What preps are you doing this week? Part 3.

[Deeps]

Replacing the stored water I used during an outage: there was a burst main nearby that took out a lot of people's supply. It's the first time it's happened to me since I started any kind of prepping, so I was able to be completely calm in the knowledge I could last out most things. I also called and checked on a couple of vulnerable people nearby, and was pleased to discover they still had water, and had some bottled in storage after the last time this happened to them.

Good for you, i'm sure they appreciated your concern. I've got a mental shortlist of a few elderly neighbours I'll be checking up on if required, I probably should write it down as an aide memoire. I've banged on about it before but if things do go horribly wrong having good relations with your neighbours might well be the difference in thriving or not. For any extended incident, community could well be vital.

[Arzosah]

Trying a new way of storing rose hips instead of making syrup which I seem to be having trouble with I am now drying them once dried they can be crushed and you can make a tea with them which still gives a vitamin C boost

I'd love a follow-up post on that when you're ready - I worked on a couple of kilos of wild rosehips last month, and the syrup was absolutely vile, much too sugary as well.

What bits did you try to dry, did you get rid of the seeds and hairs etc first by cutting and washing, how did you get on? V interested

[sniper 55]

I went through the car this morning, sorting out the boot, making sure my winter kit was in and checking torch batteries of the torches in the car, it needed a tidy up anyway.

[Darklight]

I am fairly new here but I am currenty spending time with stacks of Ordnance survey map files, planning meticulously Bug out routes, mapping places to avoid and making a list of other maps to make. So far I have got 12 physical maps relevent to my location as well as about 1/3 of the files herehttps://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openda ... ducts.html, complicated stuff but im slowly figuring it out piece by piece (anybody with experience with digital cartography willing to give any advice would be very welcome!).

Beyond that I have been adding to bits to my meagre collection. So far this week a few things have arrived 28 Iosat KIo tabs, 66 ft of 550 paracord and a spare fire starter (went for the friendly swede firestarter XL would highly recommend).

[Jamesey1981]

Last couple of days have been spent converting a roadkill fallow buck into meat!
Still slightly warm when I found the poor thing, but judging by the road debris from the car that hit it and the position of the deer it will have died near enough instantly, glad it wasn't me that hit it, weighed a good fifty kilos and will have made a hell of a mess of the car.
None of the offal was usable but hardly lost any of the meat, I used to be a chef and one of my old colleagues that used to be a butcher came round to give me a hand, been a while since I've dealt with an animal that size as although I hunt I don't hunt deer.
Have ruined the tarp that I keep in my truck kit, couple of rips from dragging the deer into my back garden, but I'll happily swap a £6 tarp for a couple of hundred quid's worth of venison, and one of the reasons I keep a cheap one in there rather than one of my good camping tarps is so that I can use it for things other than a shelter roof without ruining something expensive.
All the meat is now sitting happily in my fridge, tomorrow it'll be getting cut into meal sized chunks, we may cure or smoke some of it, and the rest vacuum packed and frozen, and we'll be making the trim into mince and sausages, thankfully my mate will be bringing his electric mincer and sausage stuffer, using my little hand cranked one would be a slow and knackering process!
Might save a leg joint for Christmas dinner.

Sad that the deer got killed on the road, he was a good strong healthy animal, and it's not the most elegant dispatch, but he won't be going to waste at least and I don't think he suffered, pretty sure my neighbours now think that I'm a lunatic though.

[gamekeeper752]

good man
road kill is the way forwardss,
but I would be interested to know if you have used the skin bones and antlers (if any) I've made some needles from dried sinew and fish hooks and needles from both cooked and dried bones some have worked some haven't ,after all its very much trial and error

I'm also on the hunt for a good deer brain mix to tan leather having done so far deer a fox and a full wool skin using chemicals.

I think Fallow is the best venison but it makes rubbish sausages unless you put extra fat in the mix

Enjoy with a nice home made beer, or sloe gin/sloe vodka

[Jamesey1981]

No antlers to speak of, they were growing but small, I do have a couple of shed antlers that I've picked up in the past that I have plans for.
Couldn't do anything with the skin sadly, had I found the deer in a few weeks then I would have had a go at tanning it, but I don't have a shed to hang it in to dry yet, it's getting built in a couple of weeks, the mrs would kill me if I tried to dry it indoors! I did a fairly amateur job of skinning too!

The real shame in my view was the liver being ruined, I love venison liver, but I suppose I can't really complain!
The meat on him is indeed very lean, we're going to mince some pork belly into it to improve its sausageyness!
I still have a little of last year's blackberry whisky left, that'll go nicely, along with the first chestnuts that I've picked up this year.

[gamekeeper752]

What I do with the body, is first make a small hole in the skin of a back leg and using a hollow metal spike made for me by a family friend 40 odd years ago, pump it up using my car compressor, he used to have a little petrol one. if you've cut the throat then you don't make a safety cut to stop it popping.

once this has ballooned up, its a simple matter of cutting along the normal skinning lines it keeps the skin whole and lifts it off the meat thus stopping you nicking the meat,

when i used to sell fox skins it also stopped me hitting the scent glands

[TomW]

Nice find on the deer jamesey!

The last week has been a nice mix of preparing for winter. Gear in to the car in case I get stuck. Preparing the gardens, mine and my parents. We run winter tyres all year but I've dug my dad's out ready to go on his car. Drained the outside water points ready for any frost. Pulled a whole pile of wood I had hoarded away out ready for processing, (my back aches just thinking about it...). Stashed away a few p3 masks too, useful in the short-term essential if it all goes down lol! Lastly started planning for spring

[Jamesey1981]

What I do with the body, is first make a small hole in the skin of a back leg and using a hollow metal spike made for me by a family friend 40 odd years ago, pump it up using my car compressor, he used to have a little petrol one. if you've cut the throat then you don't make a safety cut to stop it popping.

once this has ballooned up, its a simple matter of cutting along the normal skinning lines it keeps the skin whole and lifts it off the meat thus stopping you nicking the meat,

when i used to sell fox skins it also stopped me hitting the scent glands

That's a good idea, and now you mention it I think someone has told me that before, if I get another one I'll give it a go.