Description

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Learn the full process of sustainable, off-grid meat preparation in our immersive Austere Cooking Course. This hands-on experience will teach you how to humanely dispatch, field dress, and prepare a domestic farm animal such as a goat or sheep, guided by a certified and highly experienced butcher. Students will gain valuable wilderness cooking and butchering skills that foster true self-reliance.

This course goes beyond theory—it’s about doing the real work. We recognize that dispatching a live animal can be emotionally impactful. That’s why we create a respectful, supportive learning environment where participants are encouraged to move at their own comfort level. Whether you’re a homesteader, hunter, or backcountry adventurer, this training delivers the practical knowledge and confidence to process meat safely and efficiently in primitive settings.

OBJECTIVES

• Obtain an understanding of nutritional needs in a survival situation, and where to source these vital nutrients
• Better understand how to avoid foodborne illness
• Reduce supply chain dependency and increase self-reliance
• Learn to evaluate animal health pre and post mortem
• Understand how to break down and process an animal efficiently, minimizing waste of useful resources
• Learn how to safely handle and prepare meals in the wild with minimal modern technology
• Enhance student creativity and critical thinking skills
• Camp Craft & Bushcraft techniques to assist in cooking in austere environments

COURSE TOPICS

• Enhancing Nutritional Values that are directly related to
• Cognitive Abilities
• Hygiene/Sanitation in primitive and austere environments
• Physical Exertion
• Stress
• Metabolic Recovery
• Preventative Nutrition

IN-FIELD ANIMAL EVALUATION

• Animal identification and health evaluation
• Animal body composition, muscle structure, cuts, nose to tail uses, including non-edible body parts
• Harvest and slaughter techniques, field dressing, and in-field safe handling and food safety techniques

COURSE OUTCOMES AND DEMONSTRATED SKILLS

• Basic animal identification
• Healthy animal ID pre-&-post slaughtering
• Knife skills
• Field skinning
• Sanitary filed butchering practices for Foodborne illnesses reduction
• Organ identification – healthy organs vs unhealthy
• Whole animal fabrication methods in the field
• Further processing and butchering for meal planning
• Muscle structures – Understanding nutritional values from nose to tail
• Muscle structures – Understanding best cooking methods
• Create short/long Term storage areas
• Basic Fire pit and smoking shack building
• Basic Understanding of open flame cooking techniques
• Meal preparations in field environment
• Utilizing indigenous ingredients for nutritious flavorful meals
• Utilizing the organs, entrails and bones for added nutritional meals and safe handling
• Field kitchen setup
• Frontier methods of cooking with Cast Iron
• Field cooking techniques:
• Open flame
• Smoking
• Hot Coals
• Dutch oven
• Knowing proper cooking temperatures avoiding foodborne illnesses
• Short Term meat curing
• Jerky processing in the field

The survival training is very intensive and is almost entirely hands on with very little lecture time. The advanced survival training is not so difficult that family and older children can’t attend though. These are skills that your friends will be impressed with the next time you go camping or hunting and these are skills that tend to stick with you for a lifetime. The skills are taught in a laid back survival camp environment. Self-reliance skills truly give you an empowered feeling because after your training you will be confident to walk into any environment and take care of yourself, your friends, and your family. If you need advanced survival training to increase your bushcraft skills and overall comfort, then this is the perfect course for you!