Bushcraft Book

[southernman]

when i was a youth in scouts; working on, earning, then teaching wilderness survival merit badge, there was a great book entitled "bushcraft." anybody else ever seen it ?

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[davetclown]

I havent.
I missed out on the scout seen, but I too came across a book in my youth dealing with outdoor survival,

there are a number of excelent books out of print containing skills of some of the old masters of the time.

today we have a number new fangled devises to preserve and prelong the enevitable. but I dont think there are any gourps teaching out door survival any more.

I cant remember the name of the book I read, but it covered almost every thing from surviving in the dead of winter and how to find shelter, how to start a fire to making rope and making your own fish hooks. yep thats right you can make a fish hook and line for fishing from what you find in the feilds and woods.

it taught how to find food where to look how to prepare it.

it tought how to trap water for drinking. it taught how to trap share and set dead falls for wild life should you ever have to resort to this level of self preservation.

as the book went further in chapters it built apon skills previously learned. beginnng with the first nessesity of life moving to the next in the order that it is needed for survival. the book even provided diagrams of how each product should look when it was finished....

once you had read though the book you learned an apreciation and respect for native comunity life. no one job was any more or less important than the next. every thing done was out of nessesity. and should one laps such as rope makers not doing their jobs you had no baskets for fish, no string for bows, no bindings for for lodging. or some one was unabled to build the fire food could not be prepaired, should the food gathers fail they were dependent of the hunters to bring home the daily kill. it is realy an intricate infristructure. of corse for those who could not see the conections could gain more aprecaition of a couple fictional survival books like swiss family robinson and that other one with the guy who had a man called fryday.

as a youth I had one advantage that most did not have and that was a mile of wilderness behind my house to pratice learned skills. whished I could remember half of the material in this book. should I have to resort back to those skills today I dont know if I could realy pull off a thirty day self preservation...

I had learned a great deal with this paperback. I would like to have held on to this book as well. it was a grass color shade of green and I think the book was entitled "Outdoor Survival" but I cant be sure.

it realy is funny that when we were kids we had wanted to learn these skills, and today a kid wants to learn nentendo. back then we found pleasure going in to the wilderness with out food and water and stay a week relying solely apon the tools we carried on our backs.

I guess I am rambling again, any way what scouting group and what level were you partisipating with when you came across your book. there is a good chance that the book you were working with could still be in print or on the back log shelves in some of the scouting main offices.
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[southernman]

yah nintendo . . .i remember pong!

i think i was 15 when i came across the bushcraft paperback, i also liked the old foxfire series, i dont think there was anything about rural living that these books didnt address . ..how to make a log cabin, how to dig a proper well, far beyond wilderness survival stuff

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[davetclown]

me and my older brother built a one room dirt floor log cabin as youths. it is still standing but is in a state of delapitation, thirty years of not being used and still this day no one has found it.

we selected an ideal location to insure it could not be seen from any direction in cluding the air..

It took us the whole summer to compleat with nothing more than a double blade axe.

the cabin doubled as a duck blind deer blind and hide away, every man needs a place of reffuge...
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