Hunters spend hours e-scouting the backcountry in an effort to create a best-case scenario — a successful hunt. It’s high time they put an equal amount of time and effort into emergency planning and wilderness medicine training. According to ...
Survive
ATV Accident: How Rescuers Saved a Hunter Who Drove Off a Cliff
Los Padres National Forest sprawls across coastal California, with nearly 2 million acres of chaparral, Jeffrey pine, and white fir running up peaks that turn silver with sun or snow, but in the dark, it’s pretty black, which is probably why a hunter ...
The Best Tourniquets: Experts Discuss the Trauma Kit Essential
Tourniquets are the most important piece of equipment in your EDC or backcountry first aid kit, no matter which style you choose to carry. Period. But if you get two or more people from the SOF community talking about which is best — a ...
The 6 Deadliest Alaska Plane Crashes of All Time
While Alaska may be the closest thing to heaven on Earth, flying in the Land of the Midnight Sun can be absolute hell. Harsh, often unpredictable weather conditions and the rough, wild country make Alaska plane crashes part of everyday ...
Clerk, 80, Uses Hunting Skills and a Shotgun to Stop Armed Robbery
Eighty-year-old Craig Cope credits his childhood hunting experience for the quick-thinking and stellar shotgunning skills that saved his California liquor store and possibly his life from a group of would-be armed robbers, and he has become internet ...
Investigators: Bear Went for the Kill in Fatal Montana Grizzly Attack
Last year, a fatal Montana bear attack claimed the life of Leah Davis Lokan when a grizzly dragged her out of her tent and killed her. When the story broke, authorities said Lokan had food in her tent, and many on social media wrote her death off as ...
Bear Blood May Hold Key to Best Supplements for Muscle Growth — It’s Science
A study recently released by Japanese researchers reads like a superhero origin story: Scientists extract blood serum from a creature and use it to grow human cells like some kind of super brew of muscle-building supplements. Then, of course, Japan ...
Unknown if Wealthy Couple Died in Crash Before Being Eaten by Bears
It was recently revealed that a wealthy Russian power couple and a former biathlete were killed when their helicopter crashed in the Russian wilderness. They were then mauled and eaten in a gruesome brown bear attack. The former athlete, Igor ...
Survive a Plane Crash: Extreme Real-Life Stories, Wilderness Survival Tips
Your odds of dying in a plane crash are minuscule; let's just get that established up front. A Harvard University study found the odds of being in a plane crash are 1 in 1.2 million, and the odds of dying in a plane crash are just 1 in 11 million — ...
Illuminating Survival: Learn From Light Sources Used by Medieval Troops
Artificial light sources used by humans didn't change much at all from pre-history right up to and into the 19th century. Until the invention of the lightbuld, people relied, in one way or another, on the light of a flame burning some kind of fuel to ...
Sick Teen Rescued From Island Where Kodiak Bear Mauled Navy SEAL
The sun doesn’t set here until about an hour before midnight, so the US Coast Guard rescuers knew they could pull off the mission in daylight. “Now put the ready 60 on the line! Put the ready 60 on the line!” the pager blared shortly after 9 p.m. ...
How To Survive An Earthquake: Inside or Outside Every Second Counts
It is another day at work. You are sitting at your desk and without any warning, you are spilled out of your chair and end up sprawled out on the floor. The entire building is shaking and swaying violently. Items are falling off shelves ...
That Time Mike Rowe Almost Died in a Shark Suit
Mike Rowe, the longtime host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel, did some nasty and risky shit on camera while performing often brutal, gross, and dangerous tasks people do every day to earn a paycheck. At times, it also seemed like the show just ...
Survival Tactics: Life and Death Lessons From Our National Parks
Search and rescue efforts in our national parks and wilderness areas are climbing in direct proportion to the explosion of visitor numbers over the last few years. Even with the surge in people getting lost or injured, though, the basic survival ...
Alaska Plane Crash: Helicopter Rescues 2 From Island Ruled by Bears
It’s one thing to rush to rescue a downed plane. It’s another when the rescue subjects were downed in an Alaska plane crash onto an island ruled by big bears. “We know of Montague Island as a spot where they bring like some of the more troubled ...
9 Solid Ways to Recycle Used Coffee Grounds
Every time we finish a pot of coffee, an existential problem arises. No, it’s not whether we make another pot — that’s a given. The bigger question is what do we do with the coffee grounds? In the United States, 64% of adults currently consume ...
Pro Tips: Why Everyday Carry Is About More Than Your EDC Pistol
If you truly embrace the idea of everyday carry, you realize your kit will often change depending on where you’re going and what you’ll be doing when you get there. Sometimes, you’re limited to what you can hide beneath a suit. Other times, ...
How to Survive a Snakebite: These Tips Have Teeth
Ophidiophobia or more commonly the fear of snakes is one of the most panic-inducing phobias there is. Even the mention of a snake to some can cause a visceral reaction. Whether you love them or hate them, they slither through our daily lives. To ...
Freedive Safe Hawaii: Saving Kids and Changing Lives
In Hawaii and many other ocean-centered cultures, freediving is a way of life. Learning to become one with the water and rely on it for sustenance — both physical and spiritual — is very much a rite of passage. But it’s also dangerous to the ...
Left for Dead: Dan Bigley Recounts Horrendous Bear Mauling Details
Among apex predators, there’s a fairly clear hierarchy. In Alaska, brown bears sit at the top of that wild social structure — above even humans. But for Dan Bigley, a seasoned outdoorsman, guide, and adventurer, enduring a brutal bear mauling brought ...
3-Year-Old Boy Found After 2 Days Lost in Montana Wilderness
Spending a single night alone and lost in the Montana wilderness wearing just pajamas would be a harrowing experience for most adults. A 3-year-old surviving in those circumstances for two full days is simply unfathomable. That’s exactly the ...
How to Identify Wild Medicinal, Useful, and Edible Plants
In my opinion, one of the most impressive survival skills one can possess is knowledge of wild edible plants. I know I know, a picture of a leaf or bark on Instagram isn’t going to garner as many likes as a shiny new knife, a “one, reload, one” ...
Stonehenge Dig Reveals 400 Ancient Deer and Boar Hunting Pits
Stonehenge has long been known as the site of burial rites from the mysterious days of prehistory, but it turns out that this famed location on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, still has secrets to reveal about its deep past. About 5,000 years ...
5 Tips for Surviving a Dog Attack From a Secret Service K-9 Handler
Marshall Mirarchi knows a thing or two about surviving a dog attack. He’s a former US Secret Service Special Operations Officer and the handler of Hurricane, a Distinguished Service Medal recipient. He recently told Free Range American that he’s ...
Take The 72-Hour Power Outage Challenge, Home Edition
One of my favorite books is “One Second After” by William Forstchen. The short novel tells the tale of a small-town family dealing with the effects of the power grid going down, most likely from an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) blast over the ...
7 Bear Attacks So Far in 2022: Two Attacks Since Fatal Army Base Mauling
When a freak bear attack claimed the life of a paratrooper stationed at Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) and injured another on May 10, it became the seventh bear attack reported in the US in 2022 so far, and the first to be reported ...
Army Chinooks, USAF PJs, Park Rangers Rescue Hikers on Mount Rainier
He was trapped in an ice crevasse knifed into the side of Mount Rainier, his arm and leg busted, his buddy nearly eight stories above him getting whipped by winds blasting the snowy ridge at 50 knots. But he had excellent cell phone service. And ...
The Molotov Cocktail: How They’re Made and Defending Against Them
Throwing a Molotov cocktail against a buttoned-up tank means that somebody might eventually repaint the tank. Throwing one against an unarmored civilian vehicle — if you don’t break a window — means the owner is going to be incredibly annoyed and the ...
The Fallacy of the ‘If You Had Only One Survival Tool’ Debate
I’ve been a professional survival instructor since 2007. Before that, I worked as a canoeing and kayaking outfitter from 1998 to 2006. I’ve seen the booming interest in survival television shows, the popularity of survival gear surge in retail ...
Sleep or Die: Survival Shows Don’t Stress the Importance of Getting Rest
In 2012, I asked a friend to help me assemble a demo reel to show executives in Hollywood after being signed by WME in the reality unscripted genre. I was instructed to show as much movement as possible to attract the interest of these production ...
