Arnica for Aches and Pains

Deer hunting can be hard on the body.  All the heavy loads, steep climbs, and bushwhacking leave you tired and achy by the end of a trip.  Usually this is time for vitamin 'I' right?  But not for us! We gathered our own pain medication during some down time on the trip.

 I've always known that arnica flowers are supposed to help relieve pain and bruises, and I have always wanted to find out how you make something out of them.  Then this past winter I attended a Munartet workshop where I learned how to infuse oil with arnica and yarrow to make an ointment (click here for post).  At the workshop we used dried arnica flowers from Switzerland!  So suitably inspired I vowed to gather my own 'local, organic and source-based' arnica flowers and make an ointment just like I'd been taught.  It is actually amazingly easy - basically just add flowers to oil.

So one morning after carrying 2 deer back to camp we were too exhausted to do another hunt.  But it was such a sunny day.  Too sunny to hang out in camp.  And so all three of us gathered arnica flowers in the sunshine along the lakeshore.  A perfect afternoon activity.

The bumble bees seemed to love arnica too, and we tried not to gather too many flowers in any one place.  We wanted to leave some for the bees.  And they did their part and did not sting us when we gathered them by mistake.  This actually happened a couple of times - you'd feel a weird fluttering in your hand and would open it to release the bee.  My kids would not like gathering arnica!

In what seemed like no time at all we had gathered a game bag full of arnica flowers.  Once back home from the trip I filled 2 jars with flowers and oil to make my ointment, and I froze the rest.  We now have a supply arnica to keep us pain free all winter!  Patrick

Be careful not to mix the blue with the yellow - that blue flower is poison! (monkshood)

Arnica flowers in the meat shelter - we were true hunter gatherers on this trip!

Arnica flowers infusing in oil