Tom Sega has a Zoom sit-down conversation with Dave Canterbury, wilderness expert, outdoor survivalist, and a New York Times best-selling author on this week’s episode of Leader of the Pack, a podcast by Duluth Pack. Dave shares his vast range of experiences, from wrangling alligators to starting his own original YouTube channel and following. Dave also touches on his brand and company – Pathfinder Survival and Self Reliance Outdoors.   

Dave Canterbury’s Background  

Tom starts the conversation by asking Dave about his upbringing and his interest in the outdoor survival lifestyle. Dave says that he was born and raised in Indiana and spent a large amount of his childhood outdoors. He mentions that his parents were divorced at a young age, and he would split time between households as a child. Dave notes that his biological father was an adventure seeker and adrenaline junkie who enjoyed things like skydiving and paragliding. While his stepfather was more of a woodsman who enjoyed hunting, fishing, trapping animals, and living off the land. Dave says that he spent a large portion of his childhood outdoors between his fathers. Dave says he was fascinated with reptiles from a young age, so he turned this passion into a reality by moving down to Florida to work on a reptile farm working with venomous and non-venomous reptiles. Dave goes on to say, “I have spent a lot of time in the swamps of Florida in the water, around the water, catching reptiles every night with flashlights, buckets, pillowcases. I’d be up to my neck in water stepping on snapping turtles and tripping over alligators just trying to catch reptiles to make money.” After all this, Dave went on to work with a commercial fisherman who needed someone who was skilled in diving. This fisherman knew that many fish, especially grouper, would hang out around shipwrecks, so he required Dave to dive down and shoot explosives at the shipwrecks to blow the fish into the fisherman’s surrounding nets. This proved to be very profitable for Dave and the fisherman as they were able to catch huge numbers of fish.   

YouTube and Pathfinder Survival  

Dave recalls spending multiple days in the forest attempting to live off the land. Around this time, he says his interest shifted to primitive archery, which is essentially shooting and hunting with homemade bow and arrows. This process includes ‘flintknapping,’ which uses a piece of flint to make the head of the arrow that impales the target. Dave says, one day, he was flint knapping in his kitchen when his brother-in-law walked in and said that he should be putting this sort of stuff on YouTube because people would be really interested in seeing how this process works. This was in 2007 when YouTube was just getting started, and not many people knew about the video platform company. From this point on, Dave began to do research into the platform and its possibilities and decided to start uploading educational videos. The videos Dave uploaded to YouTube included tutorials of flintknapping, creating survival kits, along with much more educational survival content. His videos were a massive hit, with millions of people watching them. There were also a large number of people that were very interested in the products he was creating. This was when Dave started selling some of the things he made in his videos, which also became a huge success. Since Dave had so many invested viewers, this is when he started his own business, Pathfinder Survival.  

5 C’s of Survivability   

Tom switches gears by asking Dave about the ‘5 C’s of Survival’. Dave frequently teaches these ‘5 C’s’ to audiences at outdoor trade shows and his survival camps. He goes on to explain that he is a believer in keeping things extremely simplistic in order to understand and learn a given skill. He references his engineering background as the driving force behind this acronym. He says the question he tries to answer is, “What is the most important input variable, and how can you limit variation within those inputs to get the same output every time?” After he made it simple to understand and eliminated the variation of the inputs, he came up with the acronym of the 5 C’s. Dave goes on to list the 5 C’s, which he says include, “Cutting tools, combustion devices, cover from elements, containers for food, and cordage to tie and bind.” Dave says that this concept dates back to the Otzi the Iceman from 3,500 years ago. Dave explains how this man died on a hike and was mummified by the ice, along with all of the tools he had with him. Dave says he was found with a knife and flint, multiple layers acting as cover elements. He also had combustion devices in the flint and iron pyrite to effectively make fires. Along with this, he carried his birch wood and personal belongings in containers such as backpacks. And for cordage, he had rawhide and plant material that were woven together. So Otzi the Iceman had all five items, along with a bow and arrow, which he believed was necessary for survival. Dave frequently references Otzi the Iceman as a learning tool for his students on how to be prepared when going into the wilderness.   

Dave’s Favorite Part of the Outdoors  

Out of all the things that Dave enjoys outdoors, his favorite is simply walking through the woods. Dave says, “I like to just walk through the woods and see what I can see. What animals can I see, what flowers can I see, which ones can I identify on sight, what trees can I see and identify. I like to go up to bodies of water to see if there are any reptiles or what is living in the water – really just anything that gets me outdoors in nature.” Tom then asks Dave about any life and death scenarios he has encountered in the woods. Dave says it is vital to distinguish between life and death to him vs. someone else. He goes on to casually mention, “I mean, I have come across actual cobras in the wild, but instead of being afraid for my life, I just caught the thing.” He says the most dangerous situation he ever found himself in was while he was a commercial fisherman. Dave says that his boat broke down in a very remote area of the water, and they were stuck out at sea for three days with really nothing to eat and no way to cook. The conversation then shifts to the topic of mindset. Dave talks about how you can’t just tell someone what they are going to do in an emergency; the only way to find that out is to be put into an actual emergency situation. Dave goes on to say the Pathfinder school is all about gaining that ‘knowledge of self’ so you know how to process information and keep your composure in an emergency situation.  

It was such a pleasure to listen to Dave Canterbury share all of his experiences and knowledge about the outdoors and survival with us. It was fascinating to hear all of what he has done that the average individual would consider downright wild. Dave has done everything from wrangling reptiles in Florida, to blowing up old shipwrecks for commercial fishermen, and so much more. Thank you, Dave, for sharing your story with us at Duluth Pack!