If you read my last post, you know I promised to write about the first of many camping trips I have planned. Surprisingly, this excursion turned out to be pretty interesting as my Army unit trained on survival techniques in the gorgeous Colorado Rockies.

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WARNING: I did include one picture of a rabbit I killed and cleaned.  I did not find it appropriate to take a picture of anything except the cleaned meat, but the meat isn’t washed in the picture.

Oh, and second warning, in most of these pictures, I haven’t showered or brushed my teeth.

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I arrived at the site on Friday around 10 p.m., past my bedtime, and immediately threw on a headlamp to cross a small creek and set up a sleeping area.  Too tired for a hooch (Army term for poncho tent), I hoped the base of four Ponderosa pine trees would provide shelter from the rain and a high enough spot to avoid damp ground.

Here’s what it looked like when I unzipped my bivy sack (cover for my sleeping bag) the next morning:

And here’s a picture of my temporary set-up (Army backpack or ruck under my poncho and sleeping bag inside of my woodland camouflaged bivy sack):

There isn’t enough room for me to write about all of the classes I took on Saturday, but if you’re interested, almost everything I learned came from the U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76.

After knots classes (using rope in survival situations), I built my own little fire using flint.

Although my fire looked puny compared to the signal fire we lit.

I learned about setting snares for small animals (I’m so super-camoed I’m sure it’s hard to see me behind the snare)…

and set-up my hooch just before it started pouring rain.

If you’re wondering why I’m wearing ten different kinds of cold weather gear in these JULY pictures, it’s because I’m a pansy when it comes to outdoor temperatures below, well… the seventies.  P.A.N.S.Y.

Somewhere in between the survival classes, I sat down for a nice radioactive Army meal, the kind that won’t go bad for about a billion years.  The chicken tasted pretty… orange.

After eating that substance, I decided that although I would have to kill a live animal in my next class at least it would provide me with less-neon protein.

The rabbit kill.  This subject seemed to be the only thing my friends wanted to hear about after this trip so I’ll give you some details.  Our instructor stressed the humane killing of animals which I appreciated (part of the reason I buy grass-fed beef) and the techniques we used caused as little pain and suffering as possible to the animal.

After watching my instructor kill and clean his rabbit, I chose a fluffy white and black bunny from the cage holding four other rabbits.  I say bunny because this guy looked like Thumper.  Disassociating myself with the cuteness, I grabbed the rabbit’s back legs and proceeded to swing him slowly upside down.  Not sure why this technique subdues the animal (much like chickens and other fowl) but after a minute or two, he stopped kicking long enough for me to slowly lift him with my left hand.  I thank my son’s martial arts class for the next part as I used my right hand to swiftly karate chop the rabbit right behind the ears and break its neck. I immediately placed him on the ground and used my foot to brace his head as I twisted his neck to ensure a clean kill.   Looking back I think the karate chop was the most important part.  The faster and more efficiently this step is done the less pain to the animal.

I cleaned him using a simple field knife… no details here as there are many different ways to clean an animal. Here is my one and only pic post cleaning (I saved the liver and heart and as much meat as possible during the cleaning):

Someone was kind enough to bring BBQ sauce which made the meat considerably better.

After it was all said and done, I really enjoyed this trip.  I’m not a big fan of having to kill my own food, but I feel confident I could do it again to survive.  I greatly respect those that have lived through real survival situations.

If you’re interested in some extra reading, check out the Wikipedia description of the area, Camp Hale.  I couldn’t believe some of the history behind the land from WWII training to a super-secret CIA operation in the sixties.  Happy camping season to you and yours!