If you’re a hunter, it pays to know some basic survival skills. Here are five skills you should know.
Navigation
An important factor of being a hunter is having a good grasp of your bearings and directions. Typically, it’s useful in knowing your directions if you’re on a hunting trip with a party of others so you have a clear understanding of where everyone is. It’s also important to prevent yourself from getting lost.
Of course, if you do get lost, having navigation skills in your back pocket will help you find your way. Literally. Having a GPS or even a compass can do a lot in helping you get reoriented and find your way, but even if you don’t have those, know that hope is not all lost. During the day, the sun is your most powerful directional tool as it rises in the east and sets in the west. At night, finding Polaris, or the North Star, will let you know where true north is. When you find that, you can plan your route accordingly, but should still wait until daylight to do most trekking.
Getting Clean Water
Water is probably the most important resource for a person to have. You can go a couple of weeks without food, but you won’t survive very long without water in the wilderness. So, finding clean water to drink is arguably one of the most important survival skills you need to know.
Identifying potential water sources in the wild is your first step. Always look for moving water, like streams, rivers, or natural springs. Don’t grab some water from a muddy puddle. The next step is to purify your water. While drinking directly from a stream or river can seem fine, know that it’s still a gamble. Even if it looks clean, it can easily be tainted by animal feces and other factors that can give you unpleasant waterborne bacteria. Bringing the water to a rolling boil before drinking it will kill any bacteria inside.
But what if you can’t boil your water? Water that doesn’t necessarily need to be purified includes rain, snow, and dew.
Building a Fire
Out in the wilderness, fire serves many purposes. It provides warmth, purifies water, cooks food, and offers a psychological boost. So, you want to add this survival skill to your arsenal.
First, always carry reliable fire-starting tools in your hunting gear. A handheld flint striker will last almost forever, but even a lighter could help you save the day, and they’re small enough to slip into your pack and not add any extra weight. No matter what you use to start your fire, it’s important to remember that large pieces of wood need more energy to burn. This is why you start with easily burned tinder, like dry grass, then move up to small kindling, like sticks, progress to slightly thicker dry wood the size of pencils, and then continue up to logs and branches. Gather up all these different sizes of fuel before you even begin to strike a spark.
Building Shelter
If the sun is getting ready to set and you’re out, lost in the wilderness alone, you need to shift your priority to building a shelter. A shelter will help protect you from the elements and can make a big difference in helping you get through the situation.
Avoid sleeping on the ground as it will leach away all your body heat. Instead, create a buffer with leaves, moss, twigs, or pine needles. To protect yourself from dew, frost, and rain, you need to build yourself a roof. A simple lean-to will do the job. Find a fallen log or short rock wall and rest branches over the side to give you a simple but effective roof. If you want to stay extra warm, build the shelter room low and keep the shelter small. This will help keep your body heat close.
First Aid
If something goes wrong on your hunting trip, whether you’re lost or not, having first aid knowledge and skills is essential for any hunter. Nature is unpredictable, so it’s important to be prepared. You never know when you’ll have an emergency situation unfold and have to take care of wounds or injuries. Above all, learn your basic first aid aspects of dealing with different types of abrasions and small wounds and know CPR.
Learn these survival skills, and you’ll be prepared for anything you might stumble across when hunting.
Ready to Go Hunting?
Learn these survival skills, and you’ll be prepared for anything you might stumble across when hunting. If you want to learn more hunting skills with professional guides or just want to go on a hunting trip you’ll never forget, we’d love to take you on a guided hunt. At Soap Mesa Outfitters, we offer quality guided hunts on our 3500-acre private ranch that overlooks Blue Mesa Reservoir. Not to mention, we also have a National Forest Permit, which provides an additional 8000+ acres with utter seclusion due to its limited access. Let us show you what you’ve been missing.
