Top 4 ESSENTIAL Bushcraft Skills
So, you want to venture out into the woods and try your hand at survival? Maybe you just want to impress your friends while car-camping. Regardless of your motivation, there are a few essential skills to beginning your bushcraft journey, and they all come down to that Promethean fundamental - fire.
If you can light and sustain a fire, you can boil water to make it drinkable, warm your body to prevent hypothermia, and heat food to raise your morale. Once you have a stable fire you can venture into shelter building and other fun activities, but without a fire, you won’t last long. These are three essential skills to get you started, plus one to keep your hands busy while you watch the fire.
Bushcraft Skill #1 - Batonning
Before you get excited about throwing sparks, it’s essential to get your fuel ready. Starting a fire takes a ton of energy. You’ll likely be tired, cold, hungry, and it might be wet and windy out. If you have nothing to feed your fire, it’ll go out, and you’ll have wasted that energy or worse, you’ll injure yourself rushing to cut kindling.
Save yourself the trouble and work like a chef - cut everything before you start the fire. Chefs call it mise en place - everything in its place - it means you just have to toss in ingredients while the pan is hot. Pre-cut your firewood and sort it by size, so you can nurture and build it slowly.
Batonning is the process of cutting kindling with a sturdy full-tang hunting knife. Axes are excellent for big pieces of wood, but it’s easy to miss and cut yourself when cutting small pieces with an axe or hatchet. Batonning allows you to be precise and controlled, so you get exactly the pieces you want without expending a ton of energy. Learn how to baton here!
Bushcraft Skill #2 - Feathersticking
Once you have your kindling, you need something to catch a spark. I find a featherstick is a great second stage to my fire. I have a pile of shavings or dryer lint to catch the spark, but those burn quickly. A featherstick is a piece of wood with fine shavings gathered at the base, perfect for catching that fledgling flame without smothering it. Once the featherstick is lit, you can start piling on kindling, and before you know it, you’ll have a real fire.
I usually pack a featherstick with me to save time, and making them is a great way to keep busy around a fire, but in a pinch, you can make one in the woods. You’ll want a sharp knife and a dry, straight-grain piece of wood around 1”x1” and about a foot long. Learn to featherstick here!
Bushcraft Skill #3 - Sparking a Fire
Okay, we FINALLY made it to the fun part! It can also be the extremely frustrating part, so please practice at home as much as possible before you put yourself in a desperate situation. Trust me on this.
Rather than striking the rod with the starter, I like to place the starter at the back of the rod, place the rod’s tip right next to the tinder, then draw the rod back quickly like I’m pulling the starter on a chainsaw. This method makes it WAY easier to aim the sparks and makes you less likely to smash the starter into your tinder bundle.
Ensure your tinder is fine, dry, and very combustible. Random kindling, chunks of wood, or wet tinder will not catch a spark. I like a mixture of dryer lint and super-fine wood shavings, but experiment with different media. Learn more about sparking a fire here!
Bushcraft Skill #4 - Sharpening Your Axe
Okay, so ideally, you did this BEFORE you hiked out into the forest. Abe Lincoln supposedly said, “Give me 6 hours to fell a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening my axe.” He was right, a sharp axe is much easier and safer to use, but hopefully, unlike Abe, you keep your axe in ready condition. That said, the edge may be in need of a tune-up after a bushcraft session, or you may just need something to do around the fire come nighttime. Sharpening your axe is a great way to keep busy.
Unless it needs a serious repair, I always use a double-sided axe stone for tuneups. It travels well, it’s comfortable to handle, and it does a great job. I re-establish the edge and tune up any little dings with the coarse side, then polish and refine with the fine side. The more often you do it, the better you’ll get and the easier it’ll be. In a pinch, this stone is also great for tuning up bushcraft knives in the field. Learn how to sharpen your axe here!
I hope this has left you inspired and a little cautious about entering the woods. It’s very rewarding, but also very dangerous. Take care to respect nature, because it’s guaranteed to throw some surprises your way. Never venture out alone, stay on the trail, and tell someone exactly where you’re going and when you’ll be back. If they don’t hear from you by then, they need to call the cops. If you get lost, stay put - you’ll be easier to find. Bring backups of everything, extra food and water. Think about redundancy - if something fails, two is one, and one is none. It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Be safe, and leave no trace. Happy bushcrafting!
