Bushcraft

Lore & Background

Bushcraft skills provide basic necessities for human life: food through foraging, tracking, hunting, trapping, and fishing; water sourcing and purification; shelter-building; and firecraft. These may be supplemented with expertise in twine-making, knots and lashings, wood-carving, campcraft, medicine/health, natural navigation, and tool and weapon making. Bushcraft includes skill with tools such as bushcraft knives and axes, which can be used to create dugout canoes or A-frame shelters. Shelters can be purpose-built tents, improvised from tarps, or indigenous structures like snow caves or bark lean-tos, as well as natural shelters such as caves or spaces under trees.

Reader's Guide

The term bushcraft was popularized in the Southern Hemisphere by Les Hiddins (the Bush Tucker Man) and in the Northern Hemisphere by Mors Kochanski. It gained currency in the United Kingdom due to the popularity of Ray Mears and his bushcraft and survival television programs. The word was registered as a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Bushcraft USA LLC on November 12, 2013, for providing online forums about bushcraft, though some Internet users questioned its validity due to earlier uses by figures like Mors Kochanski in 1981. As of 2021, the mark had not been publicly enforced against other forums. Promoters of bushcraft include Richard Graves, Mors Kochanski, Ray Mears, Cody Lundin, Les Hiddins, Les Stroud, and Dave Canterbury.

Did You Know?

• The term bushcraft originally referred to skills used in the Australian bush and has been used in its current sense in Australia and South Africa at least as far back as the 1800s.
• The reef knot, also called a square knot, is good for bundling items and can be used to tie bandages together like a sling.
• The snare noose is commonly used to catch animals; it consists of a noose attached to an anchor point that tightens around the animal's neck.
• The word bushcraft was registered as a trademark by Bushcraft USA LLC on November 12, 2013, for providing online forums about bushcraft.