Lilly is a self-taught survivalist and a popular YouTuber.
She has over a million subscribers on her YouTube channel Survival Lilly.
Introduction
Elisabeth Puntigam (Lilly) was born on 22 September 1984.
She hails from Austria and her mother tongue is German.
Lilly’s father was a hunter.
Bushcraft & nature
Lilly grew up near a village adjoining forest and loved playing in the woods.
She, along with her brothers, cousins and school mates, used to build shelters, play in the woods and search for wild edible plants like magic mushrooms and blueberries, after school.
Also, Lilly’s mother used to take her into the woods for mushrooms and blueberries.
Her father used to take her with him while hunting and she grew up watching him hunt. She too started hunting after growing up.
Thanks to all these, Lilly fell in love with nature at a very young age.
Later, she started practising bushcraft and survival skills on her cousin’s land.
It wasn’t easy to train in survival skills in Austria as it wasn’t allowed to camp in the woods and make fire without the land owner’s permission.
But as Lilly’s cousin owned some land and agreed to allow her to camp on it, she was able to camp and practice bushcraft and survival skills.
Influences
At 8, Lilly got her hands on a German survival comic book Survival Für Abenteurer (which translates to Survival For Adventurers).
This was her first survival book that she owned. She was impressed by its survival information.
Later, Lilly read many survival books and got influenced by them.
Some of those books are Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival, Survive!: Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere – Alive, Epic Survival, The SAS Survival Handbook, Deerskins into Buckskins and Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Living.
After reading about survival rucksacks in a book, at 10, Lilly put together her first survival rucksack containing the 5 Cs of survival (cutting tool, combustion device, cover, container, and cordage) along with a lot of stuff. But she didn’t practice survival skills.
She learnt bushcrafting by trial and error, books and following other bushcraft YouTubers.
Initially, while starting with bushcraft and survival, Lilly hurt herself a couple of times as she was stressed out and accidentally cut herself with knives and saws. As the injuries were severe, she had to be treated at the hospital.
Survival Lilly
After stumbling upon a few survival and bushcraft YouTube channels, in 2010, Lilly was impressed by them and decided to start her own channel.
At the time, she used to watch videos of survivalmike YouTube channel and learnt many things.
Lilly started her YouTube channel Survival Lilly on 15 January 2011.
She published her first video “First Overnighter In The Woods” on 10 July 2011.
Going full-time
While working as an accountant in an accountancy office, Lilly didn’t like her job as it confined her for long hours in the office. Instead, she wanted to spend time outdoors bushcrafting.
So, she quit her job to do bushcraft and share her journey on YouTube.
In 2014, Lilly visited Sweden and filmed a video there which became viral. It greatly helped in the growth of her channel.
Thanks to this success, she started producing more videos regularly and improved the quality of her videos which furthered the growth of her channel.
Currently, Lilly has over 1.1M subscribers and is covering news on Europe.
She also has other YouTube channels, Survival Lilly – Deutsch, Survival Lilly Hunting and Survival Lilly Shorts.
In a few interviews, she said one of the reasons for her success on YouTube is that she doesn’t have much competition as there aren’t many female survivalists on YouTube.
She films with an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III camera with a couple of Zuiko lenses and a DJI Mavic Mini drone.
In November 2017, Lilly won the Austrian Video Award in the Travel & Food category.
She is a survivalist in season 15, episode 1 of Naked and Afraid TV show.
Shawn James of My Self Reliance is her favourite YouTuber.
After living in a small flat in Vienna, Lilly got fed up with the city life and moved to the suburbia around 2019.
Games & minimalism
Lilly used to play games on her PlayStation as it helped her train and manage her stress levels which helped her better manage real-world stressful survival situations.
Despite having a lot of survival gear, she used to prefer minimal gear because she was thin and wasn’t able to carry much weight in her backpack.
Also, Lilly used to choose the lightest gear and craft the remaining gear from nature.
Her favourite survival tool is a knife and favourite camping food is medium, fire-grilled steak.
Lilly was also interested in gardening and permaculture.
She also camped in Canada, one of her favourite countries.
Personal life
Lilly was born Christian but later became an atheist.
She hasn’t revealed much of her personal life except in a 2019 video that she has a spouse.
In 2012, Lilly was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. She manages it with a gluten and dairy free diet.
She overcame chronic fatigue syndrome.
Lilly loves reading.
So, how are you inspired by the story of Lilly?
Please comment below.
0 Comments