Self-Reliance ... A Weird Lifestyle

One of the fastest ways to start an argument in the woodcraft-bushcraft-survival community is to get into a discussion about tools. Particularly a discussion about knives and axes … which ones to carry and what or what not to do with them. There are a few more carry item discussions that can invoke quick arguments.

I’ve been engaged in a few of those discussions and have learned to avoid them.

Let me be so bold as to say something here about kits and the items that make a kit.

You can build an entire, good, usable carry kit for the cost of 1 fancy knife or 1 Swedish axe or 1 oil cloth tarp or 1 fancy pack to carry all that you will normally carry on your person … despite all the well-intentioned amateur reviews on youtube and despite all the slick marketing techniques of manufacturers and marketers that enjoy our hard earned dollars rolling in.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I’m not intentionally poking anyone in the eye with a stick. I’m not downing any of the toys that folks are playing with. Folks can purchase and use anything they want.

I’m just saying. I’m just trying to keep it real. Especially for the common person clawing and scratching their way with a limited amount of cash in their budget … for folks that don’t have $300.00 to throw at the latest knife that has pretty two-tone scales.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think that … and mind you this is just my personal perspective … when it comes right down to it, a lot of people are missing the boat when it comes to this issue of self-reliance.

The last thing I want to do is to delude anyone into thinking that having a 10-plus piece kit, along with the knowledge and skills to use the items in their kit, is going to make them self-reliant or turn self-reliance into an easy project. A good kit makes for some great outdoor weekend adventures. A good kit can turn an otherwise bad short-term situation into an adventure. Self-reliance, however, as a lifestyle … particularly a lifestyle in a long-term situation whether it is chosen or SHTF … involves a lot more than a kit that can easily be assembled and pressed into service over the course of a weekend.

In this lot is a total mindset change and the psychological adjustments that accompany it. This change and these adjustments are not purchased from any tool vendor. This change and these adjustments are in our psyche. They are reasoned, sought out, fought for, and earned every step of the way. Folks that surround us, folks that we have to do with on a normal daily basis, are ok with what we are doing as long as we are hobbying around with this woodcraft-bushcraft thing. They are good with it as long as we are dabbling in areas of self-reliance.

Their impressions of us begin to change drastically when our hobbying around begins to take on the appearance of a genuine lifestyle. We become weird to normal folks. Our circle of true friends and associates goes through a shrinking process. Partly because our priorities change. Partly because a lot of friends and associates cannot accept or handle the change in our personal priorities. We simply do not fit into their social scheme of things and discover ourselves, for lack of a better word, ostracized.

They move on.

We move on.

I’m not sure who coined the phrase. 

It’s one that sounds good. It’s one that holds some truth. It’s also one that has become something of a standard cliché in the woodcraft-bushcraft community, one that is thrown around a lot in the tool and skills department. You know how it works. Somebody says something. Somebody repeats it. Then all the parrots start their parroting.

“The more you know the less you need.”

The playing out of the cliché might get you through a short-term thing. I would not want to depend upon it in a personally chosen long-term or SHTF situation. The latter requires more than a 10-piece kit.

There is a self-reliance side to this that applies to more than the tool and skills department. This is the side that is in our psyche. It is a side that applies to the people department … especially to that part of the people department that moves on because we have become too weird for them to handle.

We move on because we have changed.

They move on because they haven’t.

And we are comfortable with the moves.

A Different Sort of Experience in the Woods

Archery season opens in our zone on October 25^th … two weeks later than it used to but the biological and planning folks that make the big decisions made some changes to the opening and closing dates of deer season last year. I don’t mind it opening later. It offers a better chance for some cooler weather in this hot part of the country. Maybe even a good frost to decelerate the activity of the mosquitoes that make sitting still for long periods of time practically impossible in these woods.

I always have hopes of being in the woods on opening day.

It rarely works out.

Life has a way of running interference.

I got my ladder stand set up late and it was well into the season before I finally got to the woods with what I call my gunbow. I used to draw a bow before the shoulder injury and was reluctant to switch to a crossbow. An inherent need to be in the woods during archery season, and the fact that the two of us under this roof prefer deer over store bought cuts of who-knows-what-from-who-knows-where, put reluctance in its place a few years ago.

I looked at a lot of different offerings in the crossbow department. Part of the looking involved what I considered a reasonable price range. I had a ballpark figure in mind and over time saved up the figure plus a little over the top. The big stores (names withheld) that most people are familiar with, and online outlets, that do a lot of business sell things at an inviting price that is offset by the volume of their sales. I pretty well settled on a brand and model. Partly because that was the brand and model a friend had. I don’t think he ever killed a deer with it. The last time I saw it the thing was hanging up in a barn.

One of the things about ordering online or going to a big store is that if or when (more likely when) something goes wrong with one of these high powered mechanical contraptions your best option is to find a good bow shop to work on the thing. I know one, and the archer that operates it. He did a major overhaul on my last compound. So I figured before doing anything it would be in my best interest to talk with him before going off halfcocked on a whim. I’m glad I did because the make and model that I was initially interested in is one that he spends a lot of time working on. He told me what he had in his shop.

I dug out my stash, headed over to see him, and drove home with the Parker Bushwacker. It is not, at its 150 pound draw weight and 285 fps, the strongest and fastest bowgun on the market but it definitely gets the job done. Its 7-pound weight makes it easy to carry to and from and not once have I felt the need to grumble about its weight after holding it in a stand for hours on end.

We were several weeks into archery season when I was finally able to break away. I drove up to a place that I refer to only as Somewhere In The Woods, USA that morning, spent some time getting camp set up and rounding up firewood for the night, then, around 2:00 climbed into my stand where I sat until it was almost dark. I wasn’t able to sit my ladder. The wind was out of the wrong direction so I hung an old climbing stand on a tree and shimmied up.

A nice doe came within 10 or 12 yards of me but there was some scrub between us that could have easily deflected the arrow. (1) I refuse to let go with a shot that has the potential of hitting badly resulting in a long slow death of an animal. (2) I am not fond of the idea of losing an arrow. Lost arrows cost money to replace and this thing does not shoot off-the-shelf Walmart variety arrows that cost $3.00 apiece.

 Even though I was up in the air a good ways the doe was catching little whiffs of me. She never looked up but she kept looking around obviously smelling the air. She hung around a few minutes, well long enough to make a shot if it was a clear one, then slowly turned and casually walked off into the thick bottom.

It was going on dark-thirty when I walked up the hill to my camp for the night. The plan was to overnight, be in my stand early, then sit until midday. I sat by the fire until around 9:00 then crawled into my bedroll on back of my truck.

I laid there thinking about the day … the drive up … the doe in the woods … the nice fire that I had sat by for a few hours and how its light still illuminated the space inside my camper shell. Sleep wasn’t far away. It didn’t take long before it found me.

Sleep didn’t last long.

I don’t know if it was from the extra work my legs weren’t used to shimmying up and down that tree, or if I had some potassium deficiency, or a combination of the two but I wasn’t asleep long before the calves of both legs started cramping like crazy. They would knot up and set me to moaning and groaning. I would moan and groan and stretch and work them out. Several rounds of that business with naps in between.

Then, middle of the night, that nature thing snuck up on me. I had already been shorted on sleep and decided I could get through the night without getting up. I was wrong. I got up at 3:00, took care of what needed taking care of, and decided to stir up the fire, make some coffee, and sit there tending the fire, looking at the star lit night, and enjoy listening to the sounds of nature serenading me.

It was beautiful.

The wind direction changed overnight and allowed me to sit my ladder stand. Must have been about an hour after getting situated that I heard the steps in the leaves. Slight. Barely detectable at first. Coming from behind me and from the worst possible direction considering the wind was carrying my scent with it. It got in really close, let out a grunt, then turned and ran. I never saw what it was but had it taken a few more steps it would have walked right beside my ladder stand. That's the kind of stuff that sets the heart pounding!

So I’m about a quarter of the way home that afternoon. Just driving along thinking about the previous 24 plus hours when something that I had heard at 4:00 that morning came to my attention beckoning consideration. I didn’t pay it much mind at the time, other than to look at my watch to make a mental note of it. It was, during the playback on the road home, that it stood out.

Bear in mind, in telling the rest of this factual account, that the closest house to the East of my overnight camp is over a mile away. The closest house to the West is over 2 miles away. Over 3 miles of distance. Between these houses it is mostly dense woods and a wide swampy Lower Alabama creek bottom that is practically impenetrable. It’s serious business down in there. It’s not the kind of place the faint of heart wander. It’s not the kind of place that most modern hunters want to labor to get into then labor to get out of with a deer sized animal. It’s not the kind of place for novice woods-goers to cut their eye teeth.

Me? I love it.

So it’s 4:00 in the morning. There’s not much to do at that time of the morning except what I’ve already mentioned that I was doing. It’s quiet. The closest paved road is over a mile away and there can be heard the occasional sound of traffic on that road. Other than that occasional sound there are no other motorized sounds to be heard … far away or close in.

Down on the creek. A quarter of a mile South from me. A half mile at the most. I distinctly and clearly heard it.

Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.

4 times. Equally as loud. Evenly spaced. It sounded like a fencepost sized piece of wood being struck hard against a large sized tree.

I spent most of the rest of the drive home, and ever since, trying to rationalize and reason it into something other than what it appears. For the life of me, though, I cannot come up with a reasonable other no matter how many times I hit the playback button. Not there. Not down in there where people just simply do not go. Not on a good day. Let alone on a bad day. And what seasoned and brave bow hunter would go down in there that long before the crack of dawn and make that kind of noise at that hour of the morning?

Any bow hunter, even a green novice, knows that archery is an up close game and you exercise as much stealth as humanly possible.

I am, no matter how many times I replay it, convinced that what I heard was the signaling sound made by … (Dare I move from skeptic to believer and take the chance of being called a crazy fella with an overactive imagination?) … the Bigfoot or, as it is more commonly called in this region, the Skunk Ape?

I’ll take that chance. And I will always consider myself to be one of the few that are privileged to hear it. Who knows? Maybe it saw the early morning fire of my camp, came close to investigate, intuitively knew that I would never hunt it or attempt it harm, then slipped off into the creek bottom where it let me know that it had been there.

Oh. By the way. Other than the pitiful few trusted souls that I've personally told this story and are familiar with my personal goings and doings, the whereabouts of this encounter will forever remain undisclosed to protect the innocent and elusive creature.

The Captivating Lure

I grew up wandering the woods.

Getting out there wasn’t an occasional thing.  It wasn’t a weekend, seasonal, or occasional thing. It wasn’t a thing to pass time away. It was a lifestyle thing. A walk through the woods was a daily thing.

Daily walks through the woods were mostly on account of some kind of work that needed doing … checking on fences … moving cows from day pasture to overnight corrals … closing gates … bringing the Jersey milk cow home for the night. Those normal daily chores always took a lot longer than necessary on account of all the woods exploring that somehow arose as part of the normal course of life for a boy that wasn’t more than 8 or 9 years old when he started wandering the woods solo.

It was, too, around that age that I graduated from a BB gun and began toting along that old .22 single shot or a .410 shotgun when out doing my woods chores. The scope and range of my woods wandering found itself largely expanded with that graduation.

I have the impression, looking back, that a lot of my peers and teachers in school believed I was maladjusted and deprived of the better things in life.

I wasn’t good at organized sports and was always one of the last ones picked for teams by peers in the schoolyard picks. That was embarrassing at first but I learned to accept and expect it as a matter of course. It was also an early on education in how the system works to reward and to punish based on some imagined preferential performance prescription. I’ve never been a fan of systems … regardless of their name or intention.

Systems create system-dependency and do nothing to promote self-reliance. Systems, in fact, depend upon this dependency to maintain their existence. The more self-reliant we become the more we jeopardize the health and welfare of systems.

School work didn’t interest me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the intelligence to do it. It was boring. I was also surrounded by kids and teachers that I shared little in common with on a personal level. I spent a lot of time staring out the window thinking about things that were more interesting than reading, writing, arithmetic, and measuring up to and fitting into all the extracurricular amusements and games that quantified the lives of the townies I found myself forced to mingle with.

Intelligence?

I was smart enough to figure out in a hurry just how much I needed to do to make good enough grades to keep my woods exploring, hunting, and fishing privileges from being restricted when the report cards were sent home to be signed and returned!

If, looking back, those childhood peers and teachers were right in believing I was maladjusted and socially deprived, I’m glad of it. Those maladjusted and socially deprived years laid down something deep in the fabric of my being that I’ve never been able to shake loose from.

I tried to put those roots behind me as a young adult and well into my adult years … tried to fit into the social scheme of things … and marry myself to the ideals and standards for success set forth by society. That may work for a lot of people but it just never worked out for me. I was, for way too many years, miserable in a suit and tie and wing tip shoes. I was also gone from my woodsy outdoor roots for so long … so long on pavement and concrete sidewalks … that getting back out there away from campgrounds and campground amenities and deep into the deep woods with its natural inhabitants for a camp with minimal gear was more than kind of scary at first.

The truth is, though, that the deeper you get the deeper you want to get. The lure of the wild, and the deep peace and solitude it affords, is captivating if we will allow it to capture us. There is something in every clearing, valley, creek, and grove that stimulates the senses, offers different natural views, and opens wilderness windows of perspective that heightens the strength and enhances the aroma of the captivating lure.

I am of the opinion that it is this lure, and all that is inherently related to it, that is the real heart, frame, and meaty muscle that gives meaning to woodcraft or bushcraft or whatever else folks choose to call this thing that comes with a certain set of skills and tools surrounding it. However, every item in the toolbox … without the carrier being a captive of this lure … is merely infatuation that fast grows cold and is regularly replaced with the newest item brought to us by slick marketing.

Skills?

I can teach skills.

Tools?

I can recommend appropriate tools that will stand up to the task without breaking the bank.

The lure?

We are surrounded by its curriculum. Its scent hangs heavy all around us. It reveals itself in every morning dew, in every sunrise and sunset, its aroma permeates every breeze, and crackles in every kindled campfire. Its effects are intoxicating and addicting.

I can talk about it.

I can lead people into its arena.

But that’s about all I can do.

The Art of Self-Reliance - Processing Deer

It was something that I grew up with.

I don’t know how young I was when I started doing it on my own. Maybe seven or eight. Before that I watched my older brothers. I watched my dad. For years. After years of watching them there wasn’t much of a learning curve when I started. It was simply a matter of doing what I had seen done time and again.

We had a spot under a persimmon tree. A low hanging limb with a couple wires attached to it served as a gambrel for hanging squirrels and rabbits. Getting small game, doves, and quail ready for my mom to cook was a normal part of life for a boy growing up in lower Alabama. At least it was for this one.

There were no deer here. Not when I was a kid growing up. You had to get up to the northern half of the county to find deer. There, even where you started getting into them, there weren’t that many. Does were totally illegal to shoot Statewide. Times have changed a lot in the deer count department since those earlier days.

I was a young man in the Army, stationed at Fort Campbell, when I killed my first deer.

Yes. I said killed.

Nowadays the supposedly acceptable word used is harvested. Like harvesting corn. Or harvesting potatoes. One of those agricultural words.

I honestly don’t understand how using the word harvested makes any real difference when you kill an animal. Maybe it does something to assuage the conscience of some people. Maybe it somehow mysteriously takes the killing aspect out of it and makes it more civilized. It honestly does nothing to change the minds of anti-hunters and PETA supporters about the people, process, and animals involved in hunting. It certainly does nothing to change the reality of what happens to the animal. The harvested animal is killed. Its life has been taken from it. Its life is over.

I think using the term harvest is entirely too impersonal. I refuse to use it to pacify anyone uncomfortable with the realities that killing an animal involves. Killing involves levels of personal interaction. Emotions are involved. It involves an extremely intimate exchange. It involves taking life. I refuse to impersonalize the realities involved by attaching a lesser, friendlier, more socially correct label to it. I refuse to think of it as anything other than what it is.

Hunting animals and personally processing them for food is an inherent part of our historical human nature. There is something about it. Something primal about it that connects us with our roots, shows us how intricately dependent we are upon nature, reminds us of both who and what we are, and affirms our humanity is a positive way.

The vast majority of modern men and women are totally out of touch with this dimension of natural life. The extent of their meat handling is to pick something out of the cooler at the store then unwrap it and cook it. The idea of killing an animal, gutting an animal, smelling the smell of the animal’s internal parts, skinning an animal, cutting it into its various parts, then using its life to sustain their own is foreign to them. Handling guts and getting blood on their hands just isn’t an interest for the vast majority of modern men and women.

Lost, with the lack of interest, are the skills necessary to accomplish all the related tasks involved.

That first deer that I killed in the Army over forty years ago?

I had processed an untold number of rabbits and squirrels but I had never processed a deer. It was a learning curve and I’ve got to tell you that I did a real butcher of a job on that one. Pitiful. There is a lot more to working a deer than a squirrel.

How many deer since then?

I don’t know for sure. Seventy or eighty is a reasonable guess. The only processing I’ve ever had done for me is in the sausage making department. Making sausage is something I want to do … and have the equipment to do the job … and will do now that finding the time to do it is not the problem that it has been over the years.

I have, needless to say, gotten a lot better at processing over the years. I don’t have a fancy set up for processing. Once the deer is quartered, put into a cooler, and iced down I generally let it bleed out a few days then bring it into the house a piece or two at a time and use the kitchen sink and counter to do the job. I’ve noticed the past few years that the height of the counter and my own height don’t quite jive. Holding my head tilted forward gives my neck fits now that some age is catching up with me. It would be nice if the counter was 6 inches higher or I was 6 inches shorter. Working on this batch I made use of a stool that brought that distance closer together. It was a little awkward at first but worked out pretty good.

Processing a deer, or any game animal for that matter, isn’t difficult. It’s mainly a matter of tracing the lines, dissecting, separating the various muscles, then slicing what you want out of them. There are plenty of books, websites, and Youtube videos on processing all sorts of wild game.

I’ve found that the best way to deal with the front shoulders is to bone them out, clean them up a little, and turn them into ground. There is a lot of meat on the front shoulders and the sad reality is that a lot of hunters nowadays don’t care to fool with them. I don’t bother double grinding it. I run it through once and leave it a little coarse. A little coarser makes for a better pot of chili.

I don’t spend a lot of time cleaning up the meat that I am going to grind. Nor am I too picky about the bloodshot. Trim the worst of it. Remove as much of the silver skin, gnarly, and sinew that can be easily removed. Cut it into cubes. Run it through the grinder. I’ve never had a problem with sinew building up on the blade or clogging the grinding plate on the first grind. The only time this has been a problem is when I’m doing a second finer grind with the finer plate.

Save the hard fat from the deer.

This is one of the parts of the deer that most simply throw into the garbage. The better thing to do with it is to save it, bag it, freeze it, and, when you have a little time, render it and turn it into tallow. Deer tallow is a valuable commodity with multiple uses. I simply put the hard fat into a lidded pot, cover it with water, simmer it for a couple hours, strain it through a cloth, then set it on the porch overnight to do its thing. The hard tallow comes to the top and sets up. Run a sharp blade around the sides, lift it out, scrape the meat particles and soft mealy matter from the bottom of the hunk, and give it a little rinse.

Learning to procure and process your own meat is one of the smartest things anyone can do. Not only as a matter of survival in a difficult situation but more so as part of the art of living a self-reliant lifestyle.

Having the tools and owning the skills to accomplish the task involves some expenditure of time and resources. Processing the meat requires a commitment of time. The investments of time and resources are well-spent and over time those investments come back multiplied many times over.

Blackeye Peas and Hog Jowl

So here we are on the first day of 2016. The old one is behind us and the new one is ahead of us.

There are some traditional foods specific to holidays and occasions. Here, in the South, Blackeye Peas is one of those "s'posed" to have on New Years Day. Rumor is that eating Blackeye Peas on New Years Day is "s'posed" to bring good luck during the year.

I don't know about the luck thing. I really don't put much stock in it.

What I do know is that the lowly Blackeye Pea is a tasty thing that we cook up around here more often than the once a year tradition calls for.

I figured what the heck. Play around a little. Get creative in the kitchen and do a little something different with the lowly pea.

Here's the recipe that I concocted.

Dice a half pound of hog jowl into 1/2 inch pieces. Fry the jowl until it is good and crisp. Get it out of the grease and let it drain while working on the 4 quart bean pot.

3/4 pound dried Blackeye Peas

One onion sliced and diced

2 stalks of celery chopped

1 small can Rotel

1 small can diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 heaping teaspoon Mrs. Dash Table Blend

1 heaping teaspoon Oregano

1 heaping teaspoon Parsley

1 generous pinch of crushed Red Pepper

Add the jowl to the pot and fill with water to a little better than 3/4 full.

Bring to a rolling boil then cut it back to a simmer. Depending upon how old the dried peas are it will take from an hour to an hour and a half for them to be ready. Go ahead, while they are simmering, and stir up your favorite Jalapeno Corn Bread and get it in the oven. Time it just right and your corn bread will still be hot when you start spooning those peas into serving bowls.

You might want to adjust some of the seasonings to your taste but what we turned out here was more than fit to eat.

Bon appetit y'all.

Oh. One more thing.

Happy New Year and forget about this business of luck. Moon Pies and Money falling out of the sky is a myth. Get out there and make it a good 2016!