Somewhere ... Sometime ... Somebody

I can make no apology when I say that folks ought to develop and hone a kit mentality.

I have my assorted reasons.

On one end of the reason-scale are the unplanned situations and circumstances that can and do arise along the course of life. Somewhere … sometime … somebody … is going to encounter life/health threatening circumstances. It might be any one of us that the search and rescue team is trying to find and get to. Thinking through the long list of possible scenarios and doing some planning and preparation ahead of time can and does save lives. It might be our own or those of our loved ones we are saving.

On the other side of the scale are the many back-to-basics possibilities to get out and enjoy being surrounded by nature where we are groomed and caressed by its terms of engagement … away from the deafening din and growing piles of debris created by society and its myriad social aspects. We learn to understand and partner with nature. We begin to view, respect, and appreciate nature as an ally.

It is this side of the scale that I consider most important. The more groomed we are on this side of the scale the better prepared we are for the possibilities that may arise on the other side of the scale.

It is not difficult to put together a good usable kit to get started. Putting one together from scratch will involve some expense but putting one together does not have to break the bank. I do not recommend scrimping too tightly though. Cheap is not always a bargain. Cheap is all too often just that … cheap. Cheap will let you down a lot sooner than something with some quality to it and it often does just that when you least need it to. Cheap can also make you work harder at simple woodcraft tasks. Expensive, on the other hand, can be merely just another bag of status wielding conversation pieces. I think it is important for people to discover their balance between these two extreme ends.

I have already talked about The Basic Kit and its contents back in April so there is no good reason for being redundant here where kit contents are concerned. I do think it is important to continue to emphasize the necessity of developing and honing a kit mentality. A kit mentality needs to be an everyday affair that we are engaged in. It is simply that important. Think about it. All of life’s necessities … shelter, fire, water, and food … revolve around the basic kit and the personal capability to utilize its contents on any given day in any given set of circumstances.

It is important to know how to effectively use the items in the kit. It is more important … perhaps even paramount … to have a good working knowledge of the environment that surrounds us.

I consider myself fortunate to have lived in three countries on two continents and in several climatological regions of this country. Each climatological environment has its own particular demands and hardships. Each climatological environment also has its natural offerings and rewards for those that know how to identify and utilize the available resources.

Here is where the real schooling begins to take place and I readily admit, for all I know, I have about a bucket of knowledge in comparison to the amount that is in the well waiting for me to haul it out. What Horace Kephart said is true. “In the school of the woods there is no graduation day.”

Woodcraft or bushcraft or whatever you choose to call it is a lifelong school. There is something new, several something’s in fact, that can be learned every day if we are curious and attentive … if we are willing to take the time and invest the effort to dip our bucket into the well.

Acquiring knowledge in the real school is a long course aggravated by the fact that the more advanced and technological housed societies become, the more domesticated and urbanized societies become, the less these societies honestly know about how to live on their own and how to identify and utilize the life sustaining resources provided by nature. For most modernites, if it does not come from the store or the restaurant … it does not come. I know this first hand. I too lived a big part of my life as a supply chain dependent and still do the convenient easy thing where the supply chain is concerned for convenience sake. We all do and we all will as long as we live in or near the settlements.

Given the necessity to forage wild edibles and to hunt or catch, kill, and process wild animals, fish, and birds for food, most modern Western Civilization residents would go hungry in the short term and starve to death in the long term. A hard course in deprivation and starvation is honestly avoidable. Nature abounds with what we need and can have if we take the time to accumulate the knowledge, experimentally familiarize ourselves with her bounty, and develop the skills necessary to utilize the bounty nature has to offer. Will we give up the grocery store as long as its shelves are stocked? Probably not. I have not anyway.

What if things take a really bad turn? What if we discover ourselves in a dire long term situation that cancels out the likelihood of rescue or being provisioned? It is just me, or just you, or just us along with our kits and the knowledge we have taken the time to accumulate?

I do not have a personal frame of reference for this scenario. I have never crashed in a plane on the side of a snow covered mountain. I have never been shipwrecked and marooned on a deserted island. I have never broken down off road in the desert. At least not yet. If I venture there is the possibility.

I have been through a good many hurricanes and had a couple close calls with tornadoes. I have bivouacked in the Army and camped as a civilian in some miserable conditions. I have a lot of personal reference points but I have never been in this sort of dire long term situation and hope that I never personally add them to my frame of reference.

Hopefully … none of us will. 

Sadly … somewhere, sometime, somebody will.

Borrowing the words of John “Lofty” Wiseman …

“You can have all the knowledge and kit in the world but without the will to live you can still perish.”

Wiseman is one of the respected “experts” on the subject of survival. He spent 26 years of his life as a professional soldier and served with the British Army Special Air Service before becoming the survival instructor to the Special Air Service. I have a lot of respect for someone with those credentials.

He makes this statement in his introduction …

“Survival is a mental exercise.

After the excitement of the incident and the rush of adrenalin has settled it takes great mental resolve to carry on. What keeps us going is the basic instinct, which is best referred to as the will to live.

This is the firm foundation that we build all of our training on and try to nourish and increase.

It is easy to see how physically fit we are but very difficult to know how mentally fit we are.

This basic instinct is getting weaker as we get more civilized so it is important to practice our skills, and be prepared for any eventuality.”[1]

Practice all you can.

Learn all you can.

Experience all you can.

[PHOTO] Wiseman’s Pyramid of Learning

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[1] John “Lofty” Wiseman, SAS Survival Handbook, How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea © 2004 by HarperCollinsPublishers. Copyright terms respected.

Constructing A Fishing Pipe

I finally got around to doing it.

I have wanted to do it for quite a long time, ever since I watched a Dave Canterbury video about it on YouTube some years ago. I just never set myself to the simple task. Watching the videos that Nate Hains posted kindled a fire under my fanny. Yep it was time to get busy.

The rig is really a smart idea.

If there is water around there are fish. Whether for the simple pleasure of catching and enjoying a meal of them or desperately needing them for food in a survival situation, there are fish to be had if you have a means to catch them.

Shirli and I both carry fishing gear in our kits … line, a couple sizes of hooks, split shot, floats that we call bobbers around these parts, a few pan fish (we call them brim) jigs, and small artificial baits that look like earth worms. Who knows? Live natural bait might be elusive and hard to find so carry something artificial just in case. Always be prepared.

The thing that really sold me on the idea and prompted me to put these together is the fact that you can cast them and get your baited hook out farther than you can when using a short sapling as a pole. A pole that is long enough to do some good is also hard to manipulate in dense cover. Especially overhead cover.

Of course I had to add a little personal touch to these fishing pipes.

One was to affix a little contraption to the butt end cap to attach the line to rather than tying it around the pipe.

I drilled a small hole, put several circular bends in a short piece of solid copper wire, inserted that into the cap, and then did the same circular bending outside. It is secure inside and out. On went the cap with some cement and it is a permanent fixture on the fish catching device.

The other end is not glued on. The pipe becomes its own small tackle box. I did do a little light sanding on the pipe so the front cap is not as likely to get stuck on so tight that it is difficult to get off. I also sanded the burrs and sharp edges on the cap that might interfere with casting and retrieving the line. On went the cap.

Next was to measure off the line, attach it to the copper wire, and wrap it onto the pipe. I used 30 feet of 20 pound test braided line. I figure that is plenty long enough for these waters. Once the line was on I applied several wraps of electrical tape. One holds the tail end of the line in place on the pipe so it cannot wander around and get loose. The other makes an ideal place to hang your hook between episodes of fishing or when the fishing rig is riding on the truck seat. You know … for those times when you might be driving by a spot and can wet a line for the heck of it.

During transport in a pack the attached bobber can be slid down close to the split shot and the whole catching end stored securely inside the pipe.

I got to thinking about something else this rig can be used for that increases the possibility of catching fish … catfish in particular.

Measure off as many 30 foot sections of #36 bank line as you care to fool with or figure you might need in your given situation. Roll them securely and have them handy in your kit. They can be attached one at a time to the fishing pipe, rigged with a good catfish hook and baited, cast out, detached from the pipe and secured to a root or tree, and left overnight to do their catching thing while you are tending to other important stuff around camp. The bank line is out deep enough to do more good than if the bait was laying in shallower water.

With a little overnight luck you might be cleaning catfish for breakfast and have enough for leftovers at noon.

Woodsmoke Woodcraft School June Training Class

The app on my phone said it was 86 degrees. 

Hot enough. With the humidity factored in the felt temperature was 97 degrees as I packed my kit and made for some respite in the air conditioning.

No regrets. This is more than well worth the sweat in lower Alabama summer conditions.

It was a good training session with the guys.

I went down to our outdoor classroom in the bottom early enough to set up my shelter and get a fire going. The fire was needed, not for warding off any cold, but to smoke the mosquitoes out of the bottom, process some fire making material, and cook up a little survival culinary surprise for the group.

Mosquitoes? More than plenty of them until the smoke got going.

Get away from developed sites and level is not always easy to find. 

Somewhat level is. 

In fair weather somewhat level is fine. When a sure enough rain comes along to add some challenge to an adventure, somewhat level can put a river running through your shelter.

I showed the guys how to improve their shelter for wet weather circumstances with items in their kit.

The first thing was to tie a short string to the line attaching their shelter to a tree to work as a redirecting water stop for water running down the tree trunk, following the attaching line, and dripping into the shelter. The string needs to be a couple inches from the tarp.

Some water may make it in but with the shelter pitched to protect against the wind, most of the dripping water will be blown away from the shelter opening.

The next was to lay out their ground covering in a way that 3” diameter logs (cut with their folding saw) can be laid inside the shelter on top of the cover. The loose ends of the cover are then wrapped over the small logs. With the wrapped logs 6 inches back from the sides and front, water running off the sides of the tarp or coming down a grade will not end up running beneath the shelter soaking everything.

The guys have watched me on several occasions using primitive flint and steel to get a fire going. They have used modern flint and steel … ferro rod and magnesium bar … to effect fire.

Today was their turn to utilize a rock and fire steel. There is a certain finesse to primitive flint and steel. It is something that you develop a feel for. The right angle. The right speed. The right amount of force of the steel against the rock. There is something about primitive flint and steel. Once you find that certain finesse … once you get onto it … it has a way of becoming your fire making go to.

I am a huge fan of charred cloth. The stuff works great. Cloth is not necessary though. Not as long as the woods produces an abundance of punk.

I showed the guys my container of charred punk, used my rock and steel to throw a shower of sparks into it, and we watched as some white spots began to grow on the char. I told them that the only way I know of to put it out is to drown it with water or deprive it of air as I put the lid back on the tin to snuff it out. I then took out a piece and showed them how easily it catches with a magnifying lense. That char went back into the tin and was snuffed.

Once it was out, I dumped the contents on a piece of bark from a River Birch, set the char where it would be safe, filled the tin with fresh punk, and placed the tin on the coals to cook. A container is not absolutely necessary for the process. It is a convenience though and a good place to keep the char once it is cooked. Punk can be effectively charred by digging a hole beneath where your fire will be built, putting the punk into it, covering it with dirt, and building your fire on top of it.

I would not tell them what it was and there was a good bit of curiosity. They did some guessing but none were close. I whittled a nice skewer from a small oak branch, speared the breasts, and propped the skewer on a forked stick that I pushed into the ground close to the coals.

Our blueberries are almost ripe. We are not the only ones that have noticed and there is an army that visits our bushes every year about this time. I have tried everything I know to keep them at bay. Nothing, so far, has worked. So I popped three of them with the fancy .22 Benjamin air rifle that I got myself as an early birthday present, pulled their breasts, and stuck them in the freezer for such an occasion as this. You know, after all, in a real survival situation you eat what you can get.

I had never eaten it before but I have got to tell you. Blackbird ain’t half bad. In fact, blackbird roasted on a green stick over an open fire is pretty dang tasty! I’ll bet if they were wrapped with bacon and seasoned a little they would be as good as any game bird I have ever eaten.

Oh. How did the charred punk turn out? It cooked up just fine. We gave it a test with a rock and steel. A good shower of sparks and there were several white spots beginning to grow and glow.

Sure.

I will admit it.

I think all young people ought to be taught to use cutting tools and build fires. 

It’s awful hard to skin a squirrel or get a campfire going with a computer keyboard or the controls to a video game.