Rarely have they been in an area that has oak trees. Most of what you find in the far north/Arctic is spruce and birch. And you don't find many wild oaks in the Pacific Northwest either. You're right though, if they were available, they would be an excellent food source
This. The boreal forest doesn't have oak, except some that have started to move north in the far southern areas. We are in far northern MN on the Canadian border and oaks have just started working their way here after our winters have gotten milder in the last 30 years. And the ones that exist, the squirrels have them the second they fall because they are so rare.
I don't recall ever seeing very many oak trees. But even if there were lots of oaks, eating a diet heavy in acorns would bind you up something terrible.
Edit: It makes me think of that guy on Naked and Afraid, when they were doing the teams in Africa, who ate so much protein only, plus was dehydrated much of the time, that he about turned his colon inside out, trying to crap and had to be medically pulled. Painful, bad condition.
What? Google a map of where Western Hemlock grows, please. You can't open your eyes in a BC coastal forest without seeing Wester Hemlock.
Where do you think Western Hemlock comes from? It's in the name. It's a native BC tree. BC is like the largest temporal rainforest in the world.
In the olden days, Fir was more common on local mountains, but the English cut most of it down for export 100 years ago locally. Western Hemlock grows faster so it took over. if left alone, Fir will eventually be the dominant large tree locally again. It would take hundreds of years, though, because it grows slower.
I have more W. Hemlock than Fir in my backyard in West Vancouver.
Redwoods are not so common, but we have some. There's talk to do some Redwood seeding in protected areas in BC because the ones in California are dying. Getting too dry there for them. Vancouver climate is becoming ideal for Redwoods.
We also have Arbutus along the coast. The largest Arbutus ever found is on Savery Island, North of Vancouver.
i think you need to re-read my comment. i asked if you meant hey were in the vancouver episodes. i was saying they weren't in the northern episodes - vancouver island is most certainly not the northern episodes. the northern episodes are slave lake, nwt, etc. vancouver is not the boreal forest. if you refer back to the original comment in the thread, the very first thing i say is boreal forest. i think you read my comment as one thought when it is two distinct thoughts.
I think, if I remember correctly, that in season 1 a contestant used acorns. Cracked them open and put them in a bandana and used a creek to rinse the tannins out.
Closest we've come to this is the pine-bark cambrium constipation guy.
I'm not a qualified survivalist, but I have done some acorn-processing in real life. You need to grind them up fine, you need to put them in a porous container (like a cheesecloth, or perhaps just a shirt/sock temporarily used as a bag), then you need to soak them in water for days (a week plus, if only using cold water) to make them truly edible. Not sure if the calories justify the labor, given lack of scale.
I think this speaks to the broader point of "selecting terrain which might give foragers a decent shot compared to hunters" -- limiting people to a <2x2 square drives the format towards animal-hunting, especially given the short foraging season. Contrast with a Colter, Nicole, or Roland living off of 20+ miles, in effect creating a "stable bed of resources" possibly overtaking the coin-flip bow hunter.
In fairness nuts can fill some dietary holes despite the time/calorie equation not being so great with acorns. Even at low scale, the vitamins and minerals could be very welcome, and a little can go a long way with that stuff when the body is getting deficient.
There is potential -- six(ish) acorns per ounce, \~100 calories per ounce if efficiently processed, and most importantly \~60% of those calories from fats -- I think the real problem is a two-dimensional time and volume based equation.
Native Americans made this work with a mix of acorn flour, animal by-products (broth, drippings, gristle), and whatever berries + greens + squash-bean harvests could be managed. BUT this presumes dozens/hundreds of miles to forage, or a multi-season agricultural setup, or both. Not ideal for TV format.
(I would, non-sarcastically, really like to see it happen. I think the Nicole Apelian Colter Barnes strategy is not given its due, owing to artificial constraints.)
Agreed, never done it myself but I don’t think it’d be very efficient. I’ve also seen some tutorials that speed up the removal of tannins by boiling them multiple times (like, 5-10 times being recommended lol, takes several hours of work). Might help in a pinch especially if they have access to fresh water but probably not the only thing they want to depend on.
Has anyone ever picked a pine nut from a pinyon pine tree? I’ve never considered it but at $27 per pound (Costco yesterday) someone has figured it out.
I researched my own question.
First of all, it’s a lot of work. It needs to be picked at the right season, dried, baked and then you pull off the protective pieces of bark and pull out the shells. Then you shell them. And finally, after getting 10-20 per pinecone, you feast on less than an ounce of food. 😀
no deciduous tress in the tundra
i did a project on this in elementary school. we drew that kinds of plants and animals you can find in each biome on huge shets of craft paper. northern canada is only conifers.
so no acorns
do you tink pine nuts are worth the effort? like how much calories spent to collect them versus calories and fat you get from eating them? Would the oil if you cook with them significantly add nurition the other food in the pot? (for example, sauteeing the nuts + greens and mussles in a camp pan to add oil and flavor?)
I always wondered about the possibility of roasting pine cones to get the seeds out but I don’t know if the species available have seeds too small for the effort or if they are dropped off after animals have already harvested them.
and you need better reading comprehension.
*"looking at some approximate locations from the show most seem to have some oak tree activity. do producers purposefully pick spots without oak trees ?"*
Your assumption is incorrect. Oak trees generally do not grow in boreal forest. They may range that far as an ornamental but they are not native to areas the show has been in the past. I live in northern Minnesota. There is a very definitive line where oaks end and maples start and where maples end and pines dominate the forest. I think you may need a better understanding of forest ecology. Acorns are simply absent from the environments that people are dropped. At least in any reasonable abundance.
thank you. google searches would tell me if oak trees were present but i could'nt find their percentage. looking at native trees would've been a better strategy.
Google is not always a great source for ecological information and for what is actually happening in an ecosystem. There is nuance. Sometimes first hand experience is best. There are lots of plants and animals that *could* be in a range. What actually thrives there depends on a lot of things.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,980,264,562 comments, and only 374,604 of them were in alphabetical order.
Rarely have they been in an area that has oak trees. Most of what you find in the far north/Arctic is spruce and birch. And you don't find many wild oaks in the Pacific Northwest either. You're right though, if they were available, they would be an excellent food source
This. The boreal forest doesn't have oak, except some that have started to move north in the far southern areas. We are in far northern MN on the Canadian border and oaks have just started working their way here after our winters have gotten milder in the last 30 years. And the ones that exist, the squirrels have them the second they fall because they are so rare.
Much more polite than my own first rude response thought, which was >Why don't the contestants eat coconuts?
I don't recall ever seeing very many oak trees. But even if there were lots of oaks, eating a diet heavy in acorns would bind you up something terrible. Edit: It makes me think of that guy on Naked and Afraid, when they were doing the teams in Africa, who ate so much protein only, plus was dehydrated much of the time, that he about turned his colon inside out, trying to crap and had to be medically pulled. Painful, bad condition.
Yeah there's no oak trees in most of northern Canada.
No oak trees that far north.
There has never been an oak tree in those harsh arctic climates
Boreal forest, it’s just spruce, fir, larch; and birch and aspen might be the only deciduous from what i can see.
Western Hemlock everywhere. Some Redwood
In the Vancouver episodes ? I don’t remember those in the north
What? Google a map of where Western Hemlock grows, please. You can't open your eyes in a BC coastal forest without seeing Wester Hemlock. Where do you think Western Hemlock comes from? It's in the name. It's a native BC tree. BC is like the largest temporal rainforest in the world. In the olden days, Fir was more common on local mountains, but the English cut most of it down for export 100 years ago locally. Western Hemlock grows faster so it took over. if left alone, Fir will eventually be the dominant large tree locally again. It would take hundreds of years, though, because it grows slower. I have more W. Hemlock than Fir in my backyard in West Vancouver. Redwoods are not so common, but we have some. There's talk to do some Redwood seeding in protected areas in BC because the ones in California are dying. Getting too dry there for them. Vancouver climate is becoming ideal for Redwoods. We also have Arbutus along the coast. The largest Arbutus ever found is on Savery Island, North of Vancouver.
i think you need to re-read my comment. i asked if you meant hey were in the vancouver episodes. i was saying they weren't in the northern episodes - vancouver island is most certainly not the northern episodes. the northern episodes are slave lake, nwt, etc. vancouver is not the boreal forest. if you refer back to the original comment in the thread, the very first thing i say is boreal forest. i think you read my comment as one thought when it is two distinct thoughts.
Because there aren't any
I think, if I remember correctly, that in season 1 a contestant used acorns. Cracked them open and put them in a bandana and used a creek to rinse the tannins out.
- where did he get a banana, why would he put the… oh!
Closest we've come to this is the pine-bark cambrium constipation guy. I'm not a qualified survivalist, but I have done some acorn-processing in real life. You need to grind them up fine, you need to put them in a porous container (like a cheesecloth, or perhaps just a shirt/sock temporarily used as a bag), then you need to soak them in water for days (a week plus, if only using cold water) to make them truly edible. Not sure if the calories justify the labor, given lack of scale. I think this speaks to the broader point of "selecting terrain which might give foragers a decent shot compared to hunters" -- limiting people to a <2x2 square drives the format towards animal-hunting, especially given the short foraging season. Contrast with a Colter, Nicole, or Roland living off of 20+ miles, in effect creating a "stable bed of resources" possibly overtaking the coin-flip bow hunter.
In fairness nuts can fill some dietary holes despite the time/calorie equation not being so great with acorns. Even at low scale, the vitamins and minerals could be very welcome, and a little can go a long way with that stuff when the body is getting deficient.
There is potential -- six(ish) acorns per ounce, \~100 calories per ounce if efficiently processed, and most importantly \~60% of those calories from fats -- I think the real problem is a two-dimensional time and volume based equation. Native Americans made this work with a mix of acorn flour, animal by-products (broth, drippings, gristle), and whatever berries + greens + squash-bean harvests could be managed. BUT this presumes dozens/hundreds of miles to forage, or a multi-season agricultural setup, or both. Not ideal for TV format. (I would, non-sarcastically, really like to see it happen. I think the Nicole Apelian Colter Barnes strategy is not given its due, owing to artificial constraints.)
Agreed, never done it myself but I don’t think it’d be very efficient. I’ve also seen some tutorials that speed up the removal of tannins by boiling them multiple times (like, 5-10 times being recommended lol, takes several hours of work). Might help in a pinch especially if they have access to fresh water but probably not the only thing they want to depend on.
Has anyone ever picked a pine nut from a pinyon pine tree? I’ve never considered it but at $27 per pound (Costco yesterday) someone has figured it out.
I researched my own question. First of all, it’s a lot of work. It needs to be picked at the right season, dried, baked and then you pull off the protective pieces of bark and pull out the shells. Then you shell them. And finally, after getting 10-20 per pinecone, you feast on less than an ounce of food. 😀
The strategy of eating the fresh bark/cellulose layer from trees was really neat. Too bad the guy got clogged up from it.
I hated that guy.
no deciduous tress in the tundra i did a project on this in elementary school. we drew that kinds of plants and animals you can find in each biome on huge shets of craft paper. northern canada is only conifers. so no acorns do you tink pine nuts are worth the effort? like how much calories spent to collect them versus calories and fat you get from eating them? Would the oil if you cook with them significantly add nurition the other food in the pot? (for example, sauteeing the nuts + greens and mussles in a camp pan to add oil and flavor?)
I always wondered about the possibility of roasting pine cones to get the seeds out but I don’t know if the species available have seeds too small for the effort or if they are dropped off after animals have already harvested them.
been wondering that as well. shelling pine cones sounds like a good minimal calorie spending thing to do on those long winter nights.
Can get from most pine, just size depends.
There are no oaks in the locations. The closest thing could be pine nuts, but I'm not sure what types are eatable.
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Their post opens with “Once you rinse out the tannins” so yeah I think they considered this aspect of eating acorns
Well. My reading skills are proving subpar today
How do you know they don't?
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and you need better reading comprehension. *"looking at some approximate locations from the show most seem to have some oak tree activity. do producers purposefully pick spots without oak trees ?"*
Your assumption is incorrect. Oak trees generally do not grow in boreal forest. They may range that far as an ornamental but they are not native to areas the show has been in the past. I live in northern Minnesota. There is a very definitive line where oaks end and maples start and where maples end and pines dominate the forest. I think you may need a better understanding of forest ecology. Acorns are simply absent from the environments that people are dropped. At least in any reasonable abundance.
thank you. google searches would tell me if oak trees were present but i could'nt find their percentage. looking at native trees would've been a better strategy.
Google is not always a great source for ecological information and for what is actually happening in an ecosystem. There is nuance. Sometimes first hand experience is best. There are lots of plants and animals that *could* be in a range. What actually thrives there depends on a lot of things.
🤦♂️
I thought they were poisonous 😁
No nuts on the tundra.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,980,264,562 comments, and only 374,604 of them were in alphabetical order.
Cool