Bushcrafting Gear!!!

"Thank you for relying on insults to argue against something that you don't understand, it's very much appreciated."

You are on an ultralight backpacking forum and you have a problem with someone that does not understand "bushcraft"?

Now that's funny.

I generally understand it. (don't have any interest to delve further) I just don't see the necessity of most of it. I find most of it to be very non-LNT and over the top. Seems to involve a lot of Cammo, larger than necessary knives (and other cutting tools), general destruction of trees for minimal gain.

You say you only use dead fall but from what i've seen online is a lot of cutting of green live standing trees for use in unnecessary shelters.

hey look they even created a fence to kill even more live trees

all of that damage for a shelter that looks tight for 2 people. nice.

BushcraftUSA.com has a great forum to discuss bushcraft gear and techniques..

I agree with what Craig says below.. Learn skills and techniques to not get into trouble. a few miles from a normal trail is what i call "lost" and that means if something goes wrong you are probably immobile and away from where SAR is going to start looking. If you are immobile you will not be able to build a shelter, probably won't be able to find necessary components for a bow drill or other primitive fire making for that matter. If you want to practice, try doing any of those skills without being able to stand on a right foot or arm.

"I am not advocating building a wood shelter on the AT because there is no need to do so. But if I'm backpacking off trail miles and miles from the nearest person, I have to be self reliant to survive. If this website is Gear Centric, then all I wanted this thread to be was a source of discussion on the necessary gear to accomplish these survival tasks."

I agree wholeheartedly about the need for self-reliance in survival.

That's why I carry a tent or tarp and a Bic lighter and I don't rely on chopping wood, building shelters, and fashioning bow drills to survive. Which leaves me plenty of leisure time for "surviving" while watching sunsets and swimming in lakes…

I have thus far made a healthy habit of not suddenly and unexpectedly finding myself in the wilderness without warning and without appropriate gear. That's the best survival strategy I've found to date.

""Thank you for relying on insults to argue against something that you don't understand, it's very much appreciated."

You are on an ultralight backpacking forum and you have a problem with someone that does not understand "bushcraft"?

Now that's funny."

I have a problem with ignorance and the hate and fear that it creates. If someone doesn't know what something is, maybe they should ask a question or two instead of automatically rejecting it as 'stupid', or just mind their own business. I don't know anything about sewing my own down jacket, that doesn't mean I invade the MYOG thread telling everyone they are wasting their time.

@ Jake

"I generally understand it. (don't have any interest to delve further) I just don't see the necessity of most of it. I find most of it to be very non-LNT and over the top. Seems to involve a lot of Cammo, larger than necessary knives (and other cutting tools), general destruction of trees for minimal gain.

You say you only use dead fall but from what i've seen online is a lot of cutting of green live standing trees for use in unnecessary shelters.

hey look they even created a fence to kill even more live trees"

Yep, all people who are interested in Bush Craft chop down giant sections of forest. Also, all Chinese people can't drive, every Muslim on Earth is a terrorist, and people from the South are inbred and have sex with pigs!

The word survival comes up a lot in the Bushcraft world.

Which, to me, makes no sense. You're obviously prepared enough for this hypothetical "survival situation", miles from trails and people, to have an axe, knife, and saw with you…

So why not just carry gear instead and not goof around with debris shelters, beds of leaves, and drinking out of your shoe?

Your Gransfors Bruks hatchet, while a cool tool, weighs as much as a cuben poncho shelter, quilt, and Gossamer Gear Nitelite pad. For the weight of your saw, you can throw in nice cook kit and water treatment. For the weight of you knife, an SUL pack to carry it all.

All of which would give you a much greater safety margin, efficiency, and comfort in your "survival" situation.

"Yep, all people who are interested in Bush Craft chop down giant sections of forest. Also, all Chinese people can't drive, every Muslim on Earth is a terrorist, and people from the South are inbred and have sex with pigs!"

Can't you find a Corvette forum to tell people that cars should not be made of fiberglass? I am sure it would be well received.

I am sure there are a few R&B music forums that would love to discuss bluegrass.

My point is that even if there is a valid purpose and use for bushcraft skills, this is not the place to talk about it. I would think you would have expected some push back.

Craig they'd rather run around like Rambo showing off their knives and sometimes guns to show how "prepared" they are. ;) making ridiculous camp setups for an overnight.

I enjoy learning and practicing primitive skills and teach some of them to my students. I think Busch craft is a loaded term often associated with high impact activities and avoid identifying with it. Friction fire, flint knaping, shelter building, etc can be fun activities. Personally I usually relegate them to sitting around my fire pit with friends or "front country" camping. When backpacking I prefer to have my basic needs met with light gear so that I can focus on walking, relaxing, or practicing the more important soft skills of wilderness survival. Awareness; including tracking, plant lore/knowledge, resource identification, etc along with the skills of water source evaluation, campsite selection, weather reading, problem solving, decision making,etc. Are as or more important than some of the "hard" survival skills and can be constantly practiced even while walking or are integral to the backpacking experience. To the original question if I were going on a hypothetical primitive trip I would probably only add thin leather gloves, a cook pot appropriate for a fire, and my Tracker knife to my backpacking kit. Also the appropriate tools and licenses for any hunting or fishing.

+1, Gerry. I think it is a perfectly acceptable hobby and I see the fun aspect. The skills you listed could be life saving and not at all out of place for UL hiking and LNT principles. In fact there are skills in your list that everyone should learn for disaster preparedness as well as hiking.

This is the sort of thing that shouldn't happen on public lands and it is a tame example:

Note the logs are saw cut, but the axe is pictured— for cache I guess.

I could see making a litter shelter for practice and then re-distributing the materials, but the example above goes too far. In fact, it wouldn't keep you dry at all; a cheap poly tarp would be far better.

Once while doing some winter hiking, a combination of factors saw me hit a campsite a couple of hours before dark knowing that I needed to have a fire going soon, and enough firewood to burn all night if things went any further south. The thought briefly entered my mind that it would sure be nice for once to have a saw. However, by keeping my wits, it didn't take too long to find more than enough wood and get a fire going, get my shelter up, get into dry clothes and start drying some things out….in the end, I didn't need the fire all night, but regardless, I didn't need the saw to survive. Quality UL gear and more importantly knowledge and keeping my wits were more than sufficient.

described as "an overnighter a few miles in".. multiple fire rings.. etc

http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/showthread.php/84221-Fresh-mountain-air-overnighter

"hard to keep warm without a big fire" uhh cuz he doesnt have a sleeping bag or shelter worth a damn with temps down to 35F.. duhhh

Same weight, two mindsets

One example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gts99Un06wA

ULers: I'm sure that any of you are better at starting a fire with ONLY natural materials or, if your pack fell off a cliff, to gett by with what is in your pockets than the average citizen in Starbucks.

Bushcrafters: Similarly, I'm sure that you could take a BPing trip and carry less weight than the typical Walmart shopper who has decided to "get away from it all".

But each is also better on what they focus on than anyone else.

I do more miles in a day than some guy who, when he gets cold, flintknaps a arrowhead, makes a bow from yew, kills and plucks a goose, and then (having sowed, picked, and woven into clothe a crop of cotton) assembles his own down jacket. But I'm not as good as bushcraft as I'd like to be. To wit: With my 12-year-oldin Desolation Wilderness, last year, I realized I'd forgotten my mini-bic. And I tried to do a fire bow to get an ember to light the butane stove I brought, but it didn't work.

I could learn a lot from bushcrafters.

Bushcrafters could learn a lot from BPL.

Why the arguments?

If you're going to bushcraft, why not head into a logged area? It more closely resembles a post-apocholeptic setting anyway.

If you are going to do a lot of miles, you are going to be on the trail system, where there are rightfully more regulations.

But if I forget some gear or something breaks, or the weather turns, it would benefit me to be better at bushcraft.

If a bushcrafter needed to make some miles, he'd (are there any female bush crafters?!?) benefit from UL concept and techniques.

Hike your own hike.

Chop down your own tree.

But we could learn from each other.

" But if I'm backpacking off trail miles and miles from the nearest person, I have to be self reliant to survive."

There are a fair number of people on this site who backpack off trail miles and miles from the nearest person, and somehow they seem to manage without trashing the environment and carrying all that extra weight. What are they missing? Or, maybe, what are you missing?

OK, I think I understand what's going on here…

Ummmm….Oh YeaH! Well I hike 40 mile days TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN TO BUILD A FIRE AND DIRT HUT!! And I Eat raw Crow! AND I'll BE READY when society collapses and you don't have your fancy Cuban backpacks!!

Did I do that right? This is a pissing contest, no?

I think it is funny that he is self reliant except that he needs to carry 2.5lbs of cutting tools. Sounds more like he is reliant on major cutting tools and unreliable primitive firemaking.

He said that Andrew has the skills to be self reliant with a pocket knife but he doesn't have those skills. apparently he thinks chopping down trees and lighting fires is a better use of time and resources than learning more and less destructive skills.

Can kid themselves all they want but in reality they just want to cut things with big tools and make fires. Doing these activities on public land is pretty disrespectful to everyone else that might come along.

"Did I do that right?"

It's spelled cuben :) Run on sentence. Improper use of capital letters. So, not so much.

Flame on!

Seriously, though, this is a tough one…

As a Forster for the Forest Service, I am familiar with the CFR. It exists to protect resources from damage. I understand what a damaged forest looks like, and consider as best I can the implications of my actions out-of-doors as they relate to the resource in regards to LNT, MBPs, and what I consider "common sense" juxtaposed against my own desires to to practice the sport–and it really is a sport–of bushcraft.

Yes, it is not practical to practice bushcraft in many situations; to me, however, it is a fun, educational activity that helps me connect with my surroundings through a deeper awareness and appreciation of the ecology surrounding me. It helps me connect with my Native American heritage, and when I know the forest is overgrown, decadent, and just itching for a disturbance, I often feel fortunate to know how to "responsibly" (I know, I know…) provide that disturbance. When things come together right and I feel an opportunity to make a pair of snowshoes comes along, it is truly a gift that I appreciate presenting itself to me, whether or not I choose to take action…

(Note: I'm talking about forest here, not juniper scrub over cryptobiotic soil crusts, alpine meadows, wetlands, and the like. I 'm not sure what would need to happen for me to practice bushcraft in these environments…)

While I can see the obvious philosophy conflict between bushcraft and bpl, as well as the 'my way is better than yours', vis a vis destructive manufacturing/distribution process of light gear vs destructive impact on immediate surrounds by cutting trees etc;

don't you think that UL backpackers and bushcrafters have much more in common (both in interests and in passion towards and advocacy around conservation) than the average joe who doesn't step off asphalt except for a dip off a beach down south come holidays?

I mean, both parties have vested interests in the conservation and preservation of nature in all our countries and around the world. I totally understand people sharing their opinions on why they feel they way they do about their relationship with nature and our environment and it's nice to hear them. That being said, we should be looking to be inclusive towards all people who can get behind the idea of protecting our earth. We're fighting an uphill battle here folks in case you didn't notice. Bushcrafters are not the problem. Our civilization's ambivalence towards earth is.

With enough time, bushcraft can produce a decent shelter.

Jake! I have a couple of questions for you which, were you to answer, would give me a much better picture of your views regarding the matters at hand. (Anyone else, of course, can also answer..)

I'm makin' lemonade here if it's the last thing I do…

1.) What is "worse" from a sustainability/save-the-resource kinda viewpoint?

A.) A weekend warrior who dedicates a closet full of all-season backpacking gear to 12 weekends and a week during summer, or…

B.) That same person who does the same things, but goes out in their normal woods/work clothes, with a few "bushcraft" tools, and constructs temporary shelters that are not reused.

2.) What is worse…

A.) A weekend warrior who dedicates…

B.) That same person..AND THE SHELTERS ARE REUSED FOR A DECADE.

3.) What is worse…

A.) A weekend warrior who dedicates…TO 36 WEEKENDS AND A MONTH IN SUMMER, or..

B.) That same person who does the same things, but goes out in their normal woods/work clothes, with a few "bushcraft" tools, and constructs temporary shelters that are not reused.

If there is a point to all of this, I suppose it's that it's kinda hard for me to draw a distinct line here; everything falls some where on a spectrum, as I see it.

Now this is all pretty much moot in the eyes of the word-as-written law, but it matters much to an individuals trying to maintain a certain moral and ethical compass, and to society as a whole. We can do nothing if not abide by our own personal set of ethics, which makes it only up to the individual to decide what is a "correct" or "incorrect" decision.

(edited for grammatical reasons only)

@ Cameron: That's Dick Proenneke's final cabin, right?

your choices don't make a lot of sense so i'll give you a general answer from my POV.

Backpacking gear in general can be used for quite a long time if treated properly and cared for. Even if someone buys a newer/better piece, the old can be passed on to others who can continue to use it. Small backcountry campsites can be almost invisible when left with a bit of leaf fluffing to remove trace of a tent.

Bushcraft shelters leave quite a visible scar of destruction when done improperly and still quite a bit of work to cover up when done well. Large fire pits in backcountry are unnecessary and lead to scarred rocks, ground and when left unattended while sleeping pose a forest fire danger.

Luckily it seems to be a fairly small subset of campers that don't tend to go far from the road. Unfortunately, if damaged is caused on public property and it is deemed an issue then most don't have a distinction between them and normal backpackers.

Yes, burning stuff and building wood shelters can be fun. I believe that should be done on your own private property where others experiences are not effected.

that cabin is far more extravagant than Dick's cabin. http://www.lakeclark.com/dick-proennekes-cabin/

Thanks for extrapolating a bit…your views are clearer to me. I'd still like you to pick "A" or "B" three times.

It's hard to pick, I know. Choices are hard. It's hard to shore up all those tangents…hard to discern accurately the repercussions…easier to criticize and not chose a position…

Can't defend a position you don't assume. Pick.