What FeralSkills Is and Isn’t

There’s no shortage of places to learn about bushcraft. YouTube is overflowing. Forums and Facebook groups have decades of accumulated knowledge. School operators have their own calendars. Big gatherings have their own websites.

What didn’t exist was one place where you could search across all of that, by skill, by region, by format — and pull up the actual in-person classes happening near you in the next 90 days.

That’s what FeralSkills is.

The cross-tribe bet

The self-reliance community isn’t one tribe. It’s a constellation:

• The bushcraft folks studying Mors Kochanski and Dave Canterbury
• The homesteaders pressure-canning and raising meat birds
• The preppers building three-week pantries and ham licenses
• The primitive-skills practitioners knapping flint and tanning hides
• The foragers cataloging mushrooms and wild edibles
• The wilderness medicine students chasing WFR and WFA credentials
• The urban survivalists planning evacuation routes

These communities overlap massively. The person who takes a bushcraft weekend in October is often the same person who takes a wilderness medicine refresher in March and a foraging walk in May.

FeralSkills exists for that person. We don’t pick a tribe. We aggregate everyone teaching the broader self-reliance arc.

What we cover

The directory covers in-person:

• Classes — single-day or short instructional sessions
• Workshops — hands-on training, usually 1–2 days
• Multi-day intensives — 3–7 day immersive courses
• Gatherings — community events with multiple instructors and classes
• Expos — vendor shows with limited classes
• Certification courses — WFR, WFA, ham radio licensing, etc.
• Semester / long-form programs — Jack Mountain Bushcraft, Trackers Earth, etc.

Plus online programs flagged distinctly, so they don’t crowd the in-person listings.

What we don’t do

We don’t:

• Charge schools to list events
• Take a cut of registration fees
• Sell subscriber data
• Run paid placement that affects directory order
• Cover gear reviews disguised as ranking

See How We Make Money for the full sustainability story.

What’s coming

The directory is the foundation. On top of it we’re building:

• A weekly Friday newsletter with classes happening that week, segmented by skill interest
• Regional content — “Texas skills weekly,” “Pacific Northwest classes” — anchored on real events
• Editorial: school spotlights, instructor interviews, gear deep-dives
• Eventually: tools for schools (registration, student communication) — always optional

If you teach this stuff, submit your classes. If you take it, subscribe to the newsletter and you’ll know what’s happening near you.

Welcome to the project.