About Howl
The aim of HowlBushcraft is to provide the elementary skills needed to spend time outdoors without the clutter of modern gadgets and gear. We look to nature to provide what we need, and the skill of our hands to craft it. We practice a high level of respect for the natural world, and always instill our sessions with the leave no trace ethos.
Howl Bushcraft was founded and is owned by Jamie Dakota.
Howl
Jamie Dakota
Founder and Chief Instructor
I grew up around three miles from the nearest woodland. Every chance I got I'd walk the three miles across the council estate to the wood to explore and camp out; with a typically over-sized rucksack and an excess of kit I quickly found myself looking for ways to lighten the load and improvise what I needed from nature. I read the books, and went cover to cover experimenting to find what worked for me and what didn't. It's that first hand experience I use to teach skills at Howl; I never teach anything I haven't vigorously used for myself. I worked since 2013 in supporting the YHA in their bushcraft provision, I provided their staff with specialist training to deliver simple but engaging bushcraft sessions for young people. In line with that I myself sought training and learned a great deal from Dave Watson, a Legend in the field, and passed my FBCC with the IOL. I founded Howl Bushcraft in 2014 with a suite of courses I’d built from desire to guide clients towards a closer connection with nature while making their travels outdoors.
My approach to bushcraft is an honest and simple one, I go out into the Nature to make journeys, and connect with the landscape I find myself in; in this way my bushcraft has been informed by expedience and practicality. In essence I look to knowledge, and then skills, which can be used to augment the connection with Nature and not impeach upon it. True bushcraft should always be subtle, in the background, and supportive. It is the foundation on which great adventure can be built.
roles
Lead Instructor at Howl Bushcraft
Bushcraft Safety Award Assessor and lead training director
Technical advisor to various outdoor providers
Associate instructor to Wild Passport
Supporting Instructor to Living By Nature UK
collaborators
The wilderness living skills and traditional crafts Adam first discovered in books as a boy have defined his entire adult career as a UK based bushcraft instructor and guide.
Honing these skills over 16 years of bushcraft instruction created a desire to gain validity in what he was passing on to students and is reflected in the significant amount of time both living and teaching these skills in the context of wilderness travel and training courses.
‘’Throughout my career as a bushcraft instructor and expedition guide, I have had a growing sense of the importance to convey authenticity in the skills I would be passing on to others. I strive for honesty by teaching only from direct experience and immersing myself in a bushcraft lifestyle. I try to practice what I preach.’’
Adam recognised early on that a central tenet of bushcraft is an understanding of plants and their applications. This has led to a lifelong fascination with the uses of natural materials for outdoor living. Opting for wool blankets over sleeping bags, natural shelters instead of tents, wood fires in place of gas burners and wherever possible handmade clothing and equipment. This has helped to temper his instruction with a measure of realism.
Pursuing ever increasing reliance on nature, a passion for so called ‘primitive skills’ developed and has led Adam to write and deliver many courses on topics including buckskin making, fur tanning, natural cordage and glues, tool making, bow making, bone and antler work, weaving, and bark crafts.
Never truly satisfied with a short trip into the outdoors Adam has spent months at a time living in Sweden’s forests. Over three winter seasons he has cumulatively spent ten months living off grid in the Canadian bush. Working as an assistant snowshoe guide and instructor, he has covered more than 300 miles by snowshoe and moccasins in Ontario’s wilderness areas.
Steven Hanton - Wilderness Folk School
Steven is an experienced expedition leader and has guided trips to some of the worlds most remote environments. Equally at home in the frozen subarctic, steamy jungle or sweltering desert, he has been fortunate to work with and learn from some of the world's last hunter gatherers for whom wilderness skills are still a way of life.
As a passionate educator, Steven completed a degree in Outdoor Education at Edinburgh University and stresses the importance not only of what you teach, but how you teach. His enthusiasm for the subject and his delivery make for informative yet fun and engaging programs.
Steven is never more at home, however, than when exploring the wilds of his native Scotland with his wife and two boys in his handmade wood and canvas canoes.
Born and raised in a small town of Sub-Arctic Sweden, the heart of the Boreal Forest, Jeremias has life long experience of the ins and outs of arctic living.
Since 2010 he has worked professionally, and trained, in the outdoor field as a guide with everything from dive guiding in Tenerife, Swedish Mountain leader qualification, Snowmobile guiding high above the arctic circle, skiing etc and since 2017 with sled dogs together with his wife and their own pack of Alaskan Huskies.
Still living on his homestead in the middle of the Boreal Forest he works with Nature and River restoration projects during the spring, summer and fall period, (as well as fishing and hunting) the forest is both his place of work and home.
Whether guiding dogmushing, snowshoeing or hiking he loves to show and teach folks from all over the world about the simple way of being out in, no matter the season.
Northern Soul Journeys is a small family-owned and operated dog sledding company in Norrbotten, Swedish Lapland.
It was founded by Hannah and Jeremias Kinnunen-Levy in 2018. They offer a wide variety of tours throughout the year with our main focus being winter dog sledding tours.
Hannah and Jeremias met in Northern Sweden, where Hannah was a dog mushing guide and Jeremias was a snowmobile guide.
Their first date was spent on a dog sled, and while they drove through the forest they realized they wanted the same things out of life.
At the end of the 2015-2016 winter season, they decided to test their relationship with a 1400 km hike through the Swedish mountains. They figured that if they could make it through that without killing each other, they would certainly make a good team.
At the end of the hike, they were a few kilos lighter and in love. After another winter season, they were ready to build their own dream of living a life with dogs close to nature.
Hannah Knight - Wilderness Folk School
Hannah's background in ecology, wildlife conservation and community engagement means she brings a wealth of experience to the Folk School.
With a degree in Environmental Conservation, she has worked in ecological surveying, managed nature reserves, worked for several Wildlife Trusts and set up and managed nature-based community engagement projects for charities such as the RSPB.
Since 2014, Hannah has also undertaken study in bushcraft and wilderness skills and is a qualified Forest School Leader. Hannah is great with people and her kind and patient nature makes her a great teacher on courses involving craftwork, basketry and plantlore.
Her knowledge and understanding of the natural world, in particular plants, is is combined with her other great passion, art. Hannah is a sought after professional artist working with pen, pyrography and paint to create beautiful, bespoke pieces. She also creates meaningful and truly unique hand-poke tattoos, often inspired by nature, through her company Ink and Ember Tattoo
A mother of two, Hannah is passionate about exploring the natural world with her children in any way she can; canoeing, foraging, cooking over fires and making woodland art!
I spent my early years in the local fields and streams catching frogs and fishing for minnows. Growing up in the Peak District gave me a love for the more wild areas of the British countryside; exploring valleys, caves, rivers, woodlands and hills.
My passion for Bushcraft came to life in my mid teens and quickly led me venturing down the path of primitive living skills.
I started this journey into these skills learning from and volunteering with Dave Watson. It was from this experience I found my passion and decided I wanted to expand my knowledge and pass these skills on to others. Since this time I have trained with various incredible teachers within this field and have used these skills in different environments including Scandinavia, Europe and North America.
In recent years I have developed and provided engaging Bushcraft sessions at an Outdoor Centre and Public workshop events for Children, SEN groups, Adults and training to forest school providers. I now also work as a guest Instructor for established schools and individuals teaching Primitive Living Skills.
Friction fire lighting, bone working, fibre and tanning are some of my favourite skills to learn. Using raw materials and turning them into something functional and beautiful is one of the magical experiences these skills offer. Whether it creating an ember from friction or hand stitching reindeer hides into a sleeping bag. These are the skills that take us back mentally and spiritually allowing us to gain a small incite into how our ancestors may have thought, experiencing their journey and problems they had to overcome.
Siegurd van Leusen is the founder of SIEGURD.nl and an outdoor athlete at heart. Grew up in the countryside in Umbria, Italy and only returned to the Netherlands at the age of 19 to move again for three years between the French vineyards shortly afterwards. It's been a long time now in the Netherlands. Now he has been working, still with great pleasure, for almost twenty years at Outline Travel as the main instructor of outdoor sports and where he runs the entire Bushcraft section under his own label.
He has had his love for the outdoor from the moment he could barely walk. Four months old, he moved to Italy with his parents. First a few years in the far south, Calabria and then until his 19th birthday in beautiful and green Umbria. Here he learns to appreciate the simple and the adventurous look-up! With parents as missionaries and therefore with a low income, life automatically becomes more creative and inventive and you see things more as challenges than as problems. Simple things like cooking on a wood fire or coal, trown foring your own food or taking it out of nature, became the most normal thing in the world. Siegurd grew up with friends from farming families, where the food just ran around the yard. He also didn't look strange when in the evening the same rabbit was lying on the table among the baked potatoes while it was still walking happily in the afternoon! He regularly went up the hills with his satybag, alone or with his brothers and friends.
At the age of 19 he moved back to the Netherlands, but the love for nature remained. His main hobbies are long-distance walking and mountaineering. He climbs the Mont Blanc and Gran Paradiso several times but also the Mont Blanc du Tacul, Arête du Cosmiques and the Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Siegurd follows several alpine courses and a first aid course in mountaineering accidents) course in Zermatt under the led by the well-known alpinist and rescuer Menno Boermans.
However, his greatest passion remains climbing Munro's in Scotland. Started in 1996 and with 282 mountains to go, Scotland is the country where you will find it the most outside the Netherlands. Despite rain and miss, Siegurd is and remains attached to this beautiful country.
Friends, guest instructors, and Associates
Max Barnes
Andy Waring
Robin Heath
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“I use Lifesaver filters during our trips and to provide drinking water on our courses in the forest. Fundamentally, their products are great. They are simple, and they work. But beyond that I truly believe in Lifesaver’s mission statement, and that innovative practical technology can work with a humanitarian goal to help some of those in most need. It is because of Lifesaver’s mission that I approached them to get involved, and in that way I am delighted to offer my followers and clients a 15% off code to use on their website. Simply type Howls15 at checkout with Lifesaver.
At Green Man Learning we see the natural world as a place of infinite potential; the potential to have adventures, to learn, to have fun, to be inspired, to create and the potential to change lives. Many children, families and adults no longer have the opportunity to spend time in nature and to experience the many benefits it can bring. It is our mission to provide the opportunity and the reason to spend time in the natural world helping everyone to learn to enjoy and respect nature.
Tom Bardon
The first commercially available Outdoor Learning Skills Progression framework. Established in 2018, there are hundreds of practitioners following the WILD Passport programme all over the world; evidencing the impact of their work, offering pathways of progression to their learners and ensuring their efforts are sustainable by providing cost effective evidence of their outcomes to leadership teams.
Thirty years ago I decided never to do a days work I did not enjoy, I wanted to use mind, body and soul in my work and be close to nature. Whilst working for the National Trust in conservation forestry I was introduced to various traditional woodland crafts as we used the trees we felled to make styles, fences and bridges. In the evenings I worked with the wood and soon making wooden bowls and spoons became a passion bordering on obsession.
Robin Wood MBE
"I highly recommend Robin's range of wood carving tools. I exclusively use Robin's carving axe on all our craft courses as they are ideal for both beginners and experienced users. Robin is a wealth of knowledge on many areas of woods, crafts and their related history and has been a fantastic source of advice and inspiration." Jamie Dakota
KindleWoods CIC is a woodland social enterprise based in North Yorkshire. We are made up of an extraordinary team of ordinary folk, working together to find creative, practical ways to tackle the root causes of our major social and environmental challenges.
We like to think big and get to the heart of an issue.
Katie Rees
The Bushcraft Journal is an online magazine working closely with many of the world’s leading outdoor guides and survival experts bringing you avariety of first-hand knowledge based skills, step by step guides, how-to's, hints and tips, and wonderful stories of travel and adventure from many different continents.
Our writers and contributors have spent many years honing these skills to a very high level in the countries they live, but have spent many weeks at a time living, learning and working closely withcultures around the world who still use these ‘Bushcraft’ skills that have been used for thousands of years.
The goal of The Bushcraft Journal is to cover all you need to enhance your journey in the natural world so you will be able to immerse yourself safely and comfortably in it for longer periods of time, regardless of your age or skill level or global location.
With the right skills and a better understanding you need less equipment making being outdoors a far better experience as you won’t be carrying a big heavy bag full of kit you never use, but it enables you to enjoy living and working in harmony will the natural world!