Stranded On an Island | Solo Survival with Only 3 Items - My Canoe Got a Hole!

We got a fish. That is not good. It's riding a bit lower than usual. Think there might be a hole. Hey everyone, it's DJ with the Bear Essentials. I'm stranded on an island today because my canoe got a hole in it. I only have this dry bag with a few limited items inside. I've got a basic knife, a full water bottle, and a survival tin. With six feet of cordage, a bit of fishing line, and a hook. For clothes, it's really just a pair of shoes, pants, and sweater. So that's it, just a water bottle, the fishing tin, and a knife. But I have no fire starter and no pot, so this is gonna be quite the challenge. I don't know if I can think about patching up that canoe tonight, so I need to think about survival. I do have some water here, but it's not that much, and I need to find a water source. The knife and the fishing hooks are gonna come in handy, but a shelter is gonna be very important, so let's go do that. So when I was hitting some rapids, look at that, the side got all damaged. This is not a problem. I could fix that when I get home, but this needs to be fixed out here in the field. But I might not have time to do that tonight, so I'm gonna prepare for the worst, and prepare to survive as long as I need to until I can fix this canoe. So my first priority here on this island is to start a fire because I need to boil water. Hydration is probably my biggest immediate risk out here. Even though I have a full water bottle, I'll probably run through that pretty fast. So my best option here is probably gonna be creating a bow drill kit. All right, I see cedar. Now, even though this is the right tree that we want for the bow drill, this won't work because we need dead branches off of it. The live stuff and the live bark actually does burn, but it's no good for the bow drill, so I gotta keep looking. This is a good sign, though, that there's a cedar here. What's that? Hey, buddy. Oh, man, I just came across something really cool. See these darker leaves here? That's wintergreen. And I don't know if you can hear them, but the mosquitoes and the horseflies are just outrageous right now, flying about. So what you could do with this stuff is just rub it on your skin. Not only do you smell nice, but the mosquitoes hate mint. So this stuff is really good for keeping them away. Oh, there's lots of it, too. Oh, yeah, look at this. See here, all this stuff? And it really doesn't smell like anything at all until you break it, and then you break it open. Mm, smells good. All right, so back on the trail, trying to find our cedar. So I think I see what looks like a cedar right over there. Hopefully it has some dead branches on it. There we go. Okay. Let's see if I can climb this guy. Let's see if we can get that. There we go, three nice pieces. Okay, so we have our dead cedar sticks, and that's gonna be our bow drill kit. But I gotta pause the fire right now. I still got some water. I think I'm gonna work on trying to get some fish. So I'm gonna build a primitive fish trap just right there. You build sort of an M shape. The fish swim into it, and they can't get back out. So it's not so simple as to make it and fish just come in. I also gotta find some bait for it. I'm just on the hunt for some rocks. There's a good one here. And at the same time, when I flip them over, I'm gonna be looking underneath, see if there's any critters, worms, anything. So we kind of have the M shape trapped. A fish will swim through, or a crayfish will swim through that center bit and get whatever bait's in here. And then it can't generally find its way back out. It just has trouble. It follows the side and kind of just doesn't know where to go. It's hard to thread the needle to get through there. That's the theory. I really don't know if this is gonna work. It's not nearly big enough, but let's see if I could find some bait. See if there's any grubs or worms. I'm gonna throw some cover on here. A little bit of shade there so the fish can hide. Oh, look at that. Wow. Let's leave them be. You can stay there, buddy. What is this? Yes. I know what you're thinking with this thing. I am not hungry enough to eat this. It's only been a few hours. Another salamander friend. Hey, buddy. I wonder if these webs are from the salamander. Oh! Is it dead? Is it a big dead worm? Oh, no, he's alive. Wow. Okay. That's huge. Let's get the hook set up and cast a line out there. Maybe get some brook trout. A loon has come to visit. Look at that. There she goes. That's nice. I heard something stirring in the water. I was wondering what it was. Nice loon come to say hello. Okay. Stick it in this here empty log, and that will bend down, and I'm gonna set a trap that'll trigger and spring a hook set in the fish when I cast a line out that way. I'll show you how it works. And now we take another stick. We're gonna carve another one. So this is what's known as an L7 trigger, and basically these two line up, one on top of another, and that holds it. If I'm putting force vertically right now, it can't come off, but if something pulls to the side, it trips, and when that trips, the whole spring is gonna snare, and that sets the hook on a fish. That's the theory at least. So let's get this in action. So imagine a fish pulling. Boom. Hook is set. So this thing flies back, the sapling pulls on the line, hooks the fish. Ready? Okay, with that line out there, we'll set this trigger. So the snare is set. And as soon as a fish pulls on that worm, this thing will trigger, and set the hook. And looks like nothing in our M trap yet. There's our little grub, and there's a little piece there. Oh my God, there's a leech. There's a leech. The leech is eating the grub. Leeches are really good bait. Look at this. Another one. There's a whole bunch in there it seems. Okay, we'll throw this on the hook, and see if we can get anything. Okay, so I think this is gonna be my shelter location. Just like this. And by shelter, all I'm gonna do is take the canoe, and lead it on an angle. The reason I'm not building a full shelter is because I need to get a fire started, and that takes priority because I need drinking water. So I could just use a makeshift canoe shelter, and I think that'll get me through the night. This moss is pretty nice. The reason I'm choosing this shelter is because of the spearmint. It's everywhere. And the bugs have been just annihilating me. So the spot will be really nice in terms of keeping the bugs away. I've never really just slept on the ground. I'm gonna do it. That'll be my home for tonight. Let's get a Bojo fire started. No fish yet. Nice. Let's take some of these small pebbles inside this. Now if I get a fish, I could hear that jiggling around. Okay, so this is a piece of cedar from before. Now our spindle's gonna be made from the same cedar. So the exact same material as this hearth board. And at one end, we're gonna have it thin, and the other end thick. This end, we want it a little bit more blunt as well. Now how it works is it's gonna go like that into this board. So we wanna carve a divot into here. Next up, this is gonna be our bow. It doesn't need to be curved. This one's straight, this'll do. In my tin, I have this six foot of rope. Now this is what we've chosen for our bearing block. It won't last very long. We'll see how it does. And the technique for doing this, you put your one knee like this, your other hand, the crook of this is gonna go right up against your shin. Perfect. And we're gonna do this just until we have a little bit of smoke. Great. Perfect. This stuff is what's gonna ignite. But what we first need is a triangle to go into this right here. And what that triangle does, is it allows an ember to fall out into this dust. All right, let's give it a go. And when we have a significant amount of dust, an amount that we're happy with, and there's a good amount of smoke coming out, and when we're ready, we'll increase the pressure a whole bunch to really ignite that. Here we go. This water bottle here is titanium, single walled, which means I could boil water right in it. Super happy to get some water. I've been passive fishing this whole time I've been here, no bites yet. There's nothing I could do about that, but I've solved my shelter and my hydration, and I've got a fire. So let's get that boiling. Just checking on our M-Trap and our L7 trigger. But it looks like nothing wanted that worm or leech. Let's have a look underneath. Take a look over here. Whoa, a frog. We got a frog. Anything here? Nothing. Well, looks like I'm going hungry tonight, but at least I got water, I got fire, and I got some kind of makeshift shelter. So that's okay with me. Got some loud bullfrog neighbors too. Maybe this fish trap will go up at night, and I'll have some late dinner. I'm not holding my breath for it, but you never know. In the morning I might have something. It's starting to get dark out. Oh, look at that. Now you may be wondering how the heck I'm gonna pick that up. Well, I'll show you. Put it in like that, and now it grabs. There we go. Just cool it down. Now we're gonna grab a bunch of this. And check this out, it's a small white pine. And you know it's a white pine because it is in each of these bunches should have five needles. See if you can count those. One, two, three, four, five. And an easy way to remember it, W-H-I-T-E, white pine. And look at these new shoots. These are great for tea. Look at this. It floats perfectly. I'm cooling the tea off just a little bit. Cooling the container. That's nice, holy. So I think I'm gonna wind down, try to get whatever sleep I can. I don't know if I'm gonna get any sleep at all just sleeping on the ground over there under the canoe. But I think it's hilarious and I wanna give it a try. So tomorrow I've gotta figure out how to patch that canoe up. I think I've got a good idea and I was scouting around and I got a solid plan. That was extremely rough. The bugs were really bad. The winter green probably did a bit but I'm not sure if that worked entirely. Okay, so our fish trap has not been set off, sadly. And that's okay. One day without food isn't gonna kill me. The important thing is I got water shelter and now I'm on my way to fix that canoe. I was totally wrong. We got a fish. There it is. What a lunker. Unfortunately, I think this one's too big to eat so we'll just let it go. See spots like this with this resin coming out? It's where our tin comes into handy. Nice grouse right over there. But it's not grouse season so I can't. So our next step is we wanna heat this stuff up. What we're gonna do is take some charcoal and just crush it up very fine right into that goo. You get a nice paste. And it's not a complete, complete hole. So I don't think I need to patch it with birch bark. I think I'm just gonna cover it with this pitch. Just don't wanna get this on your hands. Just gonna press it down hard right into that patch. Now it could just be worked in there to really seal it. The remainder of the stuff in here is just basically charred wood. We got all that pitch out and there it is. It's sealed up the hole pretty good. And it's hardening. So I'm gonna let it sit about an hour and then we'll take it out on the water and see what this does. Chicken on that patch. That's rock hard. I think that's gonna work. Let's see. I think we're good. It's just holding. That looks good. Well, we didn't get any food this trip. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Our trap didn't produce anything but leeches and a couple frogs. This was still a great time. Got to patch up the canoe, work on some bushcraft techniques and survive a night on this island. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to the next one. I'm your friend DJ with the Bear Essentials. Thanks for stopping by.