Trapper Tom

Survivalist Tom Brown III says you can commune with the Earth without throwing away your cell phone.

by Will Stone

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Published: Jun 23, 2010

Emily Wilson SMOKE BOMB: Survivalist Tom Brown III talks about his skills out in the wild and how to get back to our collective roots.

[ when nature calls ]

Getting back to nature becomes badass when a guy dubbed T3 holds the key to survival via a lethal throwing stick called an Addle Addle. Founder of the Primitive Arts Collective, a school for basic technology and wilderness survival, Tom Brown III is a hardcore advocate of sustainable living, a stance cultivated during years of roving wooded expanses and mastering the ancient throwing arts (we’re talking tomahawks here). His lecture this week will plunge us into to his lifestyle — what Brown deems the height of reliable, efficient technology — and challenge the assumptions that we can’t have our iPods and take them into the woods, too.

City Paper: How would you sum up what you do?

Tom Brown: I basically teach all aspects of primitive living, what I call the primitive arts, because you are creating functional art that our ancestors used to survive for hundreds of years. And, when you look at our modern society, which has really only been around the last 200 years, the skills I teach were used far longer and more effectively. The tools are perfected; it’s technology that can’t be improved upon. Nowadays, our technology is constantly being updated and reworked.
I also teach components of wilderness survival, a word that I really hate and try not to use because when people hear it they automatically think that I have a bunker stockpiled with guns and food. Or, they think of the show Survivor, which is a bunch of people in a place where it is usually incredibly easy to live off the land. That’s why I like to use the term primitive living and arts.

CP: What skills do you teach?  

TB: Basically, as humans we require four things when we’re in the woods: shelter, water, fire and food. Oftentimes, they’re referred to as the rule of threes. In many cases, you can die in as little as three hours without shelter. You can go about three days without water. You can only make it about three weeks without food. I basically train people how to enter the woods with nothing and be able to make tools, build a shelter, locate viable water sources and develop hunting techniques.

CP: When you say “nothing,” are you literally walking into the woods with nothing but the clothes on your back?

TB: Depending on the area, sometimes I’ll have people wear several layers, sometimes a small backpack. Of course, I have a first-aid kit and I’ll have them bring a gallon of water. We have so polluted all our fresh water in this world that oftentimes it’s hard to find a viable water source. Besides those basics, though, I really do try to keep it as hardcore as possible. But I’m all about teaching and I want to make sure people are in good enough shape to learn.

But I also teach advanced classes where we have almost no tools and are essentially living off the land. Now, there’s still a vast ocean between knowledge and experience. For my advanced student, they may very well have applied these types of skills,  but there is a whole logistical component to being out in the woods, in a survival situation.

CP: So how do you go about finding these four necessities when you guys enter the woods?

TB: Shelter is the first on the list so we start off by looking for a suitable place. Building a primitive shelter is a lot like real estate — it’s location, location, location. You want to be high and dry. You also look for things like close water sources.

Oftentimes, in these advanced classes, we break up into small groups: One group will go look for water, another will gather firewood, another will do a bit of hunting with something called a throwing stick, which is pretty much what it sounds like. We would then all gather together and start building debris huts from barks, leaves and sticks. But it’s basically all about time management and conservation of energy. By the end of the day, hopefully, our shelter is built and we maybe cooking some animals. Also, that first night, we set about building primitive traps because that way we can be hunting in multiple locations at once. That’s a very rough rundown of what we do. I like to do those advanced classes for about 10 days.  

CP: Do you do this all over the country?

TB:  Yes, I’m traveling all the time. It’s good to go to people so you can be with them in their environment. Luckily, I am my school. I can teach in people’s garages, backyards, church basements, wherever. I’m not picky. … Right now, I’m just enjoying traveling around.

CP: What was it like growing up at your father’s Tracker School?

TB: Well, my first tracker school class was when I was about 6 months old and I grew up learning the stuff. … Once I finished up school, I spent the next five years or so wandering the country, practicing survival and primitive living. Doing that, I learned another component, which I teach, called urban/suburban survival. I also work with an organization that deals with disaster preparedness and surviving in metropolitan areas, living off the land so to speak.

CP: What’d you do? Where’d you go?

TB:  A did a lot of hitchhiking around. I also walked quite a bit. I walked from Richmond, Va., to Tampa, Fla. … I also spent several years on and off in Vermont practicing the art of winter survival — that was brutal. … Most of the time I didn’t really have much on me — sometimes a sleeping bag or tent, but I really didn’t have the need for it. This is going to sound cheesy, but when you surrender to the earth, the earth will take care of you. Humans have been living off of the land far longer than we have been living in square houses and using MacBooks. We are amazing at adapting. That’s why we have been able to spread from north to south.

CP: What was the longest period that you were on your own during that time?

TB: The longest was about six months. Sometimes, I would walk into town because I wanted a slice of pizza and then run away back into the woods. Occasionally, I’d meet up with people. Being alone in the woods is great, but after a while, to reference a Tom Hanks movie, you start talking to trees and rocks. Honestly, that’s another reason why our ancestors were so good at living, was because they were in groups.

CP: What are some of the riskier situations you’ve been in when practicing this primitive survival on your own?

TB: There have been a couple times I have injured myself seriously, gotten some bad cuts. And, I’ve gotten worried. There was one time, when I was in Alabama, I must have not boiled the water well enough and luckily I was only five miles from a town. We take so many things for granted these days. But when you get the runs in the woods without medicine or people, you could be dead quick. Or even just a cut. That’s why I enjoy reading journals of early explorers and covered wagon people. You read that, you know, Jim Bob the other day got a cut. And then, two week later, they’re sawing off his arm while he is biting down on a wooden spoon.

CP: You’re said to be a master of the throwing arts. What are the throwing arts?

TB:  I consider the throwing arts any primitive weapon where you use your arms to provide the energy. For example, with a bow and arrow, you are using your arm, but the wood and string are still propelling the arrow. What I consider throwing is about 28 or so variations on the throwing stick: slings, addle addles, another tool, which looks like a lacrosse stick, tomahawks, knives, anything like that. It’s always been something I’ve been really into. Some of my earliest memories are practicing throwing tomahawks. It’s an absolute art form. An effective hunter with those tools must be good not only at target range, but when you’re extremely close range to an animal, close tracking, stalking, camouflage. You have to be proficient at all of it. It’s always been something I’ve been extremely passionate about. I hate using the word master. But out of all my skills, these are the one I have definitely taken to the highest level.

CP: What would separate a middling thrower from a more skilled one?

TB: Well, first, the ability to hunt larger animals. But you know, everyone has this misconception about animals that, because they’re smaller than us, they’re weak. Numerous times I have seen a squirrel fall off a power line 30 feet high and get up fine. Animals are extremely tough. I consider being masterful when it’s instinctive. You have to achieve this mental state where there is no thought, you just act and react. One thing I’ve found with throwing weapons: If you have to think about how you are going to throw the stick just that little hesitation is enough to give your position away or miss that opportunity. To be truly skilled, you don’t aim anymore, you just kind of do. I have a weeklong class in which all we do is throw.

CP: Have you ever had a dangerous encounter with a wild animal when hunting like this?

TB: It has actually happened a couple times — don’t laugh at me — but, it always happens with geese. They are violent creatures. Actually, one time I threw a stick at one’s head and it shook it off and started attacking me, so badly, that I had to climb up a tree until it calmed down, and I managed to get a better shot on it. Once, I was actually stalked by a mountain lion. That was an eerie feeling.

CP: Uh, what happened? How did you know?

TB:  Well, I was at a friend’s cabin in Washington state and woke up at 5:30 with him. There was a creek down at the bottom of the hill. One thing I really enjoy is going out in the woods and sitting silently by myself. When you do that, the woods kind of reveal themselves to you. So, I was just sitting there and kept having this feeling that I was being watched. Finally, I got up and walked up to the cabin. And about an hour later, I went out and found right in the mud, next to my footprints: mountain lion tracks.

CP: When you were talking about urban survival before. Are you also talking about living off the land in cities like Philly?

TB: Yeah, sure. Along with teaching disaster preparedness, I also teach other methods for gathering and building shelters. I have spent time in communities that have literally built — with stuff they have scavenged — real buildings. I really believe in teaching principles because, once you have those down, you can take them and apply them anywhere. These primitive skills are really universal. From an archeological standpoint, these have been used all over the world. For example, I teach trap called the paiute trap, named after the Native Americans, that literally appears on cave walls in France. These skills were universal. Oftentimes, they were identical or only slight variations across the world. People always say, “It’s amazing we invented the computer.” But I think it’s amazing that one of our ancestors figured out how to shave two sticks, rub them together and create fire. That’s really amazing.

CP: How do you start a fire?

TB: I teach about 20 different primitive fire-making techniques. They all are based off friction. The bow drill and hand drill are found all throughout the world. Other ones, like the fire plow — you know, the thing that Tom Hanks demonstrated very poorly in Castaway — that was for a tropical island.
I always start teaching the bow drill because you can make a bow drill out of any trees. And you can get a bow drill to work nearly 100 percent of the time. For instance, last week I taught a group of 9- to 10-year-olds for a whole week, and, by the end, most were able to create fire.

CP: So, what will you be talking about in Philly?

TB:  The basic gist of my talk is going to be how, starting with our ancestors, we were entirely connected with the things in our lives on a daily basis. Every tool they made had an extreme connection to the land. Starting from there, I’ll look at the ways, even in our modern society, this spirit has been kept alive. There are still groups that crave that connection and, to some extent, there has been a resurgence of that feeling. For example, the DIY people who are increasingly building their houses. But, of course, a lot of people don’t have that connection these days, and I believe many people feel this relationship to the land and to the tools of the land is lacking in their lives.
Along those lines, I’ll talk about primitive technology, I call it functional art. What’s happening these days is that people don’t see the land so they don’t worry about the strip mining or coal mining. Because we get things in neat packages, we don’t see how the food is treated what happens to it. The average school child these days really doesn’t realize that the package of meat their parents buy at the store comes from a cow. It’s pretty sad. There’s a great Native American chief that said, “the farther a man is removed from his soil, the less respect he has for living, growing things, and in turn the less respect he has for himself.” That’s in a very brief nutshell what I’m thinking about with this talk, and why I really enjoy what I do.

CP:  Will you be demonstrating any of these skills at the talk?

TB: Yeah, I have some friends in the area who’ll bring in their tools, as well. I’ll bring a bow drill, some throwing sticks and some of the other tools I mentioned.

CP: Your talk includes the word “sustainability,” a word that is used pretty loosely these days. What’s your philosophy on eco-friendly products and such becoming more mainstream?

TB:  What I boil it down to is research. Obviously with any trend, there  are people out there who are going to capitalize on it. If you look at some of these brands of organic that were once small companies, but are now owned by corporations like Kraft. It’s just all about research. That’s actually why I love the internet: It is such a valuable research tool.

CP: So you do use modern technology?

TB: Yeah, you know, I have a laptop; I’m talking to you on a smart phone. I have a house and two children. I think my father said it best when he opened the Tracker School. The first things he did was take off his buckskin clothing, cut his super long hair, shaved his beard, because my goal as well as his goal, is to reach as many people as possible. It’s true that if you look like some kind of freak to people, you’re not going to reach as many people. While I’m perfectly capable of picking up my family and moving to the woods somewhere, I’m not going to do that because I’d be running away. I have a certain skill set and I am more valuable here sharing it with people. By running away, it would be acting selfish in a way. I want to show people how to lead a life in society and still have a connection to the natural world.

(will.stone@citypaper.net)

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