What I've always appreciated about debris shelters, they blend in with the surroundings keeping you out of sight when having a leaf-covered door pulled in flush with the entrance. They are excellent in cold weather and not hard to make.
This is an awsome video and well done on the shelter. Makes me want to go to bed which I think I will do. Thank you for the info. By the way everyone...you should ALWAYS have a poncho or tarp in your bug out bag. Being wet will not make your adventure any fun.
Because there's lots of it to explore. What child doesn't love the woods, camping & streams etcetera........some of my fondest memories are from such activities which I have never tired of to this day, and its free!
Excellent video. We'll be using this as a base for our winter campout this weekend. The covering will most likely be a tarp topped with snow (which makes a good insulator). I really like how you lashed the three pieces together and set it right up!
to make it a bit easier to gather the leaves, you can take a bundle of twigs and sticks in your hand and use it like a rake. makes it much faster. nice video, well done.
I thought that it would be a little more complicated but I tried it and it was actually not that hard. I have made a few shelters before but this one was way better. Awesome job!
Your answer makes perfect sense and obviously you know what you are doing... your video is only for academic purpose since you have a tarp and a ruck sack and cargo pants and all :D Usually the vest i wear is enough so i could survive for a very long time. Here are some items that pack well in a small bread pan : good multi tool, Bic lighter, alcool swabs, painters tarp, 550 para rope,sawzall blade, water puri. tabs,condom, anti diarea pills, snare wire, safety pins,needles, fishing line+hooks,
I always pile up about two feet of dry leaves first and then build the shelter around it. Makes it a lot easier to have an insulated shelter floor, so you don't lose much body heat. If I need a heat source, I can heat large stones slowly in the fire, brush off any embers, and bring them inside to give off heat under the leaf pile. I like my beds comfy and soft and warm even if I am roughing it.
thats a nice effort, a good trick to cover the door is to build a wall out of logs about 2 or three feet back from the door, then if you have a fire between the wall and the shelter the wall will reflect the heat towards you , we used this method once for a 6 ft tall 8 man round shelter and had a small fire in the middle of it , it was awesome, just watch out for ticks though
I like the 3 pole technique very much! but I don't think I would use my back pack for a door it might attract critters at night I'd rather hang my pack in the trees high up. thanks for the video it was great!!!
Here's my similar design that survives storms. First build you bed of spruce boughs (3 ft uncompressed) and build the shelter over it. Use the lowest frame that's practical for less space to heat with your body. Put the ribs at an angle (hook a rib's branch on the top of the A frame) Then hook the spruce boughs onto the angled ribs from the bottom up. Thatch with more spruce (3x more than shown). Fill shelter with dry, bug free leaves and wiggle into it.
Of course if one had a tarp with which to gather leaves, the point would be moot. A-frame + tarp = shelter, and in a lot less time. Otherwise this is a good tutorial on building a debris hut. Only thing to add would be a second layer of spruce to keep the leaves from blowing away.
I would lay down a layer boughs inside the frame to insulate your body from the ground. I know there are leaves there all ready but more insulation is always good. For those who say that the tarp makes the shelter redundant then consider that there is no fire in front for warmth, (probably due to the fact that all those leaves make the entire zone a huge tinderbox,) so maybe a really cold night might require you to bundle up inside the tarp to keep warm.
excellent and informative video. nice and to the point, i like that! it's a bit funny though that the basha you used to gather leafs is what most people in a survival situation would use to actually MAKE the shelter. but hey, that wouldn't be bushcraft!
i am scottish and i live near glasgow i am only about 50 mins away from the wild lol i can go out my back door and about 2 miles away be in the woods away from everyone its a great place for bushcraft :)
That is spot on, I'm not so sure about the water proofness, a hard heavy rain would push right through, the ideal thing would be to have a tarp underneath all the leaves but LAID OVER the A-FRAME, then the boughs on top of the tarp and leaves on top of the boughs, then it would be better for wind and water proofness, but not having a tarp you have to make the best of what you have
See, this is how humans are supposed to live not in houses with internet and all other things what we created. I think that (I know it will not happen) we should all go back to living like this. No global warming, not worrying about money, no need to pay bills. This would be the best way to live as it is the natural way. I give it to the people who live in the forest, wood and desert and I would like to join them one day and so should everyone.
Nice shelter, but you didn't need the leaves for waterproofing,, you had the nylon poncho!! I would secure the nylon poncho over the top to keep it all in together, the leaves do serve as good insulation for holding in warmth though.
I was thinking the same thing when I saw the tarp being used for leaf collection. A shelter like this takes hours to prepare but most survival scenarios don't allow this time for the first night. Typically night is descending or inclement weather is upon you. Perhaps there are no leaves etc. available? I tend to believe that a tarp should be in everyone's backpack as part of survival gear.
My god I am so fucking jelly of these guys I see on youtube. Because they have larger woods then me and they have most of their woods all dry. You see here in washington, all my woods are soking wet! And all the wood and branches are rotten and old and wet! Why cant it be dry for once!
Keep making videos. Your videos are usefull and interesting. You should make some videos of you doing some other survival things like gathering plants, making tools etc.
I would use more than only leaves to finnish it to make it a little more windproof. Also in the case of a possible storm coming up, I hope it's not a beech tree besides the shelter. Although it's a young tree, beech branches break easily. I understand that you want to use your shelter to speed the process up a bit, but don't show it as a method to collect leaves, when you need to build one. There's no need of losing that much energy on picking leaves when you have a basha to stay dry...
yours videos are amazing i like to use these alot but i stick my tarp over it and stick down a roll mat i love ur videos :) please keep them up 5 stars
@Danishbushcrafter - In a survival scenario, you would make this shelter just about big enough for you to fit inside, that will help you keep warm, but in bushcraft use, you might want more space, bushcraft and survival are related, but not the same, just saying. Not trying to offend anyone.
Another great vid of yours i've watched! We used to make these a-frame shelters in cadets, we didnt use any spruce branches just good frame of dead branches and loads of debris/leafs. They were fairly waterproof, did you have a comfy nights kip? cheers
fill up the shelter with leaves get in lay on the leaves to compact them then do the same again then a layer of spruce boughs and then another layer of leaves the boughs will prevent you from sinking down through the leaves during the night if its a cold heat some dry non porous stones on your fire and place among the leaves below the layer of spruce boughs if you can only find damp or wet stones light a fire away from your shelter and heat them they may well explode
You wouldn't have a basha to collect leaves, if you needed to make the shelter it woul be becase you don't have a proper shelter. Also, when you are arranging the skeleton of the shelter, you should make sure that the sticks don't go higher than the longest stick on top, otherwise rain will run down them and drop onto you.
thees are beech leaves they do not decay like other leaves and can still be collected in spring time......in summer time you could use ferns or bracken .....in winter you could use pine or fir branches........there are Manny ways and Manny different materials you could cover shelters with ...thanks
@rabidmonkeygirl Yea i agree but for a guy out in the woods enjoying himself and showing people what he does this is a good video he doesnt claim to be an instructor or anything like that.
@c9ari The mass of debris you gather will usually be a mix of wet and dry material that tends to stay secure even in a windy area, owever, large branches with secondary growth are usually added to prevent the improbable loss of large amount of leaves. See the vid "debris hut myths" for more details.
Luv the video. One question though? if you have pasha or as we call them a hootchie why the hell wouldn't you use it? Yes I understand the subject was to make a shelter from scratch. so then you must presume that one does not have a hoochie or common sense would be to incorporate that into your shelter. I would say the same about the string to tie the poles, if you use two forked branches then the string is not nessersary or roots would suffice in tieing. Keep up the great work though.
@Makermook even so, if you did have a tarp, you could gather all the debris into one big area, then put the tarp on , then you can put the debris in top, that way you have a for sure water tight shelter +warmth, hence the leaves.
Thats not my point...what i mean is that dry leaves isnt the best way to make " the roofing " because on a windy day it would blow away in a couple of minutes + it catches fire easily. Here are some improvements : make the tripod only a couple of inches higher than you when sitting, use the tarp as roofing and the dry leaves + spruce as carpeting / blanket. Then all you got to do is dig a little fire pit in front of the shelter's entry and a wind reflector on the opposite side...makes more sense
Excellent video. Only I have one small question... this is fine in autumn, but what do you do in spring/summer/winter when dry leaves are not so available?
Isn't it cold if you sleep on the ground like that? Or do you use lots of leaves for example to insulate? I'd like to try something like this soonish, want to do it good though : ) Nice video anyways!
