I was with my friend the other day in the forest when we decided to start a campfire. We were practicing a few of our bushcraft skills and always did it as safely as possible. Suddenly, we were confronted by a park ranger who told us it was too late to start a fire at that time in the night. Say what? Really?
Since then, I’ve done a little research of my own to ask the simple question: where can I practice bushcraft safely and effectively?
10 best places to practice bushcraft and survival skills:
- Your Own Backyard
- Your Own Neighborhood
- Your Local Park
- Running Trails or Greenways
- Train Stations or Malls
- A Public Beach, Lake, or Pond
- National Parks or Forests
- Private Lands
- BML Lands
- Crown Lands
The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to be in the wilderness to practice bushcraft. It can be as easy as starting in your backyard if you just want to focus on skills like trap-making, plant ID, wildlife observation, weather predictions, and many more.
If you don’t have a yard, there probably is some “everyday” location near you that most of your skills can be worked on. In fact, you may only have to travel a bit or take an extended trip for more hardcore bushcraft skills.
So, let’s discuss the 10 best areas for you to practice bushcraft. Note: This list is ordered from areas generally easiest to hardest as far as accessibility goes.
1. Your Own Back Yard
So long as you don’t break any state or federal laws, practicing bushcraft in your yard or inside your home is the safest and definitely best way to get better at your craft. You can practice essential skills like:
- Candle making
- Water purification
- Leather-crafting
- Processing flora and fauna
- Many more
The possibilities are endless. You can just go out, pull up a chair in the shade, and do some carving or whittling. Being good with your hands in the wilderness is something that must be practiced often to keep your skills honed. It’s a good habit to get into to work on something every day.
And, just because you might have run out of daylight is no excuse, there is still an opportunity for you to hone your bushcraft skills in the night, as close to home as your back yard.
For example, on a very dark night, you can go outside, and look up in the sky. With this, you can get a better understanding of stars and constellations and how you might be able to use them to get a better understanding of direction and, in turn, some natural navigation. Don’t underestimate how important this skill is!
Simulate Survival Situations
While being at your homestead provides comfort, there is another huge benefit that cannot be overstated. The fact that you are shielded from the inherent dangers that come from the outside world allows you to take a safe trial run before heading off to parts unknown. This allows you to basically run a simulation build up your fundamental skills and get your feet wet before putting yourself at risk in the wild.
Long story short: hone every single possible skill you can at home and get really good at them before even thinking about trying it in the wilderness. A survival situation, even a relatively safe mock one, is not the place to figure things out. Master the skills and add them to your toolkit before you do it live.
Above all, the best part about practicing at home is that you don’t have to deal with anybody else! Often, authorities can get confused when they see people practicing primitive skills. By doing them in your back yard, you virtually eliminate almost all possibility of outside-interference with your work.
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2. Your Own Neighborhood
Your neighborhood is one of the safest places to practice your bushcraft skills safely. Even if you are just learning to identify the flora, it’s a great place to hone your skills. Take trees for example.
When in the wild, understanding how to use trees to your advantage is extremely important. Think of all the uses they provide. From building shelters and fires all the way to providing sustenance and even medicine.
There are likely a wide variety of species present in your community. You walk, drive, and maybe even job past these trees almost every single day. Learn to name them instantly when you pass by and what each species are best used for. Then, it’ll become second nature if you ever find yourself in a survival situation.
So, within 50 to 150 yards, within your neighborhood, in all directions, there is a range of trees you can keep your eyes on throughout the year, which will help you identify them while you go into a more remote area.
3. Your Local Park
With an open parkland just a mile or two from your doorstep, you can safely and effectively practice your bushcraft skills. Even if it’s just something as simple as predicting the weather.
Weather Prediction
Sit on a park bench and have a look at the vast expansive open sky. When you see that the clouds are starting to form and coming from a west direction, or anything unusual, pick up your weather forecasting book.
Get an idea of what those clouds are, how they are formed, and how they might predict what weather is to come. Knowing when to prepare for inclement weather or even recognizing when it is likely to be dry and hot the next day will give you a leg up on survival.
4. Running Trails or Greenways
Undeveloped running trails with very little traffic and dog walkers can be found close to most neighborhoods. You get to see all sorts of wildlife when you’re running on these trails in the morning or evening. Some of these include foxes, badgers, rabbits, chipmunks, rats, stouts, and many more.
One of the great things is that, once you’ve seen these animals in an area, you can come back after your run, and try and detect any sign, droppings, or tracks. You may also track what they’ve been eating, moving through the area, and giving away any visible sign of their presence.
So, running a more “wild” area does create the perfect opportunity to look for any wildlife and look for signs. And I am pretty sure you probably have an undeveloped running trail near you.
5. Train Stations or Malls
With a Google Map search, you can usually find a train station near you. Train station platforms are one of those places where there is not a lot to do there. They are a little bit like an airport departure lounge or a being a passenger in a car or sitting in your doctor’s waiting room.
Bring with you a couple of feet of paracord, and while you’re sitting down in the beautiful weather waiting to get on the train, you can practice some knots you know as well as learn some new ones.
6. A Public Beach, Lake, or Pond
Public bodies of water offer enumerable opportunities to practice bushcraft skills. It’s always a good idea to just pretend you are on a dessert island and have to take care of the basics, like purifying water. Here are a few things to practice:
1. Make Solar Stills
The easiest way to purify water is to make use of the plastic water bottles that inevitably always wash up along bodies of water. This video demonstrates how it is done:
This is also a great family activity. Since everyone is already digging, they might not even notice or care what you are doing. Having your kids help you.
2. Cast a Net in the Surf
Also, learning to weave a net from either natural materials or man-made cordage is a great skill to have. There’s nothing more satisfying than creating something and then eating as a reward for your labor.
3. Forage for Shellfish
Crustaceans and mollusks are mostly found near saltwater, but there are also freshwater mussels.
If you have a beach around you, it’s a great place to spend a weekend both having fun and working on your skills.
Stand at the seashore where there is a rock pool around. They are a great place to come and improve your knowledge and foraging skills. If you have no idea about seaweed, cockles, periwinkles on the shore, and all that stuff, do not worry. There’s plenty of info out there to help you. Check out this video:
The places I have mentioned so far are not the best place to practice skills that require more open space, like navigation or hunting. So, let’s discuss a few places that may require a bit of planning or extensive travel to partake of but will be extremely rewarding.
7. National Parks or National Forests
National forests are a great place to go camping and work on your bushcraft skills. You may find a national forest near you with these tips:
Use Google Maps
The easiest way to find a national forest near you is to go into Google maps. Here are a few ideas to guide you:
- Search for “National Forest Near Me.”- Google will locate you and give you a whole list of parks near you where you can practice.
- Search for “Forest Service Roads Near Me”- This is an alternative to searching for national forests near you. Because, when you’re going on bushcraft in a national forest, most at times you’re on Forest Service roads. This is not like boondocking in the desert where you can go to a variety of places to camp. To practice bushcraft in national forests, you usually have to go down a dirt or service road.
- Switch to Satellite View of the Place You Might Want to practice Bushcraft- To avoid the situation of you taking turns that lead nowhere, switch your search to a satellite view. If you just use the regular maps views, they won’t necessarily show you the best areas. From the satellite view, you can scope in and see all the little turnout roads.
Use Apps
Using the satellite view might be somewhat dicey at times because you might not see how steep these places are or if they are crowded, or for some reason, the park has been closed off by the time you arrive. This is when the use of apps, such as AllStays, becomes handy.
Get a Benchmark Map
You might not think you need this, but it may be useful for some folks. Having a benchmark map is usually most helpful when you happen to get lost and have no access to the internet. This is a definite possibility when you go to an unfamiliar area and not something to be taken lightly. You don’t want your practicing expedition to become a real-life fight for survival.
Therefore, I highly recommend you all have at least one good paper or plastic map. This is because all benchmark maps drill down to a specific state. More importantly, it will give you all of the recreation areas, campgrounds, national forest areas, and most importantly, show you the paved roads, the dirt roads, and all the offshoots. Often, they even give you more details than what you might get in a regular Google Map search.
Call the Rangers
If you do not know a good spot to go, want an area with a Wi-Fi signal, or a place with or without more people, call the local ranger station. Their numbers are on the lower-left corner of the page of the National forest you plan on going to.
Call them, and you will be surprised by the wealth of information they will share with you. They will almost always be glad to give you the best spots, and also some suggestions to make your stay remarkable.
Now you have chosen your favorite spot(s) to practice bushcraft, let us talk about a few recommended rules to follow:
Know The Number of Days You Can Stay
Generally, in most US states, you can stay at a public land for just 14 days before you have to move. Of course, all these rules can change based on the jurisdiction of the forest, and what the rules are for that locale.
If you are going to stay in that area, you will often have to move about 1 mile to 5 miles to settle again, depending on the national forest. This is great because it forces you to continuously adapt to different areas.
So, I recommend you take a look at the US forest service website where you want to go and practice bushcraft to see the number of days you can say. Then, pick 2 or spots to move around to based on how long you have to be out in the wilderness.
Clean Up After Yourself
National forests that allow bushcraft and almost never have pit toilets, trash cans, water, or anything like that. So, you must pack in everything you need for your length of stay, and pack it all out following the “Leave No Trace” principle.
If you are not familiar with that, the name says it all. You want to leave the place the same as when you got there with no trace of human activity. Bottk line: If you do make a mess, be sure to pick it up. Otherwise, Yogi Bear might come after you.
Be Far from a Water Source and the Road
If you plan to spend the night at a spot, you will have to be 100 to 200 feet from a water source and 150 feet from the road. You cannot setup your camp at the bank of a river.
It’s also important that you know everything there is to know about local state laws and federal statutes about what you can or cannot do. Can you collect fish? Can you collect berries? Are you allowed to collect samples of grass or rock formations? National Reserves can be very delicate in dealing with some issues, so it’s essential to ask beforehand.
Aside from that, National reserves can be an excellent place for learning how to identify plants and wildlife. You can find a variety of rare specimens of plant species to examine and correctly identify if you can locate the right national reserve that allows for it.
You may also come across a variety of wildlife species that are specific to each location you visit. Do your research and figure out precisely what bushcraft skill fits best for the environment, so you can be ready to go when you arrive.
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