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Basic Camp Overnighter Part 1

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

afternoon guys they can bury the pathfinder school now you're looking for a spot to camp tonight and I'm looking for an area obviously that is on higher level ground I don't want to get in the lowland areas okay so we're trained I'm looking above my head for deadfall material dead trees Widowmaker things like that and I'm in an area right now that is pretty much solid Hickory and any type of Hickory here's a really robust tree very seldom do they have dead branches and things like that hanging off of them very seldom do they die there's one beside me over here that's probably I don't know garbage can lid sighs around another one two more right behind me here they're fairly close to that size and a lot of small saplings and other ones in here that are about half that size so I feel pretty comfortable in this area I'm going to pick a spot out here throw up a tarp make camp for the night stay with me guys okay you can see I set my backpack down on a large hickory here is probably twice the size of a 55-gallon drum or half again that size a great big one Finn there's a sapling here and a pretty good sized one right here beside it so that triangle right there gives me a pretty good area now there's a game trail runs through here as well and I don't want to camp on that game trail but it doesn't run between these through trees so I'm pretty safe there I don't want a deer running me over at night not realizing I'm there so we got to be cognizant of things like that as well game trails are not somewhere you want to camp directly on if you can help it so I think stringing up between these two will be fine I'd like to face the front of my shelter south which is this direction but I'm not going to force the issue if I can't there's quite a bit of debris back here doesn't really matter I could set up in either direction I think I can go ahead and face my outward side of my shelter this direction to the south but my fire right here between me and this big tree to my packs leaning against I think we'll be in pretty good shape lots and lots of judge wood in here I can use the firewood later on there's no reason not to collect it put it aside now I'll sit aside of where I plan to put my camp and then I'm going to go through and make sure that there's nothing sticking up in here anywhere that I don't want to lay on in the middle of the night any hearing where I know I'm gonna put my bedding ass okay so I've picked my location between two trees I'm going to put my tarp for the night and what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you just a little bit of trickery here that I've never showed in another video before I like to give you guys something new every time what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my line that's against the tree and I'm going to run it through the corner of my tarp and this would work if it was a grommet as well the grommets tend to tear out where these tie offs don't then I'm going to get that thing up about waist level and this is where I have my bowline knot and I'm going to pull it through the bowline and then I'm going to pull that against the tree so that the starting point of my tarp is already held in place without any other assistance basically and it's against this tree pulling out and I'm going to get it evened up at the center of the tree and go across to my other one okay now I've got a situation here it's going to happen to you that's why I'm leaving it in the footage here I'm going to stay here but these trees aren't really far enough apart for this tarp that's no big deal because what I'm going to do is I've just broken myself off a piece of stick like I usually do to put in my trucker's hitch tag loop here and I'm going to stretch that tag loop out a little bit so that I get to the second grommet attachment point on the tarp instead of the first one and I put that through and I'll put that stake through there and then I'll pull that thing taut just like this and I'll just have a corner of that tarp that's hanging down

where I can take it up and I can come around this tree with my tag end and I can pull it tight against the tree just like this it's no big deal and that will bring it up it's still not going to be tight but it'll bring it up this right here is going to hold my tarp tight this is just going to keep it from flapping but it really doesn't matter if it lays down a little bit like that that's not a big deal what I'll do is I'll account for that when I stake the back of the tarp down and I'll leave one of these I'll go one over with my stake as well so what I've got is I've got one side of that's hanging down which that's not a big deal this is an ace an 8 foot by foot tarp so there's plenty of room across this side and it's plenty deep now what we're going to do is we're going to pick the back of this tarp up a little bit and we have the advantage with the start because it has that center row of grommets going down the middle for tie off point so I'll show you how that works right now okay so this tarp has got set of Center tie outs on it here and what I've done is I've just cut myself a green stick I'm going to shove it through two of those tie outs just like this and I have cut a v-notch

in that stick very similar to what we talked about in the notching videos and I'm going to put this piece of paracord through here and pull that knot that bowline right into that v-notch then I'm going to come back here to a tree and use that to force that up and I can use that same trucker's hitch knot back here to keep the tension on so I've brought that rope up into a tree fork of a sapling just like this then I'm just going to come up in here and make another one of those trucker's hitch style knots

attention loop that I can pull against just like this pull that taut do exactly where I want it and then just tie that thing off just like I did my ridgeline and I'm done now what I have is this I hope you guys can see this shelter I'll try to give you a better view of it here in a few minutes okay try to give you a view of what this looks like from the inside you can see there's that one two foot this drop down on the way back that crown in the backside in the middle there that we pulled up so you've got lots and lots of room in there to work and that's what's important that should give you a very very good waterproof shelter that you can actually sit up and do tasks whatever you need to do out of the weather if it were to rain okay now if I really want to weatherproof this thing to the best I could and I was worried about wind high winds things like that I've got two grommets here that are off of the ridge line because I'm pulling against the two corners pulling it away from the ridge line what I would do with that is I would take two pieces of number 36 back line like this bring them up on to here pull that down wrap that around two or three times just like that and then pull the tag in through like this just like this and that's going to give me a pretty secure situation I can get undone fairly easily if I need to and I do the same thing on the second one over here so it was connected to the line to keep it from whipping around too much in the wind now that's going to give me a really really tight secure Ridge line on the top of my tent I've got a toggle here connect it to my loop I have this tied off to the line that's tied off to the line with quick foot ties and then I have the other one tied directly to the tree rope or the Rope that's going around for the ridge line that thing is going to be very robust even in heavy wind ok I'm going to show you another little Bush trick that I use a lot I always carry a piece of rope with me generally about 20 25 feet long it's usually made out of a hemp or a cotton that way it's a natural material in case I need to use it from burning purposes and I've got the ends tied off and I use this a lot for things like either a red croft pack frame if I needed to carry something in emergency and something were to happen to my pack or I use it to wrap my wool blanket around me as a piece of outerwear because I generally multi-use that wall blanket for outerwear so what I've done is I've just taken another T another toggle and I've put a larks head knot in that toggle same stick that I use for my Ridge and I'm just going to take this rope and the other thing I like about natural material rope is it binds really good against bark you can see it almost sits up there all by itself and I'm just going to put it on this tree just like this and you can see how well that's binding all on its own I don't have to put hardly any knots or anything in that to keep it where it needs to be but by putting that on the tree I now have a place I can hang my pack and keep it off the ground even though my pack has a liner in it because it has a garbage can in it I still don't like to have my gear on the ground so I can hang my gear from this tree just like this and easily get to anything I need to get to and I don't have to really bend over to get it anymore now it's right here at waist level where I could get to it really easy and my gear is not sitting on the ground the other advantage to having your pack hanging at waist level and to get to the things that you want without picking up your pack if you've got this Coast craft type pack it's got a knack sleeve on it you've got a place to drop your ax where it's secure off the ground cover it up nobody's going to get hurt and you're not going to misplace it okay so now that we've got our shelter built the next thing we need to think about is conduction from the ground we're going to be laying directly on this ground so we've got to do something to battle conduction we can do several things that we can pile debris up inside here a few inches thick when it's compressed or we can just carry something simple like a ground mat or ground pad and you can buy these a lot of places from very cheap to very expensive but what I find works really well for me is just a thick exercise mat from Walmart this is a Gold's Gym brand exercise mat it's very pliable and stretchy so it can be used for first aid it doesn't seem to get stiff in cold weather I've used it up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and minus 13 degree weather and it seems to work fine for me so I usually carry that and I'll put that directly on the ground wherever I'm going to sleep and put my blankets on top of and then I can use this to sit on get myself off the ground so I'm not putting my button my knees in the dirt when I'm doing things before I sleep at night and I'll just throw it up inside there lay my blankets on top of it and lay right down in there now you want to get in there and kind of feel around and make sure that you don't have anything like this stick up I've got right here there's a branch sticking up right there that I don't want in me at night when I'm sleeping where I cut one off so I'm going to go ahead and cut that down lower into the dirt to make sure I don't have that problem and I'll feel everywhere I'm going to lay to make sure that there's no sticks or branches or debris underneath me that I'm going to lay on in the middle of the night and I'll make sure I'm good and up inside here and underneath I'll sleep with my head up toward the cover and my feet out generally unless it's cold weather and I'm going to sleep sideways in here for the fire then I would sleep this direction but for tonight it's not going to get probably less than you know 50 degrees for sure is probably going to be in the high 50s actually maybe in the low 60s I would sleep with my head up in here and my feet out because a little bit of a downhill grade here you never want to sleep with your head on the downhill side you'll wake up with a nice big headache in the morning and you won't understand why so always look at the grade of the ground and sleep with your head uphill when you can so that's what I'm going to do for the night now the components that I would use to sleep with in a normal situation generally are I would carry a couple things with me first of all I would have what I call a browse bag in my browse bag is very simply about a pillowcase sized bag is made out of Muslim that I can stuff with something for a pillow or I can stuff it with a blanket and I have a shroud blanket what I call a shroud it's actually about a twin size Civil War replica blanket and I use that for number one a pillow if the weather is not going to be too cold and during colder weather when I put my full-size queen wool blanket over my body as a piece of outer layer I can put this shroud over the top of that to form a cape which gives me a second layer of wool there to hold in the warmth it also gives me a second layer to shed any weather that may be coming so what I'll do is I'll take that and stick that inside my browse bag basically just like this sideways and that will be my pillow for the night that I'll use to sleep on now let's fold that brows back underneath and that becomes my pillow and then I'll use my queen size wool blanket that I have in my pack then I'll roll my queen-size blanket out and that's what I'll sleep on this is the same one that we saw on our website it's a merino wool 96 by 96 wool blanket I slept in this thing all during the advanced class on the ground just like I am right now brows back for a pillow rubber mat or the rubberized mat and this wool blanket it got down in the low 50s a couple of nights and I was fine underneath the shelter now bear in mind that when you are building a shelter like this you have to bear in mind the temperature as well because the warmer weather you want to get your Ridge a little higher so that air can flow through your shelter system if the weather is going to be colder you want to drop that Ridge down lower so that it holds the heat in because your heats going to rise so if it rises up and leaves all the sudden you don't trap any of that heat you're going to get colder you drop that Ridge down it's going to keep you warmer even without a fire in mild temperatures so what we'll do tonight is we'll just sleep with a small blanket right here on this rubber pad brows bag shelter we're good to go so now it's time to get the tick off my hand and then start a fire stay with me guys okay here's something I want you to think about here's my fire area now scrape that out my foot really good got all the dead leaves out of the way down to the dirt the weeds things like that and I've actually cleaned that area out all the way over to my camp I've got that fire about one full step and a half away from the front of my shelter but I don't want anything right up on my shelter well as dry leaves are either in case something were to pop out a fire into my shelter a very important thing to think about I think is oftentimes overlooked

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About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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