just destroyed. You want to try and get your full hands in there, and once you feel like it's warmed up is when you can start applying the downward pressure. Kind of smell the smoke before you see it. Gotta squeeze that spindle a little more. Okay, you got it? No, it just went out. It just went out. All right, take two. Try and squeeze that. You kids aren't getting dirty, are you? They're getting so dirty. Jacob, what did you do? That boy takes a dust bath like a gerbil. I really get that downward pressure. Squeeze the spindles. Just a little bit longer. I felt like I was so close, but my arms are just giving out. I am so tired, so we're going to try a different way. We're going to try the bow method. With the bow drill method, you don't need as long of a spindle, so we're going to cut one from this piece of alder here, and luckily it's really, really dry, and it's been dry for a while here in Oregon, so that makes life a lot easier. We're getting a lot of smoke, but no embers, and you can see here on the tip, it looks all yellowish. That often is a sign that there's too much resin in the wood, and the resin makes a lot of smoke, but doesn't make good embers, so we're going to try some different wood. It's not looking very good to me. See the yellow right there? We know something has too much resin. First we thought it was the spindle, but now we're thinking maybe it's the fireboard, so we're going to switch up the fireboard with that alder and see what happens. Push your fingernail in. If it leaves an indentation, that generally means that it's the right consistency. Yeah, you don't want something too hard. You don't want something too hard. It's beautiful. Just like that. Son of a gun. Just don't get too erratic, but yeah, that was... Oh man, that looks so good at the end there. I'm spent. I gotta give this a break, or I'm not gonna be able to lift my arm and scratch my nose. You'll get it. You'll get it. Nothing like spending three hours trying to create friction fire to make you appreciate a lighter. Oh, we got some fresh elk meat from one of the rear legs. Oh nice, we're gonna get some elk stew. All right, there's our chipmunk. A little bit of seasoning to it. Just clips in there. We'll get some bait inside here. All right, got some chipmunk guts. Wow, he's... All right, we'll just let that crawfish trap sit overnight. See what we got in the morning. The sun's just starting to set. Look at that crazy rainbow. Oh, how's that chipmunk looking? Perfectly roasted. Love the liver. I'll pick the liver and the kidneys and the heart over any of the the regular flesh for sure. Well, I wouldn't want to take that from you. You know, you enjoy it. Hey, who wants to eat some chipmunk? Come and try the chipmunk. Yeah, you like this. It's like rabbit. Which one do you want? What do you think, Jake? You like the chipmunk? Why don't you take that little one there? That's the kidney. That's like the... All right, we're trying chipmunk kidneys here. That was an interesting ride. Pretty good, eh? Yeah, not bad. Take the leg. All right, we've got chipmunk legs. You want more? Oh yeah. No, that's actually not bad. Tastes a little like duck or rabbit. I'm going to break off the rib cage. Now eat this with the bones. Don't even chew. The bones are so soft that you can chew them and swallow them. Okay, there we go. Chew it up. It's pretty good. Not bad. I'll eat all the bones. Oh man, the broth is looking beautiful. Potatoes going in, flavor infused. Oh, that's real stone ground. Oh yeah, the real stuff. That should be very... Oh, look at that. Good? It's nice. Good. You know, that's the first time I've had elk, I think. Really? I think so. We're going to have elk meat. Elk meat? Elk meat. No, not elf. Not elf meat. Elk meat. That is a good looking stew. The sweet potatoes? Oh yeah, they're great. I don't blame you there. Jake, you are covered in flour and dirt. You like it? Yeah. Yeah, it's good, isn't it? So how did you hear? Jake, did you like your elk stew? Yeah, buddy. Are you tired? You want to go to bed? All right, let's get you in the tent here. We originally planned on making some shelters, but the friction fire thing took a lot of time, and so I'm really glad we set up the tent. This is why you bring a backup. All right, buddy, why don't you hop in and get inside your sleeping bag there. Yeah, you got to be sleepy. It's really late at your time. I'm sleepy. Okay, buddy. All right, before I go to bed, I'm going to make some bread dough because I want to have fresh bread in the morning. So we're going to mix it together real quick. It's super easy. Just get yourself some bread flour, something with a nice high gluten content. You know, try to spill as much on the ground as you can. Sprinkle some yeast in there. Really doesn't matter how much. Take a little bit of sugar. Doesn't really matter how much. A little room temperature water. All right, we'll just let that sit till morning. Well, guys, me and Joel have had a good time chatting by the fire, but the jet lag is killing me. I need to go to bed. I'm going to see you guys in the morning. Well, guys, it got pretty cold last night. It's, uh, it's properly chilly. What do you say I get a fire started? Do you like that? Or you get a nice big roaring fire. So when the boys get out of the tent, they have something warm to stand next to. But we're also going to need to cook breakfast. And for that, I'm going to need coals. So I want a whole bunch of very consistently sized wood on a whole bunch of wood about this big around. Good morning. Well, I'm a bit stuffy, but that's okay. You know, what's, you know, what's the cure is that jump in that cold water over there. Oh, you know, it cleared up right now. I think I am. Oh yeah. Hey, Jake, why don't you come sit by your fire with the friends? You throw on the big stuff first, let it burn a little bit. Then you throw on the smaller stuff and then the smallest stuff, and then it all becomes coals at the same time. But the general rule of thumb is that for one inch of radius, it takes one hour to burn the coals. So here in about 45 minutes, we should have a lot of coals. Well, before we get breakfast started, we're going to go check the crawdad trap. Luckily we are chipmunk killing experts, so we would survive anyway. Guys, you know what we need for breakfast? We need hot dog roasting sticks because we've got breakfast hot dogs. You guys want to go find a hot dog stick? Let's take a look at our dough and see how it did overnight. Check that out. Look at all the bubbles in there. That's exactly what you want to see. It's all nice and puffy and bubbly. You know, it got down into the low forties, upper thirties last night, but it still managed to ferment a little bit. Just slows the process way down. All right, we got our butter here. Pop the lid on that. Let's sit that by the fire. That's what we want. Yeah. Nice pile of coals. I don't mean to brag, but that's a beautiful pile of coals right there. You know what? Maybe I should share one of these between you boys so that you're not bouncing off the walls. That's part of life. There's no walls here, daddy. The logic's infallible. Got my little tea ball here. So we're going to put some loose leaf herbal tea in there We got pineapple, bacon, breakfast sausages. We take survival very seriously. Yeah. Tough life here in the woods right now. That is a serious sausage stick. All right. Oh, that's getting a little hot. Get your hot chocolate before it gets cold. So yeah, we got some melted butter. It's really gooey, sticky and sugary. I hope you guys like that. Oh, look at that. Not too bad. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. There we go. Nice piece. Nice. Honey with the sausage. Just wrap it up. Eat that thing. Hot dog on steroids. That's more of a boar in a sleeping bag than a pig in a blanket. Yeah. Not too bad, huh? No, that's impressive. Yeah. And it's so easy. I'm going to do this. I'm trying to convince them to keep going. Well, we just finished breakfast and cleaned up a little bit. Now I think we can try to do some more survival skills and I'm going to try some flint knapping. And I've never done that before. If you don't know what flint knapping is, it's when you shape stones into arrowheads and knives and spear points and things like that. Obsidian. Jacob's like obsidian. That's for Minecraft. I didn't know. You can see that something, a piece has been knocked out over here. Chirpy burpy Jacob. So these are flakes. That's a knife that I'm busy working on. And then just kind of work it down to a thin flake that we can work with. See how it's taking off quite a bit. And then you push down and in if you wanted to remove some big flakes. Yep. Nice. That looks like that could be a little arrowhead. That's it. Work with that one. That looks like a nice thickness. Kind of already got pretty good shape, I think. Perfect. Oh yeah. Like, like you literally. This is very manly. You can feel my chest hair growing in thicker. You see this chest hair? Well, there you go. My first flint knapping project. It's a little bit ugly, but I'm proud of that. It's like a little small spearhead or something. Jake, do you want to try flint knapping? Yeah. Oh, see that came off. It's got a little, little blade there. Should we put it in the handle on it? Yeah. All right. There we go. Got some little notches on it. Joel has some pine pitch. We're going to melt in the fire to make a glue. So Joel's ground up some charcoal here. He's mixing it in with the pine pitch. That acts as a little bit of a binder. All right. So we got that. It's great for like tying around. It's surprising when you touch it quickly. It actually doesn't burn or anything. I think we got you a knife. You want to see if we can cut something with it? Yeah. Oh, look at that. Wait, do you like your knife Jacob? Yeah. Oh, is it a knife gun? Yeah. Little knife here. We've got, we're making all sorts of primitive shivs. Look at that. We've got two little boys with stone daggers who are having the time of their lives. Hey Jacob, should we make a sheath for your knife? Knife goes in. They're constantly talking about. Well, there you go. That's my first time making cordage. All right, Jake, let's put it on your neck and take a look. Show me your knife buddy. Oh my goodness. Is that so cool? Yeah. You have made a caveman knife. All right. I want to rematch with that spindle board. Oh, you make that look easy. You basically got it all prepared for me. I just went down the spindle twice and it was done. All right. We're going to try the bow method and we're going to look for new wood for a spindle. This is a dead willow. Of course it has to be dead. We can't have moisture in it. This is a perfectly round and straight, the exact diameter we want. When it has this like red hue to it, I've always found that that is sort of an indicator that it's, it's dried the right amount. Yeah. I leave the bark on. Um, actually find that it makes, uh, makes it a bit stronger. Closer to here. I think you got it. Oh, Oh, I think you got it. I think I got it. You definitely got it. See the smoke coming out of the pile of dust. You got it, man. That dust pile, but you definitely got it. Yeah. You can see the smoke just still going, even though we stopped. There it is. Got an ember. Take this ember and put it in there. There you go. Well, there we go, guys. That is the first time I've ever successfully made an ember with the bow drill method and little piece of alder and willow we've found right here. That was cool. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Joel. Oh yeah, man. Good job. Now my arms are going to fall off. It was just stick that in there too. That should be heated up. Do you still boil it? Yeah, I just, we're going to boil it and I'll put a set of timer on my phone for 11 minutes. You guys want some hot dogs? You're a little done. It's going to be. You want a cooked one or a raw one? I guess they're both cooked. Crop thing we do is. Yeah. And if you like spice. Oh guys, this has been fun, but we got to start packing it up. Listen guys, me and Jacob had a wonderful time and I learned a lot of new things. So if you're in the Northwest and you want to do this too, check out Joel Vanderloon's survival school. I'll put a link to his website in the video description below, as well as a link to his YouTube channel as well. He's got some pretty cool adventures, both here and in Tanzania up on his YouTube channel. So I'll link to that in the video description. Thank you very much for having us. And thanks for hanging with us, Talon. Yeah, but yeah, it was awesome. Thank you so much. All right. I'll see you, Joel. Was that fun, Jake? Yeah. Well, Jacob, did you have fun? It was a very good time. Well, listen, if you guys had a good time too, make sure to click subscribe to the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, because we put out new videos every Saturday morning. 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