Bushcraft training for beginners – A night in the woods

There are many bushcraft and survival schools out there that can teach you everything from how to pick berries to making a canoe, but for the beginner, it’s more important to learn about the basics than it is to know how to identify 50 different types of mushrooms.

If you’re new to bushcraft and just want to “have a go” at it you can learn so much yourself without having to spend any money on a course, and gaining hands-on experience can be more valuable than any book. Here’s a quick bushcraft practice session you can do yourself for free, all you need is a few pieces of equipment and permission to stay in some woodland where you can light a fire.

You will need:

Tent and sleeping bag

Cooking and eating utensils (knife, fork, mess tins, or some kind of pot to boil water in)

A knife

matches or preferably a flint and fire steel

Enough food and water to last your time there

Spare clothing in case you get wet

A piece of tarp or some kind of plastic cover

An area of woodland you have permission to camp in (the bigger the woodland the better)

Also don’t forget to bring your phone in case of emergencies

Most people who are interested in bushcraft and survival have never actually just camped out in the middle of a forest before, sure there’s people who’ve stayed on a campsite within a forest, but camping within the trees on natural forest ground is much different.

When you have found a suitable area in the forest to use as your practice ground it’s time to start gaining some skills, and the following list should give you a good all-around experience of bush-crafting. Make sure you arrive at your chosen spot early enough in the day to fit everything in.

Build a Shelter

Your shelter will depend on the type of forest you’re in, but the goal is to make something that you intend to sleep in that night. The tent you brought is only there in case something doesn’t go right, but your main focus of the day is to provide a comfortable sleeping area with enough protection to keep you dry if it rains.

There are thousands of pictures of shelters out there so choose one you think you have the time to build and nothing too elaborate. Instead of giving you step-by-step instructions on how to build one, you’d be better off just choosing one from a picture and simply “having a go” at building it yourself. When you try and use roots from the wrong plant to tie sticks in place and they snap, gaining that knowledge firsthand of how strong those roots really are and exactly what they look like up close will make you more knowledgeable in bushcraft than any set list of instructions.

If you fail at making a shelter you’ve always got your tent to fall back on, but failing and knowing exactly why you failed and being able to learn from it is more valuable knowledge than any quick set of instructions you can read online.

Make a fire and firewall

Knowing how to make a fire is essential and could save your life in the right situation. Practice how to carve a feather stick and experiment with different types of tinder, such as lichen or dried grass. See for yourself which ones work the best and which are a waste of time, and if you can get hold of one using a flint and fire-steel to make your fires is much better practice than using a match.

Learning how to capture a spark and gently nurse it into a flame inside your tinder pile is more valuable knowledge than learning how to strike a match. Lighting a fire is all well and good, but protecting it from the wind can help it burn longer and cause fewer problems with wafts of smoke blowing all over the place. A firewall is easy to build, but again it’s all about the experience rather than just knowing how to do it.

Find water and try to make it safe

Even though you should choose a nearby forest to where you live or at least one that’s close to a settlement for safety reasons, pretending you’re stranded can be a real eye-opener when it comes to just how hard it is to find water. Look around areas of wet ground and try to dig a small hole with a stick, does it fill with water you can drink directly or purify somehow? and if not then you’ll have to look somewhere else. Pretending you’re out of water and trying to find it is excellent practice for a survival situation, but for safety reasons, if you do find some that looks drinkable, it’s probably best you don’t drink it as there’s always the risk it could contain harmful germs.

Before you go to bed try and create a condensation trap with your piece of tarp or plastic sheeting, and see just how much moisture you can gather from leaves and plants in the morning. After you realize just how hard it is to find water without an actual flowing body of it, if nothing else it will teach you to be more cautious with your drinking supplies on future camps.

Go Foraging

Unless you’re an expert then you should stay away from any kind of mushroom, and in the beginning, it’s a good idea to avoid certain salad-type plants. Here’s a list of common and more importantly safe things to go looking for that you won’t mistake for anything dangerous, and how to cook them.

Fresh nettles

Get a fire going and then break a nettle off at the bottom of the stem, if you don’t have any gloves then just hit it with a stick. Hold the stem at the base with either sticks or wrapping leaves around it and quickly wave it through the flames of your fire. The leaves wilt very quickly but if do it just right then only the stinging needles will wilt and the leaf will still be fresh which you can eat right off the plant.

Boiling nettle leaves in water is the safest thing to do with them, and nettles have a similar nutritional value to spinach making them a healthy food choice. Getting through the taste of eating plain nettle soup is harder than cooking it but again, it’s all about the experience.

Cat-tail roots

A plant you can’t mistake for anything else and one that can be cooked on the ashes of a fire, no equipment needed. If you find some cat-tails then the only edible part is the root which can’t be pulled up by yanking the stem as it just breaks off. To harvest the root you have to follow the stem down with your hand and dig around it while pulling to sever all the smaller root off-shoots.

When you have a root all you need to do is give it a wash and put it on some hot ash as it is. They take between 20 and 45 minutes depending on how thick they are and how hot your ash is, but the outside will be burnt black when they are ready.

You don’t actually eat these but instead, pull out the fibers and suck the starch from them, which tastes a little like slightly nutty potato. If you happen to get unlucky with digging a root out then this would also be good practice of how to remove a leech. I find poking it with the red-hot ash on the end of a burnt stick works nicely.

Burdock root

Cooked in the same way as cat-tail but is much easier to gather and has no leeches involved. The plant is very easy to identify and can’t be mistaken for anything else up close. The root can be wrapped in leaves from the plant and put in the ashes, but unlike cat-tails, these can be eaten whole. They taste similar to sweet potatoes and are full of carbs, making them a good choice when you need an energy boost.

Thickened wilderness broth

Ingredients to make 2 pints

4 cat-tail roots
2 large burdock roots
2 cups nettle leaves
2 wild garlic plants
Any other flavourings you know how to identify safely (Wild mustard, chives, lady’s smock etc..)

Wash all your ingredients as best you can and get a pint and a half of water on the boil. Slice up the wild garlic and burdock root and add them to the water along with the nettle leaves.

Then take a bowl or some kind of container and put a splash of water in. Peel the outer skins off the cat-tail roots and slice them up as thin as you can before putting them in your bowl. Using a smooth clean rock smash them to pieces as best you can, to goal here is to extract all of the starch into the water so you can use it as your thickener.

After its been sufficiently squished, pour off the liquid into your boiling water while holding back all the pieces, if a few bits get through it doesn’t matter as the entire root is edible, just very fibrous. Simmer gently until the burdock has gone soft enough to easily stab through and serve to a few guinea pigs, i mean friends. The taste isn’t actually bad at all, especially if you get the thickness right and add just enough garlic.

Practicing these four things and getting them right will gain you more knowledge and experience than anything you could just read online. Failing and learning from it will help you learn about bushcraft much better than someone just pointing at a plant and saying “That’s edible” before moving on. So get out there and try it for yourself, because you’ll never be a survivalist if you don’t practice.