Gorilla Tape Shelter Build With My Dog | Survival Challenge | Bushcraft Camp

Description

I head to the woods with my dog to build a basic survival shelter using a $10 roll of Gorilla Tape. I use some bushcraft skills to scavenge for sticks and foliage/debris to build my camp.

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Tags: gorilla tape,survival,shelter,challenge,dog,survival shelter,gorilla tape survival,gorilla tape survival challenge,$10,bushcraft,camping,scavenging,sticks,debris,debris shelter,supershelter,foliage,camp,bushcraft camp,ta outdoors,cheap shelter,basic shelter,woods,shelter build,shelter building,ta outdoors camp,camp update,super shelter,with my dog,forest

Video Transcription

hey folks Mike here from ta outdoors I'm in the woods I've got my dog Jack's here with me and today we're going to try and build a survival shelter with some Gorilla Tape so this is the Gorilla Tape it's just the kind of bulk standard tape and really this is nothing new it has been done before but I thought I'd give it a go so what I'm going to do is build the shelter between this tree here and this tree over here I'm going to keep it relatively low profile purely because I only have a few hours out here I don't want to overheat my dog because it's 30 degrees Celsius and it's very hot and muggy and there's bugs everywhere so I'm going to try and keep it lower so that I need to collect less materials but that's the aim this is about eight and a half feet the gap between this which is easily enough for me to be able to lie down in I'm not going to build a raised bed but I would do if I wanted to stay off that keep off the ground and keep my body warm this is just going to be a real quick survival shelter keeping it nice and low profile I'm gonna use dead wood there's plenty of deadfall around in this woodland just kind of scavenge around hopefully my dogs gonna help me sometimes he's helpful sometimes he's absolutely useless and he just runs off of the sticks but we will see let's go and get some wood as you can see there is dead wood everywhere heat Jack's hydrated got my water and a dog bowl so he knows where to find it if he does get warm although I've lost him how there is hey stop being gross let's go build a shelter so I'm trying out a different microphone let me know what you guys think it's bit more of a radio mic so I can walk around like this and actually not have to I can come away from the camera and just film a bit easier when I've got the dog around so I'm gonna try and use dead what do I can this looks like I've chopped it I don't really want to use any tools so Jax is pretty much just for going and getting distracted by grass I think this will be a wide enough yeah that's gonna be wide enough I'm gonna keep it sort of low about there normally with the lean-to shelter I'd want this pretty much head height almost above my head actually just so there's plenty of room to get under the shelter and like I say this is gonna be a quick quick shelter build so I'm gonna use less materials by going lower down probably about here so now let's get the gorilla tape out the fun part it's quite a big roll easily gonna be enough because all I need to do it's just tight there the ridgeline in the rich pull this off main horizontal pole this is obviously too super sticky stuff being gorilla tape but you can't just tear it like that so it should be easy enough to get this shelter the shelter up Jack so I'm going to focus on this side to begin with run it about there so I'm gonna start by wrapping it on the ridge Ridge Pole first I don't know obviously use all this roll I say about there here naturally you probably wouldn't be walking around in the woods with Gorilla Tape but you might have in your car something like that it's a good stuff piece of survival item it's a good item to have in your survival kit just a bit of duct tape so what doing is just going underneath underneath this ridge pole and around the tree three times and then I'm gonna come the other way so round here making an X shape because that should hold nice and strong so that's one wrap two wraps I've lost my dog three wraps tear it off it's not pretty but that's pretty stable you know Oh Jax where's he gone yes you have that stick and just stay close stop running away please stick should keep him entertained for a bit so as you can see there's pretty much an X shape here I've just gone started by sticking the tape to this Ridge pole here I went round here and up around here and up three times then I wrapped it round the other way and came around this way three times and I've done the exact same the other side of the tree and but you know that's not going anywhere maybe the ultimate test and see our to see whether the ultimate test see alternate test to see whether your ridgepole is steady enough is if can you swing from it a bit skeptical here this box of at least I'm really quite nervous about this alright Jess over here oh here whatever that one over there go on wait I don't want to get my dog hurt by doing this I don't recommend trying this at home I'm basically gonna try and swing from this oh this could hurt let's get her bad oh wow look at that let's go really tape that's easy are you gonna take the weight at the shelter if we can take my whole body weight oh that's awesome

yes I'm amazed with that I did not think that would hold at all right now I need to get some vertical poles going on down here probably up to about here a little bit like a foot above this Ridge pole itself but I should probably clear this area before I do that there's so many ants and bugs around it's gonna be I'm gonna get bitten so much in shorts not a wise idea Mike let's wear shorts in the middle of the summer in the woods where there's bucks

that was the sentiment that was the ridgepole I went for first but you can see it's just a bit too short typical by like a foot but I'm not gonna waste that ah and I'll show you guys these ants in a minute they're the southern wood amp biggest ants in the UK and they spray formic acid they're called Formica Ruffa and they spray formic acid I've shown it on my channel before

do you mind Jax you see what you found what you found he's found something one boy dig it oh boy dig it good boy what's in there you get it you get it you get it oh you got tree roots nice one we got some natural cordage guy on here going to get boy dig it boy boy you get those tree roots I mean this one is a bit bit long it's a bit high but this is like I said this is not going to be a pretty shop survival shelter it was gonna be pretty damn ugly but looks aren't important in this say they're gonna be kind of all different lengths I'm just gonna I'm just gonna grab them I can change the angle of visa for one bar quite like it quite a tall okay buddy us enough come on that's enough digging you're tiring though you're tiring yourself up state of your nose so I bought my chest mount GoPro just to because I've got the dog with me and it's just so much easier to manage him with a chest mountain rather than the big camera so he's just discovered pine cones great I've got my backpack over here as well which has my dog's food and camera gear and things in but I don't really need anything in that so it's just a case of stacking so when you've got a branch too long like this one you just find a wedge in a tree two trees together this one's actually pretty rotten I think it's gonna break okay don't find that one oh there's some more over here here's one so we do a slip it between the gaps and then use it as a lever

and that snaps the branch nice and easy now it's a bit shorter to length a little tip when you're building a survival shelter and look for resources that are close to your camp you don't have to travel miles to begin with some may be my argue go further to begin with to get your materials because you're only going to get weaker but I always think try and use what you've got here first at least you then might have half a shelter to protect you in a survival situation this might not break this is going to be this is gonna be really quite a trip oh she did it she's still too long try it I didn't break so good and now that's too short what I'm Mike it's all too short hello we all make mistakes that one might be okay just funny shape these are too short Jack stop digging the holes man come on leave them leave them thank you although a peg all their dead wood everywhere as you can see I am very fortunate to have this many resources in this woodland that's quite snap him off the spiders are starting to nest now as well start to make their webs ah to shore again you need to keep drinking keep drinking your water come on let's find some more here's a I'm sort of going for the easiest easiest access how wrong is that Oh God and we've got to be quick guys there's ants everywhere come on buddy

there's your bet come on oh she's she's a big one something really satisfying about building a shelter from natural materials I have a feeling these other ones they're both too long like I said doesn't matter it really doesn't matter but it's massively this gonna be too tough to break its a boost maybe not oh we got a lot more to collect we're getting there no I didn't halfway yet logs are definitely not the devil I'm not quite happy with our level there they're sort of leaning normally with an axe I'd shot these little wiser we are getting towards the halfway point handy I've got a leverage point right near my shelter so I don't have to travel very far for that either perfect

cool I'd say we're nearly halfway and there's a good boy these ants mmm I have brought you out some of this dog biscuits if I can find them why did I put so I brought my dog these uh charcoal dog biscuits they're all broken up now but they're like the classic Bonio type things I think they are bony O's actually these things there charcoal biscuits really good for their like teeth he loves them sit good boy he loves them and it just keeps him near me that campus way to treat him every now and then he knows the good foods around here

good boy let's get back to building boy you know that don't you buddy good lad get it down your son Oh Tuffy Wow hmmm resinous oh look at the resin in this this is the stinkiest piece of wood look at all that resin can you guys see that what fat has a bit fat wood in there these kind of lighter golden patches that's pine resin and when you smell it

I didn't eat I have to put my nose near it it just absolutely stinks have resin that stuff is really good fire lighting material I could break that down with a knife get some shavings from it and that would take a spark from a farad or even the lighter on the seat really well Burns had quite a long time as well but it's getting on the shelter oh.just shelters still gonna do the same job even when that one has just touched a Ridgeline it's still gonna do the same job the main area to protect is under here where you'd sleep doesn't really matter how much overhang you have in the short term anyway you may notice that is my bushcraft camp much in the same woodland there's my bush Gogh camp that's too what I tend to do is just lean them up against a tree like this and that way when I go to collect more it look it stands out in the forest and I can see exactly where they are there if I left them all lying on the ground I'm just gonna lose them again if I lean them up against the tree and I know I can find them again quite easily that's too big I'm up against random trees so I tend to be when I'm shelter building too rotten alright alright alright that's good I'm making progress I don't want to take any word from my camp cuz that's I need that wood there so I'm just gonna leave that looking good they

hunting towers still intact oh I recently brought my dog shelter she did me quickly take my dog in there come on where is he come here good boy let's see what you look like in your shelter come on look away book for you yeah what's he gone up there get it oh yeah life of luxury he fits so well in there that's his bed in his raised bed built and a little lean-to shelter there that's the style I'm going for you like it in there buddy you good boy yeah we need to get a rug for you so much so can't believe I wore shorts such a bad idea

I look thick pieces thicker pieces means you have to collect less the thinner you go the more logs you're gonna have to collect if you go to slightly thicker you don't have to collect as much yes it's heavier but I think you expend a bit less energy on traveling him boy it's handy having a white dog I can just see if a white flash in the in the forest go straight back this whole it really productive just quite long can I get two out of it nope but it'll be oh we're so close Jax that is not cool that's inside the shelter hey stop it I reckon two more two or three more man this is where this is our shelter you got to stop digging yeah gorilla shelter fifty percent complete there's a couple of pokey branches here oh that I need to go well josh is busy eating it sticks this is the shelter itself so you can see with all that weight on it gorilla tapes not moves at all same this end what moves at all no budging that's gonna hold real easy and is it it's a great one-man lean-to shelter but the downside is there's loads of gaps loads of gaps which means if it rains if you look around here I've tried to keep all the pokey sticks this side of the shelter rather than facing in towards me just saves me having to break them off in the first place and any debris or branches that I put on here can just rest on top of these these will help to secure it and keep them in place so I didn't snap them on this side it just helps keep all the debris and whatever in but I'm pretty pleased that's all stuff that's found in the woods you can see it's all like different lengths and snapped off and yeah pretty happy with that but now I need to cover it with something because this is by no means gonna keep me dry at all this is like a sieve if it rains so I need to cover it with branches now I have to look for other kind of green branches that's widely available if you look over here there's a bit more green there's rhododendron there which is like a more of a shrub a bush whilst it is easily available there it's actually quite hard to snap off with you know no tool so it's gonna be quite time-consuming

I do have grass and a bit of mass piss so dry I don't really want to pick all that up so I'm gonna go for over there which you might be able to see Bracken there is lots of it so this is Bracken although it looks nice and green and very friendly this is pretty unforgiving stuff firstly it harbors ticks which most of you around the world should know what a tick is if you don't look it up they're a nightmare bug that can cause a lot of problems that dogs and humans and you can get Lyme disease from it things but these are full of moisture actually when you crack them open there's Jose who's that but these obviously have quite a broad broad ish area surface area so they can't be good for shelters most people prefer not to use Bracken for shelters purely because it's buggy it harvests bugs and it's just not ideal it is a summer plant in the winter it wilts down and goes completely brown and dry like this one here there goes all brown and dry and it just really doesn't do much for shelter coverage but for the time being and probably resources that I've gone my area this is ideal anybody so I'm gonna harvest this the other thing that's quite dangerous let me show you the other thing about Bracken is when you snap it you can't really see it here but if you snap this stalk in a certain way if you go to pull it like that and pull the plant up it actually it can split and make a razor-sharp like knife edge which can really cut up your hands there's another reason people don't like using it for shelter so just be aware if you're using Bracken as a as a proofing material to help reduce water getting into your shelter if you snap it it really can get into your hands quite bad and cut them up so just be aware of that we're a bit early at the moment but on the back on the underside of the leaf you can sometimes see the black spores we're still early in the season yet it won't be till kind of end of August really that we'll start to see that but you can see it on certain plants with Bracken there's a number of different ways you can uh you can get it obviously with a knife and some gloves it's the safest way but you can Jack's here you can if you get it right bend it over and you wall up the stalk with a stick like that you can you can break it off without having to harm your hands at all really so that's just one of the ways that I do just bend the stalk even that just cut into me a bit then I mean a knife is obviously easiest or taking your time and breaking it but it's really a nasty stuff when it breaks bloody bugs everywhere so I'm just gonna collect a load in a bunch first before I rather than just keep their back and forwards in the shelter I'm just gonna collect a load first probably get eaten alive by bugs at the same time I just found a really cool way of getting off let me show you this is this is a cool technique I've literally just left so what you do is you grab the stalk you snap it like so just bend it and then do circles twist around in a circle boom it just breaks up the fibers real easy that came off so quickly yeah you got it this one I got Bracken for days get our Alfie

and see much of him these days I'll be aesthetic grease digging his bloody hole I knew he wasn't was up to no good where's he just gonna leave him around here at the back and all that later it's a time-consuming process oh there's the ants Wow let me show you these can you see that these are everywhere these southern wood ants they are all summer they're everywhere I've got to keep Jax moving so they didn't call up him and bite him the forest floor is just alive with them and if you can see if we like that sometimes you can hear them but they're everywhere

can I just point out that most people didn't know my dog well understand that this is a very rare sight where you're seeing here he never sits still normally in the woods so I am filming this while it lasts gotta make the most of his moment a Jack Russell Terrier sitting still how where well at least I know where he is we're just before spider season at the moment spiders come in August they start doing the old Weaver's start making massive website in this forest and it's not pleasant because they tend to make them about head height so you walk into them and you never expect it we've got another two weeks I'd say until they start doing their webs see this is the difference I was talking earlier about it being dead it's pretty useless when dead except for file I think tinder you want that nice broad kind of green part that green Leafs not these brown cream cool ones so I'll just show you this one as well little tip try and come from underneath the plant crouch down come underneath just with a thumb and forefinger bend it get that right angle like there that's the weak point pinched either side with your thumb like this and then just spin pinch and spin and then it goes just rips off look at it's just the forest of Bracken and by the way do not worry about me harvesting all of this and it not growing back this is super fast growing grows back really really quickly and it grows up to like I've seen it about ten feet high not in this area but near where I live ten feet it loves fighting for the sunlight it grows really really quickly just dominates it dominates woodlands and hyphens the difference between this and fern is fern fern usually grows as low down and wide Bracken usually has a nice long stalk too and it grows up really high there are species of fern that do grow high but in the UK certainly that's the difference I've noticed with the Bracken and fern fern likes damp really damp areas near rivers lakes Bracken likes drier areas usually so the key with doing the Bracken on this shelter is I need to build it from the base up generally with shelters when you're building a shelter and you've you've done your structure like this and you need to proof it and cover it with something you usually should start from the bottom up and stack the layers on top of each other just to give that tiling effect and that helps with the runoff of water a common thing to do is to grab the stalk end of the bracken and just shove it in inside which I've made the mistake of doing in the past to keep two pincher there to keep it all there the problem with this let me show you the problem was shoving the stalk in like that is when it rains the rain is going to drip down come through here drip down this stalk and then drip onto you in the shelter so you don't want these sticking into your shelter really you want them going kind of across and away and you can weave them in and out so if I twist this around you can just weave it in and out like that and it's just a little bit safer it will still drip personally I just have them on the outside completely and just let that all sit on the outside so I start building on this corner and I'm gonna put quite a thick layer on the base just because it's a nice wide area for the next layers on top there and build up on take your time doing this bit as well if you just rush and dump it on you won't cover the gaps as quickly take your time to to sort of try and find the gaps I'm just layering this long ways with the outside of the leaf facing the outside of the shelter because that's naturally where it protects from the rain anyway that's quite a long piece now I'm gonna need a lot of Bracken for this it's like a jungle shelter this there's young good let's get out of here that might look like a lot but that really isn't much at all I could see loads of gaps in there so I mean you're gonna have to gather four or five more times that amount looking better from the inside it's good to harvest the materials that are fairly near your camp spend you expend less energy I find so you can probably see from even though I've covered the whole shelter now with Bracken you can see lots of light patches underneath which is not a good thing because that means the rain is going to come through those light patches so although the whole shelter is covered I now need to see where those light patches are and put more Bracken and layer it on top of there so that it's completely dark because at the moment there's so much light at the bottom which means I didn't put enough layers on the bottom which is a bit of a bit of a schoolboy error still bit light up here and in the bottom in the middle so here is the finished shelter Finnish survival shelter it's not amazing but it's a Gorilla Tape shelter I'm pretty happy with it I'd certainly keep dry in there it's a lot darker I filled in all the gaps there's a few little gaps left but most of that is pretty much dark so I would stay which breeze they could really tape is holding up really well pleased with that it's not budged at all and nor has it this side there's loads of bracken on it but it needs at least another two or three feet thickness if it was gonna make a major impact some warmth in the winter but obviously this would all die back eventually I'm pretty pleased for that I'm pretty pleased with that simple lean-to a thing to remember is I didn't actually use any tools at all why use no hand tools I use no tools whatsoever the only thing I did use was the Gorilla Tape so this whole shelter was just built by my hands and with my dog doing nothing except digging which he's doing now but yeah so you can see it's pretty much snapped off I found old bits of branches that were that I had sword sawn in the past just over in the forest floor where I do where I make cooking tripods and things like that but most of this looks all snapped off and yeah the ridge lines are all snapped off it's pretty cool I'm pretty happy with that it's nice to be out in the woods doing something practical obviously I'm not going to leave this shelter up with the karela tape here because you know it's plastic in the environment it's not good for the environment I was just showing you what you could do in that sort of situation so I will just take this whole shelter down and rebuild another one one day keep the Gorilla Tape I'm not going to throw that away I'll probably use it for something well thank you all so much for watching this video I really appreciate it I hope you enjoyed it it's nice to be here out in the woods even in the bug season to be building a shelter and have my dog with me who is just shredding everything I appreciate you watching please hit the subscribe button if you enjoyed it and more shelter-building videos also take the barrel notification and i'll see you guys in the next episode

are you done Jax Jax thank you thank you okay

[Applause]

you