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Bushcraft Shelters: Hammock & Tarp Setup

Description

If your out camping or practicing Bushcraft & Survival skills you may be considering a Hammock & Tarp setup to keep you off the damp ground and keep you comfortable. They are especially useful in humid hot jungle environments were the jungle floor can be a hive of insect activity and air flow is key to comfort. They are also very useful in water logged terrain keeping you off the boggy floor.

I use one when I'm teaching courses over a long period of time and I'm sleeping in the woods back to back. This is my setup and how it works.

MCQBushcraft:

If your interested in Bushcraft & Survival skills, fishing, hunting, fire lighting, plants & mushrooms, camp cooking, shelter building, self reliance, wilderness & primitive living skills, weaving plant fibers, knives, axes, saws and maintaining these tools in the field and much much more then check out my channel page below for playlists and more videos.

Video Transcription

either guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another video in this video I'm going to show you my top and hammock setup my preferred methods of stringing it up and how it all goes together so for in the market for a tarp and hammock this video will shine some light on one of the ways in which a setup like this can go together if we look at these items a little more closely you can see that this here is my tarpaulin a 3x3 d d tarping coyote Brown if any of you have watched my quick deployment tarp system video then you'll see that this is the set right here that I used in that video nothing's changed it's all pretty strung compressed ready to just draw out and it can be put up in a couple of minutes and the dry bag means on a wet day it can compress in and obviously it won't get any other kit damp if it has to go in your backpack but it can live on the outside as well and just here we have my hammock this is a ticket to the moon double I used to use their single butt ticket to the moon contacted me and kindly offered me their double hammock and I've been using it for the last couple of years and this is the hammock including a hammock snake which goes over the whole hammock and all the lines in carabiners all in this sat right here I've used a range of materials in terms of hammocks from mesh to waterproof and my favorite out of all of them no matter what the brand is the parachute material for it to be breathable I just find it it allows for a lot less moisture to build up in my sleeping bag and while I hang my bag out and I've stayed out in long periods of time

I think unvoluntary the longest life to spend in the woods in this exact setup here is two and a half weeks and although it's very comfortable you do need to hang your Sleep System almost every day depending on the weather of course if it's sideways rain that I would wouldn't advise against it but you're unlikely to get that when there's a canopy above you but this material here just means you don't get too much moisture building up in the bag and unlike a waterproof setup and it's far more comfortable than a mesh setup in that case

and it's just kind of the best medium for me so a parachute material I do get on very well with let me show you how it all goes together one piece of equipment that I suggest you get familiar with before you start embarking on going hammock camping or even using a tarpaulin is the tarpaulin itself it's really the roof of all your setups but it almost acts as the foundation is everything else is built up around it can determine a lot of comfort factors can determine how well the weather is shed off you the wind how everything sits underneath it how much condensation builds up on the roof and starts dripping on you in the night it really is the first thing that could go up simply because the biggest item and you're in an environment where there's lots of obstacles around so getting that big item up first usually means everything else will take shape underneath it very easily mine is a DD 3 by 3 3 meters by 3 meters and I have a very good idea of how big this tarp is and I have a fail-safe or if I get to an area and I'm unsure about the terrain perhaps it's very hilly the trees are leaning on obscure angles and I really need to understand whether it's going to fit or not before I go to all the trouble of putting up and realizing that I have to pack it away or drag it around somewhere and move it and it's really simple you just lay your tarp out on a nice big area whether it's at home in the garden inside somewhere even out in the woods and you just walk from heel to toe from one end to the other and count how many steps it takes you to get there I know for a fact that there's a diamond set up it takes me 16 and a half steps to get from point to point and as a square is 13 and a half so I've always got that in my itinerary if something goes wrong I can think right okay we have a tree here a tree there I'm not sure how far away they are from each other they look a little close I'm going to measure a time I've picked two trees here we've got a Norway spruce here it's a pretty good size it's not too big I don't generally pick trees that are really large and round unless I have to because they use up a lot of cordage which is material for me cordage on your setup here equals distance lost in between the tree say we've got a massive trunk using up meters and meters of cordage then you're losing distance on your setup I'm also checking above me as well we've got no dad full really important that something I talk about on all my videos when we're setting up shelters and setups like this or you see me out camping always check what's above me there any dead branches dead limbs we do have a Norway spruce there that looks pretty bad if I was going to stay here I could just take that down pretty easily it's very rotten at the base I think that would probably only require a push and it would come down we've got another tree just over there another Norway spruce even though I'm pretty sure this is an ideal distance I can always use the failsafe and if you're new to camping in this kind of manner then this is a perfect thing to do so we can just can if we get there with 16 steps and it's ideal we've seen 15 16 so you can see 16 steps and I've already got four or five meters just between me and the actual trunk there but the first thing I generally start with this this so we'll get it unclipped and unstrung and get it knotted to this first tree here if we open up the dry bag what we have at the very very top is the ridge line of the tarpaulin it's connected to the centre tab of the main spine of the actual tarpaulin and it's connected to just that one for a very good reason which I'll show you momentarily but what we can do is just get this Hank of cord there we've got two PRASA klopse pre connected either side of the centre tab that's for either end so if you imagine this is the middle of the top two ends connect to that as you'll see momentarily but we're going to pull on this and just get quite a lot of slack of line out just like this pulling all the line out of the hank of paracord there just allows us to drop the whole tarpaulin and tie it up to the tree without supporting the weight of it all which can affect the knot you're actually tying but if we go to the very end you'll see that I have a loop just there and the reason I'm stringing up two

tree at this height here is so that you guys can actually see what I'm doing normally if I was stringing my tarp up to the tree I would stringing up at full arm's length like this and the reason being is say that I was comfortable and I could actually walk underneath my shelter comfortably I don't like being crouched down underneath my tarpaulin if the weather is incredibly bad then it's good to have it a bit lower down just to cut in the sidewall a little bit so you actually get that protection but normal day to day work under woodlands like this where you just get vertical rain because of the canopy it means you can string it up quite high and not get too much coming in from the sides and that's the beauty of camping in woodland you have a lot of cover string it to the tree is really simple you just bring the loop all the way around like this it goes over the top if the original ridgeline just pull some slack out so you can go back round again like that and then you bring the loop around like this and then this loop you created by going back over the ridgeline the loop you have tied onto the end of the ridgeline goes through that just like this and then you take a stick from your pocket once you've picked one up of course and you just pull that and you just crank it like this like a ratchet and then it remains incredibly tight and the reason that that's so good is because this can now be incredibly loose and you can walk it away quite casually and the stick won't drop out because it's cranked down like a ratchet and to untie you just pull the stick pull it out like that and all comes apart so this is about how I would have it it's about full arm's length so I wouldn't have it down here unless I was on the ground and I had a slightly different setup but in a hammock it's up here but what we can do now is take our Hank of cord and just walk it all the way over to the other tree I'll tie this knot again so you guys can see it and then I'll put it high up where it's meant to be but you just feed the line through like this pulling and feeding through with the other hand to get some tension the ridge line goes over like that bring this back round create a loop at the top like that twist it keeping it close to the actual tree grabbing the excess and then just pulling like that and that's quite a useful quick release knot if you want to make it last for a few days all you do is put a pin in just like that and then it can't be pulled undone even if the wind and the rain are flapping around it's not going to come loose on you and just to loosen this up you just take the pin out and the whole thing drops down like that you can see we've got a really nice straight Ridgeline now and our tarp is just hanging off the center tab with a long ridge line like this you get the ability to move things around and you can make it very adjustable by tying this tarp up on the center line here and you do have to support the top when you move it or as you can burn straight through this it's probably a better model in the future that I'll make is I'm actually strengthen this up and stitch on some real good nylon and actually make this tab better because as it stands it will get burnt away if you start moving it up and down quite a lot on this ridge line here the cord will just eat through it but it does in the meantime give you some flexibility to move things around and by keeping this plastic nuts on there nice and loose you can slide them around as well and then pull them to tighten them when you actually need them tying a prusik knot is really easy you can see I've just got some bungee cord there and I've just tied a knot so I've got the two pieces of cord and just knotted them together just like that very simple created a loop you just place the loop over the piece of cord pull it back through itself like that and then place one through the other and there you have a prusik knot or a fist knot as it's often called as it looks like a list and it grips the cord like a fist like that so you can pull on this loop here to loosen it and then it will move around but again you will wear through it so these will need to be replaced if you do a lot of sliding on your setup and you just pull it nice and tight and then it starts to grip like a press ignore actually should to support the edges of your tarpaulin once you've moved your prusik knot to right type so fair distance you can take a dry bag and pull it off like that often just clip mine on and just send it up one end having the center of the tarpaulin connected to the ridge line gives me a lot of options it gives me the ability to rotate I can rotate the tarpaulin have the highest point elevated off the ground get it all assembled into various configurations and actually understand how the water will run off of it so that's why I have the center connected I do not always have this tap as a square and I don't want to be on threading the cord through these tabs here and getting it all untangled and set back up again I'd rather just rotate it and if I do want is a square I have little bungee tabs connected to each corner each end of the tarpaulin everywhere so it can be pulled out and connected to those pressing knots with little tabs little sticks that just thread through but my vise to you would be that if you're going to have this tarpaulin or any tarpaulin with nylon tabs and you're going to slide them up and down paracord that's um a little bit like a wire saw it's acting the same way and after two years mine's really worse for wear so I'm going to have to repair that a better option would be to just have carabiners so you can disconnect them I mean it's extra weight hardly at all as they're mostly aluminium but it means you're going to save these tabs and you've got just as versatile set up then you can slide it all around and and change it about as you need to and disconnect ones you don't need so that would be a better way to go so if I want it to be a square it's really simple I just take the bungee cord that's always connected to this tab here it runs along the main spine of the tarpaulin I take my prusik knot I pull the bungee through tab on the plastic knot and then just lock it in with a little twig off of the ground and then you just pull it tight like that with the prusik knot and the knot will self tighten obviously as it's got tension on it there it is set up as a square I have 15 yards of paracord connected to every corner so it can be strung out and turned into a shelter you can see that these tabs here are just no longer needed but to do a diamond it's virtually the same thing so do a diamond we just take one of the corners and you can see I've got a little bit of 550 cord on there the 15-yard line

that would go out on the square set up that can just be left to hang so when it goes through this press ignore here the actual tab itself goes through the plastic knot and the twig goes through the tab just like that and to tighten it we just pull the press ik not not too fast but just edge it along and where we would have had it tied as a square we end up with two bundles of cord here and here as this is actually the end that would make up the square for us here obviously it's rotated as a diamond so you can always have these connected and it just makes it really easy and if you hang them properly you can just pull them and walk them out sometimes you might walk your line out and find there isn't actually a tree there for you to tie on to and I always avoid tying things way over like this because it puts stress and one of the pressing knots and it will start to pull on it unevenly and cause it to slip down so good to keep the tab coming out true to its nature and that way you get a much better setup without too many creases and the runoff is much better as well in heavy rain but you might need to make yourself a peg I've got a piece of old hazel here and obviously I always carry an ax on me and I've just quickly knocked this peg out found some dead standing cut it down and something like this about a foot long will be more than adequate even for soft ground at this point I don't do any fancy knots I just pull the cord to the tarp is as tight as I want it to be and then I just wrap it around the peg like this I've played around with quite a few knots I really only use practically probably about three in total actually four and when it comes to tying pegs I've tried various knots where you can adjust and tighten things over time I never bother with them

I just keep everything real simple when I've got setups like this the simpler it is easier it is for me when you're taking down your setup you might want to Hank up your called the way I hang it up is I open my hand out like that wrap it round my thumb and put it between those two fingers there and I just keep going like that and it can involve dragging the cord along the floor which can pick up debris and this is why you pinch quite hard with these fingers and in the wet as well if you pinch hard there as you do it it rings the water out of the actual cord as you bring it towards yourself like that when you're left with some slack make sure you leave yourself enough you can take it off of your fingers like that clamp it that and I always wrap twice like this and then go back over the line and then you can just continue to wrap it round and again it's just a really easy way of doing something and it means it can be pulled and it will unravel by itself so you don't need to touch this bit you just pull this and the whole thing will just start to unravel really really easily so I've just pushed this spruce down it's not particularly tall and ideally that should have been done before this goes up if you are unsure in the direction it can actually go in then you really want to do it when you inspect the camp area prior to setup but I've just done it anyway at this stage because I wasn't particularly keen on it and it was coming down anyway the root structure is very shallow and if I de tied my tarp to this my tarp would have acted like a sail in heavy winds and it may have even started to rock it and cause it to fall onto my tarpaulin which would have been really bad so pushing it over like this makes it much safer and at the same time it'll rot down and do its thing as it would have done if it fallen over naturally but it means I can tie my tarp all in at the perfect angle which is this angle here this is a good angle that I like as good runoff and a little bit of cover as well on the sides I can tie it straight to the root structure here using the same not be tied on the end of the ridge line there so this is our tarp setup and you can see as a diamond it's great for a hammock we've got a lot of coverage overhead you can get a bit of a breeze in if you're in warm weather if you're in colder weather you may want to opt for a bigger tarp to actually block the wind off of you but to be honest with you and underquilt will do that for you anyway a good under quilt will really take that hammock through to the colder months where we can cover that in other videos when we look at sleep systems and I can show you mine and what I use with a hammock or when I'm on the ground as well but there are some pros and cons to this setup my tarp is old you can see that it's sagging in the middle no matter how tight I pull it on every corner it will always remain sagged in the center because it's stretched out and gotten old unfortunately so that's a bit of an unfortunate thing just about this tarp and its design really but another downside can be that you might want to hang your bag in close and that is a necessity when your hammock camping if you don't hang your sleeping bag by the third or fourth day it'll feel like you're getting in a damp bag it really well so you do need to hang it up but there is a benefit really to the way we've strong it up because it's a pretty strong tarp well that's the way I've set it up a so it can be deployed very quickly we end up with this spare Hank of cord just here if it was strung up as a square this would be in use as one of the corners but we can easily just pull on it and it will unravel and we can tie at the other end and it can then allow us to hang clothes in our bag up very easily but she's a very simple half hitch to tie this on at the end just tie it back like that and if you're really worried about this loop coming undone from weight you can hook it around the actual peg there and that will keep it taut for you and then the rest can be hanged up just like this just to keep it out of the way you don't want it touching the ground ideally my hammock setup is very crude but very easy to set up I've got some straps as you open it just that and we just need to take these out and we have two of these there's actually one unit even though it's green and black one part is for strapping to the tree which is the really really thick rope the reason I use a thicker softer rope is so it doesn't damage the bark on the tree you can get straps well I've never really found I've needed to use them even with prolonged periods of time this rope has been absolutely fine and it really does depend on what species of tree you hook up to and this side here is a much tighter weave it generally doesn't wick water as badly and this connects up to the actual hammock but we can hang this from the ridgeline while we work and it just stops it collecting lots of rubbish when it's on the floor we can get that over there out of the way and get this hooked up to the trick I usually string my hammocks up really high especially on in-between tall trees like this they go up above the ridgeline just there and this Green Line can wrap around several times if you've got a very very thin tree you can go around a few times like this and you pull the cord take it through that loop there and then it's hooked up to the tree but an easy thing to do now is just connect this up it doesn't matter how it connects to the carabiner just yet I never really fuss over that at this moment usually tweaked it out at the end and we can just walk this all the way out now to the other tree and get our second line up and just clip this on the ridgeline just to keep things off the ground when I walk this over here I normally just hook it on one of these tags here just keeps it off the ground lies me to get things set up without it draping around on the floor and I can get these other lines strung to the tree so again it's the same system as the other side just string up nice and high you gave round as many times as you want depending on the tree once is fine in this case because we've got quite a distance to cover and then we just go straight back so you can see on this tight black rope here we've just got knots put in every seven inches or so and these are just adjustments that you can move yourself I'm just going to connect mine up to this one here and then we can just tweak this whole setup and get it all how we want it to be once I've clipped these ons where I want them to be the important part usually is that I turn this round so the cord locks in like that you have a low point on the carabiner that just causes everything to drip down there it's very unlikely even if it twists like this that would ever make it past and go into these lines but it's just nice to ensure that you have your setup as good as it can be to be able to fend off the weather and you can always tuck this part back and just hook the knots through the piece of cord to create another low spot there so everything runs downhill now we can just take the hammock sock off it's just done sleeves

excuse to the end like that then we just make sure everything's how we want it to be nice big hammock get a lot of space in that I would always get in your hammock first and try things AK before you get all your sleep system in there just to make sure that it's all set up right you might need to tweak it you might want to tighten it up because it's sagging down too low to the ground sometimes mine's a little bit higher than this sometimes it's about as low as this this is the lowest that we'll get and I don't normally mind that too much you've got a lot of cover above me and the rain doesn't come in sideways like it does in open plains so really just got to worry about a bit of wind and some vertical rain but some of you may ask why don't I use a mozzie net I never use a mozzie net or and Mitch net as we probably more like you need over here in the British Isles but what I generally do because I've got a double is I can close this up really easily and they don't normally bother me it's a very comfortable setup and all I would suggest is that you invest in some decent tree straps you make sure you've got drip lines or carabiners to stop the rain those are the most important things the tarpaulin overhead just make sure it's strung up properly and not fold it over in a really bad way or anything and yeah you should have a very very pleasant night if one ends lower than the other I suggest you just make them equal you don't want one end higher or lower than the other cuz if it's higher you'll slope down inside the hammock through the night if it's lower you'll get a bit of blood rushing to your head as you sleep if that's your head end and you know it can there can be a bit annoying really getting headaches the next day so just make sure they're equal but it's a very comfortable set up the hammock nice and lightweight and good for weather like this that's humid and warm you need a bit of air to call your day

so this is my setup guys this is how I put it together and it's been been this way for four years really I haven't changed it there are certain elements to it that are quite crude could need we could do with improving things like that tab on the top they're getting a lot of friction on it from the cord and it's eventually going to break but I can sort that out I'm pretty handy with a needle and thread I can just put some tough an island on there much smoother tighter weave stuff that'll um that just won't wear down and probably where the paracord instead of the tab other things maybe the tree strap so I could probably deal with some flatter straps but I just never had any and I just got some rope and used that and just made sure it's nice and long so I could you know put it in between trees that were quite far apart so there are that there is some crude elements this this is by no means a demonstration of them a very high-tech setup you can see my setup is pretty pretty basic really but I mean that's the way I like it I like it easy real simple it's quick to put up it takes me probably less than four minutes to get this all strung up when I'm out here and I'm putting it together it's a very very quick setup and and that's the main thing for me is getting it up quickly I don't like faffing around throwing my tarp over the top of the ridgeline getting it all taut tightened up I'd rather take you know the the the downside of having the ridgeline over the top of the top and just running a secondary one underneath my sleeping bag and clothing and just do it that way because I prefer the ease of setting up rather than chucking my tarp over separately and that's really the main thing because a lot of the time setting up is half the battle you've got to put this away the easier it is to set up the easier it'll be to put away if you've watched my tarpaulin video like I referred to earlier in the video the quick deployment video you'll see that this tarp goes away as fast as its put up whether it's wet or dry it doesn't matter it gets stuffed in that dry bag not folded if you fold things you just get fold lines and they just go white eventually and um and you'll just get aware in that area just weakening the fabric constantly in one area crush things away the fold lines are random and the life expectancy of that Garmin will last a lot longer and that's really a fact to be fair same with the hammock that the sock goes over it gets stuffed in this bag here all the cords get unclipped and stuffed in and the whole thing just goes back together very quickly so that's the main things for me that's why I like this setup is why I've stuck with it for so long and you'll find that when you're out doing things in the outdoors whether they're very very primitive or you're using equipment like this the easier something is the more often you will do it and the longer it will stay that way and this may just be tweaked in the future here and there if a good product comes out I've used Whoopie slings not keen on them really used to use them on my old DD setup I don't bother with them anymore I just prefer a carabiner and rope because a lot of my kit isn't really set up to be as light as possible it's really a trade-off between the two if it's very functional you can double up as something else like this rope can and it can be set up quickly and it's strong and it works then I'll carry it and it won't always be the lightest setup but it would be more often and not a good setup that'll be a functional and strong so I hope this videos helped you out I hope it's showing some light on how I run my setup here and thanks again for watching guys and I'll see you very soon in another video and if you're interested in any other products there in this video see the links below in the description and obviously the links to other videos in the description on these setups here thanks again take

Written on 13 June 2016.

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About the Author

MCQBushcraft

I'm a UK based outdoorsman who started hunting and fishing with my friends when I was young.

Educating yourself about your surroundings and having the core skills to sustain yourself using your environment is a lost curriculum in the United Kingdom. We are well provided for, so well that "why do anything if somebody else will do it for you". This lifestyle has drastically disconnected people from having the knowledge and skills required to spend even one night in the woods and not get hungry.

I love being outdoors and have never lost the desire to learn and practice skills that I get a sense of natural connection from. Hunting hangs controversy in the minds of many, but in my eyes there is nothing more natural if you choose to eat meat. I appreciate that not everybody hunts in moderation though.

Thanks for reading
Michael McQuilton

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Bushcraft Shelters: Hammock & Tarp Setup

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Victorinox Ranger Wood

Mora Bushcraft Black

Kellam PR5 Puukko

Mora Heavy duty

Enzo Trapper 95

Victorinox Forester Wood

ESEE-4

Fallkniven F1

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About the Author

MCQBushcraft

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