Becoming a Wilderness survival instructor

Picking a survival knife huh? a test you say? im welcome to it. :)

If i was to give someone advice on picking a survival knife i would tell them to find a comfortable fixed blade knife with a half serrated back with good steel either O1 or A2 with a good thickness of at the very least 1/8 inch thick, should be able to serve as a multipurpose tool to assist you a reasonable size at least 5 inch hmm did i forget anything maybe a drop point considering there stronger than upturned point. oh yes a obviously full tang. now i also understand more experienced people might have something different in mind they might wont on there survival knife.

~James

Also becoming rich is not my intentions, i just love the outdoors and always have and would love to live 24/7 and being in a teaching environment i believe i would be considerably happy. plus who would want the chance to a part of that?

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Originally Posted by JamesGuyette

Picking a survival knife huh? a test you say? im welcome to it. :)

If i was to give someone advice on picking a survival knife i would tell them to find a comfortable fixed blade knife with a half serrated back with good steel either O1 or A2 with a good thickness of at the very least 1/8 inch thick, should be able to serve as a multipurpose tool to assist you a reasonable size at least 5 inch hmm did i forget anything maybe a drop point considering there stronger than upturned point. oh yes a obviously full tang. now i also understand more experienced people might have something different in mind they might wont on there survival knife.

~James

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Nope! :thumbdown:

strange you believe so i have quite a collection, and most are built this way. why do you believe so? and what would you recommend someone? i am quite interested

Learning to survive is much more than carrying a blade! It's life or death! 1st aid is the very 1st thing that anyone should learn. In the movie, Cast Away, with Tom Hanks he had to use an ice skate for a cutting tool because he didn't have a knife.

Quite frankly I find you an unknown entity at this point. There are many more on this site that I've come to know and trust that I would be willing to learn from. Listing "mummy and daddy" on your resume doesn't help. Mors Kochanski, Cody Lundin, or even Les Stroud would!

I'm not trying to be patronizing, but you said that you were up to the challenge, so I'm taking you at your word and looking at this realistically. I don't care if you're 20 years old or 40; you sound more like a "wannabe" to me. Yes, many on here would like that kind of life, but it takes a lot of hard work. Look at all that Cody Lundin goes through just to try and keep students in his school. I don't care for the teaching of Bear Grylls, but I do have to admit that many would trust him to teach because of his TV exposure. Are you going to do that? He claims to be the youngest person to ever have summitted Mt. Everest, been in the SAS, and even taken training under the French Foreign Legion! And that was before he ever made the big time on TV! Do you see where I'm going with this? Romantic notions are cool, but will never be more than fantasy; hard work and study will get you to where you want to be. Find a good, QUALIFIED survival instructor and 1st learn everything that you can from them! They will tell you when you're ready to be an instructor. Maybe join the military and go through S.E.R.E. training, then work up to your teaching position that way. Some on here have done just that! I would sit at the feet and learn from members like Sourdough & PGV Outdoors, just to mention a couple, any day of the week! Even Crashdive, whom you back-talked earlier. He has very extensive survival experience! All in all, good luck in your endeavors. :nod:

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Originally Posted by JamesGuyette

strange you believe so i have quite a collection, and most are built this way. why do you believe so? and what would you recommend someone? i am quite interested

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I believe that there is no such thing as a true "Survival Knife." Any sturdy blade that holds an edge will get the job done. We're talking "suvival," not "designer camping!" :nod:

Ditto to what Sarge said, great posts. I have some stuff I'd like to say, but I'm staying out of this one....

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Originally Posted by Sparky93

Ditto to what Sarge said, great posts. I have some stuff I'd like to say, but I'm staying out of this one....

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me too on this...

edz

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Originally Posted by Sarge47

I believe that there is no such thing as a true "Survival Knife." Any sturdy blade that holds an edge will get the job done. We're talking "suvival," not "designer camping!" :nod:

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One of my favorite quotes: "The best knife is the knife you have"

As for the OP...

1. You need a formal education first and foremost.
2. Do you have any idea how to run a business?
3. Where will the money come from?
4. What kind of business do you want to start? (i.e. for profit, 501c3, etc.)
5. Do you have a customer base? How will you reach your customers?
6. Do you have any knowledge about laws, liability, etc.?

There are just a few questions you need to take into consideration. Being a survival instructor is great and all, but you need a real education beyond an outdoors background. Additionally you will have a nightmare with the legal side of being a survival instructor. This is America. You will get sued if you screw up.... and don't tell me you won't screw up because everyone does to some extent.

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Originally Posted by RockyRaccoon

One of my favorite quotes: "The best knife is the knife you have"

As for the OP...

1. You need a formal education first and foremost.
2. Do you have any idea how to run a business?
3. Where will the money come from?
4. What kind of business do you want to start? (i.e. for profit, 501c3, etc.)
5. Do you have a customer base? How will you reach your customers?
6. Do you have any knowledge about laws, liability, etc.?

There are just a few questions you need to take into consideration. Being a survival instructor is great and all, but you need a real education beyond an outdoors background. Additionally you will have a nightmare with the legal side of being a survival instructor. This is America. You will get sued if you screw up.... and don't tell me you won't screw up because everyone does to some extent.

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:burst::burst::burst:

I want to be a survival instructor. I have vast experience. I've been doing it for over 26 years! It goes something like this...

1. Inhale.
2. Exhale
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

Toss in the occasional eating and drinking and you're ok.

This has been a free crash course presented by RangerXanatos Survival Inc.

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Like others stated before, without prior meaningful experience, no one would take your school seriously. Check around and see if there is a way you could work under someone to gain that experience at an already established school.

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Originally Posted by RangerXanatos

I want to be a survival instructor. I have vast experience. I've been doing it for over 26 years! It goes something like this...

1. Inhale.
2. Exhale
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

Toss in the occasional eating and drinking and you're ok.

This has been a free crash course presented by RangerXanatos Survival Inc.

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Like others stated before, without prior meaningful experience, no one would take your school seriously. Check around and see if there is a way you could work under someone to gain that experience at an already established school.

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There you have it......... from a real live instructor.

I'll send you my money. I had that whole Inhale, Exhale backwards.

well in all retro spec. thanks for the input i guess. but like i was trying to figure out from the beginning i was trying to find out what i needed to know and do on the other side of survival such as the teaching the legal and the degrees not that i need to have the experience obviously someon who knows nothing about survival is going to be able to teach. so again. on the business legal degree end, where should i start?

Purely from the business end:
First, do you need a loan? If so you better have a business plan written out, with market, demographic, and swat analysis.

If no loan;
1)You need to register your business with the local/state/federal departments that apply. You will need to know which ones based on your business.
Is it an SP, LC, Ltd, LLC, LP, LLP, LLLP, GP, or Corp. Check your state as they may have more designations.
2) Insurance. You will need insurance for sure.
3) Licenses.
That is all just to create the business.
Next you need:
Marketing plan. How are you going to generate business.
A place to work. You will need permission often to teach a class in public parks. Permits, etc.
Supplies. Expect to provide extensively for your students. Also expect for that equipment to be lost, stolen, or broken.
An accountant

Not to mention professional credibility, certification, experience, and teaching ability.

That's a basic rundown of everything you need just to get a business off the ground, which is the easy part.

JG the first thing you need to do is enroll in an English course at the local community college.

You lack the most basic of communication skills. You can not frame a sentence, apparently do not know what capitol letters are and seem to have never encountered a paragraph seperation.

A couple of business courses will teach you how to start up a business and keep it stable.

While there check into their EMT courses for advanced first aid training. You might also skip over to the health, wellness and recreation department for a course in basic camping and woodcraft so you can show certification in those skills.

Or, you can check by the local Army or Marine Corps recruiting station. If you make a wise career decision with them you would be able to get the training, certifications and training while being paid for the effort, along with the other benefits of military service.

Now keep in mind that several of us have all that behind us and still found we had to actually work for a living and go to the woods for fun. Being a woods bum has never paid very well.

Wow, I was about to reply to you Kyrat all pissed off because I read "JG" as "JP". I was so lost as to my failure to convey the information and lack of use of capitol letters. Granted I will give you my sentence structure isn't always the best... lol

James, all I can say is best of luck and I'm rootin' for you. Don't let any of these guys bring you down or challenge your aspirations.

Follow your dreams, you can achieve your goals. I'm living proof.

BEEFCAKE!

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Originally Posted by JamesGuyette

well in all retro spec. thanks for the input i guess. but like i was trying to figure out from the beginning i was trying to find out what i needed to know and do on the other side of survival such as the teaching the legal and the degrees not that i need to have the experience obviously someon who knows nothing about survival is going to be able to teach. so again. on the business legal degree end, where should i start?

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I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. You keep talking about wanting to "teach survival," but your experience is "camping." If it were me, and I've done this before, btw, I'd start as an adult leader in a local Boy Scout troop. You've got to become known in order to get the clients. You can also take "Search & Rescue" training and get involved there. Others on here have posted on the business end of things, I'm talking about what your actual plans are. There are some names out there that teach "survival." John "Lofty" Wiseman; Tom Brown; Cody Lundin; David Canterbury; Mykel Hawke; Les Stroud; Bear Grylls; Mors Korchanski; the list goes on and on. They all have several things in common, but the main thing is that the public knows who they are. They also have years of experience behind them. So you're 20 years old, you have plenty of time to get started. Make a list of everything that you need to do to achieve your goal. I recommend getting some material on "Goal setting" from a friend of mine by the name of Zig Ziglar. Prioritize your steps and list everything and everybody your going to need to get there. Then take the 1st step. You gotta start somewhere, right? Now's the time. Dreams become reality only if you work at them! Good luck! :cool2:

I am having a hard time writing a "nice" answer to this post, but I want to try, because a desire to do something one thinks one would enjoy is a worthy goal.

An individual who wants to teach others something doesn't need a certificate, he needs the knowledge coupled with an ability to communicate effectively what he knows to another.

To work at teaching requires the trust of those who would become students. Sometimes a certificate or degree will help establish that trust, but also just public knowledge of the teacher impacts whether or not others are willing to hire them as a teacher.

Trust is even more important, when the student feels that it can have life or death consequences if he learns something that fails when needed.

Trust flows from a connection that usually evolves over time. I may not know Mors or Bear or some of the others named but having heard their name and observed what they have publicly done over time has created a series of expectations as to whether or not spending my time and /or money with them would be of benefit to me.

At this point I do not know you from Adam, and perhaps you do have things of value to teach, how am I to know that? How can I say go be a survival instructor? If you want to enter the business arena and see if people will pay you for what you have to teach, give it a try.

Perhaps going to a local community center and offering a seminar and seeing how many people pay to come listen to you would be a good starting point. Perhaps even doing some gratis lectures or writing or utubes would help you build up that trust that is necessary between a student and teacher.

Last but not least of this ramble, You say you are 20, what in the name of heaven makes you think that you have much to teach some fellow that has been running around living somehow for more than 2 or 3 times as long as you and is the type that would gravitate to this kind of forum?

I'm not saying you don't have stuff to share / teach, just that you have not effectively demonstrated that you do.

Respect is something that has to be earned, it isn't something that one is entitled to or that can be coerced. Everyone gets one chance to make a great first impression, I hate to say this, but your first impression with me has not given me any confidence that you are yet wise enough to teach.

I do hold out hope that you have the wisdom and ability to learn and eventually become what you desire, just do not expect armchair / book knowledge to be sufficient to convince many people that you are capable of teaching survival.

IOW you have to go , do and show what ya got before anyone is gonna have any faith or respect for you.

Now don't get all upset and give up, just back up , take a deep breath and try again. Humility and manners go a long way in life, as does respect for ones elders, they may know something, have learned if by paying from the purse that contains the coin of their life, and that is a purse that is not refillable.

You are young and thus have time to direct your steps where you want to go in life, God willing. I wish you luck.

Thad.