I'd say the perfect chilling in the woods is with a hammock but that comes with the risk of freezing in the woods of course.
Definition of Bushcraft
- Thread starter Elen Sentier
- Start date
I'd say the perfect chilling in the woods is with a hammock but that comes with the risk of freezing in the woods of course.
hi....ok.....kool....but where does prepping fit in.....its not survival....its not bushcraft......its survival at its minimum.....bushcraft at its max....
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The question is: Does prepping fit into bushcraft/survival? Or rather do bushcraft/survival fit into prepping?
Bushcraft answers the question as to what to call it if there are no trees forming woods. Bush being a term that can apply to any area in or pretending to be the back of beyond. Bundu is another good name for it but bunducraft sounds odder than bushcraft.
lol...nice to know there are still areas of the uk that are 70 miles from a tescos....dont suppose i could have your address please m8?.....i know where i'm bugging out to....(dont tell me...theres a military base 1 mile away though?).....
lol...
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lol...
s
Round here, 70miles from the nearest Tesco, we call it the quarterly shop
![12192537564_1c5f127c0b.jpg](http://[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/76789218@N03/12192537564/"][IMG]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5505/12192537564_1c5f127c0b.jpg)
Take everything you can think of and a many many things you can't.
That's Life.
Take Life and remove anything not related to staying dry, warm, fed and hydrated.
That's Bushcraft.
Take Bushcraft and remove anything not related to getting back to a town or city ASAP.
That's Survival.
Take Survival wait until 2010 and remove anything that doesn't look like "I am Legend".
That's Prepping.
Go to the north side of the great glen, and travel north and west to where you find people living in greater densities than 1:10ksq, that should take you all the way to the coast
Heather is a dwarf shrub/bush, so Bushcraft should cover you.
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My, what an interesting thread! Well, here in the states we don't even use the word "bushcraft." Of course, we no longer speak English. But fortunately the language is close enough to understand one another, at least in the written form. It's sort of like Spanish and Portuguese.
People used to use the term woodcraft, which is probably close, as well as campcraft, which I suppose you have to say when you live where there are no woods. When I was little and went camping fairly often, that's what we called it: going camping. It was purely recreational. There was no "prepping" or survivalism concept, not yet anyway. No one wore bracelets made of parachute cord or carried knives around their neck, although I assure you knives were typically carried, pocket knives, that is. Not that you used them for anything practical. I suppose that's still my frame of mind, although most things I've become interested in or that I've actually done have no doubt influenced my thinking on the subject. But I think the recreational aspect is basic. That's the way the old timers saw it.
Robert Service said the woods were safer (in so many words) than the city. And George Washington Sears said we don't go to the woods to rough it; we go to smooth it. Our everyday life is hard enough as it is, let the woods be our playground.
Woodcraft, however, also implies to me learning about and using forest resources (as long as we're there) and that in fact was very much a theme of the literature of camping and scouting down into the 1960s. Since then, however, we have begun to realize that those very resources are not inexhaustible and intelligent sustainable use is necessary, for after all, the forest is a renewable resource. But many users are there for other reasons.
Hunters in particular are out for totally different reaons and naturally have their own point of view. They alone buy a license to go afield. There are also those who are dedicated long distance hikers, for whom the journey is the object and not the camping. No doubt there are others.
People used to use the term woodcraft, which is probably close, as well as campcraft, which I suppose you have to say when you live where there are no woods. When I was little and went camping fairly often, that's what we called it: going camping. It was purely recreational. There was no "prepping" or survivalism concept, not yet anyway. No one wore bracelets made of parachute cord or carried knives around their neck, although I assure you knives were typically carried, pocket knives, that is. Not that you used them for anything practical. I suppose that's still my frame of mind, although most things I've become interested in or that I've actually done have no doubt influenced my thinking on the subject. But I think the recreational aspect is basic. That's the way the old timers saw it.
Robert Service said the woods were safer (in so many words) than the city. And George Washington Sears said we don't go to the woods to rough it; we go to smooth it. Our everyday life is hard enough as it is, let the woods be our playground.
Woodcraft, however, also implies to me learning about and using forest resources (as long as we're there) and that in fact was very much a theme of the literature of camping and scouting down into the 1960s. Since then, however, we have begun to realize that those very resources are not inexhaustible and intelligent sustainable use is necessary, for after all, the forest is a renewable resource. But many users are there for other reasons.
Hunters in particular are out for totally different reaons and naturally have their own point of view. They alone buy a license to go afield. There are also those who are dedicated long distance hikers, for whom the journey is the object and not the camping. No doubt there are others.
Goodness! No new post in three weeks?
Well, then, here's another thought: backwoodsman. There are and have been people who lived in the "backwoods" (don't know if you have that term in the U.K. and points east). Some live there permanently, some temporarily, some in camps and some in what my father called "settlements." I think there may have been something of a backwoods mentality, at least for some people, particularly the hard scrabble farmers, ranchers and others living off the beatn path. I lived for a while in a log house built before the Civil War (the American one, that is) and people around there had a decided "backwoods" point of view, though hardly exclusive of any other point of view. They may have been off the beaten path but it wasn't that far away.
I think more people used to live in out of the way places, sometimes in relatively isolated communities, community not implying a village or town, or in camps like loggers or miners or even on big ranches. These days people can drive wherever they care and don't need to live close enough to anything to have to walk. I don't even think "woods" needs to be in the picture. A cowboy on an isolated ranch or distant cattle camp in the wide open spaces fits my idea (not necessarily my ideal) of a backwoodsman in a sense of the word and the Great Southwest doesn't have great forests. And farmers spend a lot of their time fighting the forest, in a manner of speaking.
None of this may have anything to do with bushcraft, campcraft, woodcraft or messing about in boats but as a group, there are similarities. The backwoodsman is self-reliant, a do-it-yourself-er and lives more in touch with the outdoors, to name a few characteristics. I'm not sure if there are many other shared characteristics since I also include surveyors, forest rangers, game wardens and foresters as much as hunters and professional guides, lumbermen, prospectors, and sheep herders. And I expect that none of us are any of those things.
Well, then, here's another thought: backwoodsman. There are and have been people who lived in the "backwoods" (don't know if you have that term in the U.K. and points east). Some live there permanently, some temporarily, some in camps and some in what my father called "settlements." I think there may have been something of a backwoods mentality, at least for some people, particularly the hard scrabble farmers, ranchers and others living off the beatn path. I lived for a while in a log house built before the Civil War (the American one, that is) and people around there had a decided "backwoods" point of view, though hardly exclusive of any other point of view. They may have been off the beaten path but it wasn't that far away.
I think more people used to live in out of the way places, sometimes in relatively isolated communities, community not implying a village or town, or in camps like loggers or miners or even on big ranches. These days people can drive wherever they care and don't need to live close enough to anything to have to walk. I don't even think "woods" needs to be in the picture. A cowboy on an isolated ranch or distant cattle camp in the wide open spaces fits my idea (not necessarily my ideal) of a backwoodsman in a sense of the word and the Great Southwest doesn't have great forests. And farmers spend a lot of their time fighting the forest, in a manner of speaking.
None of this may have anything to do with bushcraft, campcraft, woodcraft or messing about in boats but as a group, there are similarities. The backwoodsman is self-reliant, a do-it-yourself-er and lives more in touch with the outdoors, to name a few characteristics. I'm not sure if there are many other shared characteristics since I also include surveyors, forest rangers, game wardens and foresters as much as hunters and professional guides, lumbermen, prospectors, and sheep herders. And I expect that none of us are any of those things.
I like your definition too. One of my uncles was a woodsman - something similar I think. He didn't live in a log cabin but in an ancient cottage way out in the woods on the Moor. He was both self-reliant but still very in touch with the local village for whom he did lots of things. He taught me a massive lot which I'm trying now to access again from the hard-disc in my head .
BTW - love your sig-line! It made Hubby chuckle too
. BTW - love your sig-line! It made Hubby chuckle too
The "Shoot low, Sheriff" line is from the Western Swing bandleader Bob Wills from a few decades ago. He was given to yelping and tossing out lines like that during their performances.
Americans like to pretend the first settlers lived in log cabins, which is not true, and in some parts of the country, such as the Great Plains and the southwest and California, log cabins were probably never built simply because of a lack of trees. The theory is that cabin-building came with settlers from Northern Europe, which might be true. There are many old log houses near where I live and on further west. It's interesting in that the construction of all that I've seen in this part of the country is almost identical, as if they were built by the same man. Another interesting thing is that many have been added onto with different forms of construction, either stone or brick. Further west, in the area where I grew up, a log house typically are built of much larger logs. Nearly all the log houses I've seen had squared timbers. One local woodworking hobby shop actually carries broadaxes, which are used for squaring logs, but I have no idea who they expect to buy them. However, I live just outside Washington, D.C. (about 20 miles from the back door of the White House, as I like to say) and I knew where about a half-dozen log houses were (some since demolished) and for good measure, three one-way bridges.
Americans like to pretend the first settlers lived in log cabins, which is not true, and in some parts of the country, such as the Great Plains and the southwest and California, log cabins were probably never built simply because of a lack of trees. The theory is that cabin-building came with settlers from Northern Europe, which might be true. There are many old log houses near where I live and on further west. It's interesting in that the construction of all that I've seen in this part of the country is almost identical, as if they were built by the same man. Another interesting thing is that many have been added onto with different forms of construction, either stone or brick. Further west, in the area where I grew up, a log house typically are built of much larger logs. Nearly all the log houses I've seen had squared timbers. One local woodworking hobby shop actually carries broadaxes, which are used for squaring logs, but I have no idea who they expect to buy them. However, I live just outside Washington, D.C. (about 20 miles from the back door of the White House, as I like to say) and I knew where about a half-dozen log houses were (some since demolished) and for good measure, three one-way bridges.
Interesting about the lack of trees - I remember reading about dugout cabins and "sod" shacks. We have the same diversity here - although more often for financial reasons than lack of trees. For example a hovel is built from small wood because the owner had no access to timber (trees with a trunk diameter over 12"). There is still one hovel left at least
Its interesting that few people would think of such a dwelling as a hovel - but in the most literal sense, it is.
Its interesting that few people would think of such a dwelling as a hovel - but in the most literal sense, it is.
