Don’t Be Too Shocked At Where This Useful Survival Training Ground Is

To prepare for anything, you need a place to work, to practice, to prepare. It can be easy to be tempted to look for a place out in the woods or away from the urban or suburban area where you live to practice your skills, but, in thinking that way, you may be overlooking one of the best training areas available: your own backyard.

Think about it: so many of the skills that you would work on in the wilderness don’t actually require wilderness to work on, and you’re much more likely to work on them regularly and perfect those skills if you can get to them easily and readily. So, in that spirit, here are five skills that you can practice in your own backyard (hat tip to here for these suggestions):

1. Shelter – Anywhere that you have space is a good place to practice, so practice in your backyard.
2. Archery / Slingshot / Spear Skills – Now, to be fair, you’ll want to make sure that you are careful with this suggestion. You don’t want to accidentally overshoot and injury your neighbor’s dog or, worse, your neighbor. Use some common sense and safety precautions with this one.
3. Fire Starting – Dig yourself a fire pit to prevent any unintended spread of the flame and get to work on honing this valuable skill.
4. Foraging for Food – The usefulness of this one will depend on how big your backyard is and what you have growing, but your backyard may still be a great place to practice this skill.
5. Outdoor Cooking – Chances are that you are already grilling out occassionally. Why not turn that into a skill-building exercise by cooking in a more primitive set up than your gas grill?

You can probably think of a variety more ideas, but this is a good starter list.

What do you practice in your backyard? Tell us below.