Thanx everybody for all the hints and tips. Did you have alot of enemies at one point in life? Anyway, I had an idea for a good tactical fire but don't have the time to try it out so I'll run it by you guys. Do you think just using the coals for cooking and heat would work? They don't give off alot of light and almost no smoke, but they do give off alot of heat. To keep it going you could just make a trench or whole in the coals and put some more wood in. Also clean materials burn with less smoke than dirty ones ex. driftwood with mud dried on it from rivers or lakes or whatnot. OK lets say I'm somewhere out in a fairly rural setting, non hostile, with your basic assortment of plants and animals, rabbits, squirrels, deer etc and have a recurve bow at about 25 pounds of pull and arrows and a good knife. What do I do for food? Should I hunt for plants and animals at the same time or concentrate just on animals then plants. I can bring myself to eat ants, most earthworms and some grubs, in a last ditch effort of coarse. Also what other things do you think I would need? Remember, I'm trying to lean more towards using plants and shelter than prey and fire. So I would like having a fairly big (and time consuming) shelter with a small fire. As the Native Americans say, you can always distinguish a white mans camp because the fire is too big <img src="images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />