Trapping For Food

But even these daft animals can sense a predator, and especially a human predator.  
So precautions have to be made when it comes to making, handling and setting traps.
You must ensure as little as posible of your human scent gets onto the trapping materials, and the surrounding area where you place the trap.
This is an art in itself, and leaving no scent of a human and leaving no trace that you have even been there is very difficult to achieve.

Location Of Traps And Snares

Making A Killer Blow

How To Make A
Windless Animal Trap
For Prepping And Survival

Below Are The Principles Of A Windlass Animal Trap

A Scaleable Animal Trap

benefits of nettle tea

1: Aids your Heart Health

Along with high levels of vitamin D and K, nettles are stuffed to the brim with other essential vitamins and minerals, which are considered potent heart protectors.
Nettles are high in vitamins A and C, Betacarotene and other Carotenoids. High concentration of iron and vitamin C, both of which contribute to helping your body boost red blood cell production. May also help to reduce anaemia.
 
Stinging nettles also contain flavonoids, namely Quercetin and Kaempferol, both of which have been shown to lower blood pressure and thus reduce risk of cardiovascular disease.

Similarly, with it's high levels of  iron and potassium, tea infusions made from stinging nettles can help the blood vessels to relax, giving rise to healthy circulation.

3: helps muscle joint pain and strengthens bones

Nettles have natural analgesic, anti-inflammatory and pain relieving properties.
It is widely known that they were used by our ancestors to treat muscular and joint problems like muscle stiffness, aches and soreness.
 
Furthermore, studies have been made that show that stewed nettles helped greatly in relieving arthritis pain and relieved the symptoms of osteoarthritis.
Additionally there are very high amounts of vitamin D and K, Calcium, Magnesium, and Iron found in nettle infused tea, which protect bone density. 

5:. Helps To Increase Your Urinary, Kidney And Prostate Health

Stinging nettles are a natural diuretic and as such can aid in overall healthy urination. You can therefore use the humble stinging nettle plant as a natural remedy for urinary tract infections and additionally, prevent kidney stones.

Click below to see full 'How To Make Stinging Nettle Tea' video:

When to pick stinging nettles

You only have a limited time during the year when you can pick nettles, this being when when they are at there freshest and most potent.
For that reason look to harvest them from early spring through to summer.  For best results choose them while they’re still quite small, around a foot tall, you will find the leaves are at their most tender then.
If possible harvest them while they’re still young, this means before the plant starts flowering.  You'll find that once the nettle starts to flower the leaves become bitter.  

Alternatives to picking your own stinging nettles

Seeing as you can only pick fresh nettles at certain times of the year, you can do one of two things:

1. Harvest a load of nettles and dry them for future use - this is a lot of effort, and to be honest not very efficient...
OR
2. Buy them ready picked and dried in bulk. This is what I do and is by far the best method. I have left a handy link below to the nettle tea that I use....

A Word Of Warning - Common Sense Safety Precautions

There is a chance the stinging nettle infusions can have a severe effect with over-the-counter and medically prescribed medications, these include: drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes, diuretics, blood thinners and lithium.

As a result of this, it is well worth consulting your doctor before starting to use any new supplement or natural remedy.

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There are so many cooking systems to choose from these days, and the choice of fuel source is slowly increasing, but do you really need to have a stove that needs you to carry additional fuel..?
In this review I shall be testing out the Solo Stove Lite with the additional 900ml cook pot. These wood burning stoves are a complete cook system that can use wood and many fuel sources and are ideal for camping or bushcraft.

Natural Fuel:

Along with the quantity of fuel you need to carry, there's the issue of added weight in you rucksack - as always 'less is more' so eliminating the need to carry ANY fuel has got to be a big plus, in any situation.

In this article I want to run through the new designs that make the new cooking stoves so much more efficient and better than before.

The extra burst of preheated oxygen that feeds back into the actual firebox area through the small holes at the top part of the stove cause a secondary combustion.
This secondary combustion phase now allows the fire to burn more fully and is the reason why there is very little smoke during full burn phase.

Video Review:
Solo Stove Lite & Solo Pot 900ml for camping or bushcraft

Transpiration simply means to lose water vapour.

The sun will essentially "sweat" the moisture from the soil and vegetation. As the moisture evaporates, it will condense on the top side of the plastic and begin to flow toward the hole and begin dripping into the collection cup.

Three Simple Yet Effective Rain Water Harvesting Methods

Let’s face it, life is not perfect and in fact, at times it can be pretty harsh and cruel, and unfortunately, that means that disaster can potentially strike at any time.

RAIN WATER SAVING DIVERTER KIT

The Basic Essentials Of A Good Survival Knife

Modern manufacturing methods and technology means that you can have a good quality knife that will do a lot of survival jobs for a relatively low price   – but there’s a few things to consider when buying one –

• A folding knife is far more liable to break due to the folding action - so avoid them.
• The knife must fit you size of hand – if the handle is to thick or too thin you will loose grip
• A fixed blade knife is better for levering and chopping and most other survival skills.
• Always choose a ‘3/4′ or ‘full tang’ knife’, where the blade runs through into the handle
• Any knife needs to be 'looked after' and will lose its edge eventually, so be prepared to sharpen or even reset the cutting edge at some point.

Choosing your blade shape is also an important factor when selecting the best survival knife.

Below are two typical bushcraft/survival knives, both are full tang and more than capable of doing most tasks.
These are the type of knife, that if used and treated with respect, will last a lifetime.
I would recommend buying these type over a bigger knife as you will find they offer more flexibility and range of tasks that can be performed.

Survival And Bushcraft Knife Collections

The knives that I have listed above are very good quality and will do the job well, so it just boils down to a matter of personal preference really.

But no prepper relies on just one survival knife…. – I can’t make this point enough, always carry at least two survival knives that suit you and work best for you.
Remember, Two Is One - One is None!

Collecting water can be a great way to conserve resources but can you drink rain water?

Any Collected Rain Water For Drinking Must Be Made Safe To Drink

There Is An Answer To 'Can You Drink Rain Water'..

Considerations For Choosing The Best Air Rifle For Hunting And Survival In The UK

Springer or PCP? Both are capable rifles to use for hunting small game and survival.
I personally have two springers and a PCP, and by far prefer my PCP over the other two.
The performance, for me, is much better. 
But.... the PCP has far more working parts that could fail in a SHTF situation.
So the answer, as always, is to try and cover all the options.

Make sure you are within the UK laws

Final Thoughts

With so many products in the marketplace it makes choosing the right filter water bottle that will give you clean, safe drinking water is a bit of a minefield!
So what can be done to ensure you choose the right one for you needs?

Firstly I'm not talking a common or garden sports drinking bottle. Or the sort of bottle that sits in your fridge and you just fill up from the tap, that's the type with some cheapo charcoal filter inside.
I'm writing this article specifically about portable water bottles that will save your life in emergencies and a survival situation.

The amount of filters out there that are correctly tested and certify safe drinking water are very few. Most just take the bad smell and taste out of the water, nothing more.

Obviously if you are buying a filter water bottle, as a prepper it must meet certain requirements.
Firstly and most importantly, you want safe, clean drinking water, free from as many nasties as possible and to be able to get it from as many sources as possible.
With regards to what types fo contaminates it will remove, always check the manufacturers filter specifications and results first.

You must be able to store a reasonable amount in the bottle. Not too much, as the weight could be a problem and slow you down, so I think the 75cl bottle gives you a happy medium here.
I think the bottle must be see through, you know exactly how much you have got and if you need to be on the lookout for a top up.
If you can use it to fill other container, then that's a big plus as well.

Without a doubt the Water To Go bottle is my 'go to' piece of kit when I need a means of filtering dirty, contaminated water. Whether it's from for a puddle, river, lake or stream.

In fact I can get safe, clean drinking water from just about any source excluding sea water.

The Latest Water Filter Bottle
From Water-To-Go

The main filter life is based on usage, not time.
So the 'Active Filter Bottle" has a 200-litre filter capacity that will last for 100 days.

This is based on you consuming 2 litres of water per day.  Or even longer, for 200 days at 1litre per day and so on.

From a money saving point of view, I also use mine indoors.
Commercial bottled water works out far to dear!
One filter cartridge will give you 200 litres of clean, safe drinking water.
A set of two filters cost £19.99 now take off my UKprep15 discount code of 15% and add delivery £3.98 (free delivery on  orders over £20) so that's a total of £20.97.

Work that out and the cost is only 5p per litre...!

I think it's worth having for that saving by itself let alone the fact that that your getting safe, clean, properly filtered water.

How Does It Make Water Safe To Drink?

Inside the BPA-free Water-to-Go 75cl Active bottle you'll see the 3-in-1 filter and below is the click action lid. The lid has an integral drinking spout and protective, flip cap cover.
I found that this lid and spout mechanism design works well, especially when wearing glove.

The filter will work straight away to protect against bacteria, parasites and microplastics. It also reduces chemicals like chlorine and therefor gives a much improved water taste.

These are the three technologies used in a Water-to-Go filter:

1. Mechanical filtration; a very small pore size which stops contaminants passing through.
2. Electrical (by a positive charge) which reduces the pore size even further and attracts contaminants like a magnet, trapping them inside the filter. 
3. Activated carbon - the filter use activated carbon without using adhesives that would vastly reduce the carbon’s efficiency. Instead the activated carbon is contained within the filter membrane itself. This technique helps further reduce the contaminants whilst also eliminating bad tastes and odours.

This make this type of water filter perfect for preppers, disasters and emergencies, as well as general hiking, camping and all types of international travel in countries where the water quality is suspect!

There is one restriction though, you cannot filter salt water.  
You need to activate the filter first, two minute job and when your bottle is full you are ready to drink, no need to remove the lid and filter until your ready to fill it up again.

The filter will remove:

• 99.9999% for bacteria like E.Coli
• 99.999-99.9999%  for viruses like Polio
• 99.99% for micro-organisms
• Heavy metals (like lead) and also Chlorine and Fluoride are also filtered

For the international filter guidelines, please click button below:

How To Choose The Best Hunting Catapults For Survival

  One of the oldest tools used for procuring food are hunting catapults and a very good bit of survival kit to have in your bug out bag.
But what is the best catapult to hunt with? What is the best value for money and will greatly help you get through SHTF?