Let me first define what the Diary of a Survivalist series was intended to do. I’ve been hearing for years from preppers that it really isn’t possible to live off the land long term for survival in a SHTF situation. That has always been a preposterous idea and our goal was to prove just how wrong this idea is. Its not only possible to survive off the land but with some limited training and equipment you can make it easy and comfortable. Now it is difficult to survive completely primitive with no real modern tools, but if you are equipped with a proper bug out bag then life can be very easy. Here is a quick rundown of the minimum essential items that should be in every bag.
Shelter- I prefer to carry a lightweight tarp because of the diverse amount of uses they have. Tents will never match up to a good basha tarp, except for their ability to keep out bugs. But you can’t have a fire with a tent and a mosquito net for your head will negate all the advantages of a tent over a tarp. So get a good tarp.
Water- The one item everyone should have in their bag is a good water filter. My favorite filter is expensive but it will filter 13,000 gallons of water, which means it won’t ever go out on you. The best one on the market is Katadyn Pocket Filter and if you have the money should be something everyone buys. The next most import thing is to make sure you have a stainless steel bottle, because you can boil water in it as well as carry it. I also recommend a bladder of some type and the best one on the market is probably the dromedary bag. Iodine also comes in handy when you are feeling to lazy to filter or boil your water. But should be used in very limited quantities.
Fire-This can be a difficult task if you aren’t well trained in how to get tinder from the land. So I recommend everyone get
some training on primitive and modern fire craft. But a flint and steel and cotton balls will do the trick every time. I also love the fire piston and regard this as one of the best methods to make fire. The bic lighter should also never be forgotten because it is cheap and you can carry several of them.
Food-If you are going to carry food in you BOB, I like to carry some peanut butter and maybe some honey. This is an
Too Easy!
extremely high calorie and protein food that will give you much needed energy in a small container. It can also be used as bait for almost anything. But my main source of food is going to come from the land. That’s why I carry a trapping kit, fishing kit, and .22 rifle. With these items I can easily procure meat and you don’t need much training to be able to catch food with these items time and time again. Combine these things with wild plants knowledge and you will eat like a king. If you don’t have wild plants training then you better get some! It is the only food that won’t run away from you.
Tools- Your most important items are your tools because they enable you to live off the land easily and effectively. Anything can be done primitively but it takes substantially more time and effort. You absolutely must carry a couple of good knives. Either a large knife/small knife setup or a small knife/small axe setup. I also recommend carrying a lightweight pack saw such as the Bahco Laplander. These little saws make quick work of medium diameter limbs and small cutting chores. You have to carry cordage also. These are must have items if you want to thrive instead of survive.
Take a look at these videos and watch our progress to through this week long experiment and see what it takes to survive in the wild with a well designed bug out kit. We can teach you how to do this with only a few classes and you will be able to survive with minimal equipment for the long term in almost any environment. Please subscribe and comment.
Here is our Video Documentary of surviving off the land (The video will lay out my complete bug out kit)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOfUzNxr7fQ
(This is the story of our Newest Primitive Survival Instructor Josh Hamlin, he has an immense amount of real life survival experience and will be teaching at our wilderness survival classes to pass on his knowledge to SIGMA 3 Survival students)
If you haven’t read part one or two then click below!
Alone in the Wilderness Part 1
Alone in the Wilderness Part 2
After this, I found a cure for the loneliness in the woods. I came across a hiker. I was excited, because he was a Native American, and so am I. I walked up and greeted him, and he gave me a hesitant and perplexed “uh, hi”. Looking back, I can see why he was so startled. I had a big beard, because I hadn’t shaved in months, and to make matters worse, I was wearing a loin cloth. His name was Rick, and he was a member of a Native American church. Many Native American churches have brought old rituals into their practice of Christianity, and Rick performed sweat lodge ceremonies for Native American Christians. I showed him my camp. We bonded and became great friends, which was good, because he came to visit me, and he brought others. Now, I had friends who valued my quest to find the old ways and who could embrace the spiritual aspect as well.
A group of soldiers came across me, too. They played paintball to practice warfare. They gave me a challenge to take a 5 minute head start. They were to track me and shoot me. I ran over the roughest terrain I could find and hid in a small cave certain that they wouldn’t find me. I was wrong. Within a few minutes I found myself being pelted with paintballs. I don’t’ remember these guys names. I just called them the “paintballers”.
One of the worst struggles in the wilderness is insects. When you’re in the wilderness, don’t be afraid of the dark or of Bigfoot…be afraid of mosquitoes. I tried every plant I knew to keep them off, and they worked…for a few minutes. Then I would sweat, and here they would come again. I got so desperate that I actually covered myself in a blanket during the heat of summer just to block the bugs. I breathed through a small hole left for my mouth. When I woke up, my lips were swollen like a clown’s. Those things are relentless. The only thing I ever did that was significantly effective was sleeping right on the river. There was a wind on the river, and I think that kept their numbers down. If you are planning on a time in the wilderness, just plan on enduring mobs of mosquitoes, because it’s a fact of life out there.
I had another encounter with the brutality of predation, and again, it had a profound impact on me. At one time, there had been a homestead out there. The structure was long gone and nature had reclaimed the land but evidence was still there….daffodils and yucca grew in a square around my camp sight and a square hole of concrete went into the ground. The hole was about 2 feet wide 3 feet long and 4 feet deep. it was an eye sore and i wanted it gone so i decided to fill it up…i had thrown lots of sticks into the hole which rested in there like a ramp and i used the whole as a trash can for my fish bones. One evening in the fall around dusk i heard a loud cracking sound and i ran out of my shelter to see that an old coon had tried to climb down into that hole after the fishbones and the sticks had broken and he was trapped. MEAT! I grabbed my rabbit stick and went after him. I like coons, and i didn’t want to kill him, but he was so fat and I knew I would regret it if i didn’t so i killed him. He was a fierce warrior and tried hard to jump out and get me but he was just too fat. He didn’t try to jump out of the hole away from me. He tried to get out of the hole on my side. He didn’t run he fought. I didn’t want to hurt him so when i hit him I did it lightly and said sorry after each blow. but because I wasn’t using enough force I only prolonged his suffering. I had to hit him probably 60 times before he finally surrendered his spirit. His body shook with convulsions as he died, and I again felt like a murderer. I pulled him out of the whole and his eyes were open and it felt like he was staring at me hatefully, so i cut off his head and took it away from camp and buried it. I felt the predator well up inside me, and I howled like a wolf and cried my eyes out as I cleaned the animal. After my trauma subsided I began to be really interest in the insides of the animal. Did you know that a raccoons penis is a hook shaped bone? Well i didn’t before then, but I saved it and made a necklace out of it. I also saved his skin, and the amount of fat on his skin was astounding. There was tons of fat on the inside of his skin. I saved the fat and made a lamp from it. The meat i roasted on the fire and ate all in one sitting. it was extremely tough but delicious.
Winter was a dull time. The leaves had fallen, and most of the birds had left. The animals that were still awake were less active. It wasn’t fun. It was cold. I had very little clothing because I had gotten robbed. I didn’t do much of anything but lay in bed in my shelter and feed sticks to the fire. It never got so cold that the pond froze so my fish trap was still working, but it was slower in the winter and caught fewer fish. The insects were all dead and i didn’t have much to eat. I knew where some Solomon’s Seal was when it was alive, so I still gathered the roots of it long after it was gone. I still had a small but constant supply of fish so between the fish and the Solomon’s Seal roots, I never starved but i did starve for variety. I didn’t really need that much energy though because I only left my shelter to go get fish, roots and firewood. We had a one big snow while I was out there, and I got snowed into my shelter for about a week (I had no shoes), but it melted off and the winter slowly faded into spring again. The cycle began again. Spring beauties reminded me that my year was over. I packed my stuff and the next time Rick came to visit i left the mountain with him.
I left my mountain and went back into the hustle and bustle totally to meet the hectic pace of it all. The sounds of the city, the chaos, the buzzes and humming sounds everywhere. The traffic and the crime, the dirty looks from strangers, rape and murder on the news, miserable people drudging on in miserable jobs. There was also happiness and smiles from strangers and contentment from some people, but they were few and far between. I had fit in here before, or at least I had pretended to, but now it was different. Now it was unbearable. After two weeks off the mountain I turned around and went home, back to my mountain. I would still be there now if it weren’t for my mission: to teach as many people that will listen about the wonders of nature and ultimately the wonder of the CREATOR. I ultimately never came home fully from that journey because I ended up staying in the bush over two years. And I still frequently live in the woods for long periods of time in between odd jobs I do occasionally for walking around money. My life is to teach the methods of our ancestors and walk in the path of the old ones that came before us! And it will be my goal to make all the students that cross my path completely self reliant in any wilderness in the world!
(This is the story of our Newest Primitive Survival Instructor Josh Hamlin, he has an immense amount of real life survival experience and will be teaching at our wilderness survival classes to pass on his knowledge to SIGMA 3 Survival students)
If you haven’t read part one then click below!
Alone in the Wilderness Part 1
It rained for days, and I had built no shelter. I took refuge under an old bridge for a while, but the flood water rose, and I found no escape after that. I sat by the pond again…just sitting in the rain….and waited it out. I desperately needed a shelter, so I made a lean-to first. It was not much, but it worked until I could get something better. I was ready for an upgrade pretty quick, so I made my way up the hill a little to where it leveled out into a flat. I built a wickiup in only a few hours. Whenever the weather was nice, I slept by the pond, but when it rained I moved to my wickiup. The shelter was leaky and far from perfect, but it was better than sleeping in pouring rain, so I counted it a success. With shelter, food, fire, and water taken care of, I began to enjoy my life in the wild. Things got easier, I had plenty of fish in my trap consistently, and I had a shelter. I began to be able to relax and enjoy watching the animals. There were a few beaver in the pond, and I enjoyed the comedic company of goofy armadillos running around my camping area as well.
My fish trap caught a turtle about that time, and I came to grips with another struggle: the brutality of predation and feeding myself on animal meat. For some reason rodents and fish didn’t trigger my sympathy, but when I saw that a turtle had drowned in my trap, I actually tried to resuscitate it with CPR. I was overcome with grief, and actually broke down crying. Your psychology in survival can really cause you to feel for life much more passionately than in our modern society. You can feel free to laugh a bit, because it’s a bit funny to me now looking back, but you should know that it was a real struggle at that time. I’m not a cruel person, and this was a healthy struggle to do what I needed to do in nature to feed myself. I cooked and ate the turtle with all the reverence and respect due our animal brethren. I then altered my fish trap so that it would have air space above the water, so that the turtles would not die in it, but truth be told the turtle meat was so tasty that I cooked and ate every turtle that got in my trap after that.
Not all went smoothly. Once, when I had been out scouting the landscape, I returned to find my books stolen, along with some baskets I had woven . I was furious, and I looked for tracks, but I’m not the most talented tracker, and I never found who did it, which was probably a good thing for them. I decided that I needed a weapon, so I made an axe out of the flint that I had brought with me, and I made a bow out of a small butternut Hickory tree. Making the bow was laborious, but it brought me a lot of entertainment when I finally completed it.
Having made and an axe, I decided to build a better shelter. I decided to make a wigwam, and that shelter requires a lot of cordage. 50 feet of cordage doesn’t go very far, so I had to wind some more. I found myself winding cordage every single night, and there was never enough. The wigwam frame only took a few days, but the thatching had to be grass, and the grass was a long way off and up a hill. I was in no hurry, so I didn’t work on it too much, which is why the thatching took several months!
With a fish trap that was consistently productive, plenty of edible plants that I was familiar with, plenty of grasshoppers and crickets, and a shelter, my needs were met, and life was decent. But in these situations solace turns into isolation which turns into loneliness. In my case this somewhat challenged my identity and self-image. I had always considered myself a loner, able to thrive without other people around. I may have an independent streak, and I may march to the beat of a different drummer, but I found out quickly that I need others. I was missing them, and I began to talk to the animals…then to the trees…then to the dirt and the sky.
This brings me to a life-changing spiritual experience I had in the wilderness, and my story would be incomplete without relating it. Over thousands of years, thousands of spiritual seekers have taken to the wilderness for deep spiritual seeking, and I chose that path myself. It shouldn’t be news to you that spending more time in nature will reveal just how connected everything in the eco-system is. I began to really commune with the balance of nature and looked on in wonder as I lived in my place in that balance. What could be more spiritual than that? Like many people who think this way, I had turned to pagan practices, which placed a high value on nature and our communion with the wild.
Think of this: I hear bird alarm calls. They would go out, and other birds would alarm in circles spreading through the forest. I could stalk to the quiet spots and find the tracks of predators such as foxes or cats. The concentric circles of alarms going through the forest, the relationship of predator to prey, the uses I had for what nature freely handed me…I began to perceive purpose and intention behind the continuity I saw in nature. It was so fierce, but so beautiful. I understood it to be a work of art from the hand of a deliberate creator, not the impersonal energy source I had always thought it to be. That personal creator showed up out there in the wilderness, and confronted all my preconceived notions of who it was. There was a real challenge and struggle as I came to grips with the reality of God, the God of Abraham, the God I was brought up to believe was my bitterest enemy and the enemy of the wilderness and my people. I finally just cried out to God, speaking right into the air: “God”, I said, “are you real?” I didn’t expect an audible answer, but I got one: “Yes. I am the God of Abraham.” I was filled with fear, and I literally trembled violently like many figures in the bible when they met God. I asked one more question: “Are you Jesus?”. The answer came “Yes, I am Jesus whom you have been attacking.” He showed me visions of all the people He had sent me in His name. “I have been calling to you, but you would not listen.” The conviction grew so strong that I ended up on the ground begging God for His forgiveness. The voice stopped talking, but God lifted me up and hugged me. The voice has never spoken again, but I immediately left the mountain and headed to a church where I procured a bible. I went back to my mountain to study the bible, and I have been an avid student of the bible ever since. The voice has not spoken to me since, but I have felt the reassuring hand of God on my shoulder during hard times.
Alone in the Wilderness Part 3 Coming Soon!
(This is the story of our Newest Primitive Survival Instructor Josh Hamlin, he has an immense amount of real life survival experience and will be teaching at our wilderness survival classes to pass on his knowledge to SIGMA 3 Survival students)
Hello,
My name is Josh Hamlin. I lived 2 years in the wilderness living off the land. I was no stranger to the outdoors or to primitive skills by the time I set about the task, but you can only gain so much from practicing the individual skills within the safety net and comfort of civilization. The time had come, and I had a need to place these skills in their context, physically and spiritually. It will not surprise you that my deep reverence for nature had led me to practices of pagan spirituality. I set out with the intention of sharpening my skills as a survivalist and strengthening my spiritual connection to the wild. Both of these things happened, but not in the way I thought they would. Then again, if I had known all that before-hand, I would not have needed to undertake the journey, would I?
I had someone drop me off near a place I used to go to get away as a child. It was a hill near Tulsa, Oklahoma on the Arkansas river. It was a small area about 3 miles long and about a mile wide, but resources were plentiful, so the location was appropriate. I had a few items with me. I brought two dried gourds with me for water bottles. I brought 50 ft. of hand-twisted cordage. I brought some clothing and a blanket, since I would not be allowed to kill and skin large game. Lastly, I brought parts I and II of John and Gerry McPherson’s Naked Into the Wilderness.
As the car drove away, all my romantic notions abandoned me, and the reality of the struggle that lay ahead set in. This was it, and the task seemed insurmountable. For all my training, I began to feel like a fool for even doing this. Still, I had committed myself with my boasts, and I was determined not to return a failure. You can dream all you want about living wild and free, and anyone can call themselves a “survivalist”, but if you’re going to really get at it, there is no way around it. You will have to come face to face with the fear that I felt as I realized how very alone I was.
I immediately sat down near a small pond and did the most discouraging thing for anyone in this situation. I sat in despair and waited to die. Here was the unexpected twist: this was part of the process. I sat there for 3 days straight having already given up on life. On that third day, thirst paid me a visit, and the pond did not look so inviting. There was a creek nearby, and I drank from it until the thirst was quenched. It was then that I realized how hungry I was, so I set about planning to get food. Understand this, though: I was still in despair and still welcomed death. I did not do this with determination to survive, but rather I was lead by primal desire for food and water. It was very basic and very immediate need that took over my mind and directed my actions.
My need for food led me to make a fish trap. I had to cut down some saplings to make the trap, and I had no knife. Cutting saplings with flint is no easy task, and it took me a long time. In fact, it took me 2 days of work to get enough saplings to make the trap. I used some of my cordage to lash the trap together, and I threw the trap into the pond. I checked it the next day and found my trap empty. Truly, nature did not owe me food.
Still hungry, I wove more cordage through the holes on the trap, the better to stop the fish from escaping, and threw the trap back into the pond. I left my spot by the pond and returned to the creek, this time for crawdads to eat. It wasn’t long before I caught several crawdads, but I needed to cook them. There was an old Sycamore that had been overturned with the roots exposed. Sycamore is a good wood for a bow drill fire and it had roots that were pointed upward which will help them dry, so I put it to use and made myself a fire. I put the crawdads on the coals, cooked them, and had a tasty meal of one of my favorites.
I returned to the spot on the pond and checked my fish trap. Several times I had wound more cordage into the trap to prevent the fish escaping, and my labors bore fruit. Inside my trap was a blue-gill fish. I ate it, re-baited the trap with its guts, wound some more cordage into some of the holes in the trap, and threw it back into the pond. I turned a real corner in my situation with the fish trap. It wasn’t long before my trap was reliably catching fish, and food was no longer a problem. That was one need taken care of. That’s when it began to rain.
Alone in the Wilderness Part 2
New Private or Small Group Packages! Since we have so many tactical courses on the board right now I wanted to make a special offer for those interested in wilderness survival! If you have an interest in wilderness survival training and the course you are interested in is not on the schedule then contact us to setup a custom class. You can pick any course from the wilderness survival course list including: the survival standard courses, shelter building, fire making, water procurement, food procurement (trapping fishing hunting), primitive cooking, knife only (more expensive), or any basic bushcraft course of your choosing. My recommendation for beginners is the standard courses. Contact Us for more details!
2 Day Custom Course: $295/person private lessons
4 Day Custom Course: $495/person private lessons
Notes: Groups will be given discount based upon size of the group, the larger the cheaper! These courses can be setup on almost any schedule as long as enough lead time is given for the founder to schedule. We will do the courses either at our primitive camp or some other location of your choosing elsewhere in the state. Extra charges for travel!
Bushcraft is an unusual word to so many people out there that I thought I would take the time to explain what bushcraft and the primitive arts is all about. In the beginning when you first start to begin your journey into survival training, everything will start with necessities. But as you grow it will change into an expression of yourself in your survival training. What do I mean by that? Once your skill level grows past a certain point you will begin to see a new light, just as fledgling seed sprout pokes its stem out of the soil. Your senses will open up to things you never even knew where there before. For instance, most people have no idea how much food is around them even in the most crowded cities! I cannot walk anywhere anymore without seeing food that can be harvested that other people would see as nothing. In fact, most of the weeds people kill in their yards are the most nutritious and useful plants on their property! Many wild edibles are so much more nutritious than what you can buy in the produce department at your local grocery store.
Once you understand the basics of survival then you will begin to put your own stamp on everything. From trap modifications of your own design to making primitive art. Primitive art is all about expressing yourself through the art of self reliance. Whether it be constructing your own primitive musical instruments or making a shelter like no other! There is so much to learn in this field that I guarantee that one person could not learn everything in 10 lifetimes. But it is the journey that forms our character. I go camping with people constantly and am always amazed at how little so many people know about the everyday happening in nature around them. Most people are so alien to their own planet! Modern man cannot even walk into the wilderness without a plethora of space age tools and hope to survive very long. It is almost as if we are astronauts having to carry life support equipment in our own environment! What would you do if your modern conveniences were stripped away from you and you were forced to live as 97% of the worlds past inhabitants lived on a daily basis. Most people will just roll over and die!
Bushcraft is the ability to utilize resources around you to harvest whatever you need from the land. Just as a journeyman apprentice for a carpenter needs only basic tools to construct most any structure, a bushcrafter only needs a few tools to be comfortable in the bush! And a true master can construct his tools and all his survival needs from absolutely nothing! He uses his mind as the master tool to produce all his wants. Once you have achieved this higher level I can guarantee that it will give a sense of self confidence that cannot be reproduced by any other trade or martial art. Primitive survival will give you the confidence to know that no matter what happens that the sun will shine again for you!
Check out what one of our members made by mixing the modern and the primitive in order to create his own unique bushcraft piece! Its a fishing pole made from a yo yo trap and a piece of bamboo! Great Job Steve!
