Basic Wilderness Survival Tips

With the popularity of camping and hiking, at an all-time high, there is a great demand to learn basic of survival skills. This is something you need to do, before heading out on your next outdoor trip. Although most tourist destinations including campsites and hiking trails are marked to ensure that you don’t go off the trail. You can still stray from the marked trail and become lost in the wilderness. However, knowing these basic wilderness survival tips can play a big role in whether or not you can survive in the outdoors until you are found or have found your way back.

Pre-trip Planning

The first thing you want to do before even leaving for your outdoor trip is to let your friends and family know where you are going and when they should expect you back by. This will help greatly if you are stranded out in the middle of nowhere and need to be rescued. Authorities can then start their search in the general area of your last known location. This can also help in the amount of time you spend in the wilderness before your rescue. Make sure when you go on your outdoor trip that you let someone know WHEN, WHERE and FOR HOW LONG!

Shelter

Another basic wilderness survival tip is to of course find you shelter if you have found yourself lost in the woods. Make sure that you choose a shelter that will protect you from weather and other animals. Keep in mind that the temperature can be dramatically changed between night and day, so make sure that you are choosing a shelter that can keep your body temperature balanced and that you don’t get too cold. You want to make sure that you have a type of roof or covering so that if it rains you don’t get wet.

Mixing wet clothes and cold temperatures only leads to worse life threatening problems. Make sure that you get familiar with the location of your campsite so that when you venture off to find food and water you don’t become more lost and can’t find your campsite. This is a very important tip that anyone that plans to survive in the outdoors should know.

Fire

The next important tip to surviving the wilderness after finding your campsite is to get a fire going. 

• A fire is very important to have if you become lost outdoors. 
• Moral is improved by having a fire which can help with the stress of being lost
• The fire will help you in many different ways such as keeping your warm at night, keeps animals from approaching your campsite, and to cook food.
• A fire is also very important to have because the smoke from the fire alarms rescuers and helps them to pinpoint exactly where your campsite is. 

You want to make sure that your fire is constantly burning and finding wood to keep it going is another great tip when it comes to wilderness survival.

Food and Drink

After you find a campsite and create a fire, your next step is to find food and water. It is always wise to carry a backpack whenever you go on an outdoor trip and should have basic survival gear, some of which should be water, canned goods, a metal bowl, utensils, and of course a can opener. However, after you have run out of your materials in your survival backpack you then need to find a clean source of water, such as a running stream, and either hunt land animals or find a good fishing spot to fish from. Keeping yourself hydrated is very important as well as eating food to give you energy until your rescue.

For more on these areas check out “Must Have” Survival Gear

Mindset

One of the most important tips to follow is to remain calm at all times. We may become angry and scared when we know we are lost. This leads to mistakes that make the situation worse. Keep a calm mind this helps you focus and access the knowledge and skill you will use to in surviving until you are found or make your own way back.

Although all of the tips are very basic survival tips, they are very important when it comes to actually surviving in the outdoors for days on end. Make sure the next time you are on an outdoor trip, you keep these simple tips in mind and use them if you happen to get lost in the outdoors.