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Natural shelters

RescueRiley

RescueRiley

Joined
Mar 22, 2006
Messages
5,944
Lets see pics of your natural shelters...(shelters constructed of all natural materials)
 
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My wickiup

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My lean-to
 
Psy-ops,

That's a good looking lean-to but have to ask... are things OK at home?
 
Yeah, that has "I bought too many knives this month" written all over it. The thing is, in the middel of the job he was probably thinking about his next chopper. Mac
 
Yeah! If my wife finds my lastest purchase, I will be using it. But she won't. You guys think BOB's are for evacuation but they actually for hiding knives.
 
Making shelters is my favorite thing to do in the forest.
Chopping poles with my 18" Tramontina
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Setting up a swamp bed
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Gotta have a bug net in the jungle
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Sleeping is good in the swamp bed
JungleDay2_076.jpg
 
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This one was built as a group effort to teach the technique. They sleep normally in hammocks to reduce the impact we have using the same area repeatedly. The exercise was to make an off ground bed only using their basic kit. This one is held together with only vine lashings and stood up to the weight of three guys.

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My daughter and I made this one under a rock ledge. We used one of the ponchos as a tarp roof. This double decker took about four hours to build. We used bark lashings for much of it saving our small supply of rope for the highest stress points. We stayed here for two days int he height of rainy season getting pounded with rain both nights. The rock overhang made a great place to have a fire. Mac
 
Some nice shelters. I use my BOB to hide knives too gettin awful heavy now so I ordered another one. I also use a Clark jungle hammock. Goes up easy anywhere ther are trees.
 
psy-ops said:
Yeah! If my wife finds my lastest purchase, I will be using it. But she won't. You guys think BOB's are for evacuation but they actually for hiding knives.
Click to expand...

Being that close to the house, you could run the cable out there. Maybe even a duct to pipe the AC in from the central air unit in the summer. :p Might not be so bad if she finds the new knives.
 
Psy-ops' wife: :mad: "You bought ANOTHER $500 knife????!!! Go sleep in your Lean-to!!"

Psy-ops: "But, honey, there's been some mistake...I built that for you! :cool: Daylight's waning and it's getting cold. You'd best be getting to finding kindling and start chopping." :cool:


:D:D:D
 
NIce work guys... I think a swamp bed might be my next experiment...I've been focusing primarily lately on natural shelters and making traps (they have been taking up most of my free bushtime, Hopefully after a little instruciton at the end of April I'll start working on some primitive fire making...P.S. Pict the Pidgeons on my roof are sick of being Arapuca-ed....LOL
 
Im gonna be making a natural shelter in the woods by me pritty soon. Since it will be close to my home I will be going to it often, I want to make it larger since it isnt really meant to keep me warm (it will be used in warm weather), it will be more of just a place to sleep and store some stuff in the woods. I want it to keep me dry just in case. Should I incorporate a tarp? Even if I do the tarp would be covered, but would just natural meterials be enough to keep me dry? Anyone know of any good site about hut building?
 
This is a small debris hut sized to fit my daughter. We made this in Georgia.
debrissheltererinyi7.jpg

Mac

Edited to add: The last thing you would want to do in Brazil is sleep in a debris hut. That would be a sick form of torture.
 
Give yourself plenty of daylight! This isn't the kind of thing you want half done when it gets dark.

The ladder type raised bedframe shelters don't take that long to make but building a natural roof over them and making it waterproof does. We just use a poncho. If you have all the materials right there it will take about an hour to get it up, covered and roofed with a poncho. It goes quicker if you have rope and don't have to rely on vines.

Making it the way Bearthedog showed with the poles laid long is quicker still as it avoids lots of the chopping and binding of the cross pieces. I don't do it that way in my area to avoid cutting trees. By making the bed like a ladder I can exploit the tops of the longer poles we cut to make the cross pieces and save the cutting of a few more trees. Laid crossways the sticks don't have to be as strong to support your body weight.

I can't get away with just cutting trees whenever I feel like it. I take groups of four out to the same area many times a year and don't want to get charged with deforestation! Mac

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ETA: Sometimes I get a distorted view of how long it takes because I'm teaching and explaining what I'm doing the whole time. It is one thing to fell saplings, rip down vines, and lash and another to talk somone else through the whole project.
 
pict: What type of hammocks do you normally use?

Edited to add: and top tips for being comforable?
 
Come on Psy-ops!!!!! you took out baby Jesus and the animals before you took that picture.
 
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