Product Description
Bushcraft Weekend Course
The Bushcraft Weekend is a three day course designed to build on the essential bushcraft skills including fire by friction, game preparation and water sourcing. The skills learn’t will enable you to go into the countryside with minimal equipment and thrive.
Over the course of the day you’ll learn:
- How to safely use knives ands saws, including cutting techniques
- How to construct a weatherproof shelter (leaf litter)
- How to tie key knots used to put up a tarp
- How to source and use natural cordage
- How to find water whilst in the woodland (springs, ponds, streams, etc)
- How to filter and purify water, making it safe to drink
- How to Identify useful trees and plants for food and medicine
- How to prepare game ready for cooking (rabbit plus pigeon or partridge)
- Bushcraft cooking techniques on a open fire
- Where to source tinder (bark, grasses, seed heads)
- Natural navigation
- How to set snares and traps
- The legalities of trapping and snaring in the UK
- How to light a fire without matches (methods include solar, fire steel and flint and steel, bowdrill)
- How to look after your bushcraft tools in the field and at basecamp
Final Challenge
The final part of the course is a challenge to test what you’ve learnt over the last few days.You’ll have to identify a number of plants and some of their uses and finally light a fire without matches.
Your Weekend Fri 19:00 – Sun 13:00 |
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Arrive at Hands on Bushcraft You’ll be welcomed by one of our instructors and guided through the woodland to our basecamp, where you’ll be given a safety briefing before being handed the tools you’ll be using during the course. |
| Shelters – Tarps It’s then onto setting up your sleeping area for the night. We’ll show you where best to setup your tarp for a comfortable nights sleep.. |
| Evening meal Enjoy a pre-prepared evening meal once back at basecamp after you’ve setup your sleeping area for the night |
| Saturday – Breakfast An early start to the day, but first things first breakfast! You’ll be given the ingredients to cook a hearty breakfast to keep you fuelled up and ready for the long day ahead. |
| Shelters – Natural shelters After breakfast, you’ll head straight to our shelter building area, we’ll guide you through the fundamentals of shelter building, taking you through location selection, hazard awareness and types of natural shelters. You’ll then be tasked to build you own leaf litter debris shelter. This will be your home for the night. |
Game preparation It’s then time to prepare lunch, you’ll be handed a pigeon and guided through how to prepare it using only your hands. Believe it or not, it’s one of the quickest and cleanest ways to remove the meat from the bird |
| Bushcraft cooking We’ll then cook the pigeon, along with a selection of season ingredients for our hearty woodland lunch. During this session we’ll guide you through some handy campfire cooking techniques |
| Fire lighting After lunch, we’ll cover the fundamentals of lighting a fire from natural resources. We’ll demonstrate various methods of lighting a fire with sparks (flint & steel, firesteel and fire by friction). You’ll then get a chance to ignite a number of different tinders (natural and man-made) using these methods. we’ll also take you out into the woodland to harvest some barks and fungi. |
| Game preparation It’s then time to prepare your evening meal, you’ll be handed a rabbit and guided through how to, skin, joint up and de-bone ready for the cooking in the dutch ovens. |
| Snares and Traps Whilst dinner is slowly cooking over the fire, our instructors will take you through snaring and trapping, discussing the legalities behind each. We’ll have a few ready for you to test out, and then it’s time to head back for dinner, but on the way you’ll gather some nettles to make some reverse twist cordage after dinner. |
| Sunday – Breakfast As the sun begins to glisten through the trees you’ll awaken to the sounds of the woods. For the early birds, there may be a chance for a gentle stroll through the woods, seeing if we can spot any wildlife going about their daily business. Together we’ll prepare breakfast and enjoy it around the central campfire |
| Tool maintenance After breakfast we’ll take you through how to look after you knife in the field and at basecamp. We’ll guide you through how to correctly sharpen and maintain a strong cutting edge, before handing over to you to have a go |
| Water – sources, filters and purification methods
You’ll then head out in search of water.You’ll be guided by our instructors on how to best locate a water source. You’ll then use Millbank bags to filter, and tablets to purify the water. There will be chance to test out a water filter pump as well. |
| Natural Navigation On the way back to basecamp, we’ll then take you through natural navigation, looking at trees and plants to aid us in navigating our way through the wood. we’ll cover using the sun and other methods along the way too.s. |
| Final Challenge The final part of the course is a challenge to test what you’ve learnt over the last few days.You’ll have to identify a number of plants and some of their uses and finally light a fire without matches. |
Course finishes All good things must come to an end, time to pack up and depart camp |
