American Frontier — Making Your Bed With Dead Leaves?

Watching this video might make you appreciate your mattress and sleeping bag a little more… it certainly did so for me.

In it, Townsends examines the “debris bed” method of insulating yourself from cold, wet ground when you’re sleeping out in the boonies.

The beginning, after rigging a tarp as a roof, is to amass leaves to lie upon. Then you spread out your blanket in such a way that you can wrap it around yourself to create multiple layers atop and below your body.

I had to smile ruefully when he laid back in the dead wet leaves with not much blanket between him and them, saying, “We can slide back and just make some very fine adjustments here in order to get… comfortable.”

I can certainly understand his hesitation in uttering “comfortable.” He sure doesn’t look it.

After this, we learn how to wear a blanket as a shawl or coat. Not that it’s complicated… but it’s still useful info.

And there’s also a demo of a tumpline for transporting your bedroll, blanket, or whatever — when you’re not wearing it.

I really like simple stuff that works… but I confess I’m glad my life is a little more complicated than this. I’m over sleeping in wet leaves and pretending to like it.

Enjoy!

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.