Staff
George Hedgepeth, Head Instructor
George Hedgepeth has been passionately interested in wilderness living, primitive culture and skills, and useful plants since he was a child. His family in Michigan and Alabama taught him about chasing fish and picking greens and blackberries. He read authors like Jean George, Scott O'Dell, Richard Graves, Euell Gibbons and Larry Dean Olsen voraciously, and spent as much time as he could developing the skills he found in their books.
While in college, he found an opportunity to teach some of these skills while working on archaeological digs. This spurred him to develop his abilities further, and in 1992 he started the
Great Lakes Primitives, a group that focused on pre-iron technologies. He also started leading groups into wild areas for week-long survival training with Darryl Patton. All in all, George has taught and studied wild plants, flint knapping, survival, and primitive life ways in environments as diverse as southern swamps, the north woods, high and low desert areas, North Atlantic Islands, and the Alaska coast.
George is also a high school teacher, working in a program for at-risk youth near Flint Michigan since 1992. He teaches social studies and survival skills programs for students between 14 and 19. He works with adult groups as well, presenting women in the outdoors programs sponsored by several groups.
Ricci Williams, Program Director
Bio and photo coming soon!
Do you have your own tip to share?
Send an email to Georgehedgepeth(at)hotmail(dot)com
Enjoy reading wilderness survival tips?
Wilderness Way magazine has a great page of reader tips HERE.
Briar Patch Outdoors
219 Holmes Street
Durand MI 48429
(989) 288-0168
Learn about backwoods-living, pioneer skills, survival, subsistence hunting, historical trekking, living history, experimental archeology, period living skills, wilderness survival skills, Primitive Survival Skills, Stone Age Technology, Workshops and Classes, Anthropology, Archeology, Artifact Replication,
stone age, stone-age skills, earth skills, native technology, ancient skills, wilderness survival training, outdoors, hide tanning, braintan, brain tanning, nature, awareness, tracking,
medicinal plants, edible plants, prehistoric skills, cordage, fire by friction, kayaking, atlatl making and throwing, knifemaking, arrow, bow, flintknapping, dart, baskets, stone tools, aboriginal skills, traditional, workshops, classes, old ways,
Country Living, Voluntary Simplicity, Simple Living, Homesteading, survival product reviews, knife reviews, back to basics, alternative medicine, wild foraging.