This video was posted on the A.N.T.S Facebook page and features Cody Lundin of Dual Survival fame demonstrating some basic survival skills to a student at his Aboriginal Living Skill course. In theory. Cody himself admits that this clip was actually edited with Cody killing the rat before hand (mano-o-rato so to speak) then placing it under the dead fall to simulate the trapping. In real life a trap may sit for days without producing, or may produce minutes after you set it.You never know which is why in a survival situation it’s wise to run a line of traps.

Dale Martin’s The Trapper’s Bible (now available on Kindle) is the first book survivalists should read for their emergency trapping education.

But that doesn’t lessen the value of what is here. Rats are fast breeding, crop destroying, larder contaminating vermin that happen to be edible so when things go bad and you’re looking to find extra protein to ease the burden on your larder trapping and eating them is a good idea. If you’re out in the wild pack rats like the one in the video are harder to catch than their urban rat cousins, but just as plentiful. In this video Cody is building dead fall traps and using dried fruit as bait, but he’s going primitive on this.

You can buy rat traps at any grocery (or right here) to pack in your survival pack. I would drill a hole in the traps if they don’t have one for a way to secure the trap into the ground or in a tree, etc. I’ve heard of people catching squirrel by putting peanut butter in the back of a coffee can and a rat trap put inside, but my rat traps are too big to work in my Cafe Du Monde cans so this might be a tall tale.

Notice after skinning and cleaning the little pack rat had a surprising amount of meat on it. They are still small and Lundin leaves the heart, lungs and liver in. Assuredly for extra nutrition. This is the whole process from killing to eating which those of you who have never caught, butchered and eaten a creature should watch until you can stop flinching. Enjoy: