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Thread: Becoming a Wilderness survival instructor

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    Default Becoming a Wilderness survival instructor

    I am seeking a career in wilderness survival as a instructor and i am not sure where to start. obviously i need survival training(witch i have) but i did some research and all i found was adventure education and i am not sure if that is what i am looking for any help would be very much appreciated


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    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    Seriously????????

    First you post this http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...le-of-no-where and now you want to be a survival instructor?

    How old are you?
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    One step at a time intothenew's Avatar
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    I do it (wilderness survival instructor) part time, and literally pay my students to attend. I'm not so good on the business end of things.
    "They call us civilized because we are easy to sneak up on."- Lone Waite

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    Excuse me sir? first off i am twenty years old and if you remember from my last post, i said i only planed on taking that trip for six months to a year. after witch i would then happily enjoy being a survival instructor. but i definitely do not think i deserved to be patronized like a child.

    James

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    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JamesGuyette View Post
    Excuse me sir? first off i am twenty years old and if you remember from my last post, i said i only planed on taking that trip for six months to a year. after witch i would then happily enjoy being a survival instructor. but i definitely do not think i deserved to be patronized like a child.

    James
    If you recall in your second post that you made on this forum you said
    Sorry about the lack of information before had just had to get a quick post out there and get everyone fired up
    which seems to be much the same as you have done here. You want recommendations. You want advice. but you offer almost no information. The advice I give to a 20 year old will not be the same as the advice I give to a 50 year old, or to a 12 year old.

    Are you talking about being a Wilderness Survival Instructor? If so.......Since you plan on this new career path following your six months to a year of living in the wilderness I would say this - that experience will provide you with more education on survival than the thousands of dollars you could spend on "survival schools".

    As to your last comment about what you feel that you deserve. You deserve what you earn. Nothing more. Nothing less. I would hardly call my comments patronizing. Cynical maybe, but definitely not patronizing.
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    im not worried about having the experience to teach i worried about the documentation

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    A few years of experience would be in order. Unless of course you have been "living it" through out your youth. Knowledge plus experience would give you a marketable skill.
    Last edited by Pal334; 04-13-2012 at 04:44 PM. Reason: spelling
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    Senior Member SARKY's Avatar
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    So you are fine with killing someone with your lack of experience..... just as long as you have a document that says you are qualified????? REALLY?????
    I know what hunts you.

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    not worried about the experience because i already have it.

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    I am curious how you accumulated that experience, if you would share a brief thumbnail description
    .45 ACP Because shooting twice is silly... The avatar says it all,.45 because there isn't a.46

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    gladly my mother and her brother grew up in hills and mountains of California, literally off the land. my mother followed my father to ohio, where i was raised. since i can remember i have been out in the wilderness camping hunting fishing trapping. learning all sorts of things, i can easily navigate with a compass and map or with out a compass i can braintan, i am efficient with a compound bow, and most hunting rifles and a few hang guns. in the short of it i was raised to be a a woodsman didnt know it as a kid but sure love it now i have spent camping trips(1-3 months long) i have been doing that for about 3 years now and it never gets old.

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    1st you need a 2nd job, 2nd the clients you get, are not going to want to learn how to hunt, fish, braintan, or chop a tree down or any half arse ways of starting a fire. 99.9% of my clients just want to learn how to go on a bush walk, and not get lost, and what to take with them. EG small SAK, first aid kit, jumper, rain coat, lunch + abit extra, bic lighter + a few fire starters, survival blanket, compass & map, EPIRB. You spend 70% of the time teaching them, how to use a compass & map in the carpark. The other 30% you take them on a short bush walk {most my clients are very unfit, and want to do bush walking to get fit}. I have only had 2 people both about 18 or 19 turn up one day wanting to play Rambo. People that want to, go play the fool in the bush, don't pay money, they just go do it.

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    First, become aware that you are not unique. You have no more skills than a vast number of the students I have taught over the years.

    One of the girls in my fall semester class killed a half dozen deer with a bow this year. She was not alone either. Part of our cirruculum included skills weekends. The cirruculum also included safety and one full semester of advanced first aid/CPR/combat lifesaving. Yes, this was in a public school in Kentucky.

    Somewhere in your mix of vast experience I would expect an instructor to have SAR certification in the state he operates, CPR training and advance first aid and life saving certification. You are going to be responsible for the welfare of everyone in your "group" of students.

    I know several excellent "woodsmen" that I would not trust to carry my garbage to the dump! They have a bad attitude, are irresponsible, self centered, slightly sadistic and generally rude. They can live off the land from now till doomsday, but not with me or around people I care about. There are a couple of them I would shoot on sight in a TEOTWAWKI survival situation.

    Second, you are not going to make money because of what you know, you make money as a teacher for what you can teach. You will not be taking people camping, you will be an instructor. Most of your people will not know squat, if they did they would not be paying you.

    You are asking people to pay you to transfer knowledge, you have to have proof that you can teach what they want to know in advance of receiving their money. The one skill I see lacking in most "survival instructors" is any ability to organize and teach at all. Standing and rambling on for eternity is not teaching, nor is demonstrating YOUR knowledge. Being able to transfer knowledge quickly and efficiently is the key.

    Now, think about what it is going to take for a 20 year old to inspire enough confidence from a customer to seperate him from his money.
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    A stun gun? Cause I can get the money while he's down. N...Not that I would ever do that again.

    KY has given you some great insight. No one wants to douse your dreams but we do want you to see it with a solid dose of reality. Have you ever taught before? Any subject? Have you ever presented anything to a group of people? Teaching is a unique mixture of talents. Part entertainer, part walking text book, part Dale Carnegie, part Ghandi. You will have students challenge you like you can't believe and you have to deal with it. You can't take anything personally. You have to capture and hold their attention. You have to entertain them to keep them interested in the subject matter and you have to be able to teach your subject with authority and be able to provide supporting evidence that you know what you are talking about.

    "The ability to make a fire in the winter is one of the most crucial skills you can have. It's a skill I emphasized over and over when I taught (SAR, State Police, in Northern Canada, etc)". You have to show how you know your stuff. "It was so cold during our third class that a Polar Bear came in and sat by the fire with us". You have to keep them entertained.

    The subject you want to teach is really a mute point. How you teach is the important skill.
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    Kyrate, Rick....those two post should be a sticky, I sure that they can be used repeatedly.

    JamessGuyette, a good start would be a little work on your written communication skills, if for no more reason that to write out instructions during class.
    Just a thought.
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    I don't want to get banned for trying to help you. The website i am about to post about is not mine, and i don't make any money from it, it's in Australia, and i am only using it as a example. Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue Squad www.bwrs.org.au Have you got anything like that where you live? If so you could do alot worse than volunteer with people like that. You learn alot about how people mess up in the bush. That way you will know what you need to teach people, and what is a load of BS. Might be 5years or so before you will be able to make a living out of it {because of your age}, but use those years, learning everything you can. It's not about survival so much, as it's about people.

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    Peter - That's a pretty good suggestion. I know a couple of guys that pulled hundreds of cases of wilderness disasters and studied them. What happened, what went wrong, what went right, etc. So working directly with the rescue teams would be invaluable training and provide some really great insight.
    Tracks Across the High Plains...Death on the Bombay Line...A Touch of Death and Mayhem...Dead Rock...The Griswald Mine Boys...All On Amazon Books.

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    The critique was always the part of instruction I liked best in training.

    What went right?

    What went wrong?

    most importantly,

    HOW DID YOU DIE THIS TIME?
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

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    And, dont plan on getting rich in that occupation!

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    Cool Hmmmm...

    So, James, you say you already have the skills, huh? Okay, here's a test; what kind of survival knife should I buy?
    SARGE
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