Bushcraft

Choose My Adventure, Vote #1: Tracking Wild Boars or Granola Bar Survival Fire

Wow! Tomorrow begins our adventure in the Allegheny Mountains, with the Gear Junkie. We’re extremely pumped — and you should be too, since you’re voting on our first day’s activities!

Since the trip is the grand prize of the Junkie’s Choose Your Own Adventure sweepstakes, we want you to be a part of it. We need you to vote on what to do during our hike in the mountains tomorrow. Will it be:

Tracking Wild Boars
Honestly, we know nothing about the Alleghenies. So while researching, we were curious about which kinds of wildlife we could expect to see. “Whitetail deer, chipmunk, groundhogs…” Nothing new, we have those in Minnesota. “…Bobcat, snowshoe hare, wild boar and black bear are also found in the –” Hold it right there. Wild boars? Yes! What an awesome chance to read Nature’s signs, feel the thrill of the chase and perhaps get our shinbones flayed by a vicious feral beast!

-OR-

Start a Survival Fire Using Granola Bars
A vigorous hike will keep you warm, but in those elevations… well, you just never know. If you vote for this option, we’ll attempt a fire fueled with bars of both the Chewy and Crunchy varieties — and who knows, maybe some of that paraffin-coated Key Lime Luna Bar crap (I sure won’t be eating that one, Survival or not.) It’ll be educational.

So, what’ll it be? Cast your vote NOW in the Comments section of this post. You’ll find out which option we chose, when we post our hiking adventure, tomorrow night. VOTE!

1950′s Version of Survivorman Will Learn You a Thing or Two

The National Film Board of Canada just launched nfb.ca, a fantastic collection of online films, many of them full-length. A little digging around and you’ll find enough nature documentaries to sustain a man for some weeks.

“Survival in the Bush”
here, is like Survivorman of the ’50s… almost. You’ll see. Purposefully stranding himself in the wild for three weeks, journalist Bob Anderson leans heavily — real heavily — on his able Algonquin guide to get food, get shelter and get them home. Despite the occasional cornball humor, you’ll actually learn how to make a fire stick, snare rabbits and… oh! how to quick whip together a birch bark canoe. Really.

Enjoy, but be sure to grab something to snack on for this half-hour of info-tainment goodness. Dried sturgeon, anyone?

What Do Bushcrafters Do All Winter?

Well, they don’t slow down, that’s for sure. Take this entry from the Bushcraft International Toothbrush Challenge, for example. Yes: A competition to make toothbrushes out of twigs. I viewed several submissions on this rather slow news day and found the above video the most inspired, yet efficient, means of staving off gingivitis when lost in the wilds.

I guess it’s more constructive than, say, sitting on your duff and surfing the Net for stuff to blog about… There’s just the question of what to use if that brush leaves splinters in your gums — surely not a toothpick?

Envying Earl’s Canoe

A clip from Earl’s Canoe, a documentary about an Ojibway man’s construction of a traditional birch bark canoe. The camera follows his whole process, beginning with selecting bark in the woods of Madeleine Island. This definitely looks like one of those fascinating step-back-through-time films.

Ultimate Essential Bushcraft Skills: Making little doohickeys from cattails

Cattail Ducks

Rainbound inside your tent? Got nine minutes to kill while your Mountain High dinner rehydrates? Here’s a simple project to try on the next trip: How to make cattail ducks and swans.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit they are kinda cute. Even if the idea is totally stolen from how they wrap your leftovers in aluminum foil at Macaroni Grill.

Old Skool Camping Techniques: Making a pine duff mattress

Pine Duff mattressHow to get a better night’s sleep on the trail? Go old skool and fashion yourself a pine duff mattress, of course!We’d read in old camping books how resourceful outdoorsmen would stuff bivy sacks with pine boughs, dead leaves and moss. It provided insulation and padding, making sleep in the wild much more bearable. So, while setting up camp last weekend on a scenic but rocky campsite, it sounded like a perfect experiment. With a few adaptations, it was a definite success!

Here’s how to make a pine duff mattress in just a few steps: MORE >

Outdoor skills legend to teach in Grand Marais

Want to learn how to live “comfortably in the bush on an indefinite basis with a minimal dependence on technological materials and tools?” Or maybe just how to go winter camping, without ending up as the next Jon Krakauer book?

Mors Kochanski is the author of the classic instructional book, “Bushcraft.” And I was thrilled to read today, that he’ll be teaching this fall at Grand Marais’ North House Folk School. Participants of the Wilderness Living Skills course will get to assemble 2-kg Wilderness Skills Kits, [presumably] test them out, and earn one crapload of Manly-Man Points to boot.

While the classes are still a ways off (not until November), slots are filling quickly. Details here (scroll to the second course from top).

“Leave no trace” vs. “positive trace”

I just listened to an interview with Norm Kidder, VP of a non-profit that teaches primitive technologies (as in stone tools, adzes, bows and arrows. etc). He discusses why primitive tool-making still has a place in our modern world. The highlight, though, comes when he points out the problem with the ‘leave no trace’ ethic.

The concept of ‘leave no trace’ implies that humans aren’t a part of nature – that’s what I object to. And so the goal of people shouldn’t be, leave no trace; but leave positive trace… Participate in a positive way in the environment, don’t attempt not to be a part of it, because then your whole mental concept is: ‘I’m separate. Everything I do is damaging and I have to tiptoe around.’

How does one leave that ‘positive trace’ in the wild? Where can implicitly hands-on activities like bushcrafting and primitive tool-making, meet on common ground with the hands-off principles of wildlife preservation? Listen to the full podcast for further discussion.