“John! Help! THE KIDS, THE KIDS, get them out first…” Jag woke covered with sweat. “Man, I have to stop that” he said, in a worried voice after waking up from another nightmare of when he lost his family to the fire. A lighting strike hit a tree by their cabin starting it on fire, and then the cabin went up in flames, 2 years ago. He was 13 at the time and knowing there was no houses or anything else for hundreds of miles he stayed there living in a shed that was about 100 yards from the cabin he used to call home. The fire took his parents, John and Kristy, his sister, Nadia, and his uncle, Tom. Leaving just him alone to use the survival techniques his parents used to live when they lived as kids. He would have to endure cold summers and colder winters. Wolves, finding food or animals to hunt. And above all a way to survive.

2 YEARS LATER

“I have to shoot something today, I haven’t eaten since last week” Jag said as he gathered his bow and arrows he had made from a pine tree he cut down. He did have a 20 gauge shotgun but no ammo and it was the only thing he had recovered from the fire, (besides some clothes and a blanket). He had not found any shells so the gun proved worthless.

He set out to his makeshift tree stand he built out of the wood from the pine he cut down with an axe that was in the shed. When he got his sweatshirt and coat on he left to go out to the stand. It was still very dark out, no later than 4 in the morning, so navigating his way to the stand was difficult, and when he got there the sun was already completely up. When he got up the tree he started calling for deer with a grunt that he mastered over the last 3 years of hunting. 4 hours later he had seen nothing and with his stomach roaring with hunger he got up to see if he could chase a rabbit out. He got down from his stand and made his way into a thick brush pile where two rabbits darted out straight ahead of him. It freighted him so much that he fell down but his years of hunting told him never to take his eye of the game, and he watched them both stop side by side about 15 yards from his current position.

He slowly got to his knees and pulled out an arrow and just then both rabbits took off like lighting for no apparent reason, knowing it wasn’t him Jag looked around to see what scared them. He looked to his left and about 10 yards away was a little fawn eating the clover. He drew back his arrow took the shot and missed about a foot above it. The deer took off into some brush but Jag wasn’t about to give up yet.

He slowly walked around the brush that the deer went into and climbed a tree that he thought would over look the whole brush. When he got to the top he could see the fawn munching on the same patch of clover that he took the last shot. It was about a 45 yard shot from there. Jag had never hit anything from more than 30 with his bow and never attempted anything from more than 40, so this was a very difficult shot for him. But his hunger drove him to take it. He used his best arrow that he had and drew it back let it go and watched the arrow go straight into the lung area of the fawn.

The deer ran about 5 yards and dropped dead. Jag was so excited he failed to remember he was in a tree and almost fell out and experienced about 50 ft drop. He dropped his bow witch made a loud snap when it hit the ground.

Jag climbed down to see his bow completely snapped in 2 different places. He took the string and left the rest to lay knowing he couldn’t fix it. He went to retrieve his game. By the time he got home, changed, and had the deer cleaned and put in the fridge he had in the shed, it was past midnight, so he was eager to get to sleep knowing he had a long day tomorrow making a new bow.

He slept ‘till about 8 the next day and got rite to work cutting down a small pine he had next to the cabin. He took off all the needles and cut the real small twigs off, and started taking off the bigger branches to make into arrows and then take the main beam of the tree and make that into the bow. Once he got all the branches off he took them and put them into the shed so he could work on the arrows tonight because they were small and fit into the shed which was only about an 8×10 little room that had a little heater and a small fridge/freezer. It had blankets he found in his room after the fire that he used as his bed.

Then he took the main part of the tree and started taking off the bark to get the woody part. Once he got all the bark off, he took his pocket knife he got from his grandpa when he was 5 years old and always kept in his sweatshirt pocket, and started shaving down the tree to about a 3” diameter stick that was about 4’ long and then he took the axe and chopped off the ends to make it about 3 ft long and stated to make it into the bow. He made it so in the middle it was the same 3” diameter circle for a grip and then the top and bottom were made into about 2” wide ½ inch thick board type piece so it was flexible, than he made notches on both sides of the top and bottom to wrap the string around (witch was some 50 pound test fishing line that was in the shed) and tied a triple knot around it and then he was done.

He went back inside to work on the arrows. He only used the branches that seemed not to be dead or rotted so that eliminated almost half of the branches he had. He took the remaining 5 branches or so and shaved off the bark and then made about a 2 ½ ft long arrow with a pointed front and an end with leaves for stability.

It was about 3 in the afternoon and he only had a little handful of berries in the morning so he was really hungry. He took some of the new meat from the fawn he shot yesterday and put it in the wood heater in a small pan. And let it cook a while then he flipped the meat and put it back in. When he got done eating he went to bed for the night

When he got up the next morning it was freezing cold and he knew that winter was approaching. He decided to go get as much firewood as he could so he wouldn’t have to go more than once this winter. He grabbed his axe and put on a couple layers of clothes and gloves, and headed out.

He cut down a couple pine trees and had to go in and warm up because his hands were freezing. When he took off his gloves both his hands were frost-bitten on all the fingers. Knowing that he could lose his fingers to the frost bite he quickly put then above the fire. His fingers burned with pain and he was screaming at the top of his lungs in agony. A good 12 hour later all his fingers where back to normal but it was late and it was starting to snow so he knew that gathering wood tomorrow would be a much harder task.

At 7 the next morning he was getting ready to go gather wood. Since he had no windows he didn’t know how much snow ended up falling. When he opened the door he looked out with shock.

There was 3ft of snow that fell last night. The table that he cleaned his game on was 3 ft tall and he couldn’t even see it. He knew he had to get the wood so he grabbed his axe and made sure to put as many layers of clothes and gloves on as he could.

He went out to the nearest pine tree and started chopping when he heard a load but far away growling and what sounded like dogs fighting. Then he heard it again but closer, and then again even closer.

Jag went inside grabbed his bow and looked out the crack he had opened of the door to see 3 Timberwolves staring directly at Jag. One looked too big to be a wolf and the others where bigger than normal but small compared to what jag figured was the leader of the pack. He quick closed the door and put a couple big logs up against it so there was no way they could get in.

His mind was racing with thoughts of them breaking through the door and getting him. He tried to calm himself but he was too scared to become calm. He heard them growling right outside the door and on the side and in the back. They had completely surrounded the small shed Jag called home. He waited for what seemed like hours before he stopped hearing them walking around.

He finally calmed himself down enough to peek out the door to see what was out there. He didn’t see anything at first but he wasn’t convinced they were gone. He banged on the wall trying to scare anything away. He didn’t hear nor see anything so he thought they must have left. When he looked out one last time he saw snow and the sun going down and he realized that he didn’t have any wood stacked yet and it was already night. He had a little meal of meat and some more berries he had found on a bush and went to sleep.

Jag barely slept all night, he was up at every little noise and had dreams of the wolves so he was up at 6 the next day. He got lucky, only about 2 inches of snow fell last night but the 3 feet from 2 days ago was still there and was not leaving ‘till spring. He dressed up and went outside with his bow arrows and axe to cut some wood that he desperately needed. He cut 1 big oak and 2 smaller pines and chopped for about 5 hours strait and had almost the whole back of the shed filled. He had cut down way more than needed so he was trying to think of what to use it for.

He finally decided, after a meal of meat and some turkey eggs he found, that he would build a section just for his meat over the winter. He figured that he can’t go hunting every couple days so this way he can kill a bunch off deer and have somewhere to store it.

He had about 8 hours of daylight left so he figured he would finish by tonight or early tomorrow. He started by finishing cutting up the oak and using that for the base. Then he would take the pine tree me a roof and use the pine branches as some kind of shingles. He began to chop again for another couple hours.

When he finished cutting the Oak and a couple more pines he cut down he had enough for a 6×6 little hut that was 5 ft tall. He went and found a tree that’s bark was really stringy and very strong so he peeled off a bunch planning on using it as a chord to tie the logs together to form the walls.

He had to cut some of the logs in half to make a room door. There was about 2 hours of sun light left when he had all the wood cut and ready to go. He had to get something to eat so he took some of the fruit he had stored for a snack and got back to work. He dug a 6×6 area in the snow to lay down the logs. He then took four logs and laid them down in a square shape. He had the ones with the door spot in it on the bottom. He put the other two pieces on top of the last two and bound them together. He then took four more and did the same thing. He tied them together with the bark he got and it worked perfectly. After about another 2 hours of work all he had to do was put on the roof and the needle branches.

He went inside and had a big slab of meat and an apple for supper, watched the stars for a while and went to bed.

When he woke up the next morning he heard the worst noise he had ever heard before. The familiar sound of a wolf growling right in his front door. He immediately took the logs and put them against the door, and got his new bow ready. He banged the stock of his gun against the door as hard as he could to try to scare away the wolf form the front of his door. It worked he heard the wolf run away little bit but he knew he didn’t go very far.

He went up to the door opened it just a sliver and he could see the wolf about 20 yards away. It was the Leader of the pack. Jag closed the door got his bow and new arrows and opened it up again. He drew back an arrow, sighted it in right below the big wolfs shoulder, but the wolf turned and looked right at him and started running. Jag quickly aimed and fired and closed the door before he could see if he hit.

He didn’t hear anything so he didn’t know if it hit and killed it instantly, or if the wolf just ran away. He barely opened the door, so he could just see out and what he saw was both good and very bad.

He had hit the big wolf and killed it, but the other members of the pack were out there and they were mad. There were 3 of them and they all were howling and barking viciously.

Jag didn’t want them to notice him so he closed the door very quietly and put the logs against it.