How to be good at Survival.

[Sarge47]

If you'e been watching the Survival shows on TV with Bear Grylls, Cody Lundin, & Dave Canterbury you may have noticed that these guys always get by on a minimal supply of gear. That's because they are very experienced outdoors-men, but that does not mean that any of us are to go out into the Wild & emulate them. These are controlled scenarios that decipt certain types of inexperienced or ill-equipped people. I really like what Cody Lundin has to teach, but I'm leaving the boots on! I understand that eating certain gross bugs will supply needed nutrients to the body, but hey, I'm into Mountain House!

Want to be good at survival? Then take a page out of Sourdough's book & learn to be good in the outdoors. Learn to love it and become one with it! Take the required amount of equipment & learn how to use it. Make the Wilderness your friend in the meantime. Do not plan on going out into the woods alone & ill-equipped just because you saw a TV show that showed some people doing that.

Learn what the Boy Scouts teach & you'll be better prepared than most Americans. Learn to start a fire with only two matches...then learn to do it with one...then none. Learn how to do it right after a hellacious rainstorm.

Learn how to build an efficient shelter that works well in your neck of the woods, and fits in with the season you're going to be out in.

Learn how to fish, hunt, & trap wild game & fish, then learn how to skin, dress, clean, & cook it. Along the way, learn to love, & to have a deep, abiding respect for the woods

Learn 1st aid so well you could become a 1st responder!

Learn how to repair and take care of your equipment. Learn what equipment to have & how not to lose it or let it get destroyed.

Learn how to read both a map and a compass and how to use them together.

Learn how to enjoy, love, and become one with the outdoors.

[hunter63]

Here, here, Well said.......

[nell67]

Great post Sarge.

[Sourdough]

Good advice, Well spoken.

[shooter_250]

and, .....if you're still alive.

just saying...my 2cents

Lee

[your_comforting_company]

What really gets my goose is that the shows themselves do not stress these simple principles enough. Well said Sarge! It is our modern mindset that pits us in a fight against nature and the outdoors, when the truth is that peoples lived in parallel with nature for millennia. Simple and effective gear and thorough knowledge of how to use it and maintain it; There is no conflict, Nature is just nature, not some wild eyed beast that only wants to eat you. Ignorance and unpreparedness are what make the outdoors seem that way: It's our own perception.

Learn to love the outdoors and all the birds and beasts therein. Have a deep abiding respect for all the world around you.

[kyratshooter]

AHHH, a thread without argument. Crafted late on Friday evening of a long holiday weekend. You must be mellow and soulfull this fine evening Sarge. The classic "Wilderness Survival Forum" wisdom we have become famous for, repeated often for the newbies and to remind ourselves of its merit.

Next weekend I will be in the wilderness (or as close as one can get to the wilderness in south eastern Ohio) for the first long strech since my wife died. Thanks Sarge, you reminded me that I have a two page checklist somewhere around here.

We should also remember that after 3 seasons Less had damaged his body so badly he could no longer function with minimal equipment and had to give up the series. 15 weeks of this, even with recovery time between shoots, had trashed his body.

Bear can still do it due to having a hotel hidden behind the camera man.

I was reading about some pioneers comming into my neck of the woods yesterday. Hearty souls living in the trackless wilderness. Nothing but an axe, knife and rifle, right?

WRONG!! They were in a 30 foot canoe with so much equipment they only had 3 inches of freeboard above the water as they floated down the Ohio. Stacks of blankets, kegs of powder, bars of lead, kettles, saws, axes, dozens of butcher knives, bushels of salt, several extra guns, a huge oiled tarp to cover and protect it all, and a tent.

Emagine that, pioneers with a tent!

Simon Kenton, one of our local heroes, after escaping from Indians naked and unarmed on one occasion, developed the habit of stashing emergency gear in hollow trees scattered all over central KY.

Bare minimum is good, it proves you have a skill set, it proves you can do it, but a little extra can save the day.

[Sarge47]

Simon Kenton, one of our local heroes, after escaping from Indians naked and unarmed on one occasion, developed the habit of stashing emergency gear in hollow trees scattered all over central KY.

I love the story of Simon Kenton, he's one of my Wilderness influences. ("The Frontiersmen" by Allan W. Eckert.) The thing to remember is that being out in the woods is not near as dramatized the way the "experts" show it. The quietness is usually only broken by the sound of a morning dove as you awaken, or the crickets chirping at night when you sit around the campfire sipping that hot cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. TV makes it look dramatic to increase the number of viewers. It's one of the most relaxing trips you can take most of the time. Ican help you survive "city life."

[hunter63]

It's been a long time since I read that one "The Frontiersmen" by Allan W. Eckert", but yeah a lot of people didn't really think to much about "survival" as anything other than normal day to day living.
Great read.

[Alaskan Survivalist]

People did same things different ways in the old days as it is still possible today. Some had a ton of stuff, some had nothing. Some lived under stars at one with nature while others conquered the land and built a roof over thier head. Reading a book does not change the diversity of man that was. This is a modern phenominon because thats how people are educated, lead around by the nose and know no other way. Education and flouride is responsible for modern conformity. The uneducated men of old were free to come up with thier own ways of doing things simply because most did not know how they were supposed to do it. They just had the heart to do it.

[Winter]

If Lewis and Clark would have had a laptop; they'd still be in Missouri.

Being good at survival, to me, is skillfully avoiding a true survival situation. Have the gear you need.

[kyratshooter]

If Lewis and Clark would have had a laptop; they'd still be in Missouri.

I'm not too sure about that! Merriwether Lewis was from a tough family, just like Clark. And they took 15 tons of gear and three boats!

Moma Lewis once sent the boys out to get a deer. When they returned empty handed they found that Mom had shot a big buck in the front yard of the plantation house and already had it hanging in the smokehouse.

There are many tales of these rich planters going into the wilderness for weeks at a strech on survey crews and checking out land claims.

Washington did. Meriwether Lewis was Jefferson's private secretary. Young Clark was the brother of GR Clark of Rev War fame. William Byrd was the richest man in the colonies and often went out with survey crews. Thomas Walker was Jefferson's foster father. He named the Cumberland River, Cumberland Gap, Cumberland Mountains. He also surveyed the border between NC and VA when no white man had walked that land. He surveyed part of the border between KY and TN untill the NC crew got their lattitude lines wrong and he refused to agree and go farther. That mistake is why the KY/TN border had an offset to this day.

All these people knew each other and they were all from the edge of the peidmont where wealth was based on land and production. You had to be out there in the fields and woods and you had to have reserve land for when where you were now wore out. No fertilizers so you had to leech the land and move on. That took hundreds of thousands of acres that you had to buy, claim and survey. That put you in contact with the government, the small settlers and the Indians.

The thing I note as a historian is that the rich men kept journals and told us about it. They are the ones that wrote about the situations the settlers lived in. They wrote about how the hunters they hired to feed and guard the survey grews set up their camps and how they hunted. Even how they slept.

One of Byrds journal entires told of how the hunters stripped down to breechcloths and rolled up in their blankets hugging their rifles with the buttstock for a pillow. They kept their moccasins on and slept with their feet to the fire like spokes of a wagon wheel.

Crews in Indian country would sleep away from the fire, five in a crew. They would pile up with two blankets under them and three on top. Hopefully if the Indians found one group the others would get away.

It was not just proper equipment, it was also skill set knowledge even beck then.

Even the rich guys knew what they were doing in the woods. Everyone sparked their fires. Everyone killed their food. Everyone slept under wool blankets. And that was at home.

Most of the backwoodsmen never wrote a word about their lives. It was the rich planters on the spot and the historians of latter days that went out and found the old folks and asked how they lived. The country folk lived it but the rich and educated saved the information for us.

I think it is really too bad that Old D. Boone did not have an I-Pad.

And if Lewis had owned a laptop we might have his share of the notes from the expidition. He never did turn in his report of the expidition. All we have are Clark's papers.

[Winter]

My joke has been dismantled and found wanting. Thanks for the history lesson.

I do agree on the skill set. However, even an idiot can survive if he has the right kit. That same kit makes a luxury campout for the skilled.

[Batch]

I think one of the best wilderness survival skills is learning about the stories who have become lost or injured in the area you camp, hike or hunt. Understand that it CAN happen to you and learn from their mistakes.

We had a hunter who ventured 100 yards off of the road where I spend most of my time in the woods. He was lost for 4 days with dozens of searches looking for him by land and air. His camp mates heard his distress shots just fine. He could hear the interstate from where he was. But, traveling in a straight line is damned near impossible and traveling in circles is pretty damned near guaranteed if you don't know the land. He was an experienced woodsman who studied wilderness survival! He lost all of his kit including his clothes.

It would be easy to say it couldn't happen to you. It would be better to understand that it could and learn how not to end up in that situation.

One of the reasons I don't watch pro sports is all of the people who watch and arm chair quarterback. They would never make the same mistake this elite athlete who is the best in the game would make. They have the comfort of believing that BS while they sit in the comfort of their lazyboy. But, if they ever step onto that field and try to do what they say they can. They are likely to be disappointed in their ability to actually deliver just prior to being placed in a world of dirt and hurt!

[Pocomoonskyeyes3]

OK, What you all say about the historical records is true. However, What about Mountain Men and the Indians? Both traveled with far less than those you have mentioned from historical record. Indians traveled the same country as Lewis and Clark, with Far less than the massive stores, and equipment that those early explorers carried. Mountain Men were gone for months on end with only that which could be carried with a couple of Pack animals, or a canoe, and some of that was nothing but traps.

While some may condemn the "Drama". Personally I applaud it. Not for the sake of the drama, but for the simple fact of those that learn something, that otherwise would be oblivious. Yes even Bear, as much as that galls me to admit. Some people WOULD have died if not for learning SOMETHING from the shows. Let's be honest. If you weren't "Into survival", Watching a video on youtube about a bow drill fire would be rather boring. The same is true of many of the things that interest us, the "skill sets". They would be blase' for the vast majority of people. Humdrum..... boring in the extreme. Is it wrong that the shows producers provide a spark of interest, no matter how contrived? Think of the people they are reaching. Some education is better than NO education. How many times has education been touted here, as the pinnacle to strive for?
Mounts Soapbox

Really, some applaud Les Stroud for his endeavors now, yet had he posted here that that was what he was going to do, Many of the same people that now applaud him would have severely chastised him, Blasted him, condemned him, called him a numpty.... Whether you like it or not you know this is true. Unless he had posted many posts showing that he KNEW what he was talking about.

Yes these shows are contrived, yes they use people knowledgeable about survival. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with their methods people DO learn. In spite of the criticism heaped on these shows, it is better than the alternative..... "Survivor", "Lost", and the like. Here cake is being served, yet people are complaining about the icing. I'm confused, people are being educated, which most of us truly want, yet they still aren't good enough.

Personally I think Dual Survival to be the best of these type shows so far. Yes, they use "Scenarios".... much like we post about here ourselves. Specifics are given, uses are shown, Situations change,(much like it REALLY happens in a survival situation) plans adapt. They "survive" to go on to next week. Just to encounter a "new" set of conditions, items available, different environments.

Look if you want someone to learn something YOUR way, next time someone asks something, instead of chastising them and telling them that question has been asked 14 hundred times already, and they need to use the Search function, play along and give them YOUR ideas. If it's TOO redundant a Mod can always merge the threads. Otherwise the TV producers will reach a MUCH larger audience. You can't teach anything if all you do is tell them to go look somewhere else. Matter of fact you won't teach anything at all. Except to go somewhere else....which they do.

Feel free to blast and chastise me now. Same as all those that come seeking info, only to leave and go somewhere else. That which does not grow and becomes stagnant, dies. The title of this thread is "How to be good at survival", but some of the attitudes here are choking this forum to death. Yes Other Forums DO exist, and guess where people are going when they don't come here? No they don't get baby sat, but they get answers. Think about THAT next time you get ready to Jump on some new person.
Dismounts Soapbox.

[Seniorman]

KYRATSHOOTER - "I think it is really too bad that Old D. Boone did not have an I-Pad."

Yep, however I have a fascinating biography about him that relates his life from birth to death. It's very interesting about his explorations, his living day-by-day as a "long hunter" in the dense forests and mountains of the southeast, hunting, dealing with American forest indians, his business interests, etc. It is truly amazing what D. Boone did, including staying alive long enough to die an old man.

Anyone interested in this incredibly interesting man should ask your local library for ...

"DANIEL BOONE, The Life And Legend Of An American Pioneer," by John Mack Faragher, Henry Holt & Co. Publs., (c) 1992.

Probably can buy a copy from Amazon.

S.M.

[randyt]

Poco, if I get this right, you're saying be a mentor.

[Pocomoonskyeyes3]

Poco, if I get this right, you're saying be a mentor.

Exactly! Too much criticism of newbies just runs them off. Can't be a teacher with no students.

I know of two forums that have only started in the last year or so, Both come close to matching or surpassing "Most online" numbers here. The Difference? The reception people get. BCUSA is one, DT is another. On both I mostly just read. BCUSA already dwarfs this forum.

Most users ever online was 766, Currently Active Users: 301 (138 members and 163 guests)

Right now this is what we have here....

12 members and 198 guests

[LowKey]

Do people really care about forum stats?
Let's not devolve this thread into more of that other.

Back on topic, I think the title should change to How to be good at Living. The word Survival has mutated into a far different meaning in the past few years. It's become a game word. There's a difference between survival and Living off the land. There's a difference between going off and doing your own thing in the wilderness (whether that is hiking, camping, hunting or setting up housekeeping), and the chance that you may find yourself in a world of hurt and have to survive it. There will be a big difference in preparing for the EOTW, quite another to have to live it, let alone survive it.

I hope to never have to survive. I just hope to keep on living. I'm just trying to Be Prepared either way.

[BENESSE]

+1 LowKey.