Bushcraft and Survival training
As Americans, we love the idea of getting out into the bush and being at one with nature. But venturing out can be a dangerous pastime if you don’t know what you’re doing and are not prepared.
You never know when you may be placed in a lost or stranded situation for which you have not planned or an urban emergency crisis that takes you out of your comfort zone. Many people do not consider ‘what could go wrong’ and are, therefore, unprepared both mentally and physically for such situations. This, in turn, can leave them poorly equipped to deal with a challenge of this type. The better prepared people are, the less affected and vulnerable they will feel, helping them to react properly and make better decisions when they need to.
Learning wilderness survival and bushcraft skills such as fire making, water procurement, building a shelter or using signalling devices, can greatly improve your chances of surviving and being rescued in the unfortunate event of something going wrong such as becoming lost or injured in a remote area or a vehicle breakdown. Learning these life skills can also greatly benefit people caught in an urban emergency or crisis which takes them out of their usual comfort zone.
In recent years, vehicle camping has become a huge thing in America with more people gaining access to remote areas via the use of their 4WD’s. This has been both a good and a bad thing as it has enabled more people to get out, see and enjoy more of our large beautiful country but bad in the sense that people have become too overly dependent upon the ridiculous amount of unnecessary equipment and paraphernalia that goes with it. This over dependence on equipment, coupled with a very poor knowledge of bush skills has led to a number of fatalities in our outback areas and will continue to do so, as people simply don’t know what to do once things stop working or they find themselves lost without their equipment.