Moving From Survival Training To Broader Bushcraft | #AskPaulKirtley 77

Description

Welcome to Episode 77 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about expanding from survival skills to broader bushcraft skills, sleeping bag liners and entanglement, fishing as part of a bushcraft repertoire

TIMESTAMPS:

02:25 Expanding from survival skills to broader bushcraft skills

18:21 Sleeping bag liners and entanglement

22:32 Fishing as part of a bushcraft repertoire

LINKS MENTIONED:

onlinebushcraftcourses.com

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#askpaulkirtley is your chance to ask Paul Kirtley questions about wilderness bushcraft, survival skills and outdoor life.

Ask Paul Kirtley is a regular Q&A show (also available as a podcast) with leading bushcraft instructor Paul Kirtley, founder of Frontier Bushcraft and author of Paul Kirtley's Blog.

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Tags: bushcraft,survival,wilderness,camping,hiking,outdoors,question and answer,advice,questions,answers,bushcrafting,nature,self reliance,self sufficiency,outdoor skills,outdoor knowledge,Paul Kirtley,askpaulkirtley

Video Transcription

in this episode of a sport curtly we're going to talk about moving your bushcraft knowledge beyond core survival skills we're going to talk about using sleeping bag liners without getting tangled up and we're also going to talk about fishing kit [Music]

welcome welcome to episode 77 of ask pool curtly where I answer your questions on wilderness bushcraft survival skills and outdoor life and I'm presenting this show from one of our little Bush camps now like camps that I spend some of my summer teaching from down in the South of England and it is hot today it is about 30 degrees already it's not even noon yet it is very hot it's a bit cooler here in the shade we do have the Gatwick flight path today some planes going over but hopefully because I've got the lapel mic some of that won't come through like it does on the camera mic but apologies if there's planes at the background it's just the way the winds blown today we've got some air traffic coming over but it is still a glorious day to be out in the woods and I'm just in between courses I've finished teaching a course yesterday and I have a day in the woods and it and it's fantastic so it's a good day to be doing some videos as well as just relaxing a bit and having some time on my own which is always good and restorative particularly in the middle of the summer like we have now looking forward to the intermediate courses which the intermediate course rather that's coming up as well as other courses and we've got some wilderness trips coming up in September with clients so there's lots going on and I'll keep trying to answer the a sport curtly questions when I can and here is the first one of today's question and this is via the speakpipe facility on my blog at Port curly Cody at UK where you can leave a voicemail and then I can play it back and we can all hear the question

hello Paul my name is James from Cheshire and I have a question for the Paul Curley podcast I've been in the military now for almost 19 years as military aircrew and in that time I've done a lot of Seri training therefore I would like to think I have a grasp but the basic principles of survival including fire lighting knife skills and basic flora and fauna identification therefore my question is this I would now like to expand my knowledge into more of a bushcraft portfolio so what is the best way to do this do I take a specific subject such as wild edibles and solely concentrate on that until I'm comfortable and then diverse into another subject or two I simply start picking up knowledge from each area of interest and build my skills that way I don't want to be saturated and one the risk of not learning correctly as always thank you for everything you do for the bushcraft community and keep all the outstanding work alright interesting question there James thanks for explaining your background and where you're coming from with that that's useful background knowledge for me so yeah it's to a certain extent the answers a personal one it depends on what you're interested in because I think sometimes it's easier to study things and get it get more into things in more depth in areas that you're only keen on and so if there are areas that you're particularly keen on you mentioned wild edibles I don't know if that was just a random example or whether it is something you're particularly interested in but we'll use it as an example you could go down that route if you're particularly interested in wild edibles from all the training that you've done and the core knowledge and skills that you have you've clearly been talked about edibles or some edibles in your survival training maybe that's an area you want to expand on maybe that's an area you want to go into and a lot more depth you feel like that's where you're being called to look at in more detail then do that there's no harm in that you know you've got that core baseline of knowledge in terms of what you need professionally and that will stand you in good stead in in any outdoor situation

in terms of just the basic understanding of survival skills and what your priorities are in a survival situation or a difficult situation they're those you've got that in place and so you can then look at the areas that are of interest to you when you choose to go outside you've got that backstop set of skills already and if you're particularly interested in foraging and wild edibles then I would encourage you to go down that route as far as possible at the core of that of course our knowledge is knowledge of tree and plant identification clearly if you're interested in edible wild plants edible trees and parts of trees also fungi allied to that then you're going to have to get into your tree and plant identification and your fungi identification that's just part and parcel of that and I would say that is useful generally in your wider bushcraft knowledge because once you get beyond this is a dry stick I can burn it I can Whittle something I can make a feather stick there's a few you know basic things that are not super dependent upon species although even with feather sticks there are some woods that are much better and more suited than others once you get beyond the real basics you have to get into the more subtle aspects of what works best for certain styles of friction fire lighting what's best for cordage what's best for many of the different utility uses what's best for making pot hangers what's better the best for making widdy's etcetera etc etc all that basic camp craft knowledge once you get beyond the real real real baseline stuff you're into choosing particular species or differentiating between different species and having a hierarchy of choice these are the ones that I will use if I can because these are the best but then I can also use these and but they have these limitations etc etc that's all dependent upon you've been out to identify the different species so even if you go down the rabbit hole of wild edibles and learn a lot about tree and plant identification to back that up that tree and plant identification will then be useful and for other aspects of your bushcraft if you then circle back and and fill in those areas at some point equally another option would be to look at

say for example the syllabus of our elementary course and look at the different areas that we cover on our elementary wilderness bushcraft course and use that as a template as a model for building your own as you the word you use portfolio to build your own set of skills around that syllabus and that's something you can do you can look at the frontier bushcraft website for example and look at what we teach on on an elementary course and you can self-study that and there's nothing wrong with that either equally if you want some guidance on that there is an online version of the elementary course which you can find if you go to online bushcraft courses comm have a couple of online courses now that help people study where they are cuz clearly not everyone can come and do a course with me in the woods it's not practical in terms of time in terms of timings of the year I have a lot of people in Europe and North America and Canada in the US and also further afield who are interested in what I do by my blog and what I do via Frontier bushcraft and if they want to learn in this in a more structured way that's what of course always brings it brings structure and it brings prioritization and we've got the courses in the woods here of course here and around the UK as well as some of the trips we do overseas where people can learn on the move but if people want to self-study of course you can get books you can get identification guides you can get bushcraft books and survival books and you can and foraging books and you can learn that way and you can go out and find what's in your locality but if you want a bit more structure around and guidance around your self-study then an online course is a really good way to do that I've got two available at the moment I have the online elementary which covers all of those broad-based skills and it covers them in a way that we can't do in the woods actually like at the moment we had an elementary course a couple of weeks ago it's warm I can show you how to build certain shelters and my colleagues can show you how to build certain shelters for this environment at this time of year and that will be quite widely applicable but there are limits to that I can't show you how to build snow shelters can't build you teach you how to build certain shelters that work really well in the winter because we're in the summer and we're in this environment if I want to show you how to build northern forest shelters with long log fires I can't do that here very very easily and I certainly can't but build Quincy Zoar other shelters and show you the subtleties of those on a video course I can do that and then if you're in those conditions you can try those things and certainly I know people who have been studying that those modules in those courses have gone out in the winter and even if it's in their back garden and built snow shelters and then they've gone out in the woods in there in the summer and they've built shelters that work in the summer and so it's a way of self studying where you are in a way that we can't do even on a physical course because you've got that spread across the seasons also with the idea of spreading across the seasons I've got my tree and plant identification master class which is the first online course I delivered I've been five years in the making that course really I started it five years ago at the time of recording this and the first version of that went out and it's been evolving since then to where it is now it is a year-long program but don't let that put you off it's basically a module a month that gets drip fed out to you that is broadly in lines with the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere and covering the common widespread useful species that we need to know for bushcraft in these environments both in Eurasia as well as in North America and that's proven very popular each year now that only opens around the end of the year around the turn of the year so that everyone can be going through the course at the same time and there are also webinars or live sessions with me space throughout the year and like tutorials as it were and it's not massively overwhelming and used the word sort of you know the concept of overwhelm and not being sat too oversaturated clearly you've got other responsibilities that's a course that you can dip into or both courses are you can dip into as and when you want okay so have a look at those you'd have to jump on a waiting list for the tree and plant identification course because as I say early entry starts in December entries stays open until normally about the end of January and then we get rolling properly with the course you know people the people as soon as you jump in you get access to the first modules and you can get on with it and then it it it is delivered over the course of the year and then you've got access to it ad infinitum if you want to go back and refer to any module at any point going forwards it's there in your library and you can just look at them and use it as a reference so that's quite a nice way somewhere between completely unstructured unguided self-study and having to go and do particular programs at particular times a year with the expense of doing that the expense of travel etc etcetera so it's a very nice happy medium that a lot of people are finding useful and then of course there's lots of free resources on my site at Paul Kelly code at UK isn't as you no doubt know but also there's some other good resources around the net as well and and you you have to be a little bit picky and choosey like any subject but there are some good sources out there there's some good foraging sites if you look at the Association of foragers website I'm a member of the Association of foragers and you will find there are other foragers there and some of those people have blogs some of them have websites they're sharing materials for free online and so that's a very useful resource as well looking at some of those people's websites people like Monica Wilde for example or or mark at Galway wild foods - the the key members of that of setting that group up they put quite a lot of material out and you know following them on Instagram as well they're sharing things and so there's this there's a lot of resources out there if you if you start diving into different areas I would say having a good broad base of camp craft skills if you want to go out and use your you know set up camp use the natural materials around you and then while you're out you can start studying in more depth of wild edibles etc I think that's a nice way to go it's hard to self study some of the trapping elements and hunting etc etc and fishing unless you've got certain permissions but if you get a good relationship with a landowner that's got the right resources then that's possible as well and you may even make good good contact with a game key if you've got an association with a landowner and then maybe you buy maybe offering to help out the gamekeeper they might show you a few tips and tricks about how they how they trap things or how they hunt things or how they manage things and those contacts can be useful as well if you want to go down that route but that's dependent upon building up a relationship over time and with some of those people Trust isn't necessarily built up that quickly they're very busy typically and particularly this time of year I know the gamekeeper here on this estate where where we run these programs from he's getting about four or five hours sleep a night at the moment he's so busy so somebody come in knocking on his door asking for a bit of help at the moment wouldn't probably be greeted with a positive response simply because he doesn't have the time and so you need to build up relationships with these people over time and be timely but all of these things are possible but some things are a little bit more immediately accessible than others but I would say have a look at the syllabus of our elementary course and see what maybe you want to fill in if that's all completely oh you know if you completely ofay with all of those things you think have a look at the syllabus of our intermediate course are you okay with all those things I suspect you won't be there's some people who purport to teach some of the skills that we teach on our elementary course we've come and in our intermediate course and struggled with some aspects of it because it isn't just about ticking boxes I've seen that I've seen that I've seen it I've done that move on it's also about depth of knowledge in particular areas how many of you know if you can do friction fire lighting you know bow drill fish and finalising how many different species of wood have you done haven't have you done it with all the different native species in the UK that you can do it with have you done it with those different species at different times a year have you then practiced with non-native species that work there's a ton of depth just in that one narrow one narrow little fissure and so you can go right deep into those areas and and if you want to do that so don't just flip past the basics thinking you can move on I would say go deep in those core areas as well particularly the fire lighting end because when you need a fire most that's when it's hardest to light one is I'm sure you know from some of your training but the more tools you've got in your toolbox how do I get an initial flame how many different ways have I got to make a smoldering ember how many different ways ever got to take a smoldering ember into a flame how many different ways I forgot taking of taking a small flame to an established fire at different environments different times a year different resources just maximize that skill set that's a huge skill set and knowledge base in and of itself wild foods is another one we talked about fungi is you know separate again really to the trees and the plants and you know there's thousands of species of fungi there are some key ones to know and that are edible that are easy to identify and not that hard to distinguish from poisonous species but then there's a whole depth of knowledge there so you can kind of 80/20 principle that you can dip into different areas and kind of get 80% of the benefit of those areas by you know getting 10 to 20% of the knowledge and skill base in those areas and that's quite a nice way of getting a broad brush initially but then you can swing back and go deeper into those areas particularly the ones that interest you because at the end of the day you've got to feed your interest as well and I would encourage doing that because if you fight you know if you're really interested in this over here but you're kind of going I feel like I should do that logically some sometimes there's place for that but equally if it's a pastime and it's a passion and a hobby do the things here that really interest you first because you'll lap it up you'll be more of a sponge and you'll learn those things then once you starting to become satisfied there you go okay well let's go here and let's apply the way that I learned this to this area right okay let's lap this up and let's work on this and let's get really into this so that's another way of doing it and I would say getting that broad brush first at sort of 8020 principle using something like the elementary or the intermediate as a baseline guidance for a syllabus and then going into different areas and more depth is quite a good way of doing it for self-study and as I say I've got resources there that can help you with a bit more structure around some areas of self-study as well so hopefully that gives you some ideas that gives you some food for thought and if you've got a further follow up question please feel free to get in touch Jam always happy to chat about those things another speakpipe

from dan hi Paul thanks very much for your amazingly informative blog and videos very much appreciated I have a question about using a liner in a sleeping bag I've been thinking of getting one both to keep the bag a little cleaner and and some circumstances to maybe add a little warmth but I can't imagine how I could actually use the liner without getting it all twisted up around my feet do you have any advice about this thank you well I would say this I don't know what type of lining you've been looking at Dan and in my experience there are three broad types of sleeping bag liner there's sort of cheap cotton liners which are often designed for use when traveling and you can also use them for sleeping on or in beds in hostels for example there's often the requirements and those are also used to sleeping bag liners there is the silk sleeping bag liner which is designed to go into a lot of modern sort of mummy shaped sleeping bags that a lot of use for backpacking and traveling and then there's also fleece liners that you can get and although I've not seen those so much in recent years I think sleeping bags have got better for at the particular price points and the need for say a fleece liner to go into a cheek bag use maybe a bit less than it was twenty or thirty years ago but they are still around I'm sure the one you're I'm assuming you're talking about the one I certainly use the type I use is the silk sleeping bag liner which packs down to about bit less than the size of my fist when it's in a little stuff sack and it is big enough to - to fit me inside so it's very thin it's also shiny and with modern sleeping bag materials it slides around inside this leaping back very easily so basically you get into the liner like a like you would into a sleeping bag or a bivy bag and then as you turn over and move over it just comes with you it just turns over with you in slides versus the sleeping bag if you want it to I personally don't find I get my feet twisted up in it I'd fight I don't find I get twisted up in it at all and actually at the moment in this weather I haven't been sleeping in my sleeping bag at all I've maybe been using my sleeping bag liner just as a very very very thin sleeping bag and I've been sleeping on top of my sleeping bag because it's just so warm at the moment so it's useful for that as well and as you say on colder nights or cooler nights you can use it inside your sleeping bag too to add a little bit of extra warmth or you can carry a lighter weight sleeping bag and then you've got that flexibility of the two but personally I don't find that I get tangled up in it at all I wonder if you use the word imagine in your voicemail there I wonder whether it is just your imagination and causing some doubts thinking oh I might get tangled up in it and I don't think you will if you literally just open your sleeping bag up put your feet into the lot into the liner pull the liner up as far as you want it and then fasten your sleeping bag up as much as you need it and you'll find that you should be able to move around and the sleeping bag tech the sleeping bag liner tends to move with you and not twist around you so hopefully that helps try it I mean the worst what's the worst that could happen you're gonna spend I don't know forty dollars on a sleeping bag liner and you hate it launder it and gift it to somebody who would really benefit from it might appreciate it I mean that that's that's the worst case scenario and you're gonna lose out but you know I think you'll actually find it useful and most people do and thank you for the kind words as well down and glad you find all my other materials useful I appreciate you letting me know alright question via Twitter this is from mark and he says listened a lot to your ask box

and you never mentioned fishing in your bushcraft repertoire what gear do you use if any well mark I remember a sport Curly's are about me answering people's questions if people ask me about fishing kit I probably would mention a fishing kit but I guess a lot of the questions haven't been about fishing kit our dry mouth is warm today have a sip of water keep hearing something creeping around behind me looked over my shoulder a little while ago maybe you saw that I think there's either a tree creeper or a nuthatch on one of the trees behind me but I haven't caught sight of it yet but I keep hearing something scuttling around I don't think it's down in the leaf litter we do have mice here that come out at night little wood mice but you don't tend to see them so much during the day certainly not out in the open so I think what I can hear is um there's a bird on one of the trees behind me on one of them on one of the trunks you guys might be able to see better if you watching the video cuz you can see what's going on behind me I know some of you have seen rabbits and hares and deers Visconti having all thoughts behind me in the past when I've been doing these shows anyway fishing kits yeah I I am NOT a dyed-in-the-wool angler let's put it that way some friends of mine you know they grew up doing lots of fishing sitting by rivers sitting by canals going to you know manmade fishing ponds filled in quarries you know there have been stocked and doing lots of you know lots of fishing catch and release stuff that that isn't my background I have done some fishing in in my past in terms of you know just sort of separate to the bushcraft side of things so you know I do have I have a fly rod I have a spinning rod and I've never really done much sea fishing but that's something that I'm going to look to change going forward so I have done some lake fishing I've done some river fishing and yeah cause fishing game fishing I do enjoy it and I do enjoy it when I'm in a nice environment and I've done you know posh fishing on the river test for example somebody took me to do that once during them the the mayfly season that was that was mad but but quite spectacular as well caught some really nice trout on the test

still a memorable day that one so yeah I do enjoy a bit of fly-fishing like like that but equally I like just taking a compact travel rod spinning rod doing a bit of course fishing with with that and I definitely take a fishing rod with me um canoe trips overseas so you know fishing on trips in Canada which the thing that surprises people a lot about that is that you still need to get a license in some of those places the license you need to get depends on the type of fishing you're doing how much you think you might be taking out but there's a great fishing culture you know out in the wilds in Canada and I like taking part in that when I'm out there as well and though it's true I don't I don't spend a lot of time talking about fishing but it is something that I enjoy doing but I I'm not one of these British hardcore anglers who spend you know have a trolley full of gear no all sorts of different subtleties about baiting things I'm not a carp fisherman for example so you know all this you know it's almost like witchcraft you know these special techniques that people have of how to how to get them used to what you're feeding them and all those things that that's not the type of fishing I've done I'm more the sort of person I like fishing techniques and fishing kit that I like fishing kit this portable so both of my main rods my fly rod is a breakdown portable fly rod that packs down to a case that's that long and my spinner is a telescopic rod that packs down to it to a case and you can keep the reel attached to it if you want to as well so I like kit that's portable that I can take on journeys because that fits with what I like doing and then in terms of the type of fishing I like doing it's more a case of I am in a camp overnight maybe by canoe I'm in camp overnight and going to fish near to where were camped maybe we've just come down near some Rapids for example we're camped that's always a great place to camp clearly you've got a nice camp there and you've got this run out where you've got fish feeding you've got nice oxygenated water and we've had some good success on trips fishing in places like that so and yeah it is part of what I do but it isn't like I'm not one of these sort of people who are obsessed with it so maybe that's why I haven't talked about it so much but um yep and you know use use all sorts of things from you know in terms of you want to specifics for the course fishing everything from worms to sweet corn to little rubber jellies and you know we're on a jig through two mets lures particularly in Canada they love the MEPS lures out there and yet you use what the locals say works on the fish there so yeah that that's kind of typically what I've got in a little box a selection of those sorts of things along with my spinning rod which is a which is a a telescopic Shimano rod and a little Shimano rail or cap remember the numbers but good good little kit and then the the fishing rod the the fly fishing rod was a sort of custom one of the guides that I knew that used to guide a friend of mine with with in fly-fishing he could get these breakdown rods made and then you just put whatever reel you want on there I've got two different reels with two different weight lines the rod has a piece that you can put in to make it full length or you can leave that piece out and make it shorter so I've got a lighter weight line on the reel for the shorter length and then a heavier weight line on the on the reel for the longer length and that all fits into quite a compact kit and what flies I've got in a the fly box I couldn't tell you I know I've got some dunk held I know I've got some that I got down on the test I know I've got a few of those that people made for me or gave gave me or I bought here and there but I can't remember what they are I'm not that much of a other nerd I have another friend who has offered to take me out doing some fly fishing and maybe I will go out with him soon because I know he's very into it and maybe he can teach me a bit more about the flies and that's that's that's the extent of my knowledge I've got some that I use and that they they work sometimes it's I like the fly fishing is more occasional as

you can probably tell but I do enjoy it all right so hopefully that answers your question and then of course you know there's all that you know that you're asking about fishing kit but then of course there's all you knows all the other stuff that we teach in terms of making primitive fishing kit just the hobo fishing and that we teach people to do on courses we teach people how to make nets I fished with Nets in places where it's legal to do so or I fished with I've been out with people who are legally allowed to fish with nets and I've done that a fair amount as well and so I've got a good broad base of understanding of how to catch fish to feed myself and I think that's an important distinction to make as well there is the sport end of fishing and there's also the feeding yourself end of fishing and I guess you know I I err on the side of kit that is portable that I can use on trips and expeditions and techniques that allow me to catch fish that I can eat because really that's that's where I'm coming from with this skill set I've never really done any catch and release fishing and just in terms of doing it for sport that's not something that particularly interests me in terms of me spending my time then that's no Critias and with people who do enjoy doing that there's a real skill to it and as a real art to it and the people who do it are very dedicated to what they do it's just it doesn't fit with the other things that I do in in my outdoor life and that brings us to the end of a sport currently seventy-seven hopefully that's been useful range of different questions there different things to think about do check out online bushcraft courses calm and you can leave your email address there to be notified when the tree and plant ID course is open again and at the time recording the online elementary course is open for enrollment currently so you can get a couple of free samples there are videos from that course as well as a video presentation from me on developing your bushcraft skills further that's useful in and of itself also useful if you're going down that path of some guided self-study using an online course so do check those things out and they've been a long time in the making and I think they're really good quality drawing together a lot of my experience from over the years into those programs and I very much enjoyed delivering them and working with people who are working through them that gives you some access to me in terms of asking questions etc that you don't get otherwise but of course you've always got a sport curtly to ask your questions and I look forward to answering more of your questions going forwards enjoy this fine weather while it lasts if you're in an area where we've got this good weather hopefully lack of water is not bothering you too much I do sympathise with some of the farmers out there I have some friends who are farmers and particularly dairy farmers are struggling at the moment and hopefully you guys get some rain before too long but maybe for the rest of us if that rain comes overnight then we'll all be happy all right well take care and enjoy the outdoors and I look forward to speaking to you on 78 of asked Paul currently take care Chisholm

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