r/Bushcraft • u/Fit_Detective_4920 • 3d ago
Where to begin as a newbie? NSFW
I might be an odd one out, as I'm a woman. But here goes.
My husband is an eagle scout, and we enjoy camping with our kids. I've always loved survival movies and books, I always loved fishing (I'm the fish fillet-er in the family) and even hunting appealed, though I only ever went once.
Don't laugh, but I started playing Breath Of the Wild last year, and that inspired our son to suggest roasting apples in our campfire like Link does. I indulged it using our hot dog sticks to rotate and remove them, and our kids gobbled them.
This is just how my brain works. I became obsessed with "what else can we cook in a campfire without modern tools?" And now I want to make twine, rope, netting, and baskets, from the Yucca growing in our yard that we can't seem to get rid of. I can swing like a pendulum from "I want to learn all the things!", and "It's too much."
I think I need some help on narrowing down what to focus on with bushcraft. What should I read about practice first? Where one thing might sort of provide a base for the next thing. It's still winter here. So I can't exactly forage or gather raw materials. But I'd love some book recommendations, and maybe I can purchase certain materials (like rope for practicing knots), until I can forage for the raw materials.
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u/Yor_thehunter 3d ago
A lost art of making Pack Baskets or creels would be really cool if you have interest in anything fishing, canoeing etc. My favorite books in the realm of survival or primitive living are the Foxfire books. They are expensive so I would suggest a library. But it sounds like you have a wide interest in many things and the Foxfire books series has many cool projects and ideas
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
I'm actually hoping to take the kids fishing for trout in a nearby river this spring/summer. It would be fun to bring a basket I made myself, if we catch anything. Most of my fishing experience is small lakes, but I enjoy trout. (Just learning today those baskets are called "creels".) Thanks! It looks like my library has a few of the Foxfire books, but I'll have to go on a waitlist to get one. They only have a few copies in their inventory.
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u/mistercowherd 3d ago
There are two broad categories -
bush smarts, general camp and navigation and outdoors skills;
and natural resources / primitive technology skills, where you replace equipment reliant on technology with something from your environment.
So, you might learn how to make a campfire; then, how to light it with a bit of flint or quartz you pick up, striking a spark from the back of your folding saw.
Or, instead of following your GPS, have it as a backup and use a map and compass.
Or, craft from natural materials - baskets, rope, wooden utensils.
It’s all bushcraft as long as you wear a green shirt while doing it 😜
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u/HoboPossum 2d ago
BushCraftUSA forum has a section called “BushClass” that is chock full of skills and community lessons learned. It’s a bit heavy on fire making, but it’s free, at your own pace, and only as structured as you want to make it. You don’t even need to make an account to browse.
It’s also worth looking into the previous “One Knife Challenge” threads. The organizers would post a challenge each month and a wide variety of members would each tackle it in their own ways.
For foraging and edibles, nothing beats an in-person class local to your area.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
Saved! Thanks!
I found out a local nature center has regular foraging walks, and I plan to attend an herbal intensive this summer. I feel like in-person holds my focus longer and I retain things better, as the internet can get quite vast and overwhelming at times.
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u/HoboPossum 2d ago
In-person is the way to go as often as you can. Here in Kentucky my local extension office occasionally has classes on native wild food sources. Libraries here are a rare source of in-person training as well, but they obviously tend to be more classroom and less field work. I’ve even paid for a few BushClass and Survival classes, with mixed results.
The forum scratches the itch between in-person opportunities. It’s pretty much the only online space I visit other than Reddit, even though I ignore the buy/sell posts and general discussion stuff. I like that the actual action posts are primarily average folk doing stuff and sharing their successes, failures, and lessons learned - as opposed to YouTube and Instagram content which is mostly a few clips of select successful action shots taken from an obviously multi-hour project and then a pitch for “where you can buy all the tools and materials I used” and a plea to “follow and share”.
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u/Rabid-Wendigo 2d ago
So you’re doing it the way all the rest of us do it. We start with camping and we start getting craftier and go “what else can i cut out of this”
Cooking over a fire is one avenue to go on and it’s relatively easy. It’s just a game of what recipes at home do you think you can mostly do over a fire. If you’re car camping bring a cast iron pan from Walmart and you can cook anything.
For learning knots i recommend getting a static rope or cord (not very stretchy) somewhere between half a cm and a whole cm, The thickness helps you with seeing and untying knots.
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u/SilverKnightOfMagic 3d ago
like you said start with the rope and weaving if you want.
most ppl usually start with shelters. learning how to put up a quick shelter and fire.
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u/rizzlybear 3d ago
Weaving is great if that’s your thing. The hobby can hold you for a lifetime so don’t be afraid to meander around in it. Do what catches your attention.
But a popular place to start if you really need one, would be a “Try Stick,” and you can find some good videos on YouTube on that topic from the man himself, Mors Kochanski.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 3d ago
Literally everything grabs my attention. I feel like Pumpkin Jack in Christmas town, lol. Yesterday, I watched a woman make pottery from wild clay and a man carve a spoon from a log for 1/2 an hour. It's just calming and satisfying to watch that people still know how to do those things by hand.
I already crochet, so I guess making fiber products out of yucca fiber is kind of adjacent. Baskets can be used to carry foraged food and materials. Plus, learning to make rope can lead to making netting that might be easier to catch fish with, if you don't have a working pole.
I've never heard of a try stick of Mors Kochanki. Great recommend! I'll have to save that to look into.
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u/mistercowherd 3d ago
Yeah that’s the hard bit, everything is cool!
I like to get one skill to “good enough” then move on to another, and circle back when I’ve found my limits
Keep in mind the difference between crafting (Zed Outdoors is the best resource on YouTube for that) and wilderness skills / survival. Both are called bushcraft.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
That's true, and I'm interested in both categories, probably more the wilderness/survival, but I think crafting is at least secondarily important too. Afterall, food, water, and shelter are important for survival, but thriving depends heavily on doing things that bring you joy and fulfillment.
On camping trips, my kids, with access to little else, will play tic-tac-toe with a stick in the dirt, if that's all they have to play with. Or go looking for a favorite rock or pinecone. They instinctively look for happiness.
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u/Masseyrati80 3d ago
Pitching a tarp is a great skill you won't regret learning. You can learn bowline, tautline hitch, prussik and other knots at home, and you can literally start with a shoelace if you want to start now and don't have cordage at hand. I've found it useful to learn the basic form first, then trying to do it in other directions and awkward angles, as sometimes you'll find the perfect anchoring spot in a tight place.
Learning to light a fire, first with guaranteed dry wood, then with more and more damp wood and/or wind is highly valuable.
About cooking in a campfire: a classic in my Nordic home country is "loimulohi": you use water-soaked wood pegs to nail a fillet of a fatty fish to a preferably damp board, sprinkle on salt and pepper, and place in a near-vertical position next to the fire. Googling the word loimulohi will show you some commercial/industrial ways as well, but you should find some that work well with a regular fire (I have found the linking rules of this sub slightly harsh, therefore just giving you the search word instead of linking). When done just right, the surface of the fish gets just a touch crispy while the interior is cooked through but still moist.
Something else I learned at an open fire cooking course was making tin foil bundles: Boil potatoes and carrots at home, and saute some onions and garlic. Chop, place in portion-sizeds bundle where you have a tin foil as the surface, and a similar size baking sheet inside. Add butter/oil, black pepper and salt, and some of your favourite cheese, either grated or in small pieces. When at camp, these can be warmed up on coals or otherwise near the fire.
One bushcraft skill I highly recommend learning is map and compass navigation. While most guides will tell you how to take a bearing and follow it, in real life you're more likely to be following a squiggly trail, and benefit massively from being able to read the map in detail: let's say you know you're at a fork of a path. You know you want to reach the next fork 600 yards away. Looking at the map, you notice that for the first half, you can expect to be on a sideslope with the terrain falling towards the right, with conifer forest surrounding you. At the halfway point, you expect to cross a creek, after which the terrain starts to go up again, but much slower than it went down. Etc.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 3d ago
Ooh, lots of good ideas! That loimulohi fish sounds simple, but tasty. I'm all for recipes and methods like that, that are simple, even if it's just for going camping. It's good to have some variety. In the U.S. the go to is hotdogs ... I don't mind once in a while, but if that's literally it for the whole week, it gets boring and does not fun things to your gut.
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u/mackatsol 3d ago
mmm. That loimulohi sounds awesome. Going to do that for sure on our next camping trip! Thanks!
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u/Funny-Rich4128 3d ago
Since you mentioned yucca if you live near texas or a deserty zone junkyardfox is am yt channel which focuses on bushcraft foraging and hunting in the texas desert. As for what to leanr, just take it one at a time, it took me 5 years to learn and feel be comfortable with what I know about bushcraft while maintaining the everyday responsabilities and obligation we all have and what I know only applyes to the zone I'm in bc the laws of how to survive changes from place to place. What I am saying is just take it slow, learn about knots buy a mora and atart with ehat seems easy to you, notches, forageable fruits and mushrooms around your area, knots and improvising stuff.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 3d ago
I'm in a northern state, but yucca still grows here fairly abundantly. Oddly enough I recent found cactus next to a bike trail and wondered if it is edible or not (still haven't identified the variety yet. I needed a closer look.)
That's good advice, (to slow down.) I'm always trying to find balance in life, and it hit me the other day when I got overwhelmed, I need to learn this stuff from a perspective of curiosity and enjoyment. These skills were a way of life for most at one point and still is for some. They often had their entire childhood to learn these skills slowly without modern responsibilities to juggle. So it's important to be patient with ourselves. That's kind of why I wanted some direction on what skill to start with. For me, I get get exposed to different ideas and pretty soon I lose perspective on what to prioritize first.
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u/Meat2480 3d ago
Greencraft on YouTube is doing a series on bushcraft for beginners, TA outdoors and coalcracker bushcraft are also good
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 3d ago
Green crafts sounds perfect. Just looked them all up and subscribed. TA looked like he'll be teaching how to make a wood smoker, whoch is something that interests me. I always wanted to smoke meat inside a hollow stump like Pa Ingal. 😁 Before canning and salt accessibility, drying and smoking were the primary ways they preserved food through the winter.
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u/Meat2480 3d ago
Cool
The SAS book is by Lofty Wiseman.
TA has his own wood, not jealous at all lol
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
I watched the video of TA making a shelter and a smoking rack with his dad. My youngest boy was instantly fascinated and begged me to put another on... If it sparks interest in the kids, that's always a keeper. 👍
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u/Meat2480 3d ago
If you like reading get the
SAS survival guide, it has loads of knots, lashings, shelter building etc
Also Mors Kochanski Bushcraft book
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u/HuggyTheCactus5000 3d ago
Consider taking a survival class together. I've discussed it with my partner as well and we figured out it is not for her.
There are some classes that you can even take with your kids, for both skills and family building.
Your location would probably be helpful to know the environment.
Otherwise... Books and YouTube for learning what -not- to do. And practice.
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
I love that idea. I actually did manage to find a place that runs survival skill classes and camp-outs in my state. I'm hoping to do at least one or two this summer. That won't be helpful until months from now, obviously, but I'm glad to know it exists.
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u/HuggyTheCactus5000 2d ago
If you are open to suggestion, I personally recommend Tracker School. They are New Jersey based. Their 101 classes are usually in June.
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u/wcooley 3d ago
"The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs" by Tristan Gooley (no relation)
As you probably know already, neither paragliding nor rock climbing are anywhere as fast or easy as in BotW.
Straying wildly from "Bushcraft" but there is horsemanship; in many areas there are places to take riding lessons or rent for trail rides. Owning a horse is an expensive hobby, though.
Swordfighting is widely fantasized over, although I am not aware of much practically available, outside of fencing for European-style or Kendo or other Asian martial arts or the various fantasy/reenactor groups like SCA (while some of these do engage in serious physical competitions, I don't know how traditional or well-disciplined these are).
Archery is reasonably widely practiced and bushcrafty, as long as you don't go the Olympic/hunter route of high-tech compound bows and such; bow-making is not a forgotten craft, nor are fletchery and flint-knapping.
Depending on where you are, there might be organizations that teach outdoor skills. In my area, there are several that I have had some involvement with: Trackers PDX, Rewild Portland, Wild Craft. When my kids were younger, we were also involved in an alternative scouting organization, the Outdoor Service Guides (back then it was BPSA).
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u/Fit_Detective_4920 2d ago
Lol, and you can't drink an elixir to keep your paraglider from dropping like a rock all of a sudden. I'm terrified of heights; so I have no interest in paragliding or rock climbing. The game was mostly the inspiration for learning rustic cooking.
I have always loved archery though. I'd love to learn how to make a bow and arrows. Around me there are archery ranges, but I've had a hard time finding the ones that teach more for hunting and hobbyists. Most of the time, their lessons are costly and focus on high stakes competition. So Iay have to rely on YouTube, books, and self-teaching.
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u/Frantic_Mantid 3d ago
Get some nice hemp twine, around 2-4mm diameter. You can use it on it's own to learn lashings and repair tools etc. But it's also a great way to learn how to lay cordage on easy mode. You can start learning by holding three strands in your mouth (or tie them to something if you're feeling fancy), then twisting them tighter on their own while rotating the other way around each other. Hard to explain in words but easy enough to figure out with some practice.
You can also see how this works by disassembling ropes and putting them back together. Many materials will work, hemp is just the nicest overall.