Why You Should Take A Bushcraft Course

Bushcraft courses provide a fast, efficient and safe way to learn crucial outdoor survival skills that would have been second nature to our ancestors…

Bushcraft consists of a very wide variety of abilities. At the guts of this subject is an awareness of nature. This knowledge of the natural world informs a sensibility and skill base that makes it possible to live – not just survive – in a natural environment.

Someone capable in the skills of bushcraft does not need tons of equipment. In fact , the opposite is true. Since these wilderness abilities are based on a knowledge of which resources in a particular environment can supply for our basic human wants the true exponent of bush skills wants nothing apart from nature.

Hence the ability these skills provide is carried in your brain and your muscles. It weighs nothing. The practice of wilderness bushcraft is one that encompasses the supply of shelter, fire, food, water and tools as well as wayfinding, or the practice of navigating by natures signs.

While the practitioner of wilderness skills in their most pure form needs nothing apart from nature, tools and clothing have been crucial to man for millennia. Today we’ve got the luxury of choosing whether we make our own implements or purchase them, and many of us take the selection of trading for them.

The pragmatic exponent of modern wilderness bushcraft chooses tools that make the maximum of their skill-set. The most commonly handy tool is a modest fixed-blade knife that is simply maintained and can be put to countless uses. Other cutting tools that could be selected, dependent on the environment are an axe, a saw or a machete or parang.

If these skills are part of our natural heritage as homo sapiens living in a natural environment, why do we need to be taught these abilities on a course? Well the answer is pretty obvious – most of us live in urban or suburban environments, far removed from living close to nature, not to mention relying on it for day-to-day survival.

Bushcraft courses provide a methodical schooling in a variety of talents that would be passed down from generation to generation. These days such skills are typically taught in a way that suits our modern understanding of the world and dovetails with scientific data re such subjects as pathogenic organisms and water purification.

While it is possible to learn lots of the skills of woodcraft and camping from books, getting them to an adequate standard to depend on them would take a long period of trying, failing and trying again.

The soundest way of learning things such as edible wild plants and fungi is from an experienced instructor; the best way to learn fire lighting talents, especially friction fire lighting techniques is from a reputable bushcraft training school.

Taking a course speeds up the educational process. You are benefiting from the experience of others and cutting the frustration – and possible danger – of getting things wrong. Each generation of our ancestors didn’t learn each and every single skill or piece of knowledge from first principles by randomly trying things until they got it right; they learned their skills and knowledge from talented practitioners. This remains to this day the best way to learn and the best way for most individuals to access such knowledgeable people is to enrol in a course in relevant wilderness skills.

Paul Kirtley teaches bushcraft skills. He’s impassioned about nature, outdoor life and remote travel. This is something that comes across extremely clearly during the programs at his bushcraft school.