I was an assistant Scoutmaster for 16 years.

I learned tons from my highly experienced Head Scoutmaster about winter camping in the Virginia Mts and expanded that to keep myself alive at over 20,000 ft several times.

That said...I learned this from him, not Scouts. I was fortunate to learn under him rather than some fat guy who takes his Troop to sleep in the gym somewhere and calls that camping! Many, many troops have no real outdoor experience for their kids.

My official scoutmaster training (1994) was more concerned with drug abuse (by kids) and sexual abuse(by leaders) than anything else. I was taught absolutely zero about the outdoors from my scoutmaster training classes. The organization is volunteer and as such has limitations.

To upgrade the average male (and now female) leader to be proficient in First Aid, Orienteering, Weather Forecasting, Rock climbing, etc, etc, and especially "Outdoor Common Sense" cannot be done to the level of Navy Seals.

From a statistical standpoint, the number of deaths in the article must be seen in light of the number of person/days in the woods/fields/hills to make a comparison to non-scout statistics.