April Class Recap

It is a different world out there.

In the woods.

Under the trees.

Any woods, any trees, any time of the year.

We have gone through a transition here in this part of the world. Winter is gone. Spring is full-blown.

The creatures that slither on their bellies are now out. So are the mosquitoes … not nearly as bad as they will be in another month … but down in the bottoms and around the swamps the mosquitoes are already pretty aggravating. It is easy enough to avoid the fangs of these slithering vipers that the south is famous for. Mostly moccasins here where we are. And a few copperheads. You don’t have to go far though to begin encountering Eastern Diamondbacks.

Situational awareness is the key to avoiding their venom. Always know what is overhead, around, under your feet and where you are reaching. Snake boots, for any warm weather woods goer, are a smart investment. Their cost greatly outweighs the health consequences and expenses associated with anti-venom treatments.

The mosquitoes are another story. You either wear something to repel them or keep a smoky fire going to keep them driven away. I am not a fan of DEET. I would rather use something natural to avoid the strong chemicals. REPEL has a DEET-free product on the market that is supposed to be all-natural. It does repel mosquitoes but I think it stinks to high heaven. Get it on your lips and you’ll taste it for a couple of days.

Crushed Wax Myrtle leaves rubbed on exposed skin repels mosquitoes. So do the crushed leaves of American Beauty Berry. The Wax Myrtle is an evergreen shrub that grows into small trees. Beauty Berry is a bush that is just now beginning to put on their annual leaves.

Shirli and I made our way back to the classroom an hour early. We got a smoky fire going to chase the mosquitoes off the knoll and down into the bottoms that surround it. The live oaks have shed their leaves since we were back there a month ago for the compass reading and land navigation class. All the other oaks shed their leaves in the fall and early winter. These Southern live oaks wait until spring to do their shedding. That dense layer of dry brown leaves made for a nice floor in the woods classroom. Nature’s short-shag carpet.

I walked out to meet the group and escort them on their hike in to the class. On our way in a mature green garter snake was making its way across our path. It’s always pleasant to see a “friendly” under your feet. That is the first green garter that I have seen on the property and I consider it one of the indications of how nature rebounds when areas of land are left to follow their natural design.

The primary focus of our class was using common items normally in our kits to construct a simple unbaited trail snare for small game.

I always preface any discussion of snares by reiterating that the devices are not a legal means to harvest fur bearing animals in Alabama. There are other legal ways to trap during trapping season and those, during prescribed seasons, are the way to go about the task of trapping. A lot of folks get real squirrelly when you talk about trapping animals. I personally have no problem with it. Especially no problem with it when it is done as a means of subsistence. People need food to live. Animals are, among other things, food.

Trapping is a skill that is fast going by the wayside. It is also a skill that will feed you. In certain types of situations possessing this skill and the tools to utilize it can mean food on your table or in your camp. Snaring, in a genuine survival situation, can mean the difference between starving and staying alive.

Accomplishing the primary focus … constructing a snare and triggering mechanism … involves working with tools. Cutting tools. It can be accomplished solely with a knife but a folding saw makes some of the cutting tasks simpler. So there’s two tools that serve useful purposes in the process.

I collected a length from a small sapling and sat down to saw and whittle the finished product. It started to rain. Nothing like a deluge but it was one of those steady lingering things that gets you soaked anyway. We were there. We were committed. Sometimes you get rained on in the woods. It’s just one of those matter of fact things that you can’t get around.

I explained that the trigger mechanism was going to have some exaggerated dimensions so it would be easier to see exactly what I was doing and how I was doing it.

The sawing and whittling opened up the opportunity to talk about safety as I worked with an extremely sharp knife and a folding saw that will take chunks of meat from a finger. One of the things that I emphasized was the necessity to wear a leather glove on the hand that is apt to get cut if you slip. That’s bad enough of a thing to happen at home when you are close to a medicine cabinet or a doctor handy with a stitching needle. Deep in the woods is the wrong place to get a cut of any kind. Another door of teaching opportunity gets opened ...  about the natural antiseptic known as pine sap.

There is honestly no end to the woodcraft and woodlore topics that naturally begin to flow when demonstrating skills. The natural flow is one of the things that I enjoy about the relaxed style of teaching that we are doing with this group that we are mentoring. It’s hard to put together an exact outline of instruction. Quite often I just get into the primary focus and let the rest naturally unfold.

I finished my trigger mechanism and snare, found a suitable small sapling for the spring, marked out an imaginary rabbit run, made the set, and set it off with the rabbit at the end of my arm.

Something of a side note. It is not necessary to peel the bark from the component parts. I think it makes for less friction at the contact points. The peeled sticks are easier to see when checking a line that has been set. Set aside and given a day to dry and those bark peelings will be great kindling to assist in getting your fire going. Peeling sticks is also good basic training in knife handling.

Now their turn to collect their materials and whittle.

I left my finished product where they could look at it as an example but, for the most part, I wanted the class to reproduce the product on their own then demonstrate the workable function of their finished product.

There’s a lot of learning in that process. Listen to instructions and observe what’s being done … closely duplicate what you have observed … test what you have attempted to duplicate. If it works the first time … you’ve done a good job. If it doesn’t work … you haven’t necessarily done a bad job. You just need to focus and keep working at it until you do get it. It’s all about developing skills and practicing skills.

And all the while a steady gentle rain was falling to add a nice sense of wilderness survival ambiance to a class that was focusing on a wilderness survival skill. I thought it was a really nice added touch to the class.

Today marks a year and a month from the Saturday morning when this group met for their orientation class. They have come quite a long way in these 13 months of mentoring. The group has garnered a good bit of experience through these classes and camps.

They are not the only ones benefitting from the experience. They inspire me to keep digging deeper, learning new things, dusting off and rehearsing old skills. Kephart nailed it when he said, “In the school of the woods there is no graduation day.” We are all, in the school of the woods, perpetual students. There is always something new to learn. Older familiar things will always catch light to reveal another facet that we’ve not seen before.

So, as a little closing ceremony to our rain soaked class, we presented Basic Woodcraft Skills Certificates of Achievement to Jude, Gage, and Caleb to recognize, acknowledge and affirm their personal growth and achievements in their woodcraft adventures.