The first goal of any outdoorsman is to become self-sufficient. You want to handle what I call your care and feeding without relying on anyone else.
That means feeding yourself, clothing yourself, setting up your gear, drying out, warming up, and managing the basic outdoor skills your environment demands. Until you can do all of that, you’re a drag on your team.
But once you achieve self-sufficiency, don’t stop there. Knowing why self-sufficiency is important for hunting is only the first step toward what separates good hunting partners from great ones.
Why Self-Sufficiency Is Important for Hunting Partnerships
Why self-sufficiency is important for hunting partnerships comes down to bandwidth. Without it, you have no capacity to help the team. All your energy goes to taking care of yourself.
Picture a team of three where everyone is self-sufficient. Each person manages their own needs without much effort. That alone is a strong starting point.
The real strength comes when each hunter can set personal needs aside and look up and out at the team.
How to Be Self-Sufficient for Hunting
Before you can take care of anyone else, you have to handle yourself in the field. The basic skills of self-sufficiency include:
- Feeding yourself with the calories your body needs
- Layering and managing your clothing for the conditions
- Setting up shelter and your sleep system without help
- Drying out wet gear after a tough day
- Warming up after exposure to cold
- Reading weather and terrain to make smart decisions
These skills sound simple, but they take real time in the field to master. Most new hunters underestimate how much energy goes into the basics.
Once you master how to be self-sufficient for hunting, you free up the mental and physical bandwidth to look outside of yourself.
The Importance of Self-Sufficiency in Hunting Goes Beyond You
The importance of self-sufficiency in hunting becomes clear when each team member starts looking out for the others instead of only themselves. Once everyone on the team can manage their own care and feeding, the partnership starts to function at a higher level. You can begin watching your buddy:
- Is he hydrating?
- When was the last time he ate?
- Is he showing signs of altitude sickness?
Those questions build real strength within a team. They turn three individuals into a unit capable of handling more than any one hunter could alone.
When Roles Reverse in the Field
Not every adventure goes smoothly. I’ve had altitude sickness in the field. I’ve had partners get sick on hunts.
When that happens, taking care of yourself becomes secondary to taking care of them. The team that can absorb one person’s bad day finishes the hunt, which is the deepest reason why self-sufficiency is important for hunting.
That kind of partnership doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from each hunter putting in the work to become self-sufficient first, then making the deliberate choice to look out for the team.
Why Self-Sufficiency Is Important for Hunting: Final Thoughts
The answer to why self-sufficiency is important for hunting comes down to this: you can’t help anyone in the field until you can help yourself. Self-sufficiency is the price of entry.
But don’t stop at self-sufficiency. The hunters who achieve great goals are the ones who took the next step:
- Master your own care and feeding
- Free up your bandwidth to watch your partners
- Be ready to take care of them when they need it
- Trust them to take care of you when you need it
When you and your hunting partner can take care of each other, you can pull off hunts most teams couldn’t.
by John Barklow, a Special Operations Survival Instructor and consultant who has spent decades teaching military personnel and civilians survival techniques in extreme environments.
