Survival tactics (From Worcester News)

Survival tactics

10:42am Monday 7th March 2011 in Country News latest By Mike Pryce

THE opening paragraph of an article Dale Collett wrote for a survival magazine read: “If you’re heading out into the wild for a few days and you will need to make a fire, what will you take? Fire steel, flint and steel or even a nice bit of chainsaw cord to make a bow drill set?”

No mention there of popping into the corner shop for a box of matches or picking up a cigarette lighter when you stop to fill up with fuel. Which would seem the obvious answers to 99 per cent of the population.

But then Dale Collett is one of those people you just hope would be in your party if you survived a plane crash in the rain forests of Brazil, got lost in fog in the Scottish Highlands or made it to a desert island after your ship went down in a tropical storm.

He’s a survival expert and a home-grown one at that. Born and brought up on a farm in Worcestershire and a primary school teacher by profession, Dale has turned his outdoors enthusiasm into creating the British Bushcraft School, which has its base in a 100-acre wood near Inkberrow.

Here, course students can learn how to make fire by friction, how to build a shelter, what equipment you should always carry, how to purify water and what plants and trees you can eat and which you should seriously avoid. Plus 101 other skills that will come in useful if you ever find yourself somewhere you didn’t necessarily aim to be.

Most of Dale’s knowledge is selftaught, although he has attended sessions run by Ray Mears, television’s survival guru.

He said: “I think it all started from being born on a farm. We had woods all around us and they were a natural place for a young boy to explore and have fun. I think I was about 10 when my father bought me by first survival book.”

In some families that would be an invitation to go and play outside and hopefully get lost but Dale was soon putting into practice what it preached and put himself on the path towards a whole host of survival skills.

One of his more visual passions is creating fire by friction, which can be done in two ways, hand drilling, whereby a length of wood is held between the palms of the hand like a pencil and rotated into another stick on the ground, or bow drilling, using a length of cord to rotate the stick.

Dale said: “My record for creating a glowing ember by hand drilling is five seconds and 10 seconds using a bow drill. That was using particularly suitable types of wood, but using any type I would expect to have an ember within 30 seconds by any method.”

Why not use matches? As he pointed out, if they get wet you’re stuffed and if you lose a lighter likewise. It’s very useful not to have those worries.

A bit like television cookery programmes, the profileration in TV survival and outdoor series by experts such as Ray Mears, Bear Grylls, Les Stroud and a fistful of others, has led to Joe and even Josephine Public fancying a bit of the same.

Dale said: “The exposure to survival on television obviously helps. People see it and want to have a go. I should think about 60 per cent of those who enrol on our courses are in the 30-40 years age bracket, although we did have one gentleman of 75 who thoroughly enjoyed himself. Most are also men. I reckon about 20 per cent are women but the number is creeping up all the time.”

A warning though. Such skills can be damaging.

Dale recounted one occasion when he was demonstrating his fire by friction technique in a girlfriend’s sitting room and inadvertently set fire to her carpet. Understandably the relationship didn’t last.

* To learn more about the courses at the British Bushcraft School, telephone 07952 683383.

And you don’t need to tap out the numbers on a hollow log.