Yaak River Hunter-Gatherer Project 2003

Introduction

After the Kootenai River Project was over I found myself back in my “normal” life living in a yurt with my family in a remote region of Montana. Since I had been experimenting all summer with living Stone Age and was not teaching or asking for any monetary donations I was suddenly acutely aware that I needed money in this world and I didn’t actually have any. I sold my young horse Stip and we made it through the winter on deer meat and potatoes.

It was the following year that an acquaintance wrote to me and suggested that I do another project but train students for it. In this way we would get to work together in preparation and hopefully overcome some of the social issues that had plagued our first group and at the same time I would be earning a living.

Recognizing that my ability as a hunter was one of my weakest skills I planned a new project and pretty soon had 4 students that were willing to live with me through a Montana winter in tents and take a week- long class each month in preparation for a new project.

The year of preparation turned out to be way too long and the initial group all decided not to do the project just a few weeks before its anticipated start date but a couple of guys had joined us in the spring and a friend who had been with us the first year said she would like to try it again. I also invited another girlfriend who wanted to try it out for a limited time. We went out under much stricter rules, we took only regional wild foods and our stocks of dried meat had to be animals taken by bow hunting or trapping, no road kills, no purchased animals. Consequently, we had very little high calorie foods at the onset and we consequently dubbed it the “Starvation Project.”

We planned to be out for a month but as it became increasingly clear that we were indeed starving and rain kept us from hunting with our sinew bow strings so we were all more than ready to call it quits after a couple of weeks.
Excerpt - Return: A New Look at Ancient an unpublished manuscript by Lynx Vilden