If you ever find yourself in a wilderness survival situation, your life could depend on the choices you make and the actions you take. Here are 5 tips to help increase your chances of survival.

Wilderness Survival Tip #1: At First, Do No Harm

This slogan is borrowed from the medical industry, but it also applies to survival. When you first realize that your survival is at stake, you want to be careful to do no harm - don’t make your situation worse.

Wilderness Survival Tip #2: Stay Calm & Be Rational

The worst thing you can do in a survival situation is to freak out or act rashly. The best thing to do is stay calm, ad carefully and rationally decide what to do. If it takes you 30 minutes to calm down and think things through, that’s OK (in most circumstances - if you are cold and wet, for example, you’ll need to act faster).

Deal with any emergency issues, such as injuries, then move on to take care of shelter, water, & food.

Wilderness Survival Tip #3: Shelter First

In most instances, your worst need will be shelter from the weather - cold and precipitation, usually. Find or create shelter before you find food or water.

Wilderness Survival Tip #4: Water Next

After you’ve taken care of your shelter, find water. You can live for a long time with no food, but you’ll only last a couple days without water.

Wilderness Survival Tip #5: Food Last

Once you have shelter and water taken care of, find food.

Being able to find food and water are critical skills if you ever find yourself in a wilderness survival situation.

Though difficult, finding food is by no means impossible. You should try as much as possible to sustain yourself with natural foods before dipping into your emergency survival kit rations. Reserve that for when you are in a barren dessert with not a shrub or tree in sight.

When in a wilderness survival situation, it is possible to live for long periods of time even with little or no food except during periods of extra activity and during winter when more food is necessary to maintain a normal body temperature.

During times when you do not have ready access to water you should restrict your food intake to carbohydrates only as they require less water for digestion as compared to proteins.

Avoiding poisonous plants

While most grass seeds are edible and can be consumed if you find yourself in dire straits, you should be careful about ingesting any unknown plants in the wilderness. If you cannot recognize the various types of berries that grow in the wild, better to stay away from red and white berries of all kinds. Several varieties are poisonous and you do not want to find out whether they are edible or not the hard way. Other plants that you are better off staying away from include any plants that resemble melons, cucumber or beans as they are often poisonous.

Have fire? …Eat Frogs

If you have fire and a pot AND you are not squeamish, the list of food you can choose from is endless. Did you know you that frogs, birds, lizards and snakes are all edible? All you need to do is remove the skin, head and entrails, add them to the pot and you’ve got a wholesome, nutritious meal that even your mother would approve of…or would she?