Outdoor Life — The Source for Hunting and Fishing Adventure

Chances are good that you currently have a newspaper within reach at your home or cabin. If you have a stove or fireplace, or just build a lot of campfires, chances are also good that you know how effective the black and white pages of newsprint can be at starting fires, both at home and in the field.

But what about the rest of the stuff at home? What other items that you’d be willing to burn could be useful in the task of fire building?

Here are a few you’ll know well, and a few you may want to try out. [ Read Full Post ]

A wintertime wilderness emergency can leave you with a lot to worry about. Fortunately, making a bed to get you up off the frozen ground is one of the easiest problems to fix—if you know how to make a bough bed.

I am sure that beds and mattresses like this go back to antiquity, but they became common in the later days of the fur trade era in the northern U.S. and Canada. To make a bough bed you don’t need much in the way of tools—just a pair of gloves should do it. [ Read Full Post ]

Perhaps it is the way that this survival kit hangs from your backpack, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. Or maybe it’s its size and shape. Either way, the Rocky S2V Survival Grenade is a novel approach to survival kits. It’s not just another sardine can full of matches and fish hooks. [ Read Full Post ]

Frostbite can be a common injury during the winter months, especially in northern regions, at high altitude, and under windy conditions. Frostbite occurs when ice crystals form in your skin and underlying tissues. The intense cold that causes this type of injury also masks the damage. Skin will often go numb before the frostbite damage occurs. It’s only when the tissue thaws out that you feel the intense burning pain resulting from the sharp ice crystals that damaged your cells. How do you detect frostbite? [ Read Full Post ]

Fear is not always a bad thing. It is often a very valuable survival instinct. But when left unchecked, fear can lead to the irrational state of panic, which can manifest itself in diverse ways.

Depending on the severity of the emergency, you may experience everything from blind rage to a complete mental shut down (catatonia). So how do you accurately figure out if you are “losing it” in a real life emergency? Here are five signs that you are panicked, along with some tricks to get your mind back on course: [ Read Full Post ]

When planning a survival food garden, it’s critical to know what seeds to purchase and what to skip—and it’s just as vital to know how to store those seeds and what you can expect from those food crops.

I was fortunate to grow up with the concepts and calluses of growing a family garden, so I have seen bumper crops and more than a few disappointing yields. I’ve also seen that there are a lot of different interpretations when it comes to growing your own garden. [ Read Full Post ]

Last weekend, I worked a table promoting my survival classes at the SGK Gun Show in Doswell, Virginia. Let me tell you, if the gun shows throughout the rest of the country are like this one, they'll be packed with people and deep conversation.

The show was incredibly busy on Saturday and by the end of the first day, many of my neighboring vendors admitted to me that they had just seen their best sales day - ever. [ Read Full Post ]