Can we talk about Pathfinders school/ David Canterbury.

Toddy

Mod
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Jan 21, 2005
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Living as we do in the UK though, I reckon that either of those methods would leave the sleeper cooking in a sauna.
The only time I tried the hot stones in the soil stuff, the ground steamed.

M
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
That method is not used in Arctic Sweden either. Not by Swedes nor Same.

Imagine the telling off I would get if I came home with stuff that dirty....

Lysistrata did not device anything as punishing as my wife would!

Some might think it could be a useful extreme survival technique, but consudering the amount of work I do not.
 
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When I was much, much younger I spent a few surprise nights out in winter. The simple way worked for us. Build fire, sit round fire, talking, smoking or whatever and wishing you were more sensible. Come tiredness, we simply slept as we do now on cedar to insulate us from the ground and dozed in front of our fire. Every time we got too cold we put more wood on fire or turned over! We learned a lot making mistakes like that.
 

Arya

Settler
May 15, 2013
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A fire that has been dug down, covered with earth like on the last video, will give a longer lasting heat than one that´s just on the surface. That´s logical. It´s like a cooking pit. It will burn for hours and hours in the ground.
In that sense, my money is on Mr Russia.
Still I think I would rather heat up a few rocks, wrap them up and put them inside my sleeping bag if I had real trouble staying warm. Like they did back in the days before they went to bed :)

It would be interesting to try this out, but I think I´ll stick to just having a fire. I can´t dig in a frozen ground, but I can always have a fire going during the night.
 

Navek

Forager
May 25, 2015
120
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D.C. sure doesnt like to be proved wrong .. he commented on a young lads chanle who had forged a knife and slammed him for his knife design....couple weeks later he made the same shape knife .soon as I commented on it it got removed...seen it on acouple of his vids ..he comes across as I guy who knows everything and is never wrong and sure doesn’t like been proved wrong ...

Shame really as he does come up with some good stuff
 
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Tony

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As with life, you pick up bits of knowledge and skill from many people, the most important thing is to be aware of the opportunities that arise and make the most of them. There's generally something to learn from all of them, when Mors used to come to the BushMoot he was amazed at Rich59's damp tinder fireighting, it had always been a case of it not being possible and here was Rich teaching him stuff.

DC has a lot to offer, we just need to take what we need, that same for all of the outdoor/bushcraft/survival personalities, they fit some people with who they are and how they do things and other's fit other people better...
 
As with life, you pick up bits of knowledge and skill from many people, the most important thing is to be aware of the opportunities that arise and make the most of them. There's generally something to learn from all of them...

Tony, I agree with the sentiment. But I do have a problem with those who "inflate" their resume. And it's a practical one. I find that if a person has been dishonest in one area of their life, they are usually dishonest in others. It's a credibility issue that opens to question all subsequent information.

This is a big problem for teachers of outdoor skills. Someone could come to harm using ineffective skills in the wilderness. So there is a moral obligation to be candid about one's experience, forthright about how often one has used the technique being taught, and to admit one's mistakes.

I've learned watching videos from some of the more "controversial" instructors. But the underlying doubt in my mind takes away the pleasure of the learning process.

My $.02.

- Woodsorrel
 

Tony

White bear (Admin)
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Yeah, I agree with you as well, my point is more that we take opportunities from whoever we can, if there's people we decide not to use for that then that's fine, we have to make that sort of call all the time. There's usually something to learn from most people and a lot to learn from some...
 
Jul 24, 2017
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Maybe there is a problem with some of these personality's thinking there is a need to come up with things? I mean there is a lot of us here who grew up doing a thing called camping and that came in a verity of forms and once you got the basic's well rounded your pretty much good, and is there much more than the basic's, I mean is it not partly the point? its simple living, but now it's bush craft and I guess there's money to be made, Its a good thing in one way we have some great kit these days and things like this forum, I guess the camp fire dose not always bring the best company?
 
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KenThis

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Jun 14, 2016
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There is something incredibly special about a teacher who is humble enough to always be open to learning new things.
The greats always seem to have that, an unquenchable curiosity and love of learning/sharing.

However when it comes to online tutorials I don't think I'm too worried about personality issues or any CV 'bloating'.
It's the information that's important and how well it's explained.
I'm happy to learn from anyone, especially online since I don't have to put up with them.
It'd be very different if I was choosing a particular course or instructor of course.
 
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Bishop

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Jan 25, 2014
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I like to think that in the great churn of life everybody brings something new. Be they a grizzled mountain man or day-glow hiking newbie each has a different perspective and therefore solution to the same shared problems. Wisdom is figuring out what works for you. Even non-bushcrafters have made huge impacts on the way we spend time in the wilds. The work of Momofuku Ando for instance is carried (dare I say loved?) by many of us, yet right now I bet somebody is Googling his name out of puzzled curiosity.
 
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Chomp

Tenderfoot
Jan 17, 2018
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Tony, I agree with the sentiment. But I do have a problem with those who "inflate" their resume. And it's a practical one. I find that if a person has been dishonest in one area of their life, they are usually dishonest in others. It's a credibility issue that opens to question all subsequent information.

This is a big problem for teachers of outdoor skills. Someone could come to harm using ineffective skills in the wilderness. So there is a moral obligation to be candid about one's experience, forthright about how often one has used the technique being taught, and to admit one's mistakes.

I've learned watching videos from some of the more "controversial" instructors. But the underlying doubt in my mind takes away the pleasure of the learning process.

My $.02.

- Woodsorrel

People are people, we'll take to some more than others.

There is something incredibly special about a teacher who is humble enough to always be open to learning new things.
The greats always seem to have that, an unquenchable curiosity and love of learning/sharing.

However when it comes to online tutorials I don't think I'm too worried about personality issues or any CV 'bloating'.
It's the information that's important and how well it's explained.
I'm happy to learn from anyone, especially online since I don't have to put up with them.
It'd be very different if I was choosing a particular course or instructor of course.

I agree that its easier to 'buy into' a teacher if you actually like or respect them though. The flipside is that there are people with knowledge that we can learn from that we maybe don't warm to for whatever reason. Its probably a lot easier to learn from someone you don't particularly like on a medium like youtube than in 'real life'.
 

mrostov

Nomad
Jan 2, 2006
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What I have noticed is that there is much to learn from many out there, and not everyone out there is 100% on the best ideas. Most tend to be something of a specialist, whether they realize it or not.

Dave Canterbury's primary strengths lay in hunting (firearms and archery) and trapping. If you want to learn the best ways to cleverly carve wood, read Mors Kochanski. If you want to see how to trap critters for food, Canterbury's videos is a good place to start.

Canterbury is one of the reasons why so many bushcrafters in the USA count a muzzleloader or a break action shotgun as part of their standard kit, especially the H&R Topper single barrel break action, which Canterbury is a huge proponent of. Canterbury is also very big into archery for hunting.

It's common with a lot of bushcraft and primitive skills teachers to have a historical anchor point, such as paleolithic, etc. Canterbury's historical anchor point is the long hunter period of the American frontier. This is when his home state of Ohio, where his school is located, was the 'frontier' and it was common for frontiersmen to travel long distances through the thick forests on foot.

The long hunter era preceded the mountain man era of the Rocky Mountain fur trade and their frontier was what is now the central part of the eastern USA, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This was the era of Daniel Boone, when the wild frontier was places like Kentucky.

This is why a core part of his instructional videos is of the "21st Century Long Hunter". This is basically his concept of the long hunter with some of the equipment updated, like a break action shotgun (the H&R Topper is an 1890's design).

In North America, a focus on the mountain man era in the 1950's and 1960's produced a movement called 'buckskinning', which still goes on today. Buckskinning really came into it's own in the 1970's and that interest, plus the back to the land movement, branched out into primitive skills. Primitive skills instructors, like Olsen and Brown, and the books they wrote, became very popular.

In many ways, buckskinning plus traditional archery started by Saxton Pope (who learned from Ishi) really helped bushcrafting be what it is today, along with the efforts of people like Tom Brown, Larry Dean Olsen, Mors Kochanski, Calvin Rutstrum, Bradford Angier, John and Geri McPherson (a very paleolithic couple), and many others. Back in the day we had to use books and get-togethers, like a buckskinner rendevous and gun shows, to pass around knowledge.

Lars Grebnev (Danish but living in rural Russia, married to a Russian woman), who does Survival Russia, ironically, has a similar military background to Canterbury, combat engineer (Danish Army).

If you want to see how to deal with cold, look at how the Russians do it. Russia redefines cold into new realms of misery and danger. During WWII, German casualties would come home missing things left exposed to the cold and frozen off, like eyelids, noses, and other extremities that froze quickly when exposed, even for a very short period of time. They had to set low fires burning under their vehicle engines to keep the crank cases from freezing solid at night. Napoleon's retreating men could carve a sliver of meat right off of a living horse and the horse wouldn't even feel it.

Grebnev learned the basics of what he teaches from the locals and then developed it further by doing it.

Siberia is almost the same, exact climate and biosphere as the Yukon, only there is about 5 million square miles of it. Hunting, trapping, and fishing are important bushcraft skills there also. You see a lot of that coming through on Survival Russia's videos.
 
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Arya

Settler
May 15, 2013
796
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Norway
I talked to a friend of mine who´s a proper outdoor enthusiast and former soldier. He told me that they've done this on different types of soil, and if you can manage to make this coal bed on sand, then it actually works quite well. The sand apparently works like a magazine for the heat, and keeps the ground warm for a few hours. But you might not be able to count on finding a sand spot in a survival situation.
 

Bushcraftsman

Native
Apr 12, 2008
1,368
5
Derbyshire
"another shade of Bear Grylls"...at the risk of stirring the pot. Anyone who can break their back and still summit Everest gets my respect, he obviously knows his stuff, he's just trying to appeal more to a different audience and make shows that are more entertaining rather than purely factual. He's made a successful career out of being an "action man", he gets paid for it, and I'm sure he loves his job...seems like he's doing alright to me!
 
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Mr Wolf

Full Member
Jun 30, 2013
713
171
Nottinghamshire
Amazing what a narcissist with time and resource can do...fluked his way to where he is with dishonesty.

In regards to bear pills, amazing he gets plaudits,he was born rich....his back was his own fault as he didnt pull his emergency in time.
 

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