The reader's edition
Bushcraft Boxed Set: the summary
Bushcraft Boxed Set gathers four of Dave Canterbury's wilderness-skills books in one set, published by Adams Media in 2017 and running to 1,024 pages in total. Bushcraft 101 starts with gear and core skills. Its first part, Gearing Up, is built around the Five Cs: cutting tools, cover, combustion, containers and cordage. It covers packs, knives, saws and axes, rope and knots, cooking tools and fire. Its second part, In the Bush, moves on to setting up camp, navigating terrain, trees as a four-season resource, and trapping and processing game. Advanced Bushcraft takes in building a kit, woodworking tools and simple machines, advanced firecraft and sheltering. The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild has four sections, on packed-in food, bushcraft cooking methods, living off the land and emergency cooking, with a photo guide to edible and dangerous plants. Bushcraft First Aid, written with Jason A. Hunt, PhD, covers wilderness first aid from the emergency scene and wounds to environmental hazards and bites. Independent reviewers describe it as a supplement to hands-on training, not a replacement for it. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- Dave Canterbury
- 2017
- 4 chapters
- 5 min read
- 9 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of Bushcraft Boxed Set, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
Bushcraft Boxed Set gathers four of Dave Canterbury's wilderness-skills books in one set, published by Adams Media in 2017 and running to 1,024 pages in total. Bushcraft 101 starts with gear and core skills. Its first part, Gearing Up, is built around the Five Cs: cutting tools, cover, combustion, containers and cordage. It covers packs, knives, saws and axes, rope and knots, cooking tools and fire. Its second part, In the Bush, moves on to setting up camp, navigating terrain, trees as a four-season resource, and trapping and processing game. Advanced Bushcraft takes in building a kit, woodworking tools and simple machines, advanced firecraft and sheltering. The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild has four sections, on packed-in food, bushcraft cooking methods, living off the land and emergency cooking, with a photo guide to edible and dangerous plants. Bushcraft First Aid, written with Jason A. Hunt, PhD, covers wilderness first aid from the emergency scene and wounds to environmental hazards and bites. Independent reviewers describe it as a supplement to hands-on training, not a replacement for it.
Below are the 9 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
Pack by category, not by gadget: cutting tools, cover, combustion, containers and cordage.
Bushcraft 101 opens its gear section with the Five Cs and gives each of them a chapter: tools, rope and knots, containers and cooking tools, coverage and combustion. Thinking in five jobs rather than a long list of items makes it easier to see what is missing before you set off.
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2
HourLife takeaway
A knife, a saw and an axe are different tools for different jobs.
The tools chapter of Bushcraft 101 takes knives, saws and axes in turn, along with the work each one does, from batoning and notches to felling and limbing. Knowing which job belongs to which tool is part of carrying less and using it well.
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3
HourLife takeaway
In the wild, first aid is mostly about getting the injured person to real care.
Reviewer Nate Shivar reads Bushcraft First Aid as organised around one question: how to get the injured person to a hospital fast. The book's own chapter on the emergency scene ends with helicopter evacuation.
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4
HourLife takeaway
A first-aid book supplements training. It does not replace it.
OffGrid's reviewers found that the trauma care in Bushcraft First Aid follows the EMT handbook, and they recommend taking a first-aid or EMT course alongside it. HourLife's plain advice: take a certified wilderness first-aid course. A book does not replace one.
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5
HourLife takeaway
Preparation starts before you leave home.
The first chapter of Bushcraft First Aid is called Know Before You Go. The second turns to survival skills, built around what the book calls the Ten Cs, with a five-minute fire, shelter and boiling water.
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6
HourLife takeaway
An emergency scene has an order. Learn it before you need it.
The emergency-scene chapter of Bushcraft First Aid works through assessment checklists such as AVPU, the ABCs, DCAP-BTLS and the SAMPLE history. Checklists like these stick when you have practised them on people in a course, not only read them.
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7
HourLife takeaway
Trees are a resource in every season.
Bushcraft 101 gives trees a chapter of their own, Trees: The Four-Season Resource, in the part of the book about life in the bush. The title alone is a useful habit of mind: look at the woods as something to understand all year, not only in summer.
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8
HourLife takeaway
Food in the wild starts with what you pack in.
The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild begins with packed-in food before it turns to cooking methods, living off the land and emergency cooking. Its photo guide covers dangerous plants as well as edible ones. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of a photograph: learn identification from a local expert.
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9
HourLife takeaway
Read as a set, the four books move from carrying the right things to looking after people when things go wrong.
HourLife's reading of the order: Bushcraft 101 sets out the kit and core skills, Advanced Bushcraft builds on them, the field guide turns to food, and Bushcraft First Aid deals with injury and illness far from help.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Pack the Five Cs for a day hike
Before your next walk, lay out one item for each C: something that cuts, something that covers, something that lights a fire, something that holds water and some cord. Add water, food, a map and a first-aid kit, then pack.
Book a wilderness first-aid course
Find a certified wilderness first-aid course near you and put a date in the calendar. Reading about wounds and evacuation helps, but a book does not replace hands-on training.
Leave a trip plan with someone
Before every trip, tell one person where you are going, your route, who is with you and when you expect to be back, and what they should do if you are late.
Check fire rules before you go
Look up current fire bans and campfire rules for the place you are visiting. Rules change with the season and the weather, so check them close to the day.
Read the local rules before you trap or gather
Trapping is regulated, and so is gathering plants on much public land. Read your area's laws and licensing first, and learn plant identification from a local expert, never from photographs alone.
Keep it up
Practise one knot until it is automatic
Pick one useful knot and tie it every day for a week, then with your eyes closed, then with cold or wet hands. Add a second knot only once the first is automatic.
Learn to light a fire where fires are allowed
Practise at a campsite fire ring or another place where fires are permitted, with water at hand. Put the fire out cold before you leave.
Restock after every trip
When you get home, go through your pack one C at a time. Replace what you used, dry what got wet and fix what broke, so the pack is ready for next time.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
Carry the five, practise the knot, and know the way out before you need it.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full Bushcraft Boxed Set page.
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