The Other 'Style.'

Today the Dojo in which I found myself is familiar terriroty, the wilderness, tracking a giant elk with my friend and Aikido Teacher.
We ended up driving aimlessly, ending up in the middle of the woods hiking down a remote trail following signs of this elk, which eventually lead us to signs of a small bobcat that had just caught a rabbit.
Further down, now off any recognizable trail, we found ourselves in an area of high traffic for Deer, then we spotted Bear sign, tracking further, we came to an opening, signs of the Bear everywhere, the leg of a Deer lay to our right, bones crushed as it had sought the marrow just moments before our arrival.
Signs showed it was just twenty feet ahead of us, we decided to turn back, keeping to the higher points as we retraced our steps, constantly aware the Bear could come up behind us as we moved.

We played around with some rocks in the area, I grabbed a smaller rock to practice shaping, which did not go so well, as my friend explained the rocks in the area were not good for this sort of thing.
The best rocks being toward Plummer Idaho, even still, he did point out that the smaller rocks or shaping into smaller rocks for spears and arrowheads.

We practiced judging the size of an animal by the tracks, direction was not hard to tell, nor activity, the area was high traffic for Deer and Elk, being a prime spot for predator activity with smaller creatures constantly scurrying about.
We looked over the trees, sticks, twigs, taking note of what could be used for shelter, where the prime spots were for hunting and gathering, things of necessity that are constantly overlooked in the Martial Arts World.

Most may not consider it a Martial Art, but Tracking, Hunting, and Basic Survival have been among the pillars of Military Training for generations, taught to this day as part of the training for our Armed Forces.
The skills were used by Native American Hunters/Warriors long before the White Man set foot on this land, but it is part of every culture the world over, basic survival skills are an instinct, or at least they used to be.
Now we rely on others to do this, make it a part of their lifestyle, and we go to them in order to relearn what we have lost as though it were somehow foreign to our nature, and it has definitely become so, a foreign concept that is seldom visited upon in our day to day society. Why? Perhaps people feel it is no longer applicable or relavent.

Just as knot tying, among other skills, have fallen by the wayside due to advancement in modern society.
What happens when it is lost? What happens should you become separated from modern society as it is, or something happens that robs you of these advances? Fighting Skill alone will only go so far, a well rounded Martial Artist will include all aspects of training, not just the physical, and most definitely not just one type of physical skillset.
Even agriculture can be viewed in this way.

Just some food for thought.