Haha yeah. Camping was old hat to me when I went in the Marines. None of that stuff surprised me. One brutally cold night outside of Victorville we were supposed to dig in fighting holes but the ground was solid and nobody got more than a few inches deep despite hacking at it all day. We were going to be there all night.

Next to me was a big pile of wood chips for some reason. Knowing this would keep me warm and off of the ground, I lined my hole with a few inches of chips, training be damned. I was sleeping soundly (and warmly) when the company was roused at 0300 to go back to base. Nobody else slept a wink except those close enough to me to be warned. Basically, the CO got cold so we went home.

lol. I learned that survival training in the Scouts. Good times.

Id imagine it can be good if you’re never exposed to camping/survival otherwise.

I had to go through SERE for aircrew (which is in Spokane, WA) and that was the first time in my life I was ever out in the woods. It was such an insane shock and learning experience. I think there’s a lot of value being exposed to that stuff even if you have no desire to do it recreationally.

In my troop, most of the kids had never been Cub Scouts. Everyone in my patrol earned Eagle, and we never did any of the prepackaged artsy-craftsy stuff.

We crafted meals and campfires and patrol flags and lashed together poles to make camp gateways with banners and flags hanging off of it.

We slept inside caves, rapelled down cliffsides, and did weekend-sized training trips for week-long outdoor travel destinations like Quetico/Boundary Waters for canoeing, and Philmont for hiking, and then still did the council-organized camporees.

My troop joined with several others in the council to organize our own summer camp, because they thought the one run by the council was too weak, with respect to earning merit badges. You might get two or three badges at Ransburg. In the LBL group-camp area, you might earn a dozen, while also learning stuff like bow-drill firecrafting that isn't even a requirement for any badge. If you weren't in the right troops, you didn't even know about it.

The quality of the adult leadership absolutely has an impact on the experience for the kids, and that varies greatly. The economic class of the parents is also a factor. Some of the more interesting activities cost more money. That's when fundraising and sponsorship comes in. Richer parents get to have more independent troops.

If I ever had any inkling of going into the military, it all might have been an adequate replacement for about four weeks worth of training. Which would have gone instead into unlearning independent initiative and doing things the military way, instead of the situationally adaptive way. Scouts has a lot of ceremony in it, which seems somewhat lame, cult-like, and pseudo-patriotic in retrospect. That might have helped in a military career more than knowing how to build campfires and small game snares.

When I did scouts many years ago, there was definitely a lot of variation by troop. Some, like the one I was in, had a lot of weekend camping/hiking, extended trips, summer camp, etc. and the weekly/biweekly meetings were mostly just organizing for those activities. Other troops, scouts was mostly just those meetings with games/arts/crafts/etc.