Such a person, at least in my mind is someone who would go into the woods for 2, 3, 7 days and live there, relying not on modern equipment, but his knowledge of the environment. I think that it is this image that prompted the question.
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However, can we call someone who is practicing a bushcraft related skill in a comfortable camp setting a “bushcrafter”? I would say “No”. We need to have a way of distinguishing between that and someone like RM or Tom Brown Jr. If there is no difference between a camper and a bushcrafter, then the term loses any meaning. We can then rename the site “CampingUK”.
I'll hopefully never will be like Tom Brown Jr. I mean, who wants to live a lie?
I think you'll find that there is basically no one in the northern hemisphere who is a bushcrafter by your defintion. Not if you mean "as a normal every day way of wilderness travel". I've done the week/10 days with just the clothes on my back, and it is quite doable, I'll even try to get som more hides tanned and do an "Ötzi" hike next summer, just because.
Other than that -- and a forthnights starvation isn't fatal, just hard on your body -- I find it quite easy (food is the hard bit, the land and the laws have changed). But come winter or a desire to have a bit more comfort I will bring kit, so would my ancestors 3-10 millenia ago. And I'm pretty certain that RM does to. For the simple reason that it takes time; 1-2 hours (or more) to build a shelter each night, pitcooking food rather than using a pot will add hours as well, etc. In some climate regions, with sufficient disregard for hunting and fishing regulations one can do this kind of travel and come out ahead (less kit gives faster travel, at the price of more camp-time, which is a net gain if the lost time in camp is less than you gain by faster travel) (see Graham 2002 for an example). Let me bring food, or get me a "break-the-law-with-no-penalty" card, then I can get past even that limitation.
Do I have to do it in the taiga in winter (-30 C) as well? In late October (the most difficult weather)?
Would it be different if that kit was paleolithical tech level? Read up on the Kootenai River project, and pay attention to the kit lists. What is the fuctional difference? I personally find that there is a significant difference between primitive tech/paleo life/travel and bushcraft, in that in the former all kit
has to be paleolithical, while in the latter the idea is to reduce the kit to a fuctional minimum, while avoiding unnessesary dependance on modern hi tech.
I am in no way a “bushcrafter”, so don’t read into my comments that I am looking down on people who are not. I carry all the modern equipment. All the gear I have fits into my pack, but it’s all modern stuff. I even carry a lighter.
At the risk of inflaming the conversation however, I must say that on some level it bothers me when people get bushcraft fashionable. By that I mean, spending twice as much on a leather pouch made by someone else than you would for a synthetic one, etc. If you actually went into the bush with your knife, killed a rabbit, skinned it and made the pouch so you can gather your other recourses, then more power to you. However, pulling out your “authentic” bushcraft gear and setting it up next to your truck just seems silly to me.
To each his (or more seldom: her) own. If I make a wool shirt, can I buy the fabric, or must I start with a few sheep? Can I get the deerhides (and a rabbitskin pouch is rather useless for most things, so deerhides it is) from hunters with rifles, or must I kill them with a handmade flatbow? Can I trade for my flint axe the way my ancestors did, or must I make it myself? Can I buy reindeer skin from a Sami craftsman, and use it? Do I have to sew the pouch using sinew?
Some references regarding primtive living and travel worth reading:
Matt Graham. Primitive travel kit
Bulletin of Primitive Technology 24, 2002
Matt McMahon. Primitive travel gear. In Davis Wescott (ed)
Ancestral skills Gibbs-Smith Publisher, 2001
Diedrik Pomstra. Tame hunter/gatherer and wild food
Bulletin of Primitive Technology 31, 2006
Lynx Shepard. The Kootenai River stone age living project
Bulletin of Primitive Technology 23, 2002
Alice Tulloch, The Yaak River hunting project.
Bulletin of Primitive Technology 27, 2004
Alice Tulloch. Going wild: Organizing a primtive living experiment
Bulletin of Primitive Technology 34, 2006