Survival Skills: How To Scout A Good Campsite

Don’t spend precious hours wandering around looking for the “perfect campsite”, those are few and far between. All you need is a place that’s good enough and safe enough. There are always dangers and benefits to look for when selecting a base camp or survival camp location. I always encourage everyone to look up, look around and look down when surveying a potential site.  We are looking above us for things that could fall down and cause harm.  We are looking around for hazards and weather protection.  We are also looking down for pests, bad drainage and other problems.  The following simple guidelines can help you determine a good place to build. 

Look Up

Avoid places where rocks, leaning trees or large dead limbs could fall on your camp.  Also watch out for hornet nests and other pests that may be right in the branches above you.  If you are in an evergreen forest, plan a campfire spot that isn’t under a bunch of dead, dry evergreen boughs.  Your campfire could light these up and seriously escalate your survival emergency.

Look Around

You should always look for structure that can protect your camp from the weather.  Don’t set up shop out in an open field where all the weather hits the camp.  Also, don’t be on a mountain top.  The storms can scrape you off the mountain top like a bug flying off a car windshield. 

But you don’t want to get smothered either. Don’t build your camp deep in a forest or jungle where it takes a long time to dry out and the air flow is poor.  Try to find a place in between, like the east side or south side of a forest or geographical feature like a hill or ridge.  In looking around, we are also checking for hazards.  Again, look for bees and other pests.  While camping once, a friend and I set up camp after dark.  It was a great campsite choice, or so we thought.  In the morning, we noticed that the large tree on the edge of the campsite was heavily damaged.  On closer inspection, these were the claw marks of a bear!  We had camped at one of the bear’s marking posts, to which they often return.  Yikes!  Look around before you set up camp.

Look Down

When we look down, we are checking for the greatest number of things.  Scrape the ground clear of leaves and whatnot.  Look at the dirt across your entire shelter spot and check the surrounding camp also.  You are looking for ant activity, which is very annoying under your tent or inside a survival shelter.  In the Eastern Woodlands, we are looking for ½ inch diameter holes with a few yellow and black striped bees flying around.  There will be a Yellow Jacket wasp hive down there with hundreds or even thousands of bees in the underground hive.  Also look for one inch diameter holes, which could be full of rodents, or the things that eat rodents – can you say Rattlesnake in my bed?  Watch for other problems like Poison Ivy, larger animal burrows, sharp roots sticking up that would stab you in your sleep, etc.  We are also looking for a place with good drainage, where no water will build up as a puddle under the shelter or form a stream to run under the shelter.  Keep your camp at least 100 feet from any body of water.  This prevents pollution and keeps you away from the dampness around the water.  It also helps avoid insects that live around water like mosquitoes, gnats and other pests.

Want to see how to scout a good shelter site in person? Or actually build a survival shelter? Our wilderness survival, bushcraft and primitive skills classes will teach you this and a whole lot more.

Written by Tim MacWelch First draft published on outdoorlife.com