Where do you practice your bushcraft skills?

mapper66

mapper66

Joined
Nov 11, 2007
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Lately I've taken an interest in learning to put together small shelters using natural materials. Most the skills I have practiced so far are pretty low impact, fire starting, small traps and snares, etc. and I haven't worried too much about it. But a natural shelter is a larger impact and I wondering where you all try these things out? Let's assume my place isn't an option (If I cut down many more small trees there won't be any left :)) What that leaves me with is public land under state or federal jurisdiction; NPS, USFS, State parks. So where do you guys try this stuff out without getting thrown in the slammer by a good intentioned but maybe overzealous Park Ranger? For instance, I've been in some national parks where picking the wrong flower would bring some pretty heavy smackdown on you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we go out and pillage whats left of our natural areas. But there ain't that many of us out there doing this type of stuff anymore, and I'm just looking for the places I can do that in peace. :thumbup:
 
I'm not really into making shelters and stuff but if I was I'd do it in my woods. I own 85 acres and it's mostly wooded.
 
I'm in the same boat you are, Mapper, but I luckily came up with a solution. About fifteen minutes from my house you get into some good sized farms. I simply drove around until I found some farm land that had a good sized woods on it (roughly 60 acres), and talked to the farmer that owned it. I explained that I'm looking for somewhere to just hang out in the woods and practice some primitive skills, and he was very sympathetic to me, and told me I could have at it whenever I want, as long as I don't cut down any live trees. Dead, standing trees were fair game.

I sweeten the deal for him by dropping off some baked goods from my wife every now and then along with an occasional card, and the system works for me!

-Parke1
 
I have a friend who has taken 7 or 8 of Tom Brown's Tracker courses and he practices in a state park. He just goes in during the day, spends the night off the beaten path and comes out the next day.

I practice on the ranch I live on. My landlord is cool about it as long as I don't mess with the horses.
 
I use a little area of wilderness about 13 km north of the town of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais Brazil. There is a large forest reserve, area of private farm, and a mountain mining lease. I have permission to use the private land. The forest preserve and mining lease aren't pratrolled. The entire area forms a box about 10x14 km, so I have have about 140 square km to play with about 1.5 hours away. Mac
 
i have a large amount of woods out behind the house, and all the property lines are a little hazy. i just make an effort to be very low impact so that in case i am somewhere i shouldn't be, i won't be causing any trouble.

i carry a tarp, looking into playing with a bivvy bag this season. this is also good practice for very low impact camping while on the trail, always a good thing imo.

i would advise finding a buddy that has alot of land that you can get out in the woods with you and you guys can put together shelters etc. or just find someone that has land and will allow you to use it, ala Parke1's solution.
 
Usually? My living room.:D

Come summer I spend alot of time in Hatcher Pass, Denali State Park, Lake Louise, and sometimes Seward and Homer. I don't really practice skills per se; I just go into the outdoors, have fun and learn something new every time.
 
I personally practice bushcraft skills all the time. Most of the time I'm not thinking about it. I use my knife for almost everything throught the day. Also, I love to widdle pieces of wood I get off of motorcycle crates. Lately (for the past month or so) I've kept a Mora on my side in addition to my folder for widdling. In this business, you have several breaks during the day, especially in these months. I'll sit at my desk with a trashcan under it or oustide and just start working on a carving. Also, I have to use several different kinds of knots for various things around here so I'm always trying to learn new ones and figure out what application they're best suited for. Basically, all day long, I find some way to employ bushcraft skills I learned. It's funny, when people ask questions like this, that's when I realise how often I do it. Otherwise, I don't even notice.
 
in my backyard first
then, in the local city park
then while camping with my fiencee
then while camping in the UP (that would be Michigan~Upper Peninsula)
then on solo camping trips
 
we do a biggish trip once or twice a year , transcontinent kinda drive and camp the whole way ( more $$ for fuel that way ) , when we have a break for a couple days , we make it somewhere we can mess around and make shelters and have a campfire , even do some hunting and drop a feral or two

making a shelter is a impact on the environment , we just do it where the environment can take it , if I reckon its going to be more than I like , we just tent it or sleep by the fire native style

cant beat laying back and watching the skyshow at night , or seeing the sky and light changing from the predawn ...
 
I have found that practicing component making is a better investment of time than traveling out to the national forests outside of town.

For example, this past fall, I went and got a permit to take down two trees for Christmas. I used both of them as practice. I cut them both down through perforating them with an IJ leuku. Then I brought them home and made a backyard shelter out of them and some other branches I'd collected from a friend who is a landscaper and just has crews throw them in a burn pile on his property. It's a great way to get a variety of woods to craft with.

So I practiced lashing together a framework and using pine boughs as a backyard shelter the first time it rained after I got the trees. Had it not rained, I'd have run the sprinkler on myself.

About five downpours a year I try to go out into the teeth of the storm and try to get a fire going using the stuff I would carry and fuzzing or splitting some soaked branches.

Things like making primitive traps and stuff best requires field practice in order to practice picking locations and dealing with variables like local terrain and available wood, but you can perfect notching wood out on your patio in a lawn chair.

I made about two dozen figure fours before trying to deadfall my hand with best looking one. It actually supported a thirty pound decorative rock I have. The first dozen I made would have likely sent me to the ER for stitches or splints.
 
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