Outdoor learning provides so many opportunities that simply aren’t possible in the classroom and gives a truly experiential aspect to learning.
Often, when teaching bushcraft skills, certain elements get questioned and one that came up this time is why, in modern times, we would need to teach traps. Good question, we’ll admit, and one that is common to all bushcraft teachers. Traps are one of the most controversial subjects within bushcraft and something that most of us hope we never need to use. In learning hunting-related skills, not only do we have them should we ever truly need them, but we also reconnect with our food supply and the ways of our ancestors. In modern society, food arrives so simply into our homes and onto our plates; as we all know, this wasn’t always the case, yet the idea of having to catch, kill and prepare an otherwise living animal in order to eat meat is utterly foreign to many of us. Understanding (and sometimes even going through) the process of meat production can help us to appreciate the food we consume and, let’s be honest, how easy we currently have it!
One of our recent Social Saturdays demonstrated some of the worth of such activities. Not only did the group get to practice their carving skills to a high level of accuracy, they also learned about the legal and ethical considerations of trapping and explored concepts surrounding where food comes from & what is ultimately involved in it finding it’s way to the plate. Children as young as 8 took enjoyment in having a very real, practical purpose to the skills that they were learning and ultimately learned a skill that would help them should they ever find themselves in a survival situation.
Maybe it’s time that more of us consider whether we are prepared to have to catch and kill our own meat… but maybe it’s just fun to learn how to even if we’ll never need to.
