It's hard to do a real test. Anytime I wanted to do a test of my fire making skills when kayaking or backpacking was not really real. If I didn't suceed within first 15 minutes I had 8 hungry guys breathing down my neck to get the fire going. So I would chuck the magnifing glass, coke can, bow and drill and use my zippo/windmill to light up the fire. Maybe after everyone was fed and warm I would play around. But it is different to do stuff on the full belly as opposed to when you are cold and hungry.

But it is my testing ground. Everytime I go hiking, backpacking, camping or kayaking there is always down time. There is always an hour or two of down/sleepy time and everyone just rest or vegetates and at that time I play around with stuff I read about. Is it a real testing knowing that my life doesn't depend on it? To certain extend yes. Going thru the motions and practicing the skill is the way to do it. People learn CPR hoping they never use it but when they do, all this stuff comes back because they practiced it. Did they practice on a real person in a real situation? No, but working with the dummy with multiple repetition at least gave them the advantage over person who never even heard of CPR. I think same goes for survival skills. Just thinking about it, having proper equipment, maintaining it, reading about skills, being informed and implementing the usage of skills in real life is enough of the preparadness. You trying to create a water still or build a shelter when next to you is a gallon of water and your tent will give you an advantage of knowing what would happen and what kind of snags you are expected to hit. I would build a shelter and next morning I would look at it on how it held up. If it was still standing it was a success if it fell down I wanted to know where my weak points are. That way I learned proper knot tying techniques. Actual survival is so unpredictable that no matter how long you practiced brother Murphy will never fail to pay you a visit. But at least you have a knowledge backed up up by some practical skills.