Wilderness Survival Skills Hunter Gather 10 Day Course

Last Updated on Monday, 21 September 2009 16:00 Written by TeeDee Monday, 21 September 2009 15:40

The Course that I attended was on the ‘Hunter- Gatherer’ Course which is a 10 day course, which I believe is the longest running duration of course currently offered within the United Kingdom.

The course is described on their website (http://www.wilderness-survival.co.uk/ ) as;-
10 Day Hunter-Gatherer
This ten day course is going to be a real educational journey in bushcraft. It encompasses all elements of wilderness survival and provides the opportunity to experience all of these important skills in one uninterrupted package.
If you are a novice to wilderness survival and bushcraft skills you are guaranteed to find this a life changing experience, however if you already have some experience then there is the opportunity to put your knowledge to the test and learn some new skills along the way.

The course at its Devon location is set on the edge of Exmoor in a very beautiful and mixed section of mixed Woodland which offered great diversity and was exceptionally peaceful and offered plenty of variety of Trees and plants to become familiar with and identify as useful bush craft resources. The site is incredibly quiet and relaxing and the only man made sound to intrude is the occasional farm machinery on a distant field.

The initial meeting of students and instructors was set for Friday evening. After the various students were all met we were escorted down to the main Camp site where the familiar Hung Parachute shelter was already set up and the fire already had a kettle on the boil. Every one grabbed a quick brew while Joe and Glen initiated the required safety brief on the ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’ts’ of day to day Camp life.
As there was a variety of student experiences and skill levels within the group it is best to always assume the worst and issue a ‘base’ level safety instruction to ensure everyone knows how to conduct themselves around camp and paying special attention to themselves and ourselves when using any form of Sharps and the application of safe cutting techniques.

Also the explanation that ran within this course, or any other that WSS run is an available ‘Op-Out’ clause. If for any reason a student does not wish to proceed with a task that is on offer or requires to be done then there is no pressure to carry on with that task exercise with no loss of ‘face’ or pressure to perform. This opt-out clause would prove useful for many students later on in the course as the nature of the course required that students at some point would have to apply the coup-de-grace in a humane method to their food.

With the safety brief being bought to a close everyone then thinned out and set up their own individual shelter for the night wherever they wished and then returned to camp for an evening around the camp fire. It was made clear by Joe that what he would like to see for the course to be successful was that the newly formed ’tribe’ of students would, as the course progressed, split away from the main camp and start to operate more and more as an independent group possibly spending more of their time within their own shelter, attending their own fire and acting more and more independent of the instructors once we had been shown the methods and techniques the instructors wished to impart to us.

Joe the Instructor wanted us to go off and commit a ‘Sit Spot’ at the start of the course for ourselves as students to get an idea of a Psychological ‘Before’ and ‘After’ to be conducted later on in the course. For those unfamiliar with a sit spot I can only suggest that it is an observation and awareness exercise using as many senses as possible to ‘Zone In’ to your environment, but to do it effortlessly in a sort of Zen like manner.
I find it helps quiet the mind and body and eases us into the natural environment while allowing us to maximize our senses to as much of the surrounding sound, smells, sights etc, as we can.





Day two was set aside for a full day of Navigational Exercises so that we could navigate proficiently through the Wilderness. We took a little day trip out to a more relevant setting for a NAV-EX and started a full day of map-reading and navigational tasks.
Again instruction was conducted from a base level so that no assumptions of anyones’ experience or familiarity with map reading was overlooked, for those with prior experience it was a good exercise to re-acquaint oneself with the basics and then apply them with a full days exercise.

We returned to camp tired and happy and received our instruction in preparing Trout for our evening meal of the British favourite of Fish and Chips Bush craft style, griddled over the fire and chunky chips done in a Dutch Oven.