When I started as an Assistant Scoutmaster, I immediately bought and read the BSA Scoutmaster’s Handbook cover-to-cover. What a disappointment. Too heavy to take with you and not much useful in it anyway. It doesn’t describe the responsibilities of the Scoutmaster or any of the youth leadership positions. You don’t even need it for the copies of the forms—those are all on-line now.

Luckily, the current Scoutmaster handbook (Troop Leader Guidebook) is much better. So what else should a Scoutmaster read?

The first thing to read is the job description for Scoutmaster that I (finally) found in the BSA Troop Committee Guidebook (1990):

• Train and guide boy leaders
• Work with other responsible adults to bring Scouting to boys
• Use the methods of Scouting to achieve the aims of Scouting
• Meet regularly with PLC for training and coordination in planning troop activities
• Attend all troop meetings or, when necessary, arrange for a qualified adult substitute
• Attend all troop committee meetings
• Conduct periodic parents’ sessions to share the program and encourage parent participation and cooperation
• Take part in annual membership inventory and uniform inspection, charter review meeting, and charter presentation
• Conduct Scoutmaster conferences for all rank advancements
• Provide a systematic recruiting plan for new members and see that they are promptly registered
• Delegate responsibility to other adults and groups (assistants, troop committee) so that they have a real part in troop operations
• Supervise troop elections for the Order of the Arrow
• Make it possible for each Scout to experience at least 10 days and nights of camping each year
• Participate in council and district events
• Build a strong program by using proven methods presented in Scouting literature
• Conduct all activities under qualified leadership, safe conditions, and the policies of the chartered organization and the BSA

I really don’t understand why the first two pages of the Troop Leader Guidebook aren’t the Oath and Law, the aims and methods of Scouting, the five promises that Scouting makes to the boy, and the above list of duties.

If you aren’t familiar with the five promises, look at page 1 of the 11th edition handbook or page 13 of the 12th edition. They’ve been recast as questions in the 12th edition. They aren’t in the 14th edition, so you can read them in my post The Five Promises of Scouting.

Books

Troop Leader Guidebook, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 are the best handbooks for Scoutmasters that the BSA has ever produced. I’ve read nearly all of them. Get both volumes, read them, and refer back. Volume 2 includes a chapter on your own development as an adult in Scouting, for example “What do you want to do next?” That is an excellent question.

Senior Patrol Leader Handbook is what the Scoutmaster Handbook should have been, a concise, comprehensive guide to running a troop. It even includes a self-assessment for your troop’s program that I’ve never seen anywhere else. If you have a choice between reading the Troop Leader Guidebook and the SPL Handbook, read this one. And get one for your SPL. And then go get the Troop Leader Guidebook

The Scoutmaster’s Other Handbook by Mark Ray, who also wrote the new Troop Leader Guidebook. If you went to every roundtable for five years, and they were really great roundtables, you wouldn’t need this book. On the other hand, that would take five years. Get it, read it. You’ll return to it again and again. Also check out the free discussion guide from the book’s site, that has some excellent questions for improving your troop.

NOLS Wilderness Guide by Mark Harvey. I own a lot of books about backpacking, and this one stands out as the best. The only weaknesses are the NOLS cooking method (from scratch, takes some dedication) and no real info on going light (see the next book).

Lighten Up! by Don Ladigan does a great job of teaching you the lightweight way to pack. It’s also Thrifty, encouraging less stuff and reuse. Going lightweight is nothing new, it was a big concern in books by Nessmuk (1884) and Horace Kephart (1906). You will have a lot more fun carrying 25 pounds instead of 50, and so will your Scouts. And it’s all about fun, right? There are books that go into the details of full-on ultralight, like Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips, but you can’t always do thru-hiker ultralight style when you need to stop and teach map and compass or play Zorch.

AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership by Alex Kosseff gives you the mechanics of leading a group in the outdoors. These are the skills you need to pass on to the SPL and Patrol Leaders, so learn them well. If Wood Badge had a text book, it would look a lot like this.

Outdoor Leadership by John Graham covers the “inner game” of outdoor leadership. Kosseff gives you the “how”, Graham helps you with the “why”. This is your Scoutmaster Conference material for First Class and up.

NOLS Wilderness Wisdom by John Gookin is a pocket-sized book of quotes about the outdoors. When I’m stuck for a Scoutmaster Minute, I pull out this book and look for a quote that speaks to some aspect of our troop. That’s usually enough.

Camping and Hiking in the Bay Area by Matt Heid is the only book that covers backcountry camping spots in our area. There are more than are listed here, but this is a great start and the detail is impressive. Dang, it seems to be out of print, so wait for Matt’s One Night Wilderness to come out in September, though that won’t have his excellent coverage of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail. If you don’t live around here, start searching for some local guidebooks.

You will need a first aid book, but you should choose your own. Make sure that you can find things in it quickly. The one provided with my WFA course is good. If you are lost, start with recent books by Eric Weiss, William Forgey, Tod Schimelpfinig, or Buck Tilton.

On-line Documents and PDFs

Guide to Safe Scouting contains the BSA’s rules for safe activities. Read it cover-to-cover to start, then get in the habit of searching it whenever you have a question. This is your bible for everything from bullying to liquid stove fuel. If you only read one BSA publication, it must be this one. Instructions for putting the PDF on iPhone or iPad are here, though the website might be more usable on a phone.

Troop Program Features used to be a three-volume thing that filled a huge binder, but now it is a website. These provide lots of sample meeting plans and outing plans. I’ve never been able to get our PLC to use these 48 great plans, but I keep trying. Note: the book used to have the info on running an annual planning meeting, that is now the Annual Planning website, plus it is in the SPL Handbook.

Troop Program Resources, also used to be a book (the games book), but is now a website. When your PLC is stumped for games, give them this site. There is other stuff in here, but the collection of games is super useful.

The Guide to Advancement is a clear and detailed document that should answer nearly any question you have about advancement. Take the time to read through the relevant chapters, or at least the first portions of those. Maybe you don’t need to read the entire chapter on special needs, yet, but you need to know the general idea. You may find a few surprises, like the Scoutmaster conference doesn’t need to be last and that Eagle projects don’t need to have lasting benefit. This guide was written in 2011 because units had widely varying advancement practices, especially around the Eagle rank. So read it and follow it. We are one Scouts BSA program everywhere. I also keep a PDF copy on my computer and search it whenever I have a question.

Websites

Ask Andy is a Q&A site written by a very experienced Commissioner. He posts a digest of reader’s questions and his answers about once a week. He’s not afraid to call “nonsense” on a troop tradition or to tell leaders they are doin’ it wrong. Hal “Andy” Daumé passed away in November 2022, so there won’t be more columns, but the 600+ existing columns are still a great resource.

Clarke Green’s Scoutmaster podcast is a roughly weekly wisdom dump about the practical issues a Scoutmaster faces. The polka tunes and bad jokes are extra. I learned something from Clarke almost every time. Hey, how many Scouts does it take to screw in a light bulb? Only one, but it takes a long time, because they just give it one good turn each day. The podcast and posts went on hiatus in 2018 and the site has some problems as of early 2023, so I recommend using this Jan 2023 snapshot from the Wayback Machine. It will be slow, but the content is worth it.

US Scouting Service Project Advancement Pages are a gem. For years, I bought the Boy Scout Requirements Book every year, and heck, I might get one again someday, but the usscouts.org pages have all the requirements, include the adult training knots, plus they have change bars for the year-to-year updates. This is an amazing resource from some really dedicated volunteers.

Scouting Aims and Methods is something I refer to frequently to stay grounded in what we are trying to achieve vs how we are going about that. A bilingual English/Spanish PDF is here. Why do I list this? When I have a question about what course of action is right, I ask whether it is an aim or a method and whether it is Scouting. For example, advancement, including the Eagle rank, is a method, not an aim.

Sign up for your council or district e-mail list. Our district has a groups.io mailing list and I’d be in the dark without that.

Courses

Youth Protection, take it and take it again. We encourage all our parents to take this course, so they all understand the rules. Keep our Scouts safe, and keep yourself safe.

BSA On-line Training Sign on and take the basic set of orientation courses. You’ll be lost without them. Take Trek Safely because you are supposed to, but it isn’t especially useful. The Weather Hazards course is a good review in case you missed that section of the Guide to Safe Scouting.

Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills is given by your local council. My course was great fun, doing Scout camping with adults and learning things. I used it as an excuse to make test out five different freezer bag cooking recipes on my patrol. Update: a dozen years later, I’m still excited about the course, enough so that I’ve been on staff for ten years.

Wilderness First Aid is the most important course you’ll take as a leader. It teaches skills that save lives, awareness of how to avoid life-threatening situations, and teamwork skills for high-stress situations. Take this early, because once you take it, you’ll be retroactively horrified that you went on outings without these skills. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, I recommend the courses from Paratus Institute.

Cookbooks

Even if you aren’t into cooking, cooking on campouts is a great way to pick up some skills. Some prep time in the kitchen at home can save a lot of money, too. Here are the two cookbooks that I use the most. For deeper detail on cookbooks, see my posts A Few Favorite Backcountry Cookbooks and Backpacking Meal Planning: Nutrition, Recipes, and Techniques.

Freezer Bag Cooking by Sarah Kirkconnell is a guide to making your own just-add-water backcountry meals. Most ingredients are available at your supermarket. Compared to pre-packaged freeze-dried meals, these have twice the food and cost half as much. Read carefully, though, some of the recipes serve two people and some serve only one.

The Back-Country Kitchen by Teresa Marrone covers every kind of back-country cooking from dressing up instant grits with cheese and egg to Cajun Venison Tenderloin. She also has a great description of how to cook planked fish. Just reading this book makes me hungry, but the essential part is the chapter on how to dry food at home. With home-dried ingredients, you are ready for these tasty recipes or the simpler ones in Freezer Bag Cooking, your choice. I made a non-dehydrated version of the Lentil-Bulgur Chili at home and the family declared it a keeper. That’s high praise.

Note: This was originally written in 2011, updated in May 2023. Nearly every URL had changed, so it was past time for an update. Also, both the Troop Leader Guidebook and the Guide to Advancement were published after that.