Having been given a copy of John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman’s ‘SAS Survival Handbook’ when I was 13 years old, I spent a disproportionate amount of my mid-teens devising ingenious ways to cram more and more survival kit into a tobacco tin. At the weekend I’d go to the local woods with my friends and we did what all good survivors did – build shelters, light fires and whittle sticks.
Whenever I wanted to use something from my survival tin, it was hard to avoid disturbing most of the contents. I’d squeezed so much good stuff in there, I’d created something of a Chinese puzzle. It was difficult to unpack and always impossible to re-pack to the standard I’d managed at home. I’d often resort to putting a few bits and pieces in my jacket pocket rather than back in the tin. I came to the conclusion that less was definitely more. Later, I also assembled the components Lofty suggested for a ‘survival pouch’.
I persevered with the tobacco tin survival kit and survival pouch for years, carrying them with me “just in case” while hiking and on many camping trips. While I used some of the items from the survival pouch on a daily basis, I found myself packing survival kit then packing many items that replicated the functions of items in the survival kit.
The replication of kit between survival kit and day-to-day kit continued to bug me. Then I went through a lightweight backpacking phase and really pared down everything I took with me. In the end, I left much of the survival kit at home and relied solely on the little ‘bubble’ of safety created by the modern camping equipment I carried with me. After a while I got bored with being in my bubble. I wanted a closer relationship with the environment I was visiting. It was then I sought out Ray Mears to learn what he was calling bushcraft.
Combat Survival Tin
I still love the concept of the tobacco-tin survival kit. There is so much function in such a small package. The ‘Combat Survival Tin’ makes perfect sense in the context of the soldier, who has much ammunition and other heavy equipment to carry. As outdoors people, though, we are allowed a different equation. We choose to enter wild places for the sake of being there. We can take with us equipment that allows us to live there for an extended period of time. My experience of wilderness travel and living outdoors for weeks or even months at a time, combined with a knowledge of bushcraft, has changed my perspective on my own personal ‘survival kit’.
My ‘bushcraft survival kit’ is designed to be functional in itself. It is a stand-alone entity. To this extent it pays homage to Lofty’s doctrine. It is also designed to dovetail with my other basic wilderness equipment with little overlap, except where valuable back-up to critical wilderness equipment [1] is provided. Most important, the components are assembled with day-to-day use in mind. So, rather than including a couple of scalpel blades, I include a good quality pocket knife; rather than including a small flint striker, I include a full-size Swedish Firesteel; and so on. If you are living in the outdoors, rather than merely visiting (in a bubble), then the equipment you have for living there is largely your survival equipment. With a few exceptions of kit intended purely for emergencies, this equipment will be used on a regular basis if not every day.
While a knife with a fixed blade is stronger, a folding knife is a useful tool as long as it has a locking blade. While it provides a back-up, a lock-knife should be of high enough quality to be used for many of the jobs you would undertake with your main bushcraft knife. I was introduced to the Fjallkniven TK4 knife by Lars Falt and have carried one ever since. It is manufactured from high-quality materials, well-made and remarkably light in weight. A knife of this size should not be underestimated. It is entirely possible to gut, skin and disassemble an animal as large as a deer with a small knife. The back of the TK4 can be used to create sparks with the Swedish Firesteel or ‘Fireflash’. With a folding knife, this action is far safer when the blade is closed. When the knife is open there is a danger it will close on your fingers if you accidentally release the locking mechanism. I write from personal experience…
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