Moving through the woods, what you need to know.

By Ranger W.

It takes 62 days (or more for us recycles) to learn the Ranger School standard for moving through the woods.  Ranger students spend many days “patrolling” through the woods, mountains, and swamps of the southeastern US.  For those who think they might need to move through some out-of-town terrain in a shorter period of time than it would take to enlist in the Army and go to Ranger School, I have decided to list some of the highlights here.

Proper maps.  As I mentioned in a previous article, obtain MAPS THAT SHOW TERRAIN FEATURES!  Regardless what map you will be using to bug out or just to move through some scrub brush behind your house foraging for mushrooms, you should orient your map to your direction of travel.  What this means is if you are walking straight south turn your map upside down (the top of the map is always north).   This will help with terrain association.

Terrain association. This is a method of assisting your navigation through the woods if you don’t have a compass, and once you become proficient this is much faster and easier. Terrain association means not relying on counting out meters, yards, miles, kilometers, or any other metric that could be easily messed up if covering uneven terrain. Instead of trying to judge how far you have traveled, or need to, look at your map and create way-points. This allows you to think like this: “straight south I have to cross two streams, then there will be a major road intersection on my right, then passing the pond on my left will put me right in front of my well-fortified doomsday bunker.” One key to terrain association is making a backstop for yourself, for example: “if I reach the huge canyon on the west side of my map then I have gone too far.”

Dead reckoning. Determining your position on the earth’s surface using terrain features is rather difficult if walking through a desert, a snow covered barren wasteland, or a densely vegetated forest. Sometimes you might have to dead reckon (using your handy dandy watch compass you ordered from Amazon last year and forgot to take out of the package until the zombies were already at your door). Dead reckoning means pointing your compass straight to the direction you need to go then start walking, rechecking your direction every so often.  If you are stranded in the desert I feel bad for you (even the Army abandoned the Desert Phase of Ranger School in the early 90s). But if you are walking through the woods it can be hard if you walk directly into a tree every 20 feet. So when you point your azimuth (magnetic north direction you plan to go), aim at a huge tree or other identifiable mark, stone, log, cliff, road, and then put your compass in your pocket and start hoofing. Once you reach that marker repeat this step.  Here’s a tip, if you are using trees as a reference point every 200 meters or so, alternate stopping at the left and right side of the tree before re-shooting your azimuth.

SLLS halt. Based on the threats to your movement it might be useful to conduct a SLLS halt every so often. This stands for Stop, Look, Listen, Smell.  Literally do it.  Every so often stop moving, take a knee, remove your hat, remove your goggles, put down any of your kit that is rattling or making noise and just survey your surroundings.  Even if there isn’t a walking zombie sneaking up on you there could be signs of humans you might want to know about.  Can you hear cars driving a couple hundred meters to your left? Is there running water to your south where you can fill your canteens?  It is important to stop movement to do this because with your heartbeat pounding in your ears, hard breathing, the sound of your water sloshing, and your ruck sack straps creaking because your ruck is overweight it becomes increasingly difficult to get a sense of your surroundings.

Natural Lines of Drift.  Simple, stay away from them.  Humans and animals are very similar in not liking to walk on inclines, either uphill or sideways along a ridge.  That’s exactly why you should use the road less traveled.   The Golden Horde will be pouring out of the cities onto highways and will follow the easy terrain.  No one that is hungry, homeless, or desperate will walk up a steep hill if they can avoid it.  Also if you really want to avoid the looting pillagers walk through a swamp, I promise you will immediately become a hard target if someone has to chase you through knee deep sludge.

Military crest.  Never walk up the spine of a ridge or hill.  In light or dark you can then be seen as a silhouette.  Walk 5 meters or so downhill of the crest so that you are not backlit and seen by that guy from work that says his plan for SHTF is to “come take your stuff”.

Patrol Base.  This is merely a military word for camp site.  There are many great methods for ensuring your security when forced to do an overnight in the wilderness.  Here is the most important thing to remember when selecting a camp site: “This place sucks, let’s live here”.  When determining where you will stop and rest make sure it is not a perfect comfortable place that a predator would want to come find on his own.  Think of camping out in a rocky cluster on the side of a steep hill. The soft soil meadow right beside the creek with perfectly dry ground and plenty of firewood is probably not the best place to hide from other people doing the same thing as you, but only with a more fluid moral compass.

Ranger W. is a frequent contributor to Prepper-Resources.com.  Read some more of his works here, here and here.  He attended Ranger school and graduated in class 10 of 20XX.