On the surface, Craig Caudill seems like just a regular Joe. If you bumped into him at the gas station or the grocery store, you probably wouldn’t guess that Caudill has a backcountry skillset that would put most modern outdoors enthusiasts to shame. 

Caudill’s love of the outdoors has its roots in his early experiences hunting, fishing and playing in the woods of Kentucky. To say Caudill is an experienced woodsman is an understatement. As an adult, he spent two thirty-day excursions in the woods with nothing but a knife. 

Caudill has been actively pursuing experiential knowledge of all things outdoors for decades. While he remains a lifelong student, Caudill is also the founder and director of Nature Reliance School (NRS). Based in Winchester, Kentucky, NRS offers environmental and outdoor education with hands-on learning, which encourages safe engagement with the outdoors as well as environmental management strategies. In 2021, NRS was recognized as the Outstanding Business for Excellence in Environmental Education by the Kentucky Association for Environmental Education.

The courses at NRS are diverse and cover everything from land navigation to wilderness survival. As an instructor, Caudill has humbly shared his knowledge with thousands of public sector students and multiple government law enforcement agencies.

NRS also has a highly active YouTube channel with over 500 videos that provide accessible instruction on outdoor safety and survival.

Nature Reliance School was founded in 2006. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

Caudill has been a consultant for the Discovery Channel and History Channel and has authored eight books. He also regularly contributes to multiple outdoor and survival publications, including Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Backwoods Survival Guide, American Frontiersman, and Ballistic. 

Kinute recently caught up with Caudill, who carved some time out in his busy schedule to share his thoughts on bushcraft, teaching and being a steward of Nature.

You cover a lot of exciting topics at Nature Reliance School. What is your favorite topic to teach?

Tracking is my number one, without a doubt. Tracking, for me, is both a science and an art; watching people learn to use both sides of their brains simultaneously is interesting. It’s a lot like writing, where you have to let your creative side flow, but you still have to follow the rules of grammar and sentence structure. To be a successful tracker, you must learn how to control your ego, remain humble, and stay strong mentally. At the same time, you have to stay soft. It’s a delicate balance. If you’re too soft, like all sunshine, peace, and love all the time, then you can’t apply the science part of tracking. But if you’re too focused on the science, you won’t be open to the anomalies that present themselves. 

There is not a time that you track where you don’t learn more about what you’re tracking and about yourself. 

Caudill teaches the art and science of tracking to NRS students. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

What role does bushcraft play at Nature Reliance School?

I have a pretty different perspective on that than most in the survival community. My perspective is that bushcraft is more of a hobby than a survival skill. 

I think there is a kind of progression that moves from primitive skills to bushcraft and then to modern survival skills. Primitive skills come into play when you can only use what is available naturally from the environment. This would include flint knapping, bow drill firemaking, blow guns, atlatls, and that sort of thing. It is basically the way aboriginal and indigenous peoples lived off the land. 

Bushcraft includes the skills that emerged after humans discovered iron and made it work for us. That’s when we started making axes, knives, and other types of metal blades. 

Then modern survival skills allow us to use all of the fantastic modern materials we have available. 

I think bushcraft can enhance a person’s ability to live off the land, but most bushcrafters I know are more like campers. They drive trucks right to camp and bring containers of food. They probably won’t wander off the trail. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I’m not being critical of it. I actually love bushcraft. My eighth book is "Wild Woodcraft" which is basically a bushcraft book. That’s kind of my perspective on bushcraft compared to survival skills. It’s mostly about how our ancestors used iron tools to better themselves.

You’ve written several books about bushcraft, survival, and animal tracking, but could you tell us more about Secret Signs of Nature? Is that your only children’s book?

Out of eight books currently in print, "Secret Signs of Nature" is my only children’s book. It is published by Magic Cat Publishing out of London. They sought me out, which is different than most writers experience with publishers. I am humbled and thankful that they came my way. 

The original intent was for me to write about how to utilize nature to navigate. But as I got to writing it, it just kind of blew up and went in a bunch of different directions. It includes not just how to navigate but also how to predict the weather and how to predict animal behavior. 

I don’t completely know why they came to me specifically, but in the survival and bushcraft communities, there are a lot of people who just love the outdoors. I’m also a certified master naturalist, so I understand the outdoors from an academic perspective that goes deeper than most. I’ve taught courses at the university level on those topics. I’ve trained wildlife biologists and wildlife managers in wildlife tracking. I think that probably came into play.

Can you explain what it means to be a “certified master naturalist?”

There are master naturalist programs throughout the United States at different universities. The programs cover a collective of nature topics—such as archeology, geology, weather, soil, water quality, tree identification and herbaceous plants—from both an academic and a practical perspective. 

I went through the program at the University of Kentucky. We met once a week for six months to hear a lecture from a professor on a particular topic. The thing that sets most of the master naturalist programs apart is that there is almost always a field component. So we would study something like aquatic invertebrates, covering the biological components in a stream in class. Then we would go out into a stream and collect samples of little bugs to determine how many were living there. That would tell us about the biological composition and the cleanliness of the creek. And every topic was like that. 

With tree identification, we would study different buds, bark, leaves, fruit, flowers and all the stuff with it, and then we would go to the field and study how to apply that. 

NRS students study the biological components of a stream. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

How do you think that formal training has impacted your relationship with the outdoors?

It has absolutely taken over my viewpoint on the outdoors. I have been a very practical woodsman for most of my life. I’ve lived off the land. I took two different thirty-day trips out into the woods with nothing but a knife. I know how to make my way in the woods. But I haven’t always understood how intricately connected everything is,  how everything is basically a web of connectivity and I’m a part of that web. 

My first introduction to approaching the outdoors from an academic angle happened about 30 years ago. I had a farm in a woodland area and it looked like it had been raped by previous logging operations. I contacted the Kentucky Division of Forestry and the Department of Fish and Wildlife and asked what I could do to make the farm a better habitat for wildlife. I walked the farm with a forester and he would point out things about trees and how they affected other trees and animals in the area. I started to realize that my presence has an impact on the environment, and that impact doesn’t have to be negative. It can also be positive. My experience with that forester and then later with the master naturalist program helped me understand my personal environmental impact. 

Caudill seeks both an academic and a practical understanding of nature. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

There are a couple of things that this understanding has blossomed into for us at Nature Reliance School. For example, if we’re teaching a bushcraft class and we’re going to make a good bushcraft mallet, we’re basically building a hammer out of wood. It makes sense that we would want to find the densest wood possible. So dendrology helps us do that. Then, we want to choose the right tree to harvest not just based on the quality of the wood. I want to harvest a tree that when I kill it, it actually helps the environment instead of bringing harm to it. 

When I learned this my whole world was rocked. A wildlife biologist told me that one of the best things I could do was to girdle some of the oak trees on my property. If you girdle a tree, which is if you cut into a tree all the way around, you cut the cambium layer, and it can no longer feed itself.  As a hunter, I thought there was no way I was going to kill an oak tree because acorns are an important food source for wildlife. But I followed his advice because he was the expert and I girdled some trees. 

We recorded the data and it is fantastic. If a tree put out 100 acorns last year, it will put out 1,000 for about two years after you girdle it because it “knows” that it is dying. 

Ethically and sustainably, if you’re harvesting materials from a forest environment, why wouldn’t I teach my students to do it responsibly? We want to leave it better than we found it. If we’re going to go out and harvest some dogwood for our bushcraft malet, we’re not going to go out and just cut the first dogwood that we come to. We’re going to go out and find one that looks like it’s diseased or on its way to dying, one that’s showing indicators of injury, and we’re going to cut that one down. Because if we cut that one down, the resources it was using will go to the trees around it. Then those trees will be healthier and better off.

NRS teaches its students important outdoor survival skills. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

You have this relationship with the land that a lot of people in our modern times don’t have. There are people who spend time in nature but only as observers. What you’re describing is very much being a participant. 

Without a doubt. There is a large segment of our population that are really into “Leave No Trace” principles. But we are all leaving a trace even if we dig a hole eight inches deep to bury fecal matter or walk through a puddle on a trail instead of going around it. I love to ask the question, “When you throw something away, where is away?” Garbage goes somewhere after you toss it in the waste bin. So all of us are having an effect. I don’t care if you live in a big city and then go to the outdoors and carefully follow all of the “Leave No Trace” principles. You are leaving a trace because when you aren’t in the woods, you’re living in a big city that used to be the outdoors. 

Like it or not, you, I, and everybody are a part of the web. Instead of pretending we aren’t leaving a trace, why not have a positive effect on the environment? We can’t act like we aren’t a part of it.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m the kind of guy that worships the earth. I don’t. I think the earth has resources. I think we can utilize those resources. I think they are there for our use, but I also believe we are responsible for taking care of them, so we are not the last ones to use those resources. 

Caudill works one-on-one with an NRS student. Photo provided by Craig Caudill

What do you think would help weekend visitors to the outdoors better understand that they are part of that web? What are some steps they could take? If it’s not “Leave No Trace,” what should their mentality be?

“Leave No Trace” is a great way to introduce people to the idea that we need to take care of the environment. I love that they teach Leave No Trace to Scouts. It is a great way to introduce children to the concepts. It’s when the attempt to take care of the environment removes us from it. That’s where I feel like we’ve got problems. Humans need to be in Nature. It’s really good for us emotionally and physically. There’s a lot of science behind it. 

If we continue to abuse the environment, then there’s no nature for us to go to anymore. We are defeating ourselves by destroying it. But I’m not going to have somebody from a big city lecturing me about how to “Leave No Trace” in an environment where they have never planted a tree. I’ve planted thousands. I’ve spent gas money, blood, sweat, and tears building and improving habitats for wildlife. They have never done that. They will enjoy seeing grouse, quail, deer, and turkey but then lecture me about how I shouldn’t go out and use it and enjoy it. 

I think there’s a lot of value in the term stewardship. Every person needs to be a steward of the outdoors, an active participant, not just a visitor or a tourist.