This weekend JP and I held the first Woodlife Trails Wilderness Immersion Course. The aim of the course is to literally immerse participants into the woodlands and forests after giving them a few ideas of how to get closer to wildlife using field-craft, bushcraft and some basic tracking skills.
We are extremely grateful to the National Trust for allowing us to hold the course in Hatfield Forest.
The course was made up of a mixed group of wildlife & bushcraft enthusiasts at various skill levels and I’m pleased to say that following the feedback we received it appeared to be a resounding success. The first evening showed an extraordinary number of interesting observations such as owls, bats, muntjacs and fallow deer.
The following day was made up of sessions designed to give the participants more of a chance to observe wildlife at close quarters after identifying trails, runs, homes and other signs. They were also shown the rudiments of field-craft skills and how to remain detected at at night using lay-ups, camouflage, hides and quick-build shelters.
The participants were carrying their packs containing kit for a 24 hour trip and it showed them the need to pack light.
On Saturday night most stayed out in various parts of the forest all night at a location selected by them to offer the best chance of observing wildlife.
We tried all the tricks in the book to assist like using night vision equipment and trail cams.
In the morning it was reported that the observations were not as successful as the previous evening, or so they thought! After collating all the observations on a map, we found some very interesting behaviour in the forest. Mike observed 30 or so shrews running around his camp while Stu’s meowing could only be a fox cub. Muntjacs challenged the forest visitors, while a grey squirrel came within a few feet of Nigel’s camp and by its behaviour it obviously accepted Nigel’s presence even though it wasn’t entirely happy.
This is exactly the reaction we were after; in other words an acceptance of a human interloper in the forest. It turned out that everyone actually heard or saw something interesting including a large dog fox and an escaped saluki dog! Another important aspect that everybody reported was how they all relaxed and eventually slowed down to the speed of the forest.
We’d like to thank everyone who came on the course and gave us their valuable feedback to make the next one even better.
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