Hunting for survival is all about knowing your environment and maximizing your food resources based on that knowledge. Of course the ideal scenario would be to take a full-size deer or elk that can sustain your whole family, but in reality, the availability of bigger game meat may be sporadic. You’ll need to be prepared to supplement it with fish and smaller game — birds, squirrels, and even reptiles. In the deserts of the southwest, snakes can be an excellent source of calories, and when cooked properly, they can taste great too.
In the following video, survival instructor Bob Hansler shows how he cooks a rattlesnake in a cast iron pan over a campfire. As he notes at the start of the video, this isn’t a pure survival recipe since it uses a few perishable ingredients, but it requires minimal prep and is still simple enough to be accomplished with only basic kitchen staples. All you’ll need to pan fry a snake is oil, some eggs, a splash of milk, cornmeal, and salt and pepper.
Check out the full video below. If you watch to the end, Bob also shares some interesting facts about the size of a rattlesnake’s rattle — some believe that the rattle size indicates a snake’s age in years, but it actually has to do with the number of times it has molted, which can occur more than once a year based on weather conditions and other factors.
If you want to learn how to kill and skin a rattlesnake, check out Bob’s older video here.
