In this episode of the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast, host Chris Speir dives deep into the essential topic of shelter. Chris explains the importance of shelter in outdoor survival, comparing it to the comfort and safety of a home, and covers key concepts like campsite selection, building shelters using natural materials, and the importance of tools like tarps. The episode also teases upcoming discussions about layering clothing for survival and shelter.
In this episode of the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast, host Chris Speir dives deep into the essential topic of shelter. Chris explains the importance of shelter in outdoor survival, comparing it to the comfort and safety of a home, and covers key concepts like campsite selection, building shelters using natural materials, and the importance of tools like tarps.
Facebookfacebook.com/campterra
LAMS Wild Camp Alliance Groupfacebook.com/groups/lamswca
Instagraminstagram.com/campterra1/?hl=en
Welcome back to the Primitive Camping in
Bushcraft podcast. My
name is Chris Speir.
I'm going to be your guide to
enjoying the great outdoors.
So today we're diving
into a new chapter, shelter.
We're looking, we're following along in
the book Primitive Camping in Bushcraft.
And we're on page 78 where it kicks off
the shelter section.
So over the next few weeks, we're going
to explore various aspects of shelter.
How it's set up and
how to set up your camp.
What kind of shelter to bring. How do you
make your own shelter when it's needed.
Stuff like that. So we've touched on this
before, but now we're
going to do a real big detail.
It's going to be in great detail.
So let's think about
shelter for just one moment.
When it comes to shelter, what is the
first thing that you think of?
What is the most, most dynamic thing that
you can have as a shelter in your life?
Your house, your home, your apartment,
wherever you live, wherever
you lay your head at night.
That is shelter. That is the most basic
form or advanced form of shelter.
It's really advanced.
The reason why is because it keeps you
safe. It keeps you warm.
It keeps you comfortable.
It's got all the amenities in
it that you need for a shelter.
It keeps, it's got running water. It's
got a stove. It's got, it's got beds.
It's got everything that you need to keep
you safe, to keep you comfortable, to
keep you alive inside of it.
So a house, an apartment, a home,
wherever you're living.
That is the most
advanced aspect of shelter.
So when you're camping, shelter serves
the same purpose, but on
an extremely smaller scale.
Now, a tent is a small house. A hammock
can be considered a small house, like a
little one bedroom thing, you know, and
that's what it does.
So whenever you go out and you bring your
tent and everything, you're
setting up a micro shelter.
Now, in the next one, we're going to be
talking about our clothing and how our
clothing relates in
the shelter situation.
But today we're really, really going to
concentrate on the, you know, the types
of shelter that we can use and
basically campsite selection.
Where can we select our place to build
our shelter or put our shelter?
So when we, when we go camping, our
shelter is our primary, our house, our
residence, our abode, and it serves as
our place to keep us
away from the elements.
So my preferred shelter is a lean-to. If
I'm not using a hammock, my preferred
shelter would be a lean-to type
situation, lean-to setup.
And I've made natural lean-to's where
I've made it out of natural materials,
just sticks and leaves.
And, you know, I did a video here on
YouTube recently where back in November,
December, I would say, would say
recently, but it has been
several months back now.
And I did this video demonstrating how to
make a shelter out of natural material.
And I did. I laid there. I mean, I made
this, this shelter, made my bed, laid
there, camped out all night.
And I had people watch that video and
they're like, oh man, it's not, it's not
good enough. You're going to get rained
on all night long. You're going to get
rained on if it starts raining.
But the part that I didn't include in
there is that it did rain all night long
and I did not get rained
on. So, you know, shelter,
shelter protects you from the elements.
And so this shelter that I made, I made a
lean-to and it actually protected me from
all these, all the rain, all the wind.
And it got down into the high 30s, about
38, 39, somewhere between 38 and 40
degrees that night. It wasn't too bad.
So, but down here in South Mississippi,
you know, I typically
use a tarp as a shelter.
And we're going to get into building
complex structures with a tarp here in
the next few episodes. But essentially
what's going to happen with the tarp is
you're going to use
the tarp as your shelter.
Tarp is the most amazing, most effective
way to make a shelter in the woods. You
don't have to work to death to get leaves
and everything and
sticks and all this stuff.
But a tarp is going to do everything that
you need it to do. So the double D three
by three tarp or three meters by three
meters is lightweight. It's very
versatile. It's effective for pretty much
anything, you know, it'll
keep the rain, the wind, the sun.
It keeps all that off and it generates a
climate for you to have shelter to sleep
under and it will actually make you a
very good shelter from the elements.
So let's move on to key factors on
campsite selection. So selecting the
right site and that's on page 79 of the
book here. It is basically it's
an excerpt from the U.S. Army Survival
Handbook or the survival manual. And when
you're reading this, a lot of it is you
have to keep in mind that they when they
wrote this is evading enemy forces,
evading enemy, you know, being able to
evade the enemy without being seen.
And if you were shot down or left behind
enemy lines, a lot of the concepts in
that book were designed for you to
survive and not get caught. But it has
also been used as an amazing little
source of survival and camping.
And all a lot of a lot of modern survival
books are based off of the U.S. Army
Survival Manual. And a lot of survival
books today have, you know, even even my
camping book, I have referenced the U.S.
Army Survival Handbook and
there's excerpts in there.
So according to the U.S. Army Survival
Handbook, when selecting a shelter, two
prerequisites must be met. Now these two
areas, these two prerequisites are pretty
important. It must contain the materials
required to make the
type of shelter you need.
And number two, it must be large enough
and level enough for you to lie down
comfortably. Now, when they're talking
about lie down comfortably, large enough
for you to lie down comfortably, they're
talking about making a small,
personal sized shelter whenever you're
evading enemy. And they're talking about
climbing up in a log or sleeping next to
a log and making you a little something
with leaves on it to keep you warm and
not having a fire, you
know, stuff like that.
But when you're talking about a primitive
camping aspect, it still applies. You
want to have a place where you can lay
down and be comfortable. All right.
So then you should also consider, is it
suitable for signaling in the event of an
emergency if you're lost or injured? Now,
if you're out in the woods and enjoying
your primitive camping trip, most of the
time you're not going to be signaling for
others to come get you.
And so, but you always want to be
prepared in the event that something does
happen, would you be able to get a hold
of someone for rescue? And let's say you
trip fail and you got punctured in an
artery with a stick that you chopped off
at an angle and you weren't supposed to.
And you you're bleeding out and are you
going to be able to signal for help? Are
you going to be able to call for help? Do
you have the tools that you need to stop
bleeding then and still look for help?
Does this place protect
you from wild animals?
Now, wild animals, they're going to do
what wild animals are going to do. Most
of them are curious. Most of them are
looking for food. And whenever they come
up into your camp, they're looking for
food. And that's majority of it. Now,
what's really dangerous is when you have
individuals that feed wild animals and
then these wild animals
attribute humans to food.
Now, case in point is most of these
ridiculous businesses in South Louisiana
where they take you on swamp tours and
they feed the alligators. That is
ridiculous. So now when you go out into a
boat, these 12, 13 foot long alligators
will swim up to your boat expecting to
get fed. And that is you don't do that.
You don't do that. It's dangerous. Now,
with any wild animal, it is
dangerous if you feed them.
You want to consider is the place that
you're selecting free from insects,
reptiles and poisonous plants. Now,
you're not going to be free of insects.
Now, you can minimize where, let's say,
let's use mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are
pretty much worldwide. Mosquitoes are
ridiculous. Like you can minimize your
bites and you can
minimize where mosquitoes are.
Like down here in the South, water
anywhere near the water, anywhere in the
world, anywhere near water is going to
have more mosquitoes. Then anywhere near
high grass is going to have certain types
of mosquitoes. Some mosquitoes are born
on the grass. Some mosquitoes are born in
the water. But the majority of the time,
if you got water, you got mosquitoes. So
the last episode, I talked about a
thermosail, which was an amazing little
thing to bring with
you to keep mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes away and those things are
exactly what I said. Amazing at keeping
mosquitoes away. So when choosing your
campsite, here's what you need to
consider. This is the bottom line.
Proximity to water, your proximity to
firewood. Those two things you have to
have. You have to have water to drink and
you have to have water at firewood to
keep warm if you're
sleeping in a cold environment.
Now, with that being said, my recent
kayaking trip video on YouTube, I did a
kayaking trip where we went and we stayed
overnight and it was in the middle of
August. Did not have to have a fire. The
only reason we had a fire was to cook our
food and to warm our food up. But other
than that, in the wintertime, a fire is
going to be paramount to keeping you warm
and it actually helps boost the morale.
Stuff like that. Now, in this campsite,
you need to have the materials available
to create a shelter if you did not bring
one. Now these, when you're creating a
shelter, we'll get into this later on.
And we've referenced it several times. If
you're making a shelter from scratch,
like a lean to or a debris hut or
something of that nature, you need to
have enough materials
around where you can do that.
Excuse me. Now there are safety
considerations in the site that you're
selecting and that would be like, uh,
like dead standard trees, high water
marks on the trees to make sure that
you're not sleeping in a place that could
flood if there was a flash flood. And
then that brings me to flash floods,
avalanches and rock slides. You know,
there's always some kind of, uh,
danger and some people will, I've watched
a video where a fellow was demonstrating
how to make a fire and he did it in a
cave and he lit the fire. The fire warmed
up the rocks. The rocks started cracking
and his shelter exploded, not exploded,
but caved in. And he got out okay, but
his shelter caved in. You don't, you
don't build fires inside your caves, you
know, stuff like that. There's certain things that you need to know.
And certain things that you just don't
do. And that's one of them, you know, but
you don't want to camp out where it,
where there's going to be flash floods in
the event that it rains. You don't want
to camp out in places where an avalanche
is going to happen. You know, where it's
prone steep, steep terrain avalanches,
loud noises. You know, you always see
these, these movies where
people made a loud noise.
And then all of a sudden the avalanche
started, you know, rock slides do the
same thing. You know, you don't want to,
uh, go into a place where you know
there's going to be rock slides and stuff
like that happening.
Now, wildlife protection in Mississippi,
the biggest nuisance here really is the
raccoons. Raccoons will venture up to you
camp looking for something to eat.
Majority of the time, if you've got a
fire, they're scared of it.
But if you walk off for a little while,
nobody there, nobody's making noise or
something, a raccoon will, it can come up
into your camp. But there's other places
outside of Mississippi that, you know,
bears and other wildlife will come up
into your camp looking for food.
And we just touched on that just a second
ago. Majority of everything is the animal
is hungry. The animal is looking for
food. They don't have a, uh, sack and
save or a pigly wiggle.
Or a Walmart to run down and buy their
food from. They're constantly hunting.
They're constantly running around looking
for something to eat. And that is the
reason why these things show up. They
associate humans with food or humans do
silly stuff like actually
cooking their food in their camp.
And then the smell
invites them into the camp.
So.
There's different camping styles, you
know, primitive camping
means fewer amenities.
Primitive camping is, but primitive
camping means fewer amenities as if you
were taking a truck and going car camping
or something like that. You can bring
fewer stuff with you.
But also on the other hand, primitive
camping is you bring more amenities with
you than you would if you were practicing
bushcraft or survival type camping
situation and stuff like that.
You know, you, you, you carry your gear
and you set up less structured areas in
less structured areas. So you carry your
gear to where you're going and you are in
less structured areas.
Now, there are things developed campsites
like in some of these little wildlife
areas and stuff like that. There are
developed camping areas and we're going
to get into this in a little bit.
I'm going to give you a resource that
I'll leave in the notes of the video and
the notes of the podcast. But, you know,
when you get out into the woods, you're
going to look for a place to camp out
using the prerequisites from
the US Army survival handbook.
And then, you know, making sure that
there's no dead trees and stuff like
that. But there is other aspects of
primitive camping as well
that they call primitive camping.
And that is where you have these, these
pay to camp places, you know, like, like
state parks or national parks or stuff
like that, where they call it primitive.
And the reason it's primitive is because
there's no water or electricity, but
there is a firing and you could just pull
your vehicle up to it or you camper or
you can set a camp, a tent
up or do whatever you want.
Camp out, get up next morning and leave,
bring you on firewood, you know, that
kind of stuff. And these
are called developed sites.
And, you know, they already have their
fire rings or they have preset camping
areas throughout this large swath of
property. And I prefer myself to go off
the beaten path and
find my own spot to camp.
And that is, that is a very, very
relaxing thing for me. One, I get out
into nature, I get away from the beaten
path. I'm not going to
be running into people.
And I get to set up a camp and really
enjoy what I went to go do. I get to
unplug from, I guess, reality in order to
recharge my batteries.
So we already talked about, according to
the U.S. Army Survival Handbook, your
campsite must provide enough space and
materials to build your shelter.
It should be large enough and level
enough for you to lay down, blah, blah,
blah. But, you know, insects and stuff
like that, we talked about that.
And I don't know why it's on my list
twice to talk about.
But so I got a fellow that I have come to
know, his name's Scott Owens, and he is a
GIS analyst and he helps campers find
great primitive camping spots using his
geospatial mapping expertise.
And this, this fellow, you send him an
email, you say, hey, look, I'm looking at
camping in this area or something like
that. And this is
generally, I think, for the South.
He's really doing like the South areas
right now. But he will go and look in on
the maps and he will find a suitable
place for you to park your car and then
hiking through the woods to a certain
location that looks suitable.
According to the data that he processes
for you to set up a camp and it'll have
all the amenities that you need, such as
fire, water and
firewood and stuff like that.
And a great resource for you to have, he
charges like 15 bucks and you can get a
detailed PDF. I think it's like 60 pages
or something like that.
But you get a very detailed PDF and it
has recommended camping spots, weather
forecasts. And like I said, I'll leave
his information in the show notes here.
And I think that that would be a good
resource if he does
it for your local area.
Now, in the future, we're going to be
next episode, we're going
to be talking about clothing.
But for the next five weeks or something
like that, we're going to be really
hitting up the shelter section and we're
really going to be breaking it down.
We're really going to be talking about
what shelter is. Now, today, we just
briefly talked about, you know, walking
in, doing a site selection and talked
about how shelter is
like your microclimate.
And that's all shelter really is. It's a
microclimate that you can walk into and
stay warm, stay dry, stay healthy, you
know, and keep you out of the elements
and stuff like that.
So that's pretty much going to be it for
today. And this one was relatively short
one. There's going to be a couple of more
little short ones coming up, you know.
But thank you so much for joining me on
this episode. Remember to go down into
the description of this podcast or this
video, wherever you're listening or
wherever you're watching.
Go ahead and check out Scott's details. I
will put that in the details. So next
time we're going to dive into clothing.
We're going to really break down what
clothing is and how clothing is your
first layer of shelter. We have discussed
this briefly with a 35,000 foot flyover.
And I know we hit this running this
morning, but we're going to actually slow
down and we're going to get into the
details. We're going to
get into how to set this up.
We're going to talk step by step, how to
make several variations of tarp shelters.
We're going to talk step by step, how to
do pros and cons, how to do ridgelines,
you know, stuff like that.
So that's coming up in the next couple of
episodes. But the next episode is going
to be all about clothing and how clothing
fits into the shelter aspect.
So if you haven't already, grab your copy
of Primitive Camping in Bushcraft and it
is available on all
major online retailers.
And we're in page. Let's see. The shelter
section starts on page 76 and we're going
to go all the way through to page. Let's
see here. What is this? Page.
Ninety nine. And so that we're going to
be covering that over the next couple of
weeks. And I really appreciate you
following along, coming
in and listening to me.
And if you got any comments or anything,
if you're watching the video, leave a
comment on the video.
Let me know what you think.
Go ahead and do the ratings. I invite you
to rate this thing on whatever podcast
platform you're listening to.
If you would, don't if you don't mind,
please just leave me a rating there.
Leave me. How does it
help you? Is it helping you?
I mean, I mean, be honest with you. This
sucks. Just tell me it sucks. You know,
I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But I'm
just asking you to leave a rating and let
me know what you think about this.
Is it helping you? Is it not helping you?
Is there something else that we need to
start doing with it? All right. I
appreciate you so much for stopping by.
I appreciate you so much. And I will see
you in the very next video and the next
podcast. God bless you.