9 Life Saving Skills

 

Pioneers, frontiersmen, long hunters, and mountain men were not fictitious characters of stories and film. These were our real-life ancestors, and they lived by their own means by performing real-life skills. In the wild places of today, it certainly makes sense to carry high-tech gizmos and the latest survival gear on your outdoor adventures, but it’s not a bad idea to learn some traditional skills as a back-up. ……..

Tan Hides With Brains 

…….. Urine, wood ashes, tree bark acid, and even toxic substances like mercury have been employed over the centuries to tan skins into useful leather. These all have their uses, but few natural substances have had such a long and successful track record (or are as odd to work with) as animal brains to tan hides. ……..

Use Flint & Steel

I love to use real flint-and-steel fire kits like the ones our forebears used long before matches were ever invented. When you strike a piece of high-carbon steel against a hard, sharp stone edge (like a flake of flint), you can create a red-hot spark………..

Make Your Own Medicine

……….Many of our modern medicines trace their history back to where they were first discovered in wild plants. Even the word “drug” is anchored in the past: It comes from the old Dutch word “droog,” which means dried plant…………

Twist Up Some String

There never seems to be enough cordage, rope, or string to go around. Unless you can make your own, that is. If you are fortunate enough to have some fibrous raw material and you know cord production, you should be able to crank out string and heavier cord without any trouble………

Cook Your Own Meals

With a lack of drive-thrus and other dining options, our forerunners had to cook for themselves all the time. This daily grind was absolutely necessary and generally for subsistence, not for flavor……….

Make Some Weapons

………. If armaments were in short supply, our progenitors had to make them. Some of the easiest weapons to fabricate with limited tools and supplies are archery weapons like bows and crossbows. ……….

Mend Your Own Gear

In frontier times, if you wanted something that didn’t grow from the earth, you had to make it. And once you made something, you didn’t want to make it again, so you had to know how to repair what little you had. …………

Read the full original article in Outdoor Life

Article Source: Outdoor Life
Image Source: Primitive Ways