Learn Bushcraft skills by videos
watch the best bushcrafters explain techniques and skills

Bushcraft Camp: Full Super Shelter Tour (Tower, Ladder, Shelter, Roof, Log Store, Raised Bed)

Description

I head to the bushcraft camp to do a full detailed tour of my super shelter build. My bushcraft camp is complete with Hunting Tower and ladder, large primary lean to shelter with raised bed, a secondary lean to shelter with a log and moss roof, a dog shelter with moss roof and log, a saw horse, fire pit, log store, wood timber frame roof with adjustable tarp system for when there is bad weather at the camp. I also built perimeter walls around the camp.

The Bushcraft Camp Update series has been a great adventure. I enjoy building a natural shelter from resources that I find in the woods. I have enjoyed camping overnight alone in this bushcraft camp. Being alone in the forest listening to the sounds of nature. When I first started building this super shelter I used minimal gear, just simple hand tools so that I could build it on the cheap and save money. Once my Bushcraft Skills developed I began to get better bushcraft tools and I learnt how to build larger shelters. I wanted to build something a little different. With the resources available I could have probably built a Log Cabin. But I wanted to build something different. So now that the camp is built, I can practise my wilderness bushcraft and survival skills. At some point I would like to start learning primitive technology and building with minimal or no tools. Thanks so much to everyone who has watched the bushcraft camp update series on ta outdoors. I look forward to doing more solo overnight trips in the bushcraft camp.

FULL CAMP BUILD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcihSMpsDn0&t=273s

BUSHCRAFT CAMP UPDATE SERIES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnadpeGdTxDx1J1izeZ47ozu1g4XjMzM

LIVIN' GOOD IN THE WOODS HOODIES (Worldwide Shipping) https://taofficial.com/products/livin-good-in-the-woods-hoody

TA OUTDOORS MERCHANDISE: https://taofficial.com

TA OUTDOORS PATCHES: https://www.taoutdoors.com/shop/

TA INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/taoutdoorofficial

TA FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/totallyawesomeoutdoors

TA TWITTER: https://twitter.com/OutdoorsTa

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER FISHING YOUTUBE CHANNEL "TAFishing" here: https://www.youtube.com/tafishing

Music:

Simon Alexander - Hollow wine grove

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lm-RubH_t8

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9TjD6MHoFHSMtEL6pUa-A

#bushcraft #camp #shelter

Tags: bushcraft,bushcraft camp,bushcraft camp update,supershelter,super shelter,camp,solo camping,hunting tower,camping,winter camping,log cabin,cabin,tiny house,suvival,fort,survival skills,alone,alone in the wild,bushcraft shelter,bushcraft log cabin,minecraft,fortnite,primitive technology,build,lean to shelter,shelter,natural shelter,debris,moss,moss roof,wood frame,timber,dog,saw horse,tarp,building,diy,cheap,save money,ta outdoors,forest,woods,nature

Video Transcription

that thing there is my bushcraft camp started out with just a small wall about this long over the years I built it up I built different shelters I built different different structures and this is what it turned out to be like pretty much a kids for oversized kids for but it was great fun along the way I made about 17 episodes called the bushcraft Camp Update series and if you want to start at Episode one just type in YouTube bushcraft camp update and then whichever number you want to watch but I realized over the years as I was building this that I never actually did a tour video I never showed you guys my viewers around the camp itself I just filmed myself being there so this is a bit of a camp special we're going to take the camera give you a tour and actually talk about some of the you know the positives and negatives about doing something like this and also the problems that I came across whilst building certain structures there but I learned a hell of a lot along the way so come with me and let's take a tour around the camp the camp idea all started really with this fire reflector or heat reflector I had already previously built an a-frame shelter just a simple a-frame shelter with sticks and I'd put some bracket on top of it then I built this fire reflector to heat to bounce the heat from the fire back into that a-frame shelter this is the this is really the catalyst that started the whole bushcraft Camp Update series and I always look at this wall sometimes when I'm in camp just to remind me of where it all began and where it all started just a simple wall with I'd know seven or eight logs seven logs or something about pocket height and that was enough to bounce that heat back to that shelter and I enjoyed making the wall just building this fire reflector but that was the inspiration for the camp itself this is where things basically went a bit crazy I then went on to build a couple more walls which I'll show you now in camp update to Episode two I built this second wall however it was here and then I had another wall here which I eventually changed to a small shelter so essentially I was just rounding off this corner because that's where the prevailing wind was coming from over there and it's just to try and kill off that wind so that it wouldn't just burn through my fire really quickly but that was the sort of second and third wall essentially of the camp in camp update three I improved the a-frame shelter there is no longer an a-frame shelter in this camp but I did improve the shelter and I remember making it wider just to allow more room to move around in the shelter itself after bushcraft camp update 3 I wanted to do something a little bit better and put a little bit more effort into the videos themselves and that's when I started to create cinematic intros to my videos I hadn't seen many people do it before in fact I don't think I'd seen anyone in the kind of bushcraft and outdoor community on YouTube certainly doing these cinematic intros so I decided that was the route I was going to go down and at the beginning of every bushcraft camp update episode I would have a cinematic you know movie style trailer so that was inspired from camp update 3 I think maybe even camp update II that definitely camp update three onwards camp update 4 was a significant change to the camp it was where I turned what was a small kind of camp into a bit more of a four that was where the size of the structure changed and their camp got enlarged a lot more and I ended up finishing perimeter walls and I'll show you those now don't camp update for I built a solid wall here another one and then another one fit pretty much on the opposite side so essentially I I'd sealed off my camp and that was a huge part of my project really because it was not only was it you know improving the camp and making it a lot bigger but it was also the one video at the time that sort of put here outlaws a bit more on the map and I was getting a bit more recognition and yeah I started the subscribers started flooding in and I just got a lot more comments on the channel and that video now I think camp update four is on abouts I think seven hundred and sixty thousand views it's slowed right down now because it was filmed many years ago but at the time that was my first video I think that hit a hundred thousand views on my channel so that was always quite special to me as well and yeah that kind of turned this place into a fort and that's where things got out of hand ready in camp update for I also built this sawhorse this made my life so much easier at the camp because it enabled me to stop sawing wood down at ground level which would hurt my back and start raising the wood up to around waist height so that I could straighten my back and just get a lot more efficiency out of soaring wood all this was put together really was with some fishing line and I just made a few notches as well it's very rudimentary it's very basic but it's lasted me this is this is over three years old it's a little bit wobbly still but it's still going strong if you're building a camp or you're doing much soaring in the woods for a long period of time I would highly recommend you build a sawhorse in hindsight I would have liked to have built which we did at the pallet cabin another kind of X here to allow when your wood gets too short you then can't hold it on the sawhorse rigid so if you have another extra bit on the end of it you can then start to saw those smaller pieces but this made this made my life a lot easier and after I built this I think after camp update 5 which I'm going to talk about in a minute this I'll show you this made things so much so much better so much easier this then leads on to camp update 5 which is where I built the first it was actually a secondary shelter but it ended up being the shelter that I slept in when i was at camp I'll show you that now this very low down lean T was bushcraft camp update 5 at a time I think I called it my secondary shelter because I already had that a-frame this is probably one of the oldest structures in the camp and it's still going strong it's still completely dry and completely waterproof you can see we've had lots of rain the ground is very damp here at the moment but this raised bed is completely dry

I built this using a tarp I made I made a crossmember here a couple of cross members I then put a tarp from here down just stringed a nice heavy-duty top there then I got loads of logs about maybe three inch diameter two and a half inch diameter and they were back-to-back all the way along here on top of that I added Moss for two reasons really one because it made the structure will only look blending a lot more to the surroundings rather than just being locked all the time but also because it would just help prevent that water completely hitting this tarp and making a racket at night if it was raining it would hit the moss and it would kill off all the sound but this has been completely waterproof if I could change things with this shelter it would be that it's far too low if I stand up you can see it's only up to my waist so I can't sit down in this shelter if I do I can't sit now but I just end up crouching you can see and knocking my head but I did my first solo overnight at this bush Croft camp in this shelter and that was the second video on my channel which went really big that was the

and actually that was the first video I think they've got over a million views where I did a solo overnight and I stayed in this shelter and that was a really good night I think it was in December sometime and I slept really well under there had a really good sleep off and on as you do when you're in the woods sometimes but I slept pretty well I was completely dry and temperatures weren't too cold anyway and I had a the fire pit was a little bit more over this way but that was another huge step that camp Update 5 where I built this shelter I'd also built the walls on the the other side as well that Moss was only put on once and it's still there what it's done is it's grown into those sticks that I put down above the top so I know Moss is very slow to regrow it takes a long time to grow so you shouldn't harvest huge areas of moss because you can destroy whole colonies I am aware of that but I knew that what I was doing when I did this is that that Moss would eventually grow into the logs itself and yes the logs would decompose but it would also allow that Moss to to grow and flourish really and that's what it's done you can see it's still all very green it's got loads of pine needles on it at the moment because we're right in the middle of autumn but that also helps to insulate the shut the shelter because it's given that extra half a foot maybe six inches extra layer of ventilation for those cold winter months I've had to put stakes in here about five or six because the weight of that Moss this is making all these logs slide away from the shelter and they're just roll-off so by putting these stakes and I've hammered them quite deep they're just stopping those horizontal rocks from slipping off and the whole structure sliding it's just started to rain but I'm gonna carry on with the tour anyway so camp updates six seven and eight were mostly improvements to the camp itself I built that small raised bed in the shelter I've built a cooking crane called the AWS crane essentially where you lash some sticks together you have a stake in the ground and Eddy acts as a crane a cooking crane that swings in and out and you can put I made pot hanger sticks of different heights so that you could hang your Billy kin or kettle over the fire at different heights depending on the height

flame so that was six seven and eight camp update nine I built logs thought it looked exactly like this but it was on the inside of the camp and that was one of the downsides when I when I did that because it took up this much room in the camp and it was quite annoying because the camp suddenly felt really cramped so it wasn't until the later date well down the line a few years later that I moved the log store outside of the camp itself it's looking a bit sorry for itself now because it's not completely sealed the the rain has come through these gaps it's got on to the logs and unfortunately there started to rot and gone a bit punky which is okay because there's still plenty of deadfall and dead wood around but yes so this I didn't really need anything much bigger than this because I wasn't going to be staying here for very long periods of time a few days at most and I could just top it up whenever I'm here just to go out and saw some wood and chop it up to last me enough really for however long I was staying

that was a good change I remember building the log store and thinking that was a really handy thing to have and I kind of wish I did the log store earlier on because I was always going off sawing wood bringing it back and authoring wood I kind of wish in the early stages that I just built a log store and filled it up it would have made life a lot easier that was camp update 9 in camp update 10 that was when we expanded this secondary shelter and we raised up we put three logs at the back which lifted up that back and allowed a lot more room in there at that point I'd also brought my dad to the camp a bit more and that was the start really of what was called theory time where at the end of each episode we would come up with a theory just myself and my dad and we would just talk to each other about this theory and ask you guys your opinions on it most of you will know what I mean by that that's where theory time was born camp update 10 and we just kind of made made basically shelter improvements the next camp update after 10 obviously was Bush graph camp update 11 that was a huge change for my channel most of you I'd say most of you would know what I'm talking about when I say camp update 11 and what I built it was pretty out there and that is it at the time I think I call it the hunting Tower it was a it was a it was a different video - all over camp updates I'd ever done I spent a while building it I didn't I didn't I kind of thought of it a day before I had this idea and I thought it was a bit of a bold idea but I needed to kind of go for it and see what happens I didn't really know whether I could build it or not I have no construction experience I don't really have any woodworking experience but I just thought I reckon I could do this and I just had some ideas in my head and I just went for it and that was the outcome of essentially the project I wanted to build the tower I didn't want to build a tree house I wanted to build a tower and I was really pleased with it and I edited the video and I spent a hell of a lot of time it's probably the most effort I'd ever put into a video ever this was this was probably two years ago now maybe a year ago maybe just over a year ago now a year and half ago probably and I built a ladder threaten everything and I made it accessible from inside the camp only so you can't get into the tower it's set from the inside and I'll just quickly show you I mean it's big it's big tower the the the first floor the floor of the tower is my head height so that essentially was one of the hardest things was to get these huge support posts in I had to dig down maybe four feet maybe even yeah four and a half five feet I had to dig down through this peat layer which is about this thick then through the soil layer and then into the gravel because at the bottom of this forest it's all gravel and that took a long time this was the ladder I built I made notches again lashed it I tried to keep this under that small shelter there to keep it dry to preserve it but this actually this ladder has helped me build a lot of other structures in this camp it's pretty heavy but yeah that ballast that was a fun fun side of the project was building the ladder obviously gave me the opportunity to actually get into the hunting Tower itself and I need to explain

I call that hunting tower at the time because I have planned to do hunting from it I got video still that haven't put up of hunting videos from this tower as I uploaded that video only I don't even know if maybe a few months later YouTube brought in this thing which was a bit of a phenomenon at a time which was that the monetization scandal I say scandal it was it hit the YouTube community very hard at hit my channel very hard and I had a lot d D monetized videos where I had hunting videos before where I've been with my friends and they all got hit even someone's here at the camp they got hit and yeah the channel got knocked very hard I lost 50% of my revenue overnight from that and at the time I think I was just about to just about to go or decide to go full time YouTube so that was a huge thing that hit me so I do that I still do still have videos of a lot more from this tower that none of you have seen but I'm still debating whether to kind of put them up anyway that's why I call it a hunting talat because I was essentially gonna hunt from it now really it's a bit more of a lookout tower I could just get up there and I can see right across the forest because there's lots of Bracken here and you can't really see over there when it's in the summer it's pretty much overhead height you can't see very far when you go up there you can see right into the distance we get roe deer here we get fallow we get badger we've even got an albino deer a lovely white albino deer I think it's a fallow and that's really impressive we see it I've seen foxes as well but let me take you up there just to show you the view this is the view from the hunting Tower got the roof here it's a 360-degree view you can see the lovely autumn colors over in that deciduous woodland a bit of oak here some beach and a bit of birch and this is the 360-degree view and you can see what I mean you can see well into the distance there's still so much dead wood in this in this wooden that's untouched all the way around there's the bracken that you can now see over when you're up here and you can see all the deer and it's yeah goes it's it's awesome it's really cool you can also be it seeped into the camp there's my tripod apologies poor filming mic firepit tripod shelters and you can only get into it from the ladder there this was an ambitious project when I built this tower but I remember I uploaded it and I think it it got a million views in a month which at the time in our kind of community was probably one of the fastest hitting videos in the in the bush craft and kind of camping world at the time it was very very fast hitting it went down really well and it was pretty much the the main episode that put me on the map on the YouTube side of things as well this was what snowballs my whole channel the whole of ta of those snowballs and was put on the map from this episode this camp update 11 episode so it yeah it's very close to my heart building this one and it's falling its falling apart a bit some of these sticks here I kind of you know they need sorting again and the lashings need to be doing but this was awesome when I built this I was so so pleased that I could build this one my own really with bare hands a couple of tools and yeah it was no power tools involved just hand tools I was impressed with it and I think a lot of you guys really enjoyed it and a lot of you found the channel from this this hunting tower so that is it here's the floor floor is very rigid and sturdy I can jump I can shake to the side and it doesn't it doesn't move it's all very rigid but covered up the size here so that small game and animals wouldn't see me from the woodland I've obviously just have my head here and I could also rest my my I for my gun on these sticks here so essentially that was why I built this up around the size like I have done so after camp update 11 I actually decided that that was gonna be the last camp update I do I wasn't gonna build anything more at camp I was just gonna enjoy it I think I took a four-month break from the camp and then I had the bug again and I wanted to build something and it was another ambitious project and it was this so come up late twelve I did an overnighter I came back I didn't build too much the camp update 13 I came and I built this which essentially was my second secondary shelter at the time and now it's turned into my primary shelter let me go and show you it it was another one British project it was much bigger than the previous shelter that was here and we even used a piece of recycled plastic bag from a sandbag from a DIY store to make a small window and that way if it was glass it wouldn't break if anything blew into it but it allows light to go into the shelter which helps me for filming and it also helps me when I wake up in the morning I can actually see sometimes I can see the moon there in the evenings looking out and obviously the sunrise as well but it's about head height again the back of the shelter and we raised it up I did this with my dad as well we raised up the other side as well we put a tarp roof over it and we made a wood frame we made a wood squared frame then put the tarp on top and then I put some debris on top of that now the debri obviously has pretty much a lot of its blown off it would need topping up as with most debris shelters you've got to top it up pretty regularly but at the moment that's still pretty pretty much waterproof it's a cheap tarp so there's some small holes in it underneath but again another ambitious project another big build that was camp update 13 and I'll show you the inside as well as you can see it's way bigger than the previous small one that I did I can actually stand up I've got loads of headroom I made a much higher raised bed which is pretty much the back of the knee height which makes it perfect for sitting down so my advice to anyone if you're making a big camp and you want to make a raised bed make it to the height of the back of your knees that way you can sit on it perfectly almost like a toilet and you're at a perfect angle in your your knees your legs will have that right angle to make it much more comfortable when you're sitting down the raised bed I just used two logs they're two large logs and then two long horizontal logs there and then to stop the sagging in the middle I just put two support poles each side in hindsight I would advise other people I've made these as you can see the width of the bed is that long I've made these much longer which is not a good thing because if they're over hanging you sit on the edge like that they just spring up so I would make these pretty much so that they are flush almost with the log below or maybe a tiny bit over not that far over like over there also I would go for thicker logs less well you can argue it's less sawing but it's also you get a bit more of a steady a height when you go for thicker logs less kind of fluctuation and the bed itself in hindsight if I have more time I could Moss and chink these walls but that's going to take a long time and it's going to use a lot of moss a lot of materials I could use clay there's no clay in this area area unfortunately it's gravel but yes I could chink goes to keep the camp warmer the wall the wall warmer and fill in all those gaps but I'm happy with how it is and the tarp is it's lasted pretty well couple of years but it probably needs redoing that roof so in the next camp update I think it was 14 we built this air tunnel now this is a tube a large basically tube that goes all the way under my raised bed over there and outside the other end of shelter we put some a grid on the front here to stop small mice and film film ice in just general small mammals getting stuck that this then creates a draw so the air I'll show you the other side in a minute the air is drawn in from the heat of the fire here draws that cool air from the other side and essentially it's it's pumping air to this fire because you need oxygen you need air for a fire to be burning efficiently and the fuel to be burning efficiently the reason I build the pipe was because where I'd built with these perimeter walls I'd actually cut off a lot of the airflow within the camp II in hindsight I wouldn't have built all these walls I'd have left it much more open so there's a lot more natural air flow and that way the fire would burn more efficiently unfortunately I didn't have Hans height so I'd built this quite a few years ago with those walls and that meant that there was a restricted the airflow in the camp which then meant that the fire was often very smoky so there you go there's something I've learnt from from doing this

we built this airflow tunnel which made it much easier to get a drawer in here and to get that fire going I'll show you the other side as well so here's the outside the other side of the airflow pipe which goes under this main shelter and into the camp itself this is also where they're prevailing wind direction comes from it comes from over there behind the camera comes this way so I'm using the natural wind direction in this area to go through the pipe and into the fire and hopefully to make it burn a lot more efficiently this this was something we built really not it was to improve camp it wasn't like a huge structure or anything we just dug a trench put the pipe in and obviously eventually when I stopped using this area in this wood and I will take all this away I'm not gonna leave any any plastic lying around I'll take it all away but essentially that made the fire pit a lot more efficient it made life in the camp a lot better because we weren't getting smoked out all the time so it's all steady improvements that you learn to figure out from trial and error at the end of the day that's how you learn we're getting near the end now camp update 15 again I had a bit of a break in between those camp updates and that was this wood frame roof I spent a lot of time thinking about the roof and whether to put a fixed roof on it on my camp a completely fixed roof with either shingles

or you know like a debri type roof with an apex and some Gables either side but then I figured that would that would be bit more log cabin style and it was not the style I was going for for the camp I had had previously had a top as the roof which was great it was efficient but it was also in the wind in them and the debris falling on it it wasn't a really amazing solution so this is what I came up with and made a wood frame roof with the log cabin notches I buried this pole here deep into the ground like I did with the hunting Tower and I lashed another pole the other side to the big tree and I created this frame it is at a slight angle so from where you're looking it's actually should be going that way and it's it's going into the back corner so that if I made it all perfectly level then the rain would just sit there so I've made it so that all the water goes over the back corner of that shelter and that was deliberate it is an angle and it's deliberate I then made an adjustable tarp roof which I'll show you now it's very easy to use you just put your hands underneath and roll it out I like to do it from up here first in the tower and you can see what I mean it it puts this cover over their account so you can see what I mean by the the rollout top roof I can roll this out I can adjust it to any distance between the frame of the actual shelter itself most of the time I keep it all rolled away so that there's loads of light in the camp for filming but on days like today where it's been raining I'll just roll this out all the way to the end the rain will fall off and roll off hopefully in that far corner over there and it was the best solution at the time to keep rain out of the camp I really didn't want to put plastic in the camp to be honest well man-made materials in that sense but I had to put practicality over you know sustainability what would be the word you guys would know anyway that's why I went for this again when I eventually leave this place if I do I will take all this back home with me but that's how it works and I can just roll it up again nice and easy there we go loads more like makes life a lot easier for bushcraft comes update 16 I wanted to improve the heat efficiency of the primary shelter in order to do that I used the principle that was created or invented by bushcraft survival expert and instructor more Skowronski or Kochanski I'm not sure how to pronounce it I think it's kahan ski but he's a very good Canadian wilderness instructor and he came up with this idea of using these plus clear plastic sheeting to permeate the heat that would allow heat to penetrate in your shelter and through thermal radiation I don't know if that's the correct word really radiation but it helps the thermal airflow convection would it be where it moves around and it keeps that heat coming into your shelter and actually it's almost like a greenhouse effect it keeps your shelter a lot warmer so we made this it's just two hooks here this what I'd only use this when I go to bed it really [Music]

I would be on the other side in the shelter the fire would be going and that would bounce all the heat in there keep it in there and it keeps me nice and warm

that's the theory anyway that was camp update 16 I believe easy to easy to deploy as well quick deployment [Applause]

so that was kind of up like 16 I hope I said 16 this is camp update 17 which is the last camp update the latest were not done this is the fire pit where I just upgraded it a bit by adding some much much larger rocks here rather than these small ones it's very it can be very dry soil it's quite PT so it's you know you run the risk of set in the forest alight but I've got metal pan underneath it's all protected underneath so in hindsight I probably make this a lot bigger this fire pit but for now it does the job I can't tell you how many times I changed this I would suggest looking into fire pits and doing a bit of research to find out the best solution for you if you are doing this kind of thing but I finally feel like I've got there anyway with this one now this wasn't a camp Update episode where I've built this and it's just two videos I did in the channel where I built little dog shelter really previously it was a wall here but I made it a bit more efficient use of the space so that my dog could have a little shelter that he can go in and it's only small because he's only a very small dog anyways a little chat Russell but that was again another project I just went for a lean-to style shelter have plenty of resources available and I just used what I had another thing is the kind of tools that I've used obviously I use an axe saw knife your standard tools but also you can make and craft your own tools went out here in the woods this was made from coral this is made from I think it's pine but if this is just a mallet it's a little bit long and handle a bit more like a baseball bat but it just helps preserve you know your axe head and things like that and you can just use this for bashing snakes because a lot of this camp a lot of what was involved is bashing in space so yeah worth looking up how to craft your different tools and things like that this has been very useful for me it's a bit battered now it's a bit mashed up but I can make another one very quickly and it's just handy for just banging in snakes and yeah just trying to get camp tasks

done but I keep that in the dry under here because it helps to preserve the life of the tool so thank you very much folks for following me on this camp tour I know a lot of you have wanted a tour around this herb this bush girl come for a while now I've finally done it hopefully it's inspired you or giving you some ideas and what you would like to be I just wanted to say that in hindsight I wouldn't have made the camp as big as it is generally with bushcraft the principle is that you leave no trace and you try and create a minimal footprint when you're out in the woods be it with a campfire be it with a shelter be it just being out in a certain area you've got a you've got to think of nature first really and you've got to think of how you would stumble across something how you would want to find it I personally like seeing nature at its most raw rest' without any man-made things there but at the same time this is private land I'm on private land here I would never do this on public land I would never suggest to anyone to go and do it on public land number of reasons really two reasons really one it's probably illegal to do this on public land two of probably get trashed by other people certainly here in the UK it's likely to get trashed by someone who stumbles across it but yeah in hindsight I wouldn't have built it as big I wouldn't have made such a big thing of it I just got carried away I got very into it I really enjoyed doing it I got into the building process I enjoyed as a kid using things like connects and Meccano Lego and just I was always into building when I was younger I wanted to get into that sort of thing so I guess that's that's what it wasn't the way it's kind of part of my childhood I know some some some could argue that is it's obviously it's very impractical in that sense that if I was getting out in a wilderness hike somewhere I wouldn't build something like this because I simply wouldn't have the time and if I was moving and going onto different spots and traveling I would know in a build a shelter like this I would build a very small and minimal shelter this was just a project of mine where I had permission I'm on private land the whole thing the entire fort or camp is built from dead wood it's all the Scots pine tree which is a very

and tree here in the UK it's quite easy to identify it has a dark sort of lower end to the trunk you can see them all behind me and as you look up they kind of go an orangey brown it's also the pine needles are quite easy to identify as well there's a small Scots pine needles there you can actually use the pine needles from the tree for tea and you can make a tea it's packed full of vitamin C's it's very very good for you it's it's quite a resourceful tree it's usually quite resinous it's easy for fire lighting but the reason it's so straight a lot of questions are why is your camp so straight why how'd you get such straight sticks and that is not because of the tree species itself but it's because of the competition that that tree has with all the other trees around it at the end of the day trees are fighting for sunlight that's what they want that's what they need for photosynthesis they need the sunlight so they're fighting for it and because they're fighting for it they're all worrying as fast as they can upwards when they've got when they've got no competition a tree for example a lone oak tree in a field you'll see it will be a really wide broad tree a lovely broad tree and that's because it's got no competition it can get all that sunlight as the Sun moves around the sky and that's why the branches grow out when you're in a very dense woodland the trees will go tend to grow straight up because they can't go out because they won't get sunlight yet if they go out they need to get up to compete with their friends to get that sunlight I know it sounds a bit basic but that's how this wood is so straight is because all these Scots pine tree hit trees here are very very dense and the woodland is very dense not behind me but this side it's very dense so they all grow really really straight and that's how I've got such straight wood and you can see where they've grown straight they blow into each other they fall down they've only got very shallow roots as well so they fall down all the time so there's endless resources at the moment so my advice to anyone is if you're gonna go out build something have a think about the resources that you have available have a think about the concept of leaving no trace eventually I will leave no trace here and there will be no bushcraft camp because I'll either take it down or it will rot away and I'll take

the man-made materials either way it will go back to nature but the main thing is is that hey I haven't gone out cutting down live trees I've used dead standing which is a tree that's dead it's got no leaves on it it's either snapped off at the top and the roots are still there the system's still holding it together but it's a dead tree that's called dead standing or it's dead fall so it's fallen over but most of this is dead fall where it's all littered around the forest floor but that's my advice to you be careful obviously using tools and sharp tools do your research my advice really is is build something small go so you don't if you're going camping or if you're doing this is not survival this isn't survival at all this is just camp building but if you get if you're going out there and you want to learn about this kind of thing you only need to build a small shelter a little lean-to or like I started at the very beginning just an a-frame shelter a one-man a-frame shelter it didn't need you don't need to be able to huge camp like this you know it's just something that I've done and I've kind of left there essentially but I've also done it to learn along the way and I learned a lot of things along the way about building in general about bushcraft I practiced so much bushcraft here I've practiced skills here I just learnt notes along the way and I've got to thank you guys really for stumbling upon the those of you that stumbled upon the bushcraft camp videos and subscribe I got a really thank you for that I do appreciate it and I'm very grateful to have you on board and to follow me on the journey the addition behind it you might not be able to see it but just here is the cabin the pallet wood cabin that was another project I did with my dad a whole new series that if you haven't seen it pop some links to all those in the series in the description below but I just want to say thank you so much for watching this episode got some solo ones coming up as well oh yeah thank you so much and it's trip time I'm going on some more trips yeah moving about a bit so thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you real soon this morning

longest day early come come and tell me [Music]

the CSUN babe [Music]

just like the [Music]

ladies line

[Music]

you

you

[Music]

About the Author

TA Outdoors

TA Outdoors

Bushcraft, Wild Camping, Wilderness Hiking Trips, Solo Overnight Camps, Shooting, Hunting and Backpacking. My dog joins me on some of the trips. His name is Jaxx.

My name is Mike. And I'm addicted to adventure...

Check out our other YouTube Channel TAFishing: https://www.youtube.com/user/TAFishing

More articles from this author