If you sat under the cow.. you’d get a pat on the head.
I'm going to show my age here...
- Thread starter Buck
- Start date
For me it was my Grandfather's Horace Kephart and 1930s Scouting books, at a young age. Interest was then encouraged by my father who was an outdoor writer in the 1970s, so we were always camping and trying out new kit. I wanted to do something less comfortable for some reason so, as a "Greenhorn", would shiver my cold, spooky nights away under natural lean-to shelters in the garden, and without any ground insulation, until I slowly learned things along the way.
Then I watched "Hell in The Pacific", with Lee Marvin as a downed pilot on a Pacific island and my father gave me his old helicopter survival pack - and I was hooked! Off into the jungles of wildest Somerset, throughout most of my school holidays. A few other books followed and then training with an ex-SAS chap, quietly-spoken and really knew his survival stuff, throughout the 1980s. I walked alone for miles at night across Exmoor and the Lake District, from one "RV" to another, always with survival-tasks to carry out and constant revision and testing, all under his patient instruction.
I was also fortunate enough to be given a load of old parachutes and survival gear by the RAF survival school (RAF Mountbatten), including a brand new-in-the-box Wilkinson Type-D survival knife. So, parachute shelters became my new home from home and flying rations were my staple diet!
Later on, Lofty Wiseman and his book became a further inspiration and thereafter I was lucky to have many opportunities to try out what I had read and learned.
I spent much time in the jungles of Borneo and Belize, working with and learning from the people who live there and practice jungle-craft for real. My efforts to achieve the same standard as theirs usually didn't work out as well but it was a superb time of doing what I had only read about in the jungle books and seen on Robinson Crusoe too! I am now keenly awaiting 2 books on Swedish bushcraft and survival by Lars Falt to arrive; and so it continues!
Then I watched "Hell in The Pacific", with Lee Marvin as a downed pilot on a Pacific island and my father gave me his old helicopter survival pack - and I was hooked! Off into the jungles of wildest Somerset, throughout most of my school holidays. A few other books followed and then training with an ex-SAS chap, quietly-spoken and really knew his survival stuff, throughout the 1980s. I walked alone for miles at night across Exmoor and the Lake District, from one "RV" to another, always with survival-tasks to carry out and constant revision and testing, all under his patient instruction.
I was also fortunate enough to be given a load of old parachutes and survival gear by the RAF survival school (RAF Mountbatten), including a brand new-in-the-box Wilkinson Type-D survival knife. So, parachute shelters became my new home from home and flying rations were my staple diet!
Later on, Lofty Wiseman and his book became a further inspiration and thereafter I was lucky to have many opportunities to try out what I had read and learned.
I spent much time in the jungles of Borneo and Belize, working with and learning from the people who live there and practice jungle-craft for real. My efforts to achieve the same standard as theirs usually didn't work out as well but it was a superb time of doing what I had only read about in the jungle books and seen on Robinson Crusoe too! I am now keenly awaiting 2 books on Swedish bushcraft and survival by Lars Falt to arrive; and so it continues!
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Interesting read this thread and brings out very well the differences between traditions. Scouting has been the start for many here but the old traditional hunting has lived strong and that has been the start for others. "Erä" tradition, meaning hunting in the middle of nowhere and not just surviving but "living", that includes all the necessary skills. The term "survival" has been imported much later and here mostly means other than standard camping skills.
Long may your country's traditional skills continue!
I was taught the approach to live "with" the land (as per the indigenous folks) rather than live "off" the land and that changed my entire perspective on "survival" as I had known it. Learning practical survival skills early on of course taught me the basic emergency procedures to follow during my work and travels and taught me skills that took me to the fringe of "bushcraft" and jungle-craft (but not very far beyond) - when I used to discuss "jungle survival" with my Iban and Dyak guides they just laughed and said "we do all that every day we're in the forest!" They did it all very well too!
A very good principle but it has another side too, an anthropologist friend once said indigenous people do not leave many marks on the land because they just do not have the numbers and the means to do it. There are people who -depending on the surroundings and other conditions- have developed a way of living that is stable and in many ways sustainable for long time but it is not automatic.
Interesting observation and I guess that it's all down to education about nature and respect for the land, whether you are born into a remote village in the wilderness (although sadly, no guarantee of "automatic" there either these days) or were raised in a disconnected city and move out to start another way of life.
That's where the old-era books about bushcraft and hunting, trapping and wilderness living etc are still relevant and important these days - along with capable teachers of these skills - to educate the younger generation and encourage them to try it all out and get away from the gadgets and TV. And to respect Nature as well as themselves.
I think it is question of attitude and skills, attitude not to do anything that permanently changes things and skills to do it in a sustainable way. Of course for me the army sergeants were very good at instilling the attitude of not leaving traces ... the how was left to the individual.
Absolute necro-posting but it really is the most amazing (to me) thing. I became reacquainted with Bullet this week, I remembered Fireball, Smasher, 3 Men in a Jeep... What I had completely forgotten was the survival wallet and cut outs. It was like someone switched on a light in my head, that was the reason I went to the library for "survival" books in the first place, that was why I discovered Eddie McGee, that was why I went to the local builders yard to scrounge a big plastic sheet! That was why I traipsed up the local glen with a schoolbag full of beans, tea bags and bicycle repair kit tin full of "useful" things.
In short I'd completely forgotten its existence, but I think I can safely say that that wallet was the initial spark of my interest in what I would, decades later, call bushcraft.
In short I'd completely forgotten its existence, but I think I can safely say that that wallet was the initial spark of my interest in what I would, decades later, call bushcraft.
In Europe and the UK, you people have not seen the Neolithic for thousands of years. Around my place, it's yesterday and today.
The mid-1800's in western Canada was very much "cowboys and Indians." I can't say how us kids got started. Camping trips of 7-14 days when we were 10-15 years old? By 1964, I was living to work many miles off the grid for months at a time. Mixed with university, quite an adventure. Dig out a map. My turf is the stretch from Black Bear Island Lake in the west to Keg Falls in the east, some 80 km of the fur trading route, the Churchill River. My name is in the registry in the Stanley Mission church.
Hindsight tells me one thing. Find an area and learn it like an old coat that you can slip over your shoulders at a moment's notice and drift out of sight. It takes some determination and diligence but at bed time, it was always a good day.
Even where I live now, there are logging roads that I've travelled many more than 100 times. You just do different stuff in different places.
The mid-1800's in western Canada was very much "cowboys and Indians." I can't say how us kids got started. Camping trips of 7-14 days when we were 10-15 years old? By 1964, I was living to work many miles off the grid for months at a time. Mixed with university, quite an adventure. Dig out a map. My turf is the stretch from Black Bear Island Lake in the west to Keg Falls in the east, some 80 km of the fur trading route, the Churchill River. My name is in the registry in the Stanley Mission church.
Hindsight tells me one thing. Find an area and learn it like an old coat that you can slip over your shoulders at a moment's notice and drift out of sight. It takes some determination and diligence but at bed time, it was always a good day.
Even where I live now, there are logging roads that I've travelled many more than 100 times. You just do different stuff in different places.
Cool. Always good to reconnect like that to something long-forgotten. I was always really grateful for the few bits of kit that I managed to cobble together in my early days and the outdoor escapades in local hills and woods seem, now, to have felt more adventurous with less gear and the need to improvise.
I too had the Survival Wallet which got me started into the Bushcraft adventure. Wish I still had it, fetch a hefty price on fleabay. Survival for young people by Anthony Greenbank and Eddie McGee followed. Made our own adventures with these as guides.
In the 70’s s a kid, I was hooked on a program called one for the pot, Fred Taylor was his name.
There was also one about survival with bare minimum..everyone was polite & kind & helped each other..no mardyness or back stabbing like today’s trash programs.
There was also one about survival with bare minimum..everyone was polite & kind & helped each other..no mardyness or back stabbing like today’s trash programs.
The old rocker, Ted Nugent, and his wife, Shemayne, have had a big property in the Upper Peninsula of the state of Michigan. They harvest all kinds of deer, process everything properly and give it all to the food banks around the state. For decades now.
Get a copy of their cook book: "Kill It and Grill It." Shemayne wrote the recipes. Ted wrote the hunting stories, some funny as Hello.
I suggest this because it applies to all the food that you should be eating, every day. The recipes are universal. "Hassenpfeffer by Glock" applies to beef and chicken. If you can stop shaking from laughter long enough to bang another rabbit.
Get a copy of their cook book: "Kill It and Grill It." Shemayne wrote the recipes. Ted wrote the hunting stories, some funny as Hello.
I suggest this because it applies to all the food that you should be eating, every day. The recipes are universal. "Hassenpfeffer by Glock" applies to beef and chicken. If you can stop shaking from laughter long enough to bang another rabbit.
I read My Side Of The Mountain by when I was about eight or so and that got me interested in the whole living outside houses in a glorified den sort of thing.
Also I liked Jack Hargreeves (his book is well worth a read as well) and Les Hiddens.
Ray Mears also good.
Also I liked Jack Hargreeves (his book is well worth a read as well) and Les Hiddens.
Ray Mears also good.
Yeh I remember them, if memory serves right was the Bush tucker man Australian? Might be getting confused with that one though. The reason I got into it was a book I read in the 70s called "My side of the mountain" after reading that I wanted to be that kid living in the wilderness.
Like others writing on this fantastic thread I was heavily influenced by those men and women who had served during ww2. These people often had kindly and encouraging words of advice for my then tiny adventures.
Growing up on my parents farm in the late 60’s my brother and I had space to roam and places to make camp, starting on the back lawn with an old canvas tent that we smeared with dripping in an attempt to make it waterproof (it then became so smelly it was unusable!) and progressing to a self-built den in woodland nearby with a fire and proper burned food.
I loved The Bushtucker man and more recently Mr Mears on the telly.
This prompted me to organise a series of moots at my fathers old sawmill site where like-minded folk could practice what had now become recognised as ‘Bushcraft’. At that time these were popular, well attended and great fun to put together.
I like motorcycle travel and whenever possible will make a two or three day trip to find an old ww2 airfield and attempt to ride up what’s left of the main runway. As I live in East Anglia I’m rather spoiled for choice.
I am growing a small woodland for possible future outdoor events and after fourteen years a good number of the young trees are now able to support a hammock.
Dodgy knees and hips mean I can’t walk so far now but I have been lucky to circle the UK on my m-cycle and see a good bit of Europe and Oz on two wheels.
Just the simple act of boiling water with my old faithful Trangia to make a cuppa gives me immense pleasure. Transform this to a secluded spot if I’m on my travels and read ‘I’m in paradise’!
S
Growing up on my parents farm in the late 60’s my brother and I had space to roam and places to make camp, starting on the back lawn with an old canvas tent that we smeared with dripping in an attempt to make it waterproof (it then became so smelly it was unusable!) and progressing to a self-built den in woodland nearby with a fire and proper burned food.
I loved The Bushtucker man and more recently Mr Mears on the telly.
This prompted me to organise a series of moots at my fathers old sawmill site where like-minded folk could practice what had now become recognised as ‘Bushcraft’. At that time these were popular, well attended and great fun to put together.
I like motorcycle travel and whenever possible will make a two or three day trip to find an old ww2 airfield and attempt to ride up what’s left of the main runway. As I live in East Anglia I’m rather spoiled for choice.
I am growing a small woodland for possible future outdoor events and after fourteen years a good number of the young trees are now able to support a hammock.
Dodgy knees and hips mean I can’t walk so far now but I have been lucky to circle the UK on my m-cycle and see a good bit of Europe and Oz on two wheels.
Just the simple act of boiling water with my old faithful Trangia to make a cuppa gives me immense pleasure. Transform this to a secluded spot if I’m on my travels and read ‘I’m in paradise’!
S
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