This is a thread for discussing outdoor careers of any kind and how you go about getting them.
I'm about to go to college for 4-5 years and get a degree in forestry, wildlife, conversation, or some such. Don't need to know the specifics until I start at SFA in about 2 years. I'll probably end up counting and measuring trees for lumber companies. But hey I'll be out. I've heard I should avoid becoming a ranch manager. They work there asses off and don't go in the woods much. While I'm in school I should volunteer and join clubs to get experience I can put on an application.
Any advice?
Bump
Used to be on a trail crew and it was a blast. Thinking of getting an associates degree. Just wondering where to start
"/out/" jobs are either ones that have negative earnings value after you factor it the long-term body damage, or ones that earn okay but become more office oriented as you move up.
You are better off finding a career that earns well that you can do remotely so you can live PrepHole with a decent income stream.
this is generally true but even these more office jobs can be in PrepHole locations with provided and subsidized housing that are otherwise not possible or very hard to live at even with remote work or vanlife
Basically what said
Additionally, I think it's incredibly important you find clarification on why you want an PrepHole job.
Do you really want to be PrepHole all the time or just have it be a component of the job? Is that the most important aspect of the job you want?
I work in conservation and have one degree in wildlife ecology and another in natural resource sciences. I got into this because I didn't want a desk job and wanted to help save the planet. As I progressed, I realized fieldwork was awesome but not something I could do every day. I realized having an impact was far more important than being PrepHole. Now I'm a project manager that gets to travel internationally several times a year to see cool nature shit, but my day-to-day is at a computer.
If all you want to be is PrepHole, the magic trick you'll have to pull off is becoming experienced and competent enough to get a full-time, permanent job (avoiding temp work) while not being so skilled or educated that managers want you in leadership roles that keep you inside more.
I want to be PrepHole far more than I want to make an impact. I've heard volunteering while I'm studying, then moving to temporary jobs is a good rough game plan.
Any suggestions? Especially, do you know the specific names of any jobs that are permanently PrepHole? Also I don't know about anything related to retirement with any of these careers.
Yeah what other animals have y'all seen on your out jobs?
No shit. This is the fricking dream job. I'm terrible socially but great under stress. I like to stay informed medically, take CPR classes, and know how to apply a tourniquet. I haven't even started school yet though so there's time to maneuver.
>Especially, do you know the specific names of any jobs that are permanently PrepHole?
Really depends on the kind of work you'd like to do while balancing basic life shit.
You could bounce between temp trail crew and fire jobs that may or may not pay shit but put you in buttfrick nowhere for weeks on end. You could also go for a science degree that tees you up for data collection jobs. I know people with Master's degrees that still do grunt work for the feds in national parks and wildlife refuges, and they wouldn't be there without their degrees. That risks a bit more office work but sets you up a bit better for benefits. You could get a forestry degree and cruise timber for logging operations. Main thing is that PrepHole jobs will break your body over time, so having resources to support yourself when the inevitable injury happens is really vital in my book.
OP here, quick update, started my job with a metal roofing and building company today. We do most of our work in the country. So it kind counts. I get paid 15$ an hour. Not to bad for Texas. I'll probably be here until I go to school in Spring 2025.
I'm looking at forestry, because I think it's where the money is at. My dream job is wilderness EMT. I have time anyway, while I'm doing my first two years of schooling, to figure that out. Really need to save up for a truck so I can start joining clubs and such.
It's a start.
If they're here and want to learn, more power to 'em.
So you get to travel a lot? What's the pay like?
How's that going? How long does it take?
Amen
Professional Skinwalker can be a lucrative gig if you get a contract in a busy hiking area but I find the work to be lonely and there is a lot of pressure to always be at your best when dealing with clients.
>Any advice
Get a real job moron
The only way to get paid with an |environmental" degree is to shill for big timber or other mega corporations that make money on raping the environment--which is most of them. There is very little money in opposing these people and they are very evil, extremely dishonest, and have massive pull in government.
I can never figure out why you children love shitting this place up so much with your moronation. Your posts are neither annoying of funny--they just make me feel sorry for you.
Get help.
Na, homies gotta face reality b
Talk to a financial planner
Shill
Bump
>everything that doesn't validate my terrible life choices is a shill!!111
take your meds.
Kek
What kind of remote job are you thinking about? Why is this "where it is at"?
Can you tell me more? Qualifications and what do you actually do on the job?
You ever try to trap and relocate any? I've used a steel box trap to move racoons off my folks and jobs property for years. I take them to some woods near the lake.
I'm 31 and I'm just getting started on it. So I sure a frick hope not. It'll probably take me 4-5 years to complete my education. Are you willing to go back to school?
>getting upset at legit advice.
take your meds.
Game & Fish
I work as a Land Surveyor and my job is literally 50/50 in the office & in the field.
Took some time to study at university as its quite mathematical but its a good career, I spend most of my days in the Australian outback walking around.
You can also get jobs as a hydrographical surveyor measuring the heights of the seabed.
I'm studying to become a land surveyor right now
>That's not what I want to do with my life though.
It’s a math problem. Are you going to inherit a significant amount of money? No? Then you need to save $X per year or else you have to live on social security and eat cat food and probably work a shit retail job into your 80’s. Is that what you want to do with your life?
The bait... is lame.
Honestly weeks, even months, away would be great. Only family I have is parents. I'm 31. The longest I've spent alone in the woods was two weeks. I much prefer to be alone than with general society.
Thank you anon. I'll go look now.
What is your job called? What kind of education did you have to get? What do you get paid? What does your average day look like?
I heard a wildlife degree doesn't do much for you either.
park ranger is the official job code but there are a number of different kinds of rangers under that. usajobs, the federal hiring site, will have them listed as park ranger (interpretation) or others or park ranger (wilderness) which is me. they all require a bachelors or equivalent years of experience. that bachelors won’t be anything directly related because there is no such degree, what matters is parks/medical experience. my degree is history, it got me parks interp jobs (other humanities degrees like anthropology do too) which then got me the parks experience to qualify for the wilderness jobs.
there are very few permanent wilderness jobs. most are seasonal, which means 6 months. if you want to do this you have to be willing to get a new job every 6 months. even the permanent ones all have furloughs.
most wilderness rangers are at a gs-5 which means between 18-20 an hour depending on locality. there are some gs-7s but those are really hard to get. there is more to it though, as these jobs generally come with subsidized housing and federal benefits and when your season ends you can collect state unemployment. because these jobs are in remote places you dont really have things to spend money on anyway
its ultimately not that much money but some people do make a career of it. I know wilderness rangers who are at 30+ years of seasonal work.
cont.
the biggest thing for wilderness rangers is having medical certs. they want emts. bonus if its a wilderness emt cert. some jobs require different minimum levels like wfr or emr but emts will get the jobs. the primary purpose of these jobs is to be search and rescue first response, even if you don’t actually spend much time doing that
the secondary purpose of these jobs is to be a knowledge resource of conditions. your job is to learn the land and its conditions to tell people where they can find water and sites etc but also so you can know how to get from canyon a to canyon b without a trail because there was an sos ping over there. and to then help people plan their trips with this knowledge in the permit office
on that, the average work pay period would be easier to describe than a day. in two weeks i probably go on two or three overnight/multiday patrols in the backcountry. i walk the trails, check on and clean up campsites, collecting trash, talk to visitors and check permits and offer help/advice and answer their questions about the rocks and plants or whatever, do minor trail maintenance, arcgis logging, and invasive removalI or other resource work. if people are doing stupid/illegal shit i try to convince them not to, and if not let law enforcement know if its bad enough. these positions are NOT cops but have cops as supervisors and are part of their division. depending on the park you might also be on boats/rafts or 4x4 or OHV or even dirtbikes or horses.
one or two days in that pay period I’ll work in a permit office issuing backcountry permits or other office work. gov job means theres always emails.
maybe once every couple pay periods theres a sar and you respond. if it happens outside regular work hours you get fun overtime money. you can always say no for whatever reason, you aren’t obligated to respond to everything.
>I know wilderness rangers who are at 30+ years of seasonal work.
I have met some long-timers. They seem to have it all worked out and love their life. some spend winters in Mexico lol
Philosophy degree here, this is great advice thanks.
Around 2020 for some reason I decided that grad school would be a bad idea and started taking wilderness survival classes. The plan is to retire as a hermit, but I'm still not sure what to do in the meantime. Sounds like a wilderness EMT cert may be in my near future.
When im too old to work my plan is to die, simple as
Last night i saw a big wolf trot past my gfs backyard in the burbs. I hope it eats her neighbors yappy dog
Nta but im same age. I had a good time working on some farms in my early 20s, including mennonites in ky. Never did horse stuff but the neighbors across from some relatives had a horse boarding/training ranch, my sister would volunteer when she was in state visiting and i would tag along to keep an eye on her. There were some cute birds, so if you need a woman check out some animal jobs. Ive done a lot of work with dogs but tbhtbh the dog world is full of gayets and crazy b***hes nowadays, plus theres no $$ at all unless you make a name as a big time handler or run a puppy farm (and i will track you down and rape you to death if you do that) pic rel is one of my full african basenjis whose mom we bought from some random congo villagers in the 2000s. Shes a grandma now 🙂
Hey we have the same retirement plan. I was a live in work hand on a farm for a family of prepers for a few years. Got experience with cows, horses (riding and husbandry), goats, general maintenance, just whatever shit came up. Had to put down a horse with a .45 there once. The place backed up to a 2,500 acre wildlife management area. Snuck in there for solo camping trips a bit. Best time of my life. Cool dog and story behind it. Sounds like you really know what your doing with them. I've got an American Pitbull Tarrier I picked up on the streets in Dallas. Gave her to my parent. She acts like a toddler.
You've got to have a license to run/own a chainsaw over there? I'm U.S. Texas. I've heard networking and volunteering is basically as important as going to school. If you do the schooling and don't volunteer, you won't have the experience to get a job. Kek, I think I've found the conference since I got sober and found some real direction. I'm going to be working my way through school so time will be limited. But I can join clubs and volunteer whenever possible. I really enjoy learning about anything outdoors and am acutely aware of my lack of knowledge and expertise. So I think I should do fine being keen and humble.
Thanks anon. I can!
Definitely not scared of the hard labor. It's an opportunity to prove myself to employers, right? Can't wait to go out there and learn. The man who knew everything, stopped learning anything new. I do not know everything.
And this is the pitbull terrier from Dallas.
Oh shit here's the picture.
I guess the thing with Surveying is that its so broad though it may be rare there would be some conservation like jobs (following around ecologists tracking animal locations etc).
Also sometimes I do work with ecologists and there jobs looks interesting but you would have to be ready for a life of working a roster, weeks away at a time sort of thing.
Go to state and fed job sites and check out the qualifications and pay. Should give you a good idea of what they want/outlooks
>state and fed job sites and check out the qualifications and pay
Spoiler alert: they are going to ask for a bachelor's and offer $20/h. That's why nobody wants to work for the state.
Lol yeah the pay sucks is why I told OP to look. That is a lot of "conservation" jobs and the qualifications are analogous to private sector.
I'd recommend focusing more on resources than wildlife. Water, power, mining, forestry, etc.
Subsidized housing, government benefits, not needing to spend much out there and doing what I love should help.
Agreed I think forestry is the way most likely going to go.
Holy shit your my hero. This sounds like an amazing job. If I could do anything like this I would be happy. We have great medical programs at the college and university in my town.I never would have considered it.
How much scratch you making? What were the qualifications? What's your average day/week look like?
About $600/hive/year in just honey, I don’t have an estimate on the wax since there’s multiple things you can do with it, and I haven’t chosen what I’ll do yet. I haven’t actually worked a season yet but it seems like all the hard work is in gathering information beforehand, and knowing how to respond to what you see the bees doing during the season. Then during the season, it’s a biweekly check and adding frames accordingly to how fast they’re expanding. Harvest once in the fall, while setting them up for winter, then spend the winter processing the frames, building new hives/frames. In the state I live in, honey is considered “cottage food” and does not need a license to sell, but every hive and swarm trap needs to be registered with the state.
forest janny here. the federal government pays me to backpack around in wilderness, do whatever work I come up with, and respond for medicals/search and rescue. happy to answer questions about federal work
Do not go into conservation. If you might see wildlife in your day to day they expect you to work for free.
I’m about to start beekeeping in spring. Outside often for inspections, get to work peacefully and alone, make damn good scratch for that delicious nectar. Feels good.
Euro here
I work as a "forest dude" for a private landowner. I'm a mechanical engineer by degree, but I got annoyed of the field, wasn't really feeling the officecuck life, so I left it, and now I'm just full on forest guy.
In winters, when it's still cold, I do logging, thinning and all sorts of other tree felling shit, in springs I either prepare land for tree planting or plant trees, in summers, I do agroforestry, de-shadow all the little baby trees, do some selective thinnings in newgrowths, touch up the drainage systems and in general, just wander around. In autumns I do all sorts of tree protection stuff from deer, moose and other barking walking bug infested woolly idiots on tiny legs.
It also includes doing forest inspections, tree evaluations, disease and bug infestation inspections, removal of invasive species and so on.
The job's quite physically demanding. You have to be tough as rocks sometimes, but I like to lift logs in my free time, so I'm fine with it. Sometimes you are wet the whole day, even in winter, sometimes the mosquitoes and ticks will annoy you more than banana pictures used to annoy fat morons on /b/, and with this salary, I won't become a milionaire. But I don't fricking care. I can sustain myself, pay for all my necessities, and do some hobbies aside. I just listen to Johnny Cash and touch grass. Love it like nothing else.
Sounds like you fell into a very cushy position. I'll keep networking and maybe find something similar, or people in your position.
Is there a retirement in your plan?
Very cool. If and when I get the land and time, I like the idea.
Fire lookout here. Everyone knows fire season is about having no social life to max hours for a low hourly wage. Supervisor can't wait to bust out lightning code for a single thunder a county away.
Looking to switch to a remote job so I can homestead. This is where it is at in my opinion.
Exploration geologist. Good pay and when you're too old, there's still job you can do inside
i work in a parking lot overnight and i get too see lots of wildlife (stray cats, foxes, 'coons, opossums, skunks) no deers or bears tho :/
Get a few lot lizards too?
Forgot to mention the homeless and one time i got to see a hawk.
I've been in healthcare for the past six years and recently got a promotion into management. I hate it. I love the outdoors. I wish I had gone to school for something outdoorsy. Is it too late? I'm 34.
Never too late. Many people in this industry dont start off in it. The manual labour might be too much, and often you have to start by being a work horse. HOWEVER, loads of these national park/widlife charities dont actually work you hard because its all inclusive and all that bullshit. You will have to humble yourself and go back to being ignorant and a newbie! Otherwise, transfer to a similar job for a company that deals with th outdoors, and work your way to having some days out surveying, site managing etc.
UK-based, just kicking off my career. Currently an Assistant Ranger at a National Park 2 days per week, the rest of the time I do tree planting, felling (got my chainsaw licence for £900), and general countryside management like fence building for estates. Never had so much fun doing hard work, and everywhere I work I meet people, chat to them out of genuine interest, ask if they have work on and need help, and ask if i can give them my number. Then I call them about once a month, and I get taken on here and there. I make new connections, find my way to the more interesting and well-paid work. All the while searching for jobs online every week. Once you have a foot in the door as a training ranger/warden you will be set, as long as youre not lazy and you gtf out of bed, work hard etc.
How it started? Volunteer while you study, doesnt have to be much, just do it over a long period. One day per week, you can have days off along the way but you can still say you volunteered while studying for a year. Look up bird reserves, wildlife sanctuaries, zoos, stables, ranches, etc. Get working with your hands, use machinery, tractors etc, use that experience to get another volunteer role.
Then, using that and your degree you can find apprentice/trainee roles. If you live at home and dont have high living costs this should be viable. Otherwise, its all about getting ad-hoc work through networking. There are tonnes of jobs out there, you just have to ask. Talk to people - talk about wanting to work in the outdoors - ask if they have friends who work in the outdoors - ask for their number. Have a chat, just ask them how they got into it, if they know of any work you could get into.
You have to be confident, thats the only catch. Probably you wouldnt be on PrepHole if you were. But people appreciate character and being keen. Dont be disheartened, just keep putting yourself out there, humble yourself, be the apprentice and learn from these people out there. You can!
Don't go into conservation if you're planning on living indoors and eating food. Worse than acting for people trying to pay you in "exposure" or you paying them to work. Getting really good at R and GIS (but if you're good at R it's pretty redundant) and it will give you a ton of leverage. Agricultural science is a good path for job stability, money and being outdoors. Don't be afraid to start with something extremely broad though, that's half of what college is for.
I'm a landscape gardener, work outside all day every day. Does that count?
Shit place to ask. This place is full of neets who seldom leave their rooms and are too moronic to hold down jobs of any sort.
If you don't like it then leave.
>bumping a thread to tell someone who posted weeks ago to leave
You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?
Telling anyone on a Moroccan stenography forum to "leave" is moronic no matter when you do it. What are you gonna do, point them to the door? Stand between them and your VR waifu and make them back off?
I'm gonna bump this thread tomorrow too frickstick! Just because it makes ya seethe heh heh!
I work for my state bureau of radiation protection, it's my job to take dirt and water samples near the nuclear plants. I also have to get yearly milk samples from the local farmers.
What's the day to day like?
>Can't tell if your talking about a haunted house gig or something. Tried looking it up even kek.
Man this isnt even an obscure meme. Lurk moar, making me feel old and shit
Currently working as a land surveyor. Sweet gig. I got it without having any prior experience or schooling for it either. Sometimes I’m in the city mapping out a CVS sometimes I’m out in the woods looking for property boundaries. It’s not too bad and pays well.
Before that I worked on organic farms. Best feeling job in the world, great food, sun everyday, hard work but amazing mental state. Didn’t pay well but I was able to be living on my own.
Looking into going to school but I’m not really sure what I’d want to study as I can only take online/night classes with my full time job
Feels good reading this thread knowing other people are on similar roads to me… I just wanna work outside and be happy
Become a licensed land surveyor. Decent money in that. Not as much field work though, you become more of a project manager.
Going to become a software engineer so I can work from home and travel
I do fieldwork for grad students and I make McDonald's wage and live in a dorm provided by the government. Like 15% of my coworkers have bizarre personality disorders, like it was either this or following Phish around. Also every professor that isn't an obvious nerd is a psycho. I think I'm gonna join the military.
Also frick having a boss that's a grad student