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                            School of Wilderness Survival             
                                    and Ancient Skills                     

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Our Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills courses both deal with life saving outdoor skills.  However, each course is vastly different in the material that is covered and in the ways that shelter, water, fire and food are obtained.  

And we won't even make you eat bugs and snakes.

Wilderness Survival & Primitive Skills Courses

Wilderness Survival

Primitive Skills

Tracks and Sign

More info about Survival and Primitive Courses

WILDERNESS SURVIVAL

 
Wilderness Survival Kit -  Student's Survival Camp

The Wilderness Survival course is a 2 day course designed to instruct students in a wide variety of year-round life saving wilderness survival skills using the latest modern gear and the best historic outdoor skills.  Students of this course will learn the priorities of survival, how not to get lost in the first place, how to signal for rescue, and what to put in survival kits.  Skills will include building and camping out in one of the many tarp shelters to be covered; collecting and purifying water with several modern methods; and the basics of making and utilizing fire including flint & steel, batteries, magnifying lens, waterproofing matches and tinder.  Food gathering instruction will include collecting and preparing nutritious edible plants, four different traps unique to this course and survival fishing. How to sharpen a knife with a stone, knots and string making will also be covered.  We recommend this course for all outdoor persons.

Dates and Pricing

PRIMITIVE SKILLS

Leaf hut shelter  -  Cooking over a fire and drying meat

The Primitive Skills course teaches valuable wilderness survival skills using the stone age technologies that were common to of all of our ancestors.  Students will learn how to build a leaf hut shelter, without tools or cord; how to collect and prepare tinder and kindling; how to do friction fire making with the bow drill; primitive tool making; primitive water gathering and purification; four primitive traps unique to this course; how to make a rabbit hunting stick; and the skinning, cleaning and cooking small game (typically squirrel).  Edible plants, primitive cooking, food preservation and storage, wicker basketry from vines, plant and tree bark string, and burning out wooden bowls and spoons will also be covered.  This course is designed to provide skills for living primitively in the wilderness; and this course is a student and staff favorite.

New course subject - Due to request (and because it is fun), we have recently added "Primitive Fishing" to this class.  We're already teaching you how to make string in this class, so now we're going to teach you how to make thorn hooks.

Dates and Pricing

TRACKS AND SIGN

Our Tracks and Sign class is the special project of instructor "Hue" Hueston.  Learn the beginning "steps" for the ancient art tracking.  Clear foot print identification; animal scat and sign identification; and animal behavior will be taught just for starters. 

Dates and Pricing

More about our Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills courses

Do you have to do things that you are not willing to do?

Never.  We are not that kind of school.  This is not Fear Factor.  No one will be forced to do anything that they don't want to do.  That goes for all of our courses, not just survival and primitive courses.   

Shelter

Students will make their own shelters during the Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills courses, and a sleeping bag will be required equipment.  We want the shelters to be used and enjoyed, but we also want students to set their own comfort level.  If uncertain about staying in a shelter of your own making, you may bring a tent.

Meat and fish, bugs and snakes

You won't eat bugs and snakes during our courses, unless you want to go get your own.  We do serve deer meat during some of these courses, on the side, if any students prefer not to eat deer meat.  We do gut, skin and cook small game as part of our Primitive Skills course.  The small game used in this course are typically Grey Squirrel, legally taken in Virginia during season, frozen and then thawed for each Primitive Skills course.  

If you don't want to participate or even watch these things, you will not have to, and you will certainly not be treated disrespectfully for it.

Trapping

The Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills courses deal with trapping and trap construction, but no animals will be trapped during the Wilderness Survival and Primitive Skills courses.  However, everyone in these two classes will have the opportunity to make traps and to set a non-harming trap to test their skill at setting traps.  The traps covered in each course will be unique to that course, and non repeated in any of our other courses.

Fishing

Since we have moved, we do not have a pond anymore.  Classes that had fishing in the curriculum will still include fishing information, but we will not actually be able to go fishing.  Very sorry.     

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Web site designed by Jennifer MacWelch        Last modified: October 01, 2006