Living

[demographic]

One thing I've noticed about various forums if that every once in a while someone comes in and accuses everyone else of not being hardcore (Grr) enough.

On motorbike forums its someone who always commutes, every day. The fact that they live in a big city where commuting by bike is a lot faster compared to a car than in a rural area, they might just be the type that's just never managed to pass a car test and that they still live with their mum seems to be on the list of details they forget to mention.

In order to fully evaluate this particular "I'm considerably more herbaceous bordercraft that yow" thread I feel that we need more details about the OP.

So, who owns the land yer on, who paid for it?
Are you a hunter gatherer or do you sometimes just raid market gardens?
Do you have a mummykins that pays to keep your spacious bedroom in order while you drop out or are you really doing it on your own?
Have you saved up for ages to drop out for a while? If so it's just a holiday isn't it? One day a week is about the same as 52 days a year. take them one at a time or in a block.

Anyway, what about that Loctite, is it the best threadlocker or what? I usually use the 221 for easy removal but I've got some 641 as well, yeah its a proper hardcore threadlocker innit.

 

[cbr6fs]

End of the day who cares though.

I do what i feel i need to do to get through life, others do things differently.
I'm pretty sure many on here would be living in the lap of luxury with a roaring fire going before i'd even picked out a spot, but then i don't think many of them could strip and rebuild a car engine in a day with 1 hand.

We all have things we are better at and things are aren't so good at, that's why to survive as a race comfortably we are preprogrammed to form social groups.

That way we have a blacksmith, baker, healer, farmers, hunters, gatherers.
Once we get comfortable we then have time for entertainment so we then have singers, actors, story tellers.

Some of us choose to work hard look after our earnings and try and provide as much financial security for our family as possible.
Others are too lazy and do not contribute at all to the state and only drain it of resources by scrounging off those that have the dedication and willpower to slog their guts out on a daily basis paying taxes and national insurance to keep the road networks, infrastructure, hospitals, pensions, dole etc.

We all have times when we need help amd i don't begrudge paying taxes to help out the odd hard working person who's temporally down on their luck.

I'm certainly not envious of someone that scrounges off us tax payers for medical care, scrounges off others for food, internet, a warm bed etc.

I could drop out and become a lazy loner living illegally off the land with not a care for the consequences tomorrow, it's not really difficult to do is it.

As it is i choose to look after my family and be a contributing member of society.

 

[Wayland]

 

[Karl82]

If you seriously think 26,439 members can go live the dream as hunter gathers as you clam you do in the UK you need to check the fungi you eating more carefully. Enough said!!

 

[Dartmoor navigator]

Now that was funny

 

[crosslandkelly]

Woodowl, either you are one lucky SOB or a complete Walter Mitty. Either way, if you don't feel that this forum is hard core enough for you, please feel free to leave.
The members on this site do not have to justify themselves to anyone.

 

[drewdunnrespect]

Woodowl, either you are one lucky SOB or a complete Walter Mitty. Either way, if you don't feel that this forum is hard core enough for you, please feel free to leave.
The members on this site do not have to justify themselves to anyone.

WELL SAID mate

 

[xylaria]

"I'm considerably more herbaceous bordercraft that yow"


.

That one line had me stitches.

I am off to knit some underware out of nettles now.

 

[Laurentius]

You are not really hard core unless you smelt your own iron to make a knife and grow your own goretex

 

[British Red]

Grow your own Goretex?

Luxury!

We had to make our own canoe, cross the Atlantic on no more than half a seagull a day,

Grow the cotton,

Weave the Ventile

Recross the Atlantic

AND be home before tea

And when we got home, our mum & dad would thrash us to sleep with a Gorse bush natural shelter

Goretex? Pah - call yourself a bushcrafter?

 

[outdoorpaddy]

Folks, is it just me or is this entire thread just a bit silly and pointless? We do bushcraft and enjoy it. Full stop. Fin. Period. End of. We should not need any more justification than that. The great thing about this forum is that the experience of each member varies, some may stay out in the woods for nine weeks at a time, others may only get out on sunday afternoons and that is why collectively our experiences are so useful to each other. This forum is about like-minded people helping each other out and having a laugh along the way, lets not jeopardise that by implying that no-one is hard core enough or most of all that anyone here is inadequate in how much bushcraft that know or do. To make someone feel inadequate like that is just plain wrong and has no place whatsoever on this forum.
So with that, lets get back to enjoying ourselves and helping eachother out

paddy

 

[crosslandkelly]

+ 1 to that.

 

[sandbender]

Grow your own Goretex?

Luxury!

We had to make our own canoe, cross the Atlantic on no more than half a seagull a day,

Grow the cotton,

Weave the Ventile

Recross the Atlantic

AND be home before tea

And when we got home, our mum & dad would thrash us to sleep with a Gorse bush natural shelter

Goretex? Pah - call yourself a bushcrafter?

You had it lucky.

 

[Robbi]

Folks, is it just me or is this entire thread just a bit silly and pointless? We do bushcraft and enjoy it. Full stop. Fin. Period. End of. We should not need any more justification than that. The great thing about this forum is that the experience of each member varies, some may stay out in the woods for nine weeks at a time, others may only get out on sunday afternoons and that is why collectively our experiences are so useful to each other. This forum is about like-minded people helping each other out and having a laugh along the way, lets not jeopardise that by implying that no-one is hard core enough or most of all that anyone here is inadequate in how much bushcraft that know or do. To make someone feel inadequate like that is just plain wrong and has no place whatsoever on this forum.
So with that, lets get back to enjoying ourselves and helping eachother out

paddy

well said young Paddy.

 

[Silverclaws]

Having spent some time reading the contents a number of Bushcraft sites, I find myself wondering what it is really all about? I am back at home after six weeks walking and living as, I feel, life should be. Is this a site for weekend campers? I have seen many postings of "how to catch a fish, skin a rabbit" etc but are these skills not way of life and taken as given?Or am I at the wrong site? Off walking again next Tuesday to see the Autumn in beautiful Scotland.

Maybe you are thinking much the same as myself, just what is all this about this bushcraft thing. I have tried to formulate ideas and the most pertinent one is that what we are in our day to day lives in this modern society is simply lacking as everything we could ever need can be well, bought or is just not worth thinking about because well, it's old tech.

Now as I look at what is posted here and other places I think; 'fancy that as what I see evokes memories of a past forgotten and the things I used to do as a youth following books such as 'stay alive ' with Eddie Mcgee and later Lofty Wiseman and of course the scouts where our group in particular was big on backwoodsman craft, camping without tents and building camp kitchen, latrines and larger pioneering projects, where our camp always had a watch tower and a gate, usually a cantilever action draw bridge and portcullis, thinking back our camps were almost militarised.

Maybe my resurgence of interest is the fact that a local scout leader knows my scouting history and wants me as a leader, to which I am uncertain with society these days, yes I would like to give something back, I have a lot to offer, but I fear people and their ideas regarding males that volunteer to work with young males, it was why I left scouting in the first place.

But then I see stuff of the countryman aspect and remember Countryfile of old when it used to be on a sunday after dinner with a young Jim Craven far better than it is today and digging further back to the tv programme with a rather catchy tune which started and ended with an old chap driving a dray along a road.

All memories from the past and some forgotten are reignited by bushcraft, but we don't have a 'bush', we live on a densely populated island with little that is truly wild anymore and too much of the 'get off my land' where everything is owned by someone and they don't want you there especially if you are packing anything with the ''shock horror, he's got a knife!''

So what is it have we as a country gone so far that life is now, well boring with everything provided for us, there is no challenges anymore and no real achievements, so we must look to the past, to simpler times and look upon it with rose coloured spectacles thinking how much better life must have been.

I am interested, why, I don't exactly know, but I have always had a bit of the survival nut about me, but I teeter on the edge of this wondering whether I should fall in, but there is a fear I can't quite put my finger on yet.

 

[Retired Member southey]

Never form a view based on anything on the internet, that way madness lies.

 

[xylaria]

Grow your own Goretex?

Luxury!

We had to make our own canoe, cross the Atlantic on no more than half a seagull a day,

Grow the cotton,

Weave the Ventile

Recross the Atlantic

AND be home before tea

And when we got home, our mum & dad would thrash us to sleep with a Gorse bush natural shelter

Goretex? Pah - call yourself a bushcrafter?

Make a canoe, you softy we swam the atalantic, before breakfast.

AND We ate nothing but weeds and roadkill.

Gorse shelter talk about lush, we had nowt but a pine cone to keep us dry.

 

[joejoe]

Grow your own Goretex?

Luxury!

We had to make our own canoe, cross the Atlantic on no more than half a seagull a day,

Grow the cotton,

Weave the Ventile

Recross the Atlantic

AND be home before tea

And when we got home, our mum & dad would thrash us to sleep with a Gorse bush natural shelter

Goretex? Pah - call yourself a bushcrafter?

and when you tell the kids they dont believe you

 

[Toddy]

Don't know about the OP, but this conversation around the virtual campfire reminds me of just what good company you lot are

Seriously, this is an *on-line* bushcraft forum, we can only talk about what we do here, connect with like minded people (squabble among ourselves, kind of healthy haviing differing lifestyles/viewpoints, I think ) and we learn.
Tempts us too; to wander, to try stuff, to make, to create, to generally enrich our very modern lives T'is all good

So, enquiring minds want to know OP...........what kind of response did you get to your revelations on other 'bushcraft' forums ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

digging further back to the tv programme with a rather catchy tune which started and ended with an old chap driving a dray along a road.

Jack Hargreaves in "Out of Town" - one of my all time favourites

His son has publish large amounts of Jacks material on You Tube and Vimeo - Its still as good now as it was then