Book Review: Living off the Land

Hi everyone!! I saw this book, Living off the Land by Chris McNab, at the library and my first thought was that it was about homesteading---gardening, canning, raising animals for meat. I was totally wrong, but the book looked so good I checked it out and read it. (Well, same as the other book I reviewed, I read the parts of it that applied to us.)

Living off the Land is basically an instruction book for anyone who wants to survive out in the wild. There are chapters on Finding Water, Survival Food, Hunting and Trapping, Making Fire and Cooking. I took notes on the Finding Water chapter and tucked the papers into my emergency folder. I thought he had some great ideas for ways to find water in the wild when there is no obvious source. The Survival Food chapter did not have pictures of the foods, so a wild edible foods guide with color pictures would be a good thing to have.

He has chapters in the book for Surviving in the Dessert, Surviving in Arctic Climates, Surviving in the Tropics, and Surviving Water Environments. Those are the chapters I did not read as I don't currently live near any of those types of environments.

I did read the last chapter, though, which was Urban Survival. That chapter covers Preparation, Evacuation, Gardening, Urban Hunting, and Finding Water.

If you're wanting to do some back-country camping, where you live off the land the whole time, I think this book would be a good resource. As I said, the water chapter had some great ideas and I thought the book was worth reading even if only for those. The writing style is very easy to read. This isn't the be-all, end-all of survival books, but I thought it was a good read, and had some very good ideas and good illustrations.

Prep On!
Gen-IL Homesteader
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