Bushcraft

Bushcraft skills include foraging, hunting, fishing, firecraft, and tying knots.

Woodcraft is a subset of bushcraft that focuses on survival skills for use in woodland or forest environments.

Bushcraft skills provide basic necessities for human life: food (through foraging, tracking, hunting, trapping, fishing), water sourcing and purification, shelter-building, and firecraft.

These may be supplemented with expertise in twine-making, knots and lashings, wood-carving, campcraft, medicine/health, natural navigation, and tool and weapon making.

A skilled bushcrafter can use these tools to create many different things, from dugout canoes to A-frame shelters.

Bush in this sense is probably a direct adoption of the Dutch bosch (now bos), originally used in Dutch colonies for woodland and country covered with natural wood, but extended to usage in British colonies to refer to uncleared or un-farmed districts, still in a state of nature.

It more recently gained currency in the United Kingdom due to the popularity of Ray Mears and his bushcraft and survival television programs.

The Irish-born Australian writer Richard Graves titled his outdoor manuals "The 10 bushcraft books".