Wood Badge Patrols
As with the Boy Scout program that gave birth to it, Wood Badge takes many of its principles and tenets from nature, so it is not surprising that a collection of woodland creatures would find their way into the program and figure largely into it. The Wood Badge program aims to provide adult scouters with the most complete adult training program possible, allowing those that have completed the program to bring back the best of the scouting world to their home packs and troops. To accomplish this, participants are broken into patrol groups, similar to those that the Boy Scouts operate in. Each patrol is named for one of the following critters:
Beaver
Bobwhite
Eagle
Fox
Owl
Bear
Buffalo
Antelope
The Wood Badge critters have to one extent or another been part of the Wood Badge program since its inception in 1919. Wood Badge first came to America in the 1930s as a prototype but wasn’t truly standardized in America until 1948. From the very first class, participants were inducted into “Troop 1” and were split up into as many as eight different patrols with no more than eight participants per patrol. Just as patrols within a Boy Scout troop are given names to identify them, so too are Wood Badge patrols.