Bushcraft is a set of skills that can help you survive in the wild. These skills include foraging, hunting and firecraft. They also include shelter building, first aid and navigation.

Survival and bushcraft have some similarities but are different in that survival is done to keep you alive while bushcraft is more focused on living comfortably in nature for enjoyment. This is why you will find skills like birch bark cups and whittling spoons.

Foraging

Using indigenous skills to thrive in the wilderness, bushcraft promotes self-reliance and a deep connection with nature. The ancient survival techniques it encompasses include foraging, hunting, shelter building, and water sourcing.

Responsible bushcraft emphasizes taking only what you need while ensuring the long-term health of the ecosystem. For example, you should never feed wildlife or leave trash behind. Also, it’s best to observe animals from a distance rather than approaching them directly.

Learning how to forage, hunt, and build fires is a great way to get outdoors and experience the beauty of the natural world. But it’s also a challenging discipline that demands patience and perseverance.

Hunting

In addition to being a lot of fun, bushcraft offers a unique and calming connection with nature. It fosters a deeper appreciation for natural resources and encourages environmental stewardship.

Bushcrafters follow the Leave No Trace principle, respect wildlife, and observe from a distance when encountering animals. They also avoid damaging historical, cultural, and natural artifacts.

Hunting provides a kinship with wildlife and wild places, combats the nature deficit disorder, increases Vitamin D, and puts healthy food on the table. It also promotes sustainability by reducing the need to collect or import supplies from outside the wilderness. However, some bushcrafters take hunting to an extreme and use animal hides for utensils and clothing, which aren’t necessary in survival situations.

Firecraft

Bushcraft focuses on wilderness survival techniques at the most basic level, but also includes many other useful skills like tool making, container construction from natural materials, flintknapping, cooking, tracking, hunting, shelter building, and much more. These skills are rooted in ancient practices and indigenous wisdom, and foster self-reliance, problem solving, and deep nature connection.

While some of these skills may be necessary in a survival situation, others such as processing hides for buckskin garments or carving birch bark cups are more luxury items that can add comfort to your time out on the trail. Responsible bushcraft practice also includes knowing how to treat common wounds with wilderness first aid.

Shelter

One of the most important skills to develop in bushcraft is shelter. This will allow you to avoid dangerous weather conditions and survive in the wilderness.

Start by finding a good spot to build your survival shelter. Look for areas with a flat face of rock to reduce wind exposure. Also, try to stay away from mountain tops, open ridges, and bottoms of valleys where cold air collects.

Then, gather armloads of any kind of dry debris you can find to build a mattress of insulating material in your shelter. Branches, pine needles, and mosses work well. Poke your head inside the shelter to see if light is penetrating, and keep adding material until it is.

First Aid

First aid is the act of administering immediate care to a casualty to prolong their life and prevent their condition from worsening until professional medical assistance is available. Although not a substitute for professional medical treatment, the application of first aid can minimize the time required to recover from injury or illness and minimize lasting damage and scarring. First aid protocols are simple to follow and don’t require specialist training and can be executed under stressful conditions. They can also be used as a tool to build first responder confidence and provide a foundation for more in-depth training. First aid is a critical skill that every person should have.

Navigation

Bushcraft is about connecting with wilderness and having good navigation skills is a key part of that. It’s easy to get engrossed in the technical aspects of navigation (reading contour lines, finding north with a map and compass and so on) but good observation is important too.

Learning to identify vantage points is an excellent outdoor skill and can be a lifesaver in survival emergencies. It also helps you to internalise a mental map of the landscape, which is useful when backtracking in a survival situation.