Dental Floss – A Hunters Friend

A good hunter must also always check the wind to make a successful stalk or ambush. Most commercial products to accomplish this require movement to actuate a puffer or squeeze bottle. Expensive, wasteful, and not all that effective to hide you from the game you seek. Tie a 3 or 4 inch section of unwaxed dental floss to the upper limb tip of your bow instead. Fray the end and it will pick up the most delicate breeze and all you need to move is your eyeball. Since I started carrying the floss for this purpose I have found it to be one of the most versatile tools a hunter can carry. It is especially useful for wilderness backcountry hunts. I carry several lengths wrapped around a pencil in my emergency kit. You can easily carry several hundred yards of the stuff with virtually no space and it can quickly become very useful. Floss has many applications on a bowstring. A lot of traditional shooters actually prefer a lump of floss for a nocking point on their string. One has complete control of the size of the nock and tapered feel. Replacing your nock in the field is also very easy this way. In addition, you can easily repair the serving on a bowstring in an emergency to keep it from completely unraveling. You can use it to build up the string to precisely fit your nocks. It can be used to secure wool yarn silencers or cat whiskers. Heck, if you had enough of the stuff you could build an emergency bowstring! You can wrap floss through your arrow fletching to adhere a feather or quill that has come loose from the shaft. You could reinforce a selfnock or tie on a point with it. I have used it to tie on my harvest tag after a successful hunt and you can tie off the bladder or anus to ensure clean tenderloins during field dressing chores. The other main application I have found for floss is for repairs. I carry a couple sizes of sewing needles in my emergency kit and can repair torn jackets, pants, boots, and other pieces of clothing in the field as well as replace buttons. Double or triple the strands and you have a substantial heavy duty thread for making repairs. In an emergency medical situation you could even use it to administer stitches to an open wound or tie off an artery. I actually carry some silk floss in addition to my nylon floss so I could boil the thread and sanitize it for this purpose. I hope I never have to try it out though! Floss can really shine in an emergency. It can be used as rope to bind a shelter together or tie off a tarp, you can use it to make a snare or net, you can carry a fish hook and catch dinner, make a bootlace, tie on a bandage, or affix your pocket knife to a pole for a spear. As a kid I used to tie floss with a stick across a deer trail as a “Tell”. If the “tripwire” stick was pulled from the ground I knew an animal had passed through. When camping we used to catch my friends sneaking into camp by tying it to two beer cans with pebbles inside. Unwaxed nylon floss can be used for camp cooking also. Tie that trout to a stick/plank or use it to tie up the wings and legs of a grouse or hen for even roasting. Wrap it taught between your fingers and you can use it to cut biscuits or evenly and thinly slice breads. Oh, you can get jerky bits out of your teeth too!