When it comes to outdoor survival, everyone has their own particular things they may be best at. Everyone has some skill set that can be of value when in a survival situation. Yet when it comes to outdoor survival skills camping wise, people tend to believe they will be fine. This is why some campers die every year in spite of camping for years prior to their untimely demise.
Why does this happen? While surprise attacks by animals like Bears can be an issue, the most common problem is that people get lost and are unable to find their way back to camp.
Others can make it back but lack the resources they once had to make it out of a place they camped out at. Honestly, there are numerous situations where skilled campers do not make it.
This is why survival skills for campers can be so very important. Thus, we wanted to prepare you for survival situations you might find yourself in randomly one day.
It should be obvious that one should carry a knife, Ferra Rod/Firestarter, as well as a cell phone, food, etc when camping. But let’s assume these normal resources are not available.
How can you make it out of this survival situation alive? Check these helpful tips out!
Table of Contents
Use The “Easy Shelter” Mindset
A lot of people like to watch survival shows on the Discovery Channel or something similar and think they need to make some elaborate shelter. Yet you already have some camping supplies with you. It could be that you are alone in this camping quest or that you did this with a friend or friends. It does not matter how many were involved as each of you is able to carry at least some of the camping supplies you have.
Therefore, you already have your shelter with these camping supplies. Let’s pretend that your tent or tents end up torn or worse, they cannot even stand due to some issue with the poles or something. Perhaps your tent is not meant for all-weather events and a surprise rain will surely make your tent leak.
You can look for multiple different areas around you, such as an abandoned cave, rockside, or rockside opening. These areas will mostly be dry and you can likely use your tent to act as sheets or bedding.
You can also grab leaves from all around you, as there will likely be some in most places. You can put these inside the tent to make bedding even softer or more insulated to help to warm you up.
This situation is helpful when you cannot get a fire started for some reason.
Learn How To Predict The Weather
Did you know that you can actually predict the weather at times? While it’s pretty obvious that you can assume rain is possible due to black clouds in the air, there are other things you can notice too. In fact, you won’t even need to make that much of an effort to do this either. You just need to look up and do this throughout a given day off and on.
You can predict snow or rain 24 to 36 hours before they arrive by simply looking for a halo in the clouds. This is caused by a refraction of light by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds.
Once this halo is broken in the clouds, you can look at the broken side and it will point to the direction that rain or snow will be headed. Therefore, allowing you to know the areas to avoid or in some cases, head to.
If there isn’t anything in the clouds or no clouds are present, then you really have nothing to worry about as the days will likely be pretty good for a while.
Knowing when and where the weather will get bad can literally save your life.
A Trick For Getting Rid Of Those Pesky Bugs
While this may be more of an issue during the Spring or Summer periods in places you might visit, it can also be an issue in some places for the Fall and/or Spring too.
Bugs! Some of them carry horrible diseases while others suck your blood, get inside your ears or nose, and much more. Heck, some bugs may just love biting or cutting you just to feel accomplished.
There are a few things you can do to help with this, depending on what you have available. One option is using mud to cover yourself. This may seem weird and messy for the sake of being messy, but it truly helps. It’s like having a coating on your body. They may still try to bite you, but they’ll never be able to break through the mud.
You can do something similar involving the ash from a fire. You simply coat yourself with it and many bugs stay away. The reason is likely the odor it puts off. This may also have something to do with tricking them as they are not fond of fires or smoke. Whatever the reason, it works perfectly!
In the prevention of this, always have some sort of clothing that has long sleeves packed or on your person. This is just a way to prevent bites a little easier without the other two options being used as much if at all.
Build A Fire With This Helper
When you need to build a fire, you may find yourself out of essential survival content like matches or a lighter. In those cases, a feather stick can be of use big time. If you want to make one, you won’t need to do much. That’s the best part for us.
Find a tree and remove as much bark as you can, then cut into the said tree in order to get the inner bark. When you do this, you’ll be able to peel open the layers of the wood, which should make it appear like a “feather.” Hence the “feather” stick part. This can help you start fires easier as it’ll catch on fire with just the slightest of sparks.
We’d advise that you need to keep this as dry as you can the entire time. This can easily be done by just putting it in your shirt or pants pocket. However, if you have something like a waterproof or water-resistant backpack, then you can always store this in there instead.
Truly, this is up to you at the end of the day. It’s one of those survival skills while camping that we all need to know!
Be Sure To Create A Water Filter
Let’s be honest, even if you are able to find water in some environments, it surely won’t be possible to drink it. People assume that they can just boil the water and therefore, they can get rid of all the problems this way. However, this is slightly a myth. Yes, it can help get rid of a lot of things but it won’t always get rid of EVERYTHING harmful in the water.
This is why it’s best to actually know how to make a water filter. Since you may be unsure how to do this, we’re going to tell you exactly how!
You just need to have some sort of bottle or container. Since you went camping, it is pretty clear that you had some sort of bottle or container on you. It would be odd if you did not in this circumstance. As a result, we’re pretty sure you’ll be fine on this front.
Once you have your bottle or container, put small holes at the bottom of it.
Look for coarse gravel of some type, this can just be small rocks you may see lying around too. You’ll then need to find coarse sand and charcoal that you can crush up.
Fill the container with all of this to ensure it’s about one to two inches at least in height. Once you do this, add water to the top layer of the sand. It should filter the water completely by the time the water makes it to the bottom.
You can then boil this to ensure even further that it’s okay to drink.
Some people find water tastes terrible in the wild, depending on where they find it. This is quite common, so there is a small fix for it. All you need to do is add a small bit of charcoal to the water.
While it may seem weird, this actually absorbs a lot of the particles that might be making the water taste so bad. As a result, it should taste better when you add the stuff. Try it and see for yourself, it really works!
Obviously, all of these outdoor survival skills are important, but knowing how to handle water might be the biggest thing you need to know.
