North Bay couple wraps up their 'big wild year'

It's  been almost a year since Delphanie Colyer and Jeremy St. Onge started their big wild year.

The North Bay couple vowed to eat only wild food for 12 months. That meant hunting their own game, catching their own fish, and gathering berries, seeds and mushrooms.

"We've eaten our way through a lot of wild food," said St. Onge.

Colyer ran through the list: bear, raccoon, porcupine, deer, moose, caribou and waterfowl.

St. Onge said they also dined on a lot of wild mushrooms and root vegetables. "Recently we had a huge haul of wild apples, which was a pretty big crunchy treat for us," he added.

Colyer said they got most of the food on their own but it was hard to turn down a gift of food —  like the sandhill crane that Colyer prepared with wild rice, wild apples and leeks and cranberries.

People call it "the ribeye of the sky," said Colyer. "It was so good."

One of the biggest challenges of a year of living wildly was the seasonal aspect of food. 

"There are certain things that are only available for a couple of weeks of the year and if you're 
busy tied up with kids or a job or something else and you miss that, then you know that opportunity doesn't come back around for another year," said St. Onge. 

Another challenge was trying to estimate how much food they would need for a year. The couple admits that things did get a little scary at times.

"In the spring, at the tail end of winter, I think I lived on maple syrup for a couple of weeks," said St. Onge.  "There's nothing wrong with that. I'd do it again," he laughed.

"But we were pretty low on our food. We had two and a half bears in the freezer and we were surprised how quickly we went through that meat," he added.

The year of living wildly did have a few memorable moments — like the roadkill bear cub that was St. Onge's birthday dinner, and being banned from using the office microwave.

On the upside, St. Onge says there have been positive changes to his health. Both have been tracking their physiology and blood test results with the help of a kinesiologist and a doctor.

"We've got some pretty good records of weight loss and positive changes to cholesterol, blood triglycerides, blood pressure, blood glucose and resting heart rate," said St. Onge.

As for Colyer, she says she was healthy before they started their year of living wildly and maintained her health on an all-wild diet, which some people perhaps would not have thought possible. 

Colyer and St. Onge say they're going to continue eating wild but not 100 per cent. Colyer missed her spices and plans to return those to her diet. "Some of the things you're left craving are pretty basic" she added. 

As for someone who wants to live their own wild year, advice from Colyer and St. Onge is to plan and to know the risks and rewards. 

The couple is writing a book about their year of living wildly.