Top Five Useful Knots for camping, survival, hiking, and more

Hey everybody, this is Craig Cottle, the director of Nature Alliance School, and today what I wanted to show you was about five of my favorite knots for camping and survival usefulness. So if this is what looks like the best knot that you know how to tie, you'll probably find something in here you can use. And if you're already a seasoned outdoorsman, then maybe the way I do it will help you do it as well. So glad you joined us. The first knot I'm going to show you how to do is called a half hitch, and the most common use that people seem to use a half hitch for is sitting up a ridge line or something of this nature. So I'm going to bring the camera in really close and I'll show you exactly what I did right here. So the end that you're working from that's holding the load, which is basically another tree in this case, is called the standing end, and the end that you're working with, this end, is called the working end. And so I'm going to take the working end around my tree, pull that taut, place it under the standing end and down through that hole and pull that through. Now again, if I just let go, that's going to fall apart. So what I do is I do the same thing again, and then it's going to hold itself. That's two half hitches. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two half hitches with a bite because this is really important. So if I want to do two half hitches with a bite, I do the same thing for the first one. Just put it down through the hole. And then when I bring this one up and over, stick down through the hole, instead of using the working end all the way through, I just make a loop out of that, stick it through the hole and then cinch it up that way. And in that manner, all I've got to, this is tight, but all I've got to do to pull it loose is just to pull that working end and now it's loose. The next one I want to show you how to do is called a fisherman's knot, and it is more often than not used for combining two pieces of string cordage rope together. So I'm going to use an OD piece and a fluorescent orange piece so you can see, and it makes it a little bit easier for you to see which rope is doing what. First thing you want to do is you want to take your two pieces of cordage and you want to lay them down next to each other parallel. And then you want to take one end of one of them and double it back. So basically, what's right here under my thumb is a loop. And once I get that doubled back, I will take that piece and wrap it around both pieces. Wrap it around both pieces again so I have that right there. And then I take that end and put it back through the loop and I cinch that down. So basically I have a knot that is sitting and sliding on top of the orange piece. Okay, so that slides rather easily. Now I do the same exact thing over here. Double that back on top. I make a loop with the working end. I make another loop with the working end all the way around. You'll have to forgive me, my hands are cold. It's cold out here. Put that back through that loop and cinch that down. Make that pretty. Now I have a knot on this side. I have a knot on this side that slides on the green. I have a knot on this side that slides on the orange. And so I just pull those together. Once I pull those together and pull that tight, I have a very, very good bind between these two pieces of cordage. You can either cut this off. I don't recommend that. You can also tie it down so that the extra is hanging off. That's what a lot of climbers do for safety. But for our purposes, we just leave it like that for survival and camping. The next knot I'm going to show you is called a prusik. It's P-R-U-S-I-K. A prusik knot is a real useful knot if you have a ridge line or a taut line or something of this nature and you want to tie another rope to it such that it'll stay tight and also loosen whenever you want it to be. So that's what we're going to show you next. So best thing to do when you're doing a prusik knot is to have a diameter rope of one size like this one and then have the next one smaller and it'll work better. But in this case, I've got the same size. It's going to work. It's just not going to work as good. So I lay my loop on top of my rope and I bring my other rope around and pull it through. Okay? So once I do that, I'm going to... The thing you want to check for is see if you've got two parallel lines, that these are not crossed over one another inside that loop. So now I do the same thing again, which is I pull the other end back through the center of that loop and pull all that through. Now again, I want to make sure here that everything is not crossed over itself inside the knot. So you'll see once I get that straightened up and you're looking down on your knot, you can look underneath, see all the lines are parallel, they're not crossed. See all the lines are parallel, they're not crossed. That's what you're looking for. So when you cinch this up, it's going to look just like that. All parallel lines. Now to make this even better, let's do that again. So I pull this back up through the center of my loop and my hands are cold so I'm having a little bit of trouble, but you just want to make sure again that all those lines are parallel. So you can see parallel on this side, everything's parallel on that side, nothing's crossing up. Cinch all this together, pull. Now what's cool about this knot is that this slides really easy, but once I get it really cinched, and again this is where it doesn't work as great with two ropes that are of the same diameter. Pull this really tight, then that does not slide along that rope. It hangs onto it. That's why I mean you need to have two ropes of different diameter. Now it's all tight on there and it won't slide, particularly if this rope is of larger diameter. All right, so the next knot I'm going to show you is what's most commonly referred to as a trucker's hitch. I usually refer to it as a canoeman's hitch because I'm a canoeman and not a trucker. So what you can't see that's off camera up here, maybe you can't, no you can't see it, is this is tied to a tree and let's assume that that's tied to one side of a load or that's tied to the end of a canoe and we want to pull this really tight and cinch it down incredibly hard. So basically what we're going to do is we're going to create a pulley system along the rope. And so we take our rope, our cordage, our paracord, whatever it might be, and we wrap it around another portion that we want to tie off to. So basically all we do is we take the rope that we have in front of us and we double it back on itself. Now pull from the end that you're on, where you're pulling from, pull that back through your loop. I'll do that again. So there's the end that's tied to my canoe or whatever load that I want. I create a loop and then basically in this situation, I pull from this end, I pull that back through and create a loop. If you do this right, when you send your other rope back through and start to cinch it down, this loop that you created in the rope will not collapse. However, if you pulled from here, it will collapse. So all I do here, pull tight, pinch it off, tie my half hitch with a bite that we looked at before. And I've got a really tight pulley system that I've created with just one rope. To get it undone, pull it off and then just pull your knot out. You're ready to go. Cool. I'm going to show you one more and that's called the clove hitch. And these are again, four or five knots that I really use a lot in survival and camping. And this has probably prompted me to do another video of 101 useful knots like I've got for paracord and bandanas. But anyway, clove hitch, real simple. Basically take your rope, make a loop, take another end of the rope, make another loop. And the second loop, from my perspective, looking at it, I put it in behind the other one. And so I've got those two loops and I pull this taut. This is what's called a clove hitch. So basically what you'll see is you'll see that the knot gets tied basically upon itself. And then you can use this as a, this will not slide along that real easily. Pull this tight and it's tied into that rope. And so I use this for trapping a lot. I can put pegs when I put up the teepee, put pegs in and tie the pegs down and help keep the teepee taut onto the poles and any number of things that use a clove hitch, tie a bag off with it. It's real simple. So I used to use this a lot in tying feed sacks. So there you go with five knots that I like to utilize in survival and camping situations. So I appreciate your patience with me with my cold hands. Now that I've got those done, I'm going to go back to the house and get my hands warmed up. Those are five useful knots for survival and camping, any number of uses. I use basically every one of those on the farm all the time. Tying down loads of hay, tying up feed sacks, any number of things, they're real useful knots. So if you liked them, please subscribe to our channel, give us a like, give us a thumbs up here on YouTube, share it on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, wherever it is that you do social media. And we appreciate you. Come on, join in. Let's learn together.