Customer Reviews

Wilderness Living

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gregory Davenport's book is a masterpiece of clarity and brevity, and it covers all the bases. Use it as a reference book, as opposed to a cover-to-cover read. For instance, it starts off with a chapter on making buckskin. It's just the right level of detail if you're tanning a hide, but too much for the casual reader. Another example is the wonderful chapter on making snares. Davenport lists some nineteen types, all illustrated, and all with a practical application. Davenport's education was clearly of the outdoor variety, at the expense of the indoor variety, resulting in some cumbersome syntax, and excessive passive voice, but perhaps his editor is more to blame for that. Overall, it is a genuine masterpiece, and my copy is already dog-eared with use.

Gregory Davenport's Wilderness Living is a fascinating and informative guide that looks beyond merely surviving in the wilderness and envisions the art of living with nature in the long term. Among the many skills taught in detail are hunting and trapping techniques, meat preservation, improvising clothing, finding water, designing shelter, and making tools and baskets. The black-and-white illustrations clearly depict the braiding, trap-building, knot-tying and many other abilities described. Wilderness Living is indispensable prefatory reading for any nature enthusiast who wants to learn how to live on their own, away from the comforts and conveniences that saturate modern civilization!

Wilderness Living contains all the basic information you might need for a long-term living arrangement in the wild. It covers all sorts of methods for providing shelter, water, food, clothing, tanning and tools/implements in a primitive environment, even if you have limited or no "man-made tools" available to you. I thoroughly appreciate that the author states right up front that your ingenuity is your best survival tool... because, while this book has lots of examples, it certainly doesn't cover everything you might need if you're out in the bush for extended periods. The author gives you the basic knowledge and assumes that you will be able to take his examples and expound on them to devise whatever else you might need to survive and prosper... which is exactly how someone living in the middle of nowhere needs to be able to perform!

Anyone planning an extended trip into the wilderness should tuck this book into their pack "just in case"!

This is a great book, a lot of good and useful skills in it.I find the water procurement chapter rather incomplete and because water procurement is of such high priority in the wilderness I don't see why he shared so little about it. He doesn't tell you how to build solar stills and other very important skills.
However most wilderness books leave something out so be prepared to do some research no matter what book you buy. I highly recommend this one.

I learned A LOT from his books, they offered a tremendous wealth of information for any wilderness enthusiast. It teaches you how to skin a deer, preserve the meat, build a shelter, start fires, and much more.

However, the book could have added more depth. They only covered certain chapters with a page and barely discussed certain topics.

Hi, I'm new to the survival world and wanted to purchase a few books about the subject. I have found this book to be very helpful and easy to understand. I is loaded with information that I feel will help beginners like myself and the experienced survivalist. It is easy to understand and has plenty of drawing to show the reader how to perform tasks.

This book will defiantly be stored in my backpack so that it is readily available incase of an emergency situation!

I highly recommend it to everyone.

this is a great book to have. it's packed full of imformation on making tools, clothing, rope/string, shelters, traps,containers, fire, glue/soap, furniture. also has tips on hunting, navigation, cooking and preserving food, tanning hides and so much more. this is money well spent.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I ordered this book. If you're planning on leaving society to go live in the back country, this is a decent book to have for some conveniences. This is not a book for people wanting to learn how to live off the land if they had to.

Mostly pretty common sense but provides a good historical picture of traditional wlderness skills.. enjoyable read, good conversation piece.

Davenport will give you practical information for a goal you probably ought to be dreaming to achieve. Buy it.