5 Bushcraft skills you can learn from home

With YouTube tutorials and the enormous amount of free information online, you can become knowledgeable about almost anything, but there’s only so much you can do from home, especially when it comes to gaining experience. Here are five bushcraft skills you can learn from home to increase your chances of survival when out in the wild.

Sewing

Today there aren’t many people who would know how to fix their own clothing or sow on a patch, and why would they since new clothing is so readily available, but it can be one of the most important skills you can have in certain situations. Knowing how to effectively fix a rip in your tent’s fabric can make the difference between it holding firm and being ripped to shreds during a storm. Sowing is such an important survival skill that it is taught to recruits in the armed forces and various civilian branches like the police and rescue teams. Small rips will always get bigger as the fabric moves, and learning how to sow is learning how to stop a problem from getting worse.

Knot tying

This is one of those skills that you don’t realize how handy it is until you try it. Everyone can tie a basic knot but would you know the best option if you had to suspend your entire body weight from a wet rope? Or if you wanted to make something that needed to be taken down quickly without having to untie a bunch of tightly pulled knots? This isn’t one of those skills that are likely to save your life, but it certainly makes things much easier and opens up new crafting options on your bushcraft adventures.

What things are

(The berries of the Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade as its more commonly known, contains a toxin that can slow your heart to the point of stopping)

Learning about some basic wild foods and the range of equipment available will open up new options and new foods, and more importantly, stop you from eating that tasty-looking berry that could stop your heart from beating. Perhaps a survival shovel and a spare space blanket would make things more comfortable when you’re in the wild cooking up your jack-by-the-hedge flavored burdock root, don’t know what those things are? Then do some reading and expand your knowledge base, your stomach will thank you for it, and in the right situation your life may one day depend on it.

Blade care

Knife sharpening is quite straight forward but it pays to know how to do it properly. A good knife will last for many years but only if it’s kept in good condition. Whetstones are normally cheap and will last for longer than the knife will, and it doesn’t take much to fork out for some oil to make the process easier. Even though all you need to keep your blades in good condition won’t cost you much, knowing how to do it is something else entirely, and you can even damage the blade and chip it using the wrong method. Survival professionals across the world would declare the knife is the single most important item you can have in a survival situation, so knowing how to look after it properly is just sensible.

What “Not” to do

(Chris McCandless went into the wild alone to try and live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, he was found dead from starvation and weighed only 30kg)

Reading some survival stories is one of the best ways to learn how people get into the wrong kind of situations, but most of them share the same mistakes across all the stories. The usual reasons of people not paying attention to where they are or how far they’ve walked, or they thought they would be fine and could easily make it to the top of the next peak, only to find themselves stuck in a life or death situation. There are obvious, common sense things to do in certain situations, but learning about the reasons people find themselves in trouble in the first place is the best way to avoid it happening to you.