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HATCHET ONLY - SOLO SURVIVAL - No other items (Catch & Cook, Shelters etc)

The Bear Essentials

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This Solo Survival Challenge was inspired by my favourite childhood book: HATCHET, by Gary Paulsen.

I construct multiple bushcraft shelters and showcase a diverse range of primitive survival techniques while fishing, hunting, and foraging for a variety of food!

This is a mix of education and entertainment. My style is meant to teach in a way that's enjoyable and exciting to watch, hopefully inspiring everyone, including younger generations - to get out and enjoy the outdoors!

The Bear Essentials is my Brand, and I make/innovate on a bunch of camping and outdoor gear as a passion project. If you'd like to help support my journey, business, and educational content, feel free to reach out or visit The Bear Essentials Website and check out my gear!

www.bearessentialsoutdoors.ca

Your friend,
DJ

#survival #bushcraft #primitive

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
1:20 First Wild Encounter
1:50 How To Stalk Animals
3:35 What I Brought With Me
6:15 Finding Tinder Fungus
6:40 How To Tell How Much Time Until Sunset
8:09 How To Do a Chaga Fire Plow
11:01 Chaga Fireplow Success
13:04 Making a Birch Bark Bowl
14:20 Boiling Water in a Birch Bark Bowl
16:28 Hunting for Bullfrogs at Night
19:26 Eating Frog Legs
22:06 Day 2 Plan
22:40 Harvesting Bunchberries
24:19 How Tinder Fungus Holds an Ember
25:30 Harvesting Wild Cattails
26:46 The Cattail Root System and What's Edible
28:21 Making it To the River
28:59 How To Weave Cattail Cordage
29:45 Building a Hobbit Hole Bushcraft Shelter
33:30 Wolf Prints
34:00 Eating Wild Sarsaparilla
24:52 Harvesting Dogbane to Make Fishing Line
36:31 How To Weave Fishing Line Cordage From Dogbane
40:56 How to Make a Survival Gorge Hook
43:49 Catching Crayfish
44:36 Primitive Fishing Using A Gorge Hook and Hand Made Fishing Line
46:36 Rekindling a Chaga Fire from Ember
48:22 Catch and Cook
49:08 Eating Cattail Rhizomes on the Fire
51:14 Leave No Trace

20 Comments

@TheBearEssentials Creator 2 years ago (edited) Pinned

MORE INFO + COMMENTS ANSWERED:

1) Can you still get giardia from the raw cattails? / How safe are the Cattails to eat?"
Yes, technically, you can get giardia from eating those raw shoots. I haven't heard of anyone getting it that way, but these plants are filters, and one should always wash them off first, but even then, I'm guessing the parasite can technically be in the shoot. I eat them raw because they are way more delicious that way to be honest! But yes - safer method is cook them (at a minimum, wash the new shoots off well with clean water)

Also, don't wat cattails from any roadside location simply because they are filter plants and any roadside toxins or pesticide runoff will accumulate in these plants. If you're in a survival or wild setting, there's no risk there - but in general, avoid grabbing them from the roadside!

2) Why didn't you use your bag to boil the water in?
I just wanted to ONLY use the hatchet - I found some human trash at times, too; there was a can and piece of glass and a small frayed rope, but I didn't want to use any of these so I could focus on showing what to do with just nature.

3) Is the Chaga Friction fire reliable?
I would say no. I think I got lucky and worked very hard for this fire. In the future, I would stick to the bow drill. If the Chaga is moist (which it is in pretty much all warm months, and very likely in the winter too then it won't work.)

@dalcassian9098 1 year ago

The lack of ego here makes this content very appealing

@ek-nz 2 years ago

I feel a lot of kindred spirits here. We all grew up with Hatchet (I think I liked Brian’s Winter even better) and we are all still interested in survival and living with nature, despite many of us being somewhat stuck in the urban grind. Thanks for this video DJ, we appreciate it.

@rock_machine01 2 years ago

I’ve never seen anybody be able to turn green vegetation into a fishing line. I’d love to see this work.

@ZukoB-Lit 1 year ago

2 fish from a stick and some self made twine is insane to me. That's awesome.

@user-vw6ej7ib5c 2 years ago

Old saying " the more you know the less you need" holds true

@PKAdventures 2 years ago (edited)

42:10 -part of the reason i have a long beard is because if i can't find any bait and none of my lures are working, then i can run my fingers through my beard and come up with a couple loose hairs, then trim off around the bottom inch of my beard. then i put the trimmed off portion around my hook, and use the loose hairs i found to wrap around the tuft of hair and hook, tie it off, and boom, i have a fly.
the cool thing is i have a bunch of different colors in my beard, and the more time i spend in the sun the more those colors come out, and the more the browns turn to reds and oranges, which seem to work really well.
so if i do get stranded, by the time i need to make a fly from a small portion of my beard, it should be getting a lot of that red and orange color.

also, if somehow you have no other options, you can make pretty good cordage for fishing line from beard hair.

and hair is actually pretty good in a tinder bundle. but you want to mix it with other things because it has a bunch of natural oils and burns really fast.

so ya, 1 of my most important and useful survival tools = my Beard

oh, and great video, you got my sub!

@Hobbithooksets 2 years ago

The "Hatchet" was arguably THE book that got me interested in camping, Bushcraft and Survival. Love this style of video. Great change up from the knot tutorials (which I also love). Keep these coming! 🤜

@LieutenantSheezy 2 years ago

Love how he talks into my left AirPod for all the selfie shots

@Gruzz_Seymour 1 year ago

The boy from hatchet ALSO made his shelter in a rock overhang 🤣🤣

@XanderBudnick 2 years ago

learned alot on this one DJ! Great video brother! ive always wanted to try the chaga fire plow! u da man!

@foreveragamer7560 2 years ago

Love that you explain the stuff you do as well

@TEDSTER87 1 year ago

Met D.J. at the Toronto outdoors show the other day, great guy, and I love what he's doing. Valuable knowledge being taught. Get outdoors and practice what you learn. Even bought that wallet sharpener in person that I've had my eyes on for a while now. Handy little thing. I've been sharpening blades my whole life, with water and stones, or expensive sharpener systems. An I work in a company that sharpens tools. So I can certainly say that it's a handy little item to keep in your bag.

@TheBearEssentials Creator 2 years ago

One of my most fun videos to shoot!! Hope you all enjoy it!!!
-Your friend,
DJ

@TareanSmiley 1 year ago

I had a weird situation where we couldn't find natural bait anywhere. It was super confusing. Early next morning we heard chickens clucking. Our camp was almost literally in some dudes backyard, and his chickens would roam the area and pick it clean. In hindsight it was pretty funny, but I could imagine wild birds giving you a run for your money if you're unlucky.

@trevorking2820 2 years ago

I recently read the Hatchet series and I can’t get them off my mind. Kinda the reason why I’m watching this lol. As a city kid, I was always fascinated by the woods and those books brought it all back with a vengeance.
It’s humbling to realize how much peril you would be in if modern infrastructure collapsed or if you were stranded in the bush.

@chrisrider102 2 years ago

Love the moment the dark came down and your fire burned brightly! Outstanding

@JifeLacket 2 years ago

I had no bait when I was up in northern Ontario with the family on a canoe-in-camping trip and used random green leaves and caught a bunch of rock bass. The hooks are definitely what made it work but it was crazy to me when I was 25 years younger.