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View Full Version : AAR: Patriot Survival School Bug-out Basics Level 1, 31-Jan to 2-Feb, 2014



Chance
02-03-2014, 08:56 PM
AAR: Patriot Survival School Bug-out Basics Level 1, Telephone, TX 31-Jan to 2-Feb, 2014

I know this isn’t exactly the sort of AAR to post in a firearms forum, but I figured some of the people here might be curious about it. What follows is a description of the course contents, my observations and my brutally honest opinion.

BLUF

The school, as a whole program, is a little wet behind the ears, but they have fantastic instructors and I'm sure kinks will be progressively ironed out of their curriculum. Excellent material and I hope to return at some point.

The School

Patriot Survival School (PSS) (http://www.patriotsurvivalschool.com/index.php) is in its infancy as a program, nearing the first full year of their existence. They are actually hosted by the Wild Horse Creek Camp and Cowboy Church (http://www.wildhorsecreekcamp.org/) in Telephone, TX, although their mailing address is listed in Dallas.

The on-site facilities were actually pretty nice, as it's set up to be a youth camp. The main building is a large class room that doubles as a church, with an attached restaurant-esque kitchen. They have male and female / family barracks, which are surprisingly comfy and continually being improved by the church.

Barracks had bunk beds, spring mattresses, a TV and recliners. It’s a plain brick building with zero insulation and no heating / AC (at the moment, they’re being installed presently), so it keeps you out of the weather but not necessarily out of the temperature. The compound is definitely in the woods, so walk 100 feet out of camp and you can pitch a tent, string a hammock or whatever, if that’s the experience you’re looking for.

A primary motivation of the school is to give people an absolute baseline of outdoor / survival skill without costing a fortune, or requiring people to buy a fortune in gear. Pretty much the only gear you have to have is a long pair of pants, a compass and a sturdy pair of shoes. If you have an large inventory of outdoor equipment, want to go nuts and buy every imaginable camping item you can find at Cabela’s, or if you’re just a casual person who is looking for something different, the school will work with you.

They have a baseline of items you can buy on-site. Military issue compasses (Cammenga) are available at a decent discount (I found mine a little cheaper on Amazon). Fire starters, seed / sprout kits, in-house survival bracelets and various swag are available.

Practically no cell phone service. We did have a few students who followed their SSIs around like divining rods until they found signal enough to make a call. Definitely no Internet, but power outlets abound so you could always charge your phone or fire up a laptop to take notes, or what have you.

There were no firearms allowed in the class, which I didn’t particularly appreciate, but I understand why they had that rule. First of all, you are periodically going to be out of line-of-sight with an instructor (either because you’re at a distance or wandering around in the dark), and they couldn’t keep an eye on people to make sure there was no mis-handling of weapons. Second, I can easily imagine a student with no firearms experience getting a little overzealous and showing up with an elephant gun they intend to kill a squirrel with. Also, this simply wasn’t a firearms class. Again, I thought the rule was a little weird for a school that is all about survival and self-sufficiency, but it had solid rationale behind it.

The Instructors

I was pretty impressed with the instruction staff they had present. All of the lead instructors with the school were veterans of Army special operations, both Rangers and SF. Their senior instructor, Ryan, has a total of fourteen tours in the GWOT with the 75th, eleven of which were to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The school was founded by Dennis Black, of Dr. Dennis Black (http://www.drdennisblack.com/) fame. Doc Black is a veteran of both the Rangers and SF, and has a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. While I’m inherently skeptical of anything that qualifies as “alternative medicine” (not saying it's hokum, just saying I'm skeptical), when it came to pragmatic advice and survival skills, the guy has the professional experience to back it up and obviously knew his stuff backwards and forwards and then some.

In addition to the primary staff, they had three volunteer assistant instructors who had been through previous classes. Two of whom were Army veterans, one from the Cold War and another from the GWOT, not sure about the third guy. They were all knowledgeable.

All of the instructors there were very approachable, and were constantly soliciting questions. Although the material in this class was the absolute basics, they were happy to chat about whatever you were curious about. This was a large class (forty people), but I never had an issue finding and speaking with an instructor.

Zero indoctrination and no company line. If they disagreed with other, they were perfectly frank and shared their rationale.

I felt all of the instructors were genuinely enthusiastic and committed to helping people learn. I have an epic story of concussion-inducing facepalm that illustrates how accommodating they were, which I will share in a moment.

Class Makeup

Because the school is so young and trying to get the word out, this class was actually offered over Amazon Local. Because of the mainstream advertising, the students were a mix of people who were totally serious and enthusiastic, and… other. We had more than our fair share of “that guy”s, but the instructors usually did a pretty good job of mitigating their effects on the rest of the class.

Day 1

The first day was a little awkward. They chose to start the class at 6:30pm on a Friday, which presented several challenges. Telephone isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it’s about two hours from the D/FW metroplex with good traffic. The start time wasn’t early enough to require people to take the full day off, and wasn’t late enough to let everyone get to the location on time. Thusly, a good portion of the class trickled in late, and we didn’t actually start with the material until just before 8:00pm.

We began with the basic safety rules (the buddy system, what to do if you get lost, et cetera). It’s a pretty safe class, but there are feral hogs in the area, snakes (in the appropriate season) and people who don’t know how to use knives trying to use knives (Doc Black: “Don’t let your weekend be ruined by the dangerous person sitting in your seat.”)

Then a general discussion of what “bugging out” means, why it might be necessary and what a BUG / INCH is. A quick run through of good things to carry with you, why some tools would / not be good to have, and some guidelines on caching.

After this, there was the lecture and demonstration on survival animal processing, or what I’ve come to call The Priscilla Incident. In previous classes, the instructors have had a hog that they have killed elsewhere then brought to the location to demonstrate how to prepare the carcass. Because not everyone in the class was a hunter (myself included), the cadre decided to bring the hog to class to illustrate what exactly killing an animal was about. This was not a trivial decision, and I think they were absolutely correct in wanting to convey to the sheltered among us (myself included) that this wasn’t a game.

In the past, they had trapped a feral hog to demonstrate on. They didn’t have one this time, so the pig was a 200 lbs domestic female. To show the quick and humane way to kill the animal, they were going to shoot it behind the ear to sever the brain stem. With a shot from a .22 LR revolver.

Five shots later and the animal is still thrashing around the trailer and screaming. I’m not sure what happened after that because I left and went back to the classroom. Two of the instructors and a few students later retreated there with me, where we chatted over the sound of screams and thrashing for about another five minutes.

I’d like to be completely clear in emphasizing that the instructors did not intend for that to happen, and all of them regretted how it played out. Actually, for those of us who weren’t hunters I think it turned into an invaluable lesson.

However, while trapping animals as an absolute necessity can be inhumane, a simple demonstration shouldn’t have been. After speaking with the staff, I’m confident they’ll have a plan to better handle that, if it should happen again. Doc Black posthumously named the pig Priscilla, out of respect for putting up such a fight. "That would be worse than a .22" became a synonym for something that was a bad idea for the remainder of the course.

Afterwards, the pig was skinned and gutted. This was an excellent walk-through and very valuable for those of us who weren’t hunters. The meat was later cooked and served to the class for meals on subsequent days.

To wrap up the evening was the night orientation. The class hopped on a trailer and rode out to the woods. The instructors walked the class out along a trail, spaced us out and then left us there for maybe forty-five minutes. I grew up in the woods, so this didn’t do much for me, but I think it left an impression on some of the other students who had never really been out in the country before. At least one moron had his white-light on within about three minutes of being dropped off and started checking where the other students were. I guess the guy was scared of the dark.

After that, the instructors picked us up, we rode back to camp and called it a day. We turned in after midnight.

Day 2

Breakfast was supposed to start at 7:00am, but with so many students, that didn’t even get started until almost half an hour later. Food was eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy and also cake for some reason. At around 8:45am, Doc Black started his lecture.

Discussion was about sprouting and how easy and useful it was. Then an orientation to the Cammenga compass, shooting an azimuth, a back azimuth, navigating around obstacles and keeping a pace count. After the discussion, we headed out to an open field and practiced picking landmarks and using our compass. We also got our own pace count walking a laid out 100 meter stretch.

When this was completed, we hopped in the trailer and rode out to one of the land navigation courses. Simple course with a handful of trees and the like to exercise moving around things in your way. Then back to the camp for lunch.

The daytime land navigation practice was definitely the low point of the course, sans the pig. The material was interesting and well communicated, but there were too many people in the class and the staff had us walk the course one by one. Get to start point. Wait. Walk 100 meters. Wait. Walk 100 meters. Wait. Trailer ride. Wait. Walk 100 meters. Wait. Walk 100 meters. Wait. Massive downtime just standing around and waiting for everyone to finish.

Apparently, previous classes had around 20 people, and this process might have been reasonable. However, with forty students it just didn’t work. This was complained about (loudly) by the class, and I’m confident the staff will refine this in future courses.

Lunch was chili and grilled cheese with more cake. When we were finished eating, Doc Black covered more material over things like good animals to trap, pre-planning evacuation routes, preparing kindling and starting fires.

The class was then split up into two smaller groups and we headed to the woods. One group covered shelter building: what survival shelters need to accomplish, basic do / don’ts, good tools to have with you and basic shelter examples to look over.

Another group covered fire starting and water purification. Again, do / don’ts, et cetera. They didn’t cover starting fires without fire starters, but it had been raining all weekend and that would have been a pretty tedious demonstration (they did have some videos on their phones of them going through the process if you were curious). I was extremely impressed that you could boil water in your run-of-the-mill flimsy plastic water bottle and never would have guessed that was possible.

Finally, there was a station talking about basic trap building. Dead fall traps, spring snares and another trap meant to catch squirrels running up a tree (which I can’t remember the name of) were set up and demonstrated. After that, the students had an opportunity to practice fire building, examine the traps and ask instructors questions.

We’re now heading into the late afternoon / early evening and thus begins the facepalm. A man had brought his two sons to the class, and on the first night, I was paired with his older son as a survival buddy. After observing their behavior Friday evening, I had a quick chat with one of the instructors, Mike Broland, about how the trio was doing and that some additional attention from the staff might help them pick up the material.

On the evening of the second day, this guy goes up to Mike and says that he’s going to take a walk: his spirit animal guide had visited him and told him that there was an elf soul trapped in a tree a few miles away. Instead of slack-jawed balking (which would have been my reaction), Mike offered to go with them and turned the trek into a lesson on compass reading and keeping a pace count.

The class was told the basics of what happened. There were some additional cringe-worthy details that were later shared with me in confidence, but suffice it to say, Mike turning the whole thing into a learning experience for the guy and his kids speaks volumes about his character. He, personally, deserves a huge amount of credit and I think any member of the staff would have done the same thing.

When discussing this with the class, Doc Black later said, “When people tell you who they are, believe them. Don’t try to talk them out of it or change their mind.” I think that’s solid advice, especially if something desperate is going on.

Dinner was Priscilla, mashed potatoes, slaw and cobbler. After that, there was a brief lecture on night navigation: how’s, why’s and so on. The class then hopped in the trailer and headed out to the land navigation course.

When we arrived, we were split into about five teams, each headed by a member of the staff and at least one other instructor or assistant instructor. The groups spread out to various waypoints and started the course. Routes were zig zagged across a mostly open field covered in thigh-high grass, briar patches, the occasional fully grown pine tree and clusters of tree saplings. The course had to be completed with no illumination, except red lights for spotting the actual stake in the ground and reading the next waypoint.

I’m sure for those in the military, or with experience as a boy scout, this is fairly blasé. But for me (being neither of those), successfully navigating at night, with a completely overcast sky, no lights and no electronics was simply awesome. I definitely learned that keeping a pace count is an art: 14 * 15 * (hole) * 37 * 38 * (thorn in the groin) * 63 * 64 * (branch in the face) * 1 * 2….

When we were finished, we headed back to the classroom for a brief discussion on edibles. Everyone turned in well after midnight.

Day 3

The temperature was near freezing and raining when the day started. It never got above the 30’s all day, and this is with Friday being in the low 70s. Usually, the class ends with a fire building competition, but because of the weather, the potential for deteriorating road conditions and the fact it was Super Bowl Sunday, we let out early. (After seeing the damn game, we all would have stayed there.)

Breakfast was supposed to be at 7:30am, but was way late. Everyone was tired and probably two-thirds of the class was still asleep at that time.

The last piece of the class was the buddy land navigation exercise. We hopped into the iced-over trailer and went to the same course we had walked the night before. Everyone spread out and we navigated in pairs. Instructors walked about to make sure no one wandered off into the woods and answered any questions that popped up. After this, we hopped back onto the frozen trailer, rode back to camp and said our goodbyes.

The Bad

The school is basically brand new, and things aren’t particularly well organized at this point. There was the aforementioned down time, and the instructors often had to conference amongst themselves to figure out exactly what they needed to do.

Indications that kinks hadn’t been ironed out popped up periodically. For instance, on the night navigation course, all of the markers featured as different way points for different routes. To figure out what the starting point of your route was, you were supposed to use the same color route listed on the card as the color of the zip tie that attached the card to the stake. Given that it’s at night and everyone is using red lights, distinguishing the color of the zip tie was basically impossible. It was a really minor issue, but things like that popped up here and there.

The instructors mentioned preparing portions of the pig that were a little unorthodox to eat, but would be useful in a survival situation (heart, liver, et cetera). Not sure why, but that ended up not happening. I would have been curious to try that, and Priscilla definitely earned the respect.

Practically no talk about firearms at all. Again, this wasn't a firearms class (and I got the strong impression most students had a small arsenal at home), but in the interest of completeness I think this should have been mentioned. If you ask me what the best tool for defending against two- and four-legged predators as well as providing a source of food is, the first thing that's going to pop into my mind is some type of gun.

I also think the class was too big. The staff was still experimenting with class size and overshot on this iteration. I doubt they will have that many people in their future classes.

No discussion of bugging in. Again, not the topic of the course, but I thought it could have been mentioned in the interest of completeness.

The Good

I thought the instructors were excellent. Every one of them was knowledgeable, approachable and engaging. I felt all of them were genuinely enthusiastic and cared about effectively teaching the material. I’m completely confident they’ll iron out kinks in the course and put on wonderful classes in the future.

The instructors' military backgrounds also helped. That's not a knock on teachers who only have civilian experience, but some of these "survival" courses are more about getting in touch with Gaia than actual skills. They kept things pragmatic at all times and all the material was down to earth and useful. Zero fluff.

The facilities were also great. While not a hotel, they absolutely beat your typical camp ground and were ultimately very comfortable. The church is committed to improving them further, and I’m sure things will gradually get even better.

Even though the facilities were cushy, getting the bush experience was easy. You could set up your camp site within throwing distance of the barracks and retreat inside to a hot shower if that didn’t work out too well for you.

I really enjoyed the talk about sprouting and have already purchased a few things to get started with it at home. While I’m sure it’d be useful in a survival situation, I mostly just want it as an easy and healthy snack.

The camp was also easy to find from the D/FW metroplex. No issue getting there with Google maps and a manageable drive back home when you're dog tired.

Summary

Overall, I enjoyed the course a lot. It’s great if you have zero experience, but also a good brush up for experienced hunters, particularly the nighttime land navigation. The material was an excellent crash course in survival skills and left students with more than enough to start researching on their own. I hope to attend their more advanced classes in the future.

Tips

The class flyer recommends you bring snacks and a variety of other things. I never knew how long we were going to be away from camp so I carried everything they suggested with me at all times. In practice, that wasn’t necessary, and we were rarely gone for more than about two hours. Keeping a water bottle, a note pad and your compass on you will usually suffice for most everything you do.

For the night exercises, make sure everything you need to keep with you, you can find and replace in the dark. I would also recommend everything be secured to you with a lanyard or otherwise, especially your flashlight. If you drop your compass in the middle of a briar patch in the middle of the night, you’re not going to find many volunteers to help you dig for it.

Use a dedicated red light, or a red light with a dedicated lens. Any light that can be switched between colors will invariably be swapped to the wrong light eventually, and you’ll hose everyone’s night vision.

Wear tough pants, and if you’re expecting precipitation, they definitely need to be waterproof. I had some on order from Duluth, but they didn’t arrive in time. Thorns and other things are everywhere. You’re probably not going to get wet, but riding around on the trailer or stumbling into the mud will be unpleasant, especially if it’s freezing.

Carrying around band-aids would be helpful. Various owies are inevitable.

I would bring a pair of clear safety or shooting glasses for the night navigation. There are more than ample opportunities to get whacked in the eye and you will, quite literally, never see it coming.

Don't be the guy who frantically swipes at his fire starter for 20 minutes, fails to reliably create spark and then periodically stops and readjusts his kindling, as if that were going to make a difference to the fire starter. (Seriously, he swiped hundreds of times regardless of what the instructors advised him to do.) Don't be that guy.

Don’t be the guy that separates from his group during the nighttime land navigation and decides to take a nap on the ground. When your ten-year-old son saves you by telling the instructors you’re not there after frantically searching the entire camp, you’ll never hear the end of it as long as you live. Don't be that guy.

Gear

Asolo Fugitive GTX Hiking Boots (http://www.rei.com/product/706762/asolo-fugitive-gtx-hiking-boots-mens) – I can’t speak to the longevity of these boots, but in every other aspect they were great. Recommended by the sales reps at REI. After stepping through mud soaked with near-freezing rain, my feet stayed warm and snug the entire time. They also kept me from rolling my ankle dozens of times.

Thorlo Hiking Socks (https://www.thorlo.com/activity/outdoor/hiking-socks) – I purchased two pairs of these after reading about them on MSW (http://modernserviceweapons.com/?p=5478). Phenomenal. There really wasn’t that much walking in the class (less than ten miles over three days, probably closer to six or seven) but my feet weren’t exactly used to it and my boots were barely broken in. No blisters, no sore spots. Highly recommended.

Rite in the Rain notebook (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZZTUEM/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and water proof pen (http://www.amazon.com/Rite-Rain-Weatherproof-Tactical-Clicker/dp/B000QBPZKS/ref=pd_bxgy_sg_img_y) – Excellent combination. Nothing was smudged due to moisture (or spilled coffee) and the pen worked every time. Notebook can easily slip into a back pocket and the pages are thick enough not to rip easily. Highly recommended.

Smith & Wesson Galaxy 12-LED flashlight – Decent as a cheap LED flashlight. The “multi-switch advanced technology” thing is a joke: the thing has two switches, one for white light and one for cycling through red, green and blue. That’s it. No lanyard to secure it and it’s too big to comfortably put in your mouth. I’d recommend finding something else.

Cammenga Model 3H (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001W2CJX6/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) Tritium compass – Seemed to work very well. Can be found for about $70 on Amazon and the instructors had a high opinion of it. The school also carries a phosphorous compass (for people on budget), but I wouldn’t really recommend that as it's practically useless at night.

Questions

I'll answer as best I can.

SeriousStudent
02-03-2014, 10:57 PM
Thank you for taking the time to do the writeup. I'd seen that class advertised on Amazon, and pondering taking it.

Chance
02-03-2014, 11:23 PM
...[A]nd what a BUG / INCH is.

That should say "BOB / INCH". "Bug out bag" and "I'm never coming home" bag.


Thank you for taking the time to do the writeup. I'd seen that class advertised on Amazon, and pondering taking it.

I would start perusing some YouTube videos and show up with questions. They were happy to answer, but I usually couldn't think of anything to ask.

Jason F
02-03-2014, 11:34 PM
Thanks for taking the time to write up the AAR!

Seems like they have some kinks to work out, but they may be on track to good things. I'll have to keep my eyes on them and see how they develop.

RoyGBiv
02-04-2014, 08:58 AM
Interesting. Thanks for taking the time to do a thorough writeup.

Chance
02-04-2014, 11:50 AM
A handful of details I got wrong initially (I couldn't figure out how to edit the original post...):


PSS pays to use the church's facilities. So, the event takes place at the church, but is not "hosted by" the church or affiliated in any other way;
Business HQ is actually in Carrollton;
In previous classes, the staff had prepared various organs from the pig. In this case, the pig's endocrine system was way into overdrive, and that may have had some ill effects on the tissue. The instructors opted out this time;
On the beginning of the second day, we road marched out to the course rather than be trailered. There and back we covered various things such as picking out good landmarks, fundamentals of tactical movement, et cetera; and,
It's again worth emphasizing this is a basic, level 1 class. The school offers others with much more advanced material.

Josh Runkle
02-06-2014, 09:56 AM
So, is it correct that all instructors are former military and they had no non-military-background staff?

Chance
02-06-2014, 04:45 PM
So, is it correct that all instructors are former military and they had no non-military-background staff?

All of their on-staff instructors are former military (Ranger or SF). All of whom but one have combat experience.

Two of their assistant instructors were Army veterans, one of which has combat experience. The only person without a military background was one of their assistant instructors.

Their assistant instructors aren't formally attached to the cadre, they're volunteers who have been through previous classes and showed high aptitude. Basically, they were invited to take the class again for no charge if they helped corral everyone, et cetera. All of the material was taught by the on-staff instructors.

Josh Runkle
02-06-2014, 04:49 PM
Good to hear that at least one instructor has a different background. Former military have a ton of info to teach, but I usually steer clear of groups where all of the instructors have the same background. The lack of diversity usually leaves holes in training.

rudy99
02-07-2014, 01:26 PM
Thank you for the detailed write up. I wasn't aware that this was even an option in DFW. I had actually planned on getting involved in some local orienteering (http://www.ntoa.com/) as a means to get some land navigation experience. Especially when my kid gets a little older. This looks like an interesting experience as well, although spending two nights with an unknown crowd doesn't sound too appealing...

In regards to the red light issue, I wonder if a red filter on a surefire would have been a good option.

Chance
02-07-2014, 07:45 PM
I had actually planned on getting involved in some local orienteering as a means to get some land navigation experience.... This looks like an interesting experience as well, although spending two nights with an unknown crowd doesn't sound too appealing...

In regards to the red light issue, I wonder if a red filter on a surefire would have been a good option.

For me personally, the night time land navigation stuff was just awesome. I think the staff is considering spending a whole class on learning to read topographical maps, but that was just something I overheard.

There are motels in Bonham, which you need to drive through to get to Telephone (if you're coming from the Metroplex). They're a pretty good ways out, though. The bunking thing wasn't a big deal for me, but then again, I slept well and everyone else probably had to put up with my snoring. :)

I actually have two Surefires and had no idea they made red filters for them. Derp.

SeriousStudent
02-07-2014, 08:48 PM
Thank you for the detailed write up. I wasn't aware that this was even an option in DFW. I had actually planned on getting involved in some local orienteering (http://www.ntoa.com/) as a means to get some land navigation experience. Especially when my kid gets a little older. This looks like an interesting experience as well, although spending two nights with an unknown crowd doesn't sound too appealing...

In regards to the red light issue, I wonder if a red filter on a surefire would have been a good option.

A long time ago, I used to wander about with a map and compass in the dark. We would "borrow" a small brass pilot's flashlight that had a red filter on it. Then these came out:

http://www.opticsplanet.com/inova-microlight-black-and-clear-base-led.html

Inova makes a spiffy little LED flashlight that works really well for inconspicuous land nav. The metal clip easily fastens into a button hole on a shirt, and the switch can be squeezed between your teeth. The switch can also be slid on for a longer light display. They even make an IR version - that's new.

I carried one on my dog tag chain when they first came out - very handy. The red lens model throws just enough illum to work with a map and compass. They also make a model with a blue LED. Very handy for spotting blood in the darkness, when you want to discreetly examine a patient, or follow a blood trail.

It's also not a bad idea to pack a second light, usually a headlamp. Petzl makes great ones, and they come with filters.

I'm a big fan of carrying a second compass as well, just to check your work. It's possible to get so exhausted you think the compass is "broken" or "lying" to you. I have pulled out a second smaller compass, and decided the first one was correct. That saved me a lot of walking several times.

Also, a wrist band compass on your watchband can be a good method to help with offsets and obstacle crossings. Some of the better ones are relatively sturdy, and will fit on a NATO watch band. A rubber SCUBA band on most dive watches is usually too big.

Like Chance said, it's really easy to lose stuff in the dark (even if you dummy cord it), and a spare can become your one and only.

Good luck with whatever you choose.