Cattail Roots in Winter - The Harsh Reality

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Video Transcription

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as much any survival we'd have a little discussion about frozen cattail roots stay tuned all right so if part of your winter survival strategy is to be collecting cattail roots to supplement your hunting trapping and ice fishing you had nothing come I just gave it a shot cuz I've never done it before thought I'd give it a shot and I got to tell you shipping through the frozen dirt the frozen mud that they usually are sitting in it's like chipping through rock it's ridiculous I'll show you that in a minute another thing is that if they're not sitting in frozen mud then they're sitting in frozen water which means that you need to walk into frozen water that's possibly knee-deep chipping ice and all that stuff if you have to and and then you have to extract them from the dirt that they're growing in anyways you know because they like to have structure and dirt and things like that so you know you're not going to just walk up to them and just pull them up standing in water and it's going to be you know an easy task in the winter everything's frozen everything's hard everything's really staying put that's really not a situation that you want to be in you know you don't want to be you know walking into a frozen lake you know up to your waist or your knees to be trying to you know dig out cattail roots because now you're putting yourself in jeopardy of dropping a core temperature and you're not going to get the calories back because you're going to expend a lot of calories then extracting them in that environment in that situation that frozen situation now half your body soaking what frozen we are chipping ice to get to it and you have to now actually start the job which is already a calorie dense job of getting cattail roots

and extracting them all right so here's the water's edge that's where the water starts right there so these are all cattails

but take a look you can see there's ice where there's less movement in the water glazed over thought shallow either so you have to walk into that to try to extract the cattails and that's absolutely not a situation you want to be in so now also these cattails on the edge here where there's some mud right on the edge where you don't have to wade into the water to get to them that's just like breaking into rock take a look alright so this is the finest solid edge here this is an edge right here in the mud and I've already been working out a little bit but I mean this is that's a nice shovel just like breaking through Rock cattail roots they're usually a foot down so you're going to be here a while hacking away and no doubt as you hacking you probably end up packing up the roots too so you know I also hoping to come out here gather some roots but I've never done in the winter before this is why I do these things so I learn this stuff which is why I'm making this video so i can it's crazy it's like break it into rock so i can impart this experience that I've learned which is cattail roots are not a viable option for food in winter not even close I'm not going to light a fire here to try to thaw the ground or anything because cattail is just a ridiculous flash tinder you know I'm going to like this whole field on fire incredibly dangerous careful will you walk alright already broke through right there once loop do that she'll do Pettis go right up into your ankle so I tend to check first before I step I mean this is all ankle deep so you can see so you need be real careful when you're walking this stuff too okay so no doubt you can sit there hacking away for a couple hours with a digging stick or you're going to shovel probably save a little time with the shovel cuz it's a metal tip to extract a couple bites of food you know but I don't really think it's a viable option in winter and I just wanted to share that with you guys because it's definitely a lesson for me you know i was hoping to come out here and you know take some cattails home with me it's just um it's like breaking into rock you know really not a fan it's a missionary survival for she views comments you support see in the next one take care