The pioneers developed amazing skills in order to survive in the wilderness. Here are 12 lessons we can learn from their techniques!

Trapping
Having the skill of trapping small game for food will be a great advantage. Knowing how to set multiple types of traps for different animals will ensure your survival and the survival of your loved ones.

Foraging
From all the skills mentioned here, this is probably the most well known. However, we’ve seen that many people either focus on the ability to hunt, or the ability to forge. In order to give you the best chances of survival, knowledge of both skills is extremely necessary. Developing on from that you’ll also want to think about clothing, because those really nice winter jackets you’ve brought probably won’t last forever. Skills like skinning will come into their own here.

Hunting
Hunting requires spending a lot of energy, and there’s a reason that settled humans moved from hunting to cultivation in the form of growing food and rearing livestock. The ability to grow fruits and vegetables not only saves you from having to hunt as much, but it also provides nutrients for your diet that you might not otherwise obtain, especially when attempting to survive in the longer term. There are illnesses that can be brought on simply by not getting enough nutrition like Scurvy. This is something avoidable. The rearing of livestock would be a harder task but not unimaginably so. This will not only yield food, but it’s also a good way of keeping busy especially if you’re trying to survive in an environment far from the general population.

Butchering
Raising an animal is one thing, butchering it is another. Few hunters even know how to properly butcher an animal, as most take them to a butcher for cutting up and packaging. Yet, an animal which is not properly cleaned and butchered can cause disease. You can also waste a lot of good meat by not doing it correctly. The pioneers knew how to butcher an animal the right way and never wasted anything. Every part of the animal had a use.

Knowing Herbal Remedies
For medicines the pioneers had to provide for themselves. Women soon learned the use of herbs for healing. They used boneset for fever, pennyroyal to purify the blood, horehound for coughs, and ginseng for tonic. Syrups and salves were made from cherry root, horseradish, and witch hazel. Wild mustard, poplar root, and red sumac root went into teas, poultices, and powders. The standard cure for a chest cold was to rub the chest with goose grease and apply a mustard plaster.

Some frontier remedies were based more on superstition than science. Among these were potions of walnut bark “peeled upward,” boiled nettles, and “nanny tea,” made from sheep dung.

Navigation
Being able to read a compass and a map is maybe one of the most important skills that will make the difference between life and death. Imagine the pioneers that had to make huge journeys to the old west from Independence Missouri to Oregon City. They were able to orientate by the stars and by the sun. Nowadays is easier to use a GPS but if SHTF and the GPS won’t work no more the old ways will come handy.

Start A Fire Without Matches
There’s a primal link between man and fire. Every prepper should know how to start a fire with the resources around them, even if that means creating fire without a match or lighter. This is an essential survival skill as you never know when you’ll find yourself in a situation where you’ll need a fire, but you don’t have matches. Maybe your single engine plane goes down while you’re flying over the Alaskan wilderness, like the kid in Hatchet. Or perhaps you’re out camping and you lose your pack. It need not be something as dramatic at these situations-even extremely windy or wet conditions can render matches virtually useless. And whether or not you ever need to call upon these skills, it’s nice to know you can start a fire, whenever and wherever you are.

Gardening
I’ve found that I increasingly prefer old fashioned gardening techniques (or at least those that I think of as “old fashioned”). I’m not saying they’re the best. I think my preference has something to do with my personality–but also that I’m gardening in a harsh subtropical environment where these techniques really work for me.

Some of these techniques are:

Set thin plants to the maximum recommended distances  (or more) for good air circulation, increased drought tolerance.

Cultivate (with a good sharp hoe)to keep down weeds and improve water penetration

Rotate crops and leave a bed fallow every few seasons

Amend soils with finished compost

Level the planting area (a gardening book tip that I’ve learned the hard way and extremely important in sandy soil)

Soap Making
The pioneers used to make soap themselves using the copious amount of wood ashes, a natural result of their homesteading activities, with also a plentiful supply of animal fat from the butchering of the animals they used for food. Soap with some work and luck could be made for free. Soap making was performed as a yearly or semiannual event on the homesteads of the early settlers. As the butchering of animals took place in the fall, soap was made at that time on many homesteads and farms to utilize the large supply of tallow and lard that resulted. On the homes or farms where butchering was not done, soap was generally made in the spring using the ashes from the winter fires and the waste cooking grease, that had accumulated throughout the year.

Soap making takes three basic steps.

Making of the wood ash lye.

Rendering or cleaning the fats.

Mixing the fats and lye solution together and boiling the mixture to make the soap.

Basic Carpentry and Shelter Building
The pioneers were very good carpenters. On every new frontier the pioneers made homes for themselves, using what the wild land provided. In the great forests of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys the land provided timber. Here the pioneers’ essential tool was the ax. The ax would clear the forest for the plow. But its first task was to shape a pioneer shelter.

When a family of settlers arrived at the spot where they planned to make their home, they began chopping saplings and trimming poles to build a lean-to. Between two forked trees they laid a crosspole. With the help of oxen or horses they rolled up a log, which was banked with dirt to form a low back wall. Then they laid poles, slanted upward, from the back log to the crosspole. The sloping roof was covered with bark and branches. The ends of the lean-to were walled with shorter poles and pickets. This was the pioneers’ “half-faced camp.” It always faced south, away from wind and rain. In front of the open side they dug a fire pit. Logs smoldered there day and night, giving warmth and protection.

Weaving
In a post crisis world, not only will it be impossible to buy clothes, you may also find it just as hard to buy material, patterns, and tools for making your own clothes and shoes. As someone that learned how to knit, crochet, weave, and hand sew by the age of nine, I can safely say there is far more to good quality, long lasting clothes than what you see in the stores. Our ancestors readily turned cotton, wool, hemp, and other plant based goods into textiles by using spinning wheels and looms. By the same token, stretching and tanning animal hides (including brain tanning) also offers a source of fabric from just about any animal you take for food. When it comes to bugging out or preparing for a crisis, you will eventually realize that it does not make much sense to stockpile clothes. Even though modern fabrics are convenient, they can easily be replaced later on using materials that you grow or hunt.

Cooking Over Open Fire
Cooking over open fire differs substantially from kitchen-based cooking, the most obvious difference being lack of an easily defined kitchen area. As a result, campers and backpackers have developed a significant body of techniques and specialized equipment for preparing food in outdoors environments.

A pot hanging over the fire, although picturesque, may spill, and the rigging may be difficult to construct from found wood. Generally this is done with metal rigging, much of it identical to that historically used in home fireplaces before the invention of stoves. Two vertical iron bars with an iron cross-piece allow pots to be hung at various heights or over different temperatures of fire. Griddles, grills and skewers can also be hung over the fire. When working with wood, one may use two tripods, lashed with tripod lashings, but the rope will be liable to melt or burn. Dovetail joints are more secure, but difficult to carve.

It's remarkable how these settlers learned to survive as they expanded their civilization into unknown territories. For more information on pioneer survival tips, visit Bio Prepper!