Whether you want to learn survival skills or simply become comfortable living in the woods, bushcraft courses will help. They are also great for developing mental wellbeing and boosting confidence.
Practice makes perfect when it comes to bushcraft techniques. Taking small increments of time to work on various aspects of bushcraft, such as fire lighting or navigation skills, can make a significant difference. Discover more at weekend bushcraft course.
Basics
Bushcraft is the study of nature; it’s about learning how to use natural materials to meet your needs in a wilderness setting, reducing reliance on equipment that you can’t produce yourself. You’ll learn how to make fire, find and purify water and build primitive shelters with the help of this minimalist outdoor skill set.
You’ll also discover how to identify and use wild plants for food, cordage-making and other practical purposes. You’ll become familiar with tools like axes and bow drills and explore specialised techniques like flint tool making, bark container-making and wooden pulleys.
A week-long immersion into the cornerstone skills and knowledge of bushcraft will furnish you with a fully rounded and balanced understanding of wilderness survival. Thomas Coyne Survival School offers a variety of courses including the accelerated Critical Survival Skills intensive, taught by their namesake founder who has trained a number of military personnel in wilderness survival. These classes cover the essentials of wilderness survival, allowing you to walk away from your course confident that you’ll be able to survive in a wilderness setting.
Intermediate
If you’ve already taken a beginner bushcraft course, then an intermediate survival training camp could be just the thing to further your skills and comfort in wilderness environments. Learn advanced woodworking techniques, advanced fire-making, wilderness first aid and more as you build your skillset and gain a newfound level of self-reliance in nature.
An immersive, week-long immersion in a range of core bushcraft and wilderness survival skills, this course will extend your skill-set to include trapping, tracking, wild food foraging, fungi and ancient technology as well as more practical aspects such as shelter building and fire-making. It’s the ultimate in experiential learning to develop a fully rounded understanding of living in wild places.
A more intensive experience than a weekend wilderness adventure, this course provides an immersive, week-long immersion in a variety of core bushcraft and wilderness survival skills including primitive hunting methods, trapping, shelter building and more. This course also teaches wilderness first aid and is taught by a certified instructor.
Woodcrafter
Woodcrafters build items that both serve a utilitarian purpose and provide creative expression. This includes furniture, toys, decorative items, and carvings. They use a variety of tools, including hand and power tools, to create functional and artistic pieces of woodwork.
Woodworking is a hobby that can be incredibly rewarding. It’s also a valuable skill set that can help you in your career. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced woodworker, there are courses to meet your needs.
Learn the skills needed to carve intricate designs into wooden sculptures. This on-demand course trains students in a structured environment to become comfortable with various carving and sculpting techniques and tools. It also introduces students to the history of wood carving and its contemporary applications.
Survival
Embrace your primal instincts and learn survival skills that can help you thrive in the wild on a bushcraft course. From preparing food to constructing a primitive shelter, you can hone your wilderness survival knowledge in an array of natural settings around the world.
If you want to hone your survival skills while learning to reduce your dependence on modern backpacking gear, consider a survival bushcraft course with Mountain Shepherd Adventure School in Virginia. This wilderness survival and bushcraft training center offers a variety of classes in one of the state’s most beautiful settings.
Other notable survival and bushcraft courses include a 1-day Critical Survival Skills Intensive at Thomas Coyne Survival Schools and a 5-day Survival Instructor Certification at Sigma 3. The Aboriginal Living Skills School teaches a range of courses including plant medicine, desert survival, fire-making, and shelters. Its founder, Cody Lundin, also teaches a Modern Winter Survival course where students learn to create quinzhees and snow trenches as well as survival psychology and physiology.