Survival and bushcraft. Knives, kit and activities.

[Bushnoob]

This title means a lot to me.

I have heard many opinions that people who are kit-hungry are generally leaned more towards bushcraft and might not turn out so well in a survival situation with only a knife.
And then I hear that people who choose to carry a knife only will thrive much better with minimal tools. Now I do agree if they only carry a knife then the odds are that they will, but when they carry a knife the size of a machette I can hardly agree.

Isn't using a large knife for chopping the same as using a saw or an axe but maybe more or less efficient? Just because they descide to carry light they insist they can survive better. I think if you give any bushcrafter a large knife that a "Survivalist" might carry than they can do just the same task as the next person....

Why say whittling spoons is a waste of time? I'm sure if you really wanted to practice survival than you would use a small knife if not no knife at all. Using a large knife is just as much of a relief as using a small knife and an axe except for the fact that it is lighter carry which is easier to carry of course. If you are using only a large knife and saying you are better at survival than I laugh. Survival isn't about how light you carry and how large your knife is but it is knowledge of your surrounding and common sense to get yourself out of a bad situation...

Obviously no one will carve a spoon in a survival situation unless they were really that comfortable But odds are that no one will have a knife of their choice when the time arises unless they place themselves in that situation. The kit that you carry is mainly for easier work and learning how to use each piece of kit. The knowledge that you learn without your kit and how to thrive off of nature is more survival.
So anyone who says that people who are kit hungry will not survive as long as "you", large rambo knife man than please reconsider. I'm sure if you both don't have any more knowledge other than using your tools and are both presented with nothing more than a small neck knife than you both have the same chance at survival aside from common sense....

Bushcrafters carry tools and go into the woods as a hobby and leisure activity and if you carry a large knife it is the same thing IMHO.
Bushcrafters also practice survival skills while in the wilderness but with tools incase they need them.

If you must insist on being a survivalist and rant on people who practice bushcraft and carve spoons, make jams, weave baskets, etc... than please make sure to leave your large knife or any knife at home...
Bushcraft is a hobby for me, I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone else. If I want to practice survival than I will but I don't call myself a survivalist but I do believe in practicing both for the apporpriate times.

Survival for more short-term, but Bushcraft for a sustainable long-term stay with more comfort. Learning survival is important of course but don't call activities in bushcraft a waste of time

I do believe that you should always work with minimal tools when possible but don't go unprepared to prove a point. If you have already proven a point than feel free to use as many tools as you want

 

[durulz]

You've really got that survival/bushcraft bee in your bonnet, haven't you?
This is very much more a 'bushcraft' than 'survival' forum (though there are one or two paranoid nutters ) - so you can now take a deep breath, let it out slowly and just relax and put it all behind you.
There, doesn't that feel better?

 

[johnnythefox]

the chances of needing survival skills are low.
bushcraft skills would help in a survival situation,obviously.
but the person most likely to survive will need more than physical skills he will need big heart
i am ex army,i am here to learn about bushcraft skills,not survival but they do crossover.

what if a told you on basic training [at 16 years old] we didn't have any knives in the field.we could only use what was provided by the mod.
just poncho,sleeping bag,water bottle,mug,mess tins,hexamine cooker,mess tins,kfs and ration packs.

no knives,axes,open fires,waterproofs,sleep mat,bivi bag and poor clothing.
it was just called fieldcraft

 

[Xunil]

I think the underlying point behind at least some of the commentary regarding survival is sometimes taken way out of context, which is understandable.

The very concept of a 'survival' anything is flawed outside of the normal realms of a ditch bag in a boat/car/plane etc. These days you simply can't carry proper gear with you everywhere due to social/legal/practical issues and, even if you could, I certainly wouldn't want to be saddled with a good setup all the time.

I have a long standing and deep rooted interest in survival skills but I am concerned sometimes about the kit oriented mentality of some.

Example: take away a firesteel (or magnesium kit, lighter, flame thrower et al) and see how long it takes your average bushcrafter to get a fire going.

The reality behind being kit oriented is that if the kit is unavailable, lost, broken, stolen, what then ?

Survival is at least 90% mental attitude in most cases and any kit you can find, scavenge or that you happen to have on you at the time is a bonus.

...
Survival for more short-term, but Bushcraft for a sustainable long-term stay with more comfort.

I'd like to see you back that statement up and that's right about where things fall down for many - I understand the argument and your point, but survival is often not a short-term event (the point behind the unexpected is you cannot predict how long it's going to take to come through the other end intact) and bushcraft being sustainable over the long term is an even bigger myth for most simply because the vast majority of people practicing it haven't sufficient skills and knowledge to make that a reality.

Before I get flamed for that comment sit back, take stock, think about your own abilities very openly and honestly, and then think about the abilities and skills of those you might know who are also into bushcraft. The majority are not equipped (in terms of knowledge and practical skills) for a sustainable existence of any sort, let alone in comfort. Mostly this is because bushcraft is a leisure activity of choice where most of its practitioners are basically doing a rough spin on a form of wild camping, to one degree or another. I'm not having a dig or taking a pop, but an awful lot of bushcrafters wouldn't stand a cat in hell's chance of any sustainable long term stay once their supplies run out.

Put any handle you like on it - living off your skills and knowledge off the land requires a lot of hard work. Often the only difference between bushcraft and survival is the series of events that lead up to the point where you begin using your skills.

6 weeks is my longest wilderness trip. It was in Canada many years ago with my uncle and we had resupply twice by arrangement. Having done a lot of survival/bushcraft stuff over the years I can honestly and openly say the idea of living like that for any length of time galls me. There is no romance to it and the reality is quite simply that unless you are kitted up to the eyeballs then living off your skills and knowledge in the wilds is bloody hard work no matter whether you want to go under the label of bushcrafter or survivalist. The two have some many crossover points and commonalities I find them impossible to separate.

Interestingly the vast majority of the remaining tribes that live either hunter/gather or hunter/gatherer combined with subsistence farming lifestyle all use large knives (machetes) almost exclusively.

Any training and knowledge in these skills holds value, especially if you ever need to use it in emergency situations. I think far too many people spend far too much time and effort trying to separate bushcraft from survival for whatever reason. 20 odd years ago when I used to teach survival courses nobody would know what you were banging on about if you called them bushcraft courses. Much of the core content to the courses hasn't changed one jot, but attitudes towards a simple word have.

As long as you are out and about enjoying your chosen take on what constitutes bushcraft then strength to your arm. Not everybody sees value in carving spoons (for example) but if you get something out of it then where's the harm ?

The only way you will ever have the luxury of carving a spoon in a bushcraft trip is by having sufficient kit and supplies with you to allow you the luxury of free time for carving. Planning, provisions and so on play a great part in this.

Which brings me full circle back to the point that if you take away the kit, no matter whether is is olive green or cammo, or big or small, you remove the capacity for most people to simply get by never mind flourish and carve stuff.

My own interests have evolved over the years from an out-and-out survival/bushcraft skills approach focussed on living off the land to a deep interest in paleo skills such as stone tools, fire by friction, natural cordage, bows and arrows made entirely from natural materials using primitive tools and so on. I've been doing this for a long time now and I can very honestly say I wouldn't much enjoy it if I was dropped in the middle of nowhere for any extended period, with or without kit.

Planned camping/bushcraft leisure time has almost nothing in common with using your skills in a long term sustainable way, regardless of the kit you may or may not have with you.

If what you are doing has value to you then it's worth doing and who cares what anyone else might have to say about it ?

Everyone who does this does it to a different degree and often for very different reasons. As long as nobody gets hurt, as long as those involved enjoy themselves and as long as it is done in a respectful way (towards your surroundings) then strength to your arm.

I'll get my coat.

 

[johnnythefox]

"If what you are doing has value to you then it's worth doing and who cares what anyone else might have to say about it ?"

well put

 

[offroadmick]

Bushcraft is, to me, putting yourself in a 'planned' survival situation. Building shelter, finding and making safe a water source, making fire and finding food... Which most of us can do with a small knife and knowledge... The extra kit just make things easier and more enjoyable. I have never been in a survival situation but most bushcraft skill go hand in hand with it... Making a spoon is fun, needing a spoon unlikely, but the knife skill practice making one provides is priceless.

 

[HillBill]

Bushcraft and survival are one and the same IMO with the difference being in the practitioner and not the skill set.

Survival skills are learnt in order to get yourself back to civilisation in one piece in the event of some form of unplanned event.

Bushcraft is learnt by folks who plan to head away from civilisation for a certain period of time.

The skills are the same, the mindset and direction of travel are the main differences

 

[johnnythefox]

you can put yourself in a bushcraft situation for fun and use whatever you want,there are no rules.


if your in a survival situation its not by choice and your trying to stay alive.
lots of kit will help
but your unlikely to have it.what you need then is knowledge and determination.

 

[Corso]

I agree with the idea that your kit is not your only tool - the space between your ears should be full too.

I also appreciate there's little pont being a master with the axe and then find you have no axe when you loose your comforts - I tend to practice my shelter building,fire making skills ect. with a non-locking sub 3" blade - not always with sucess but atleast I know what I can achieve with the folder I will likely be carring when I need it

 

[Xunil]

I think this is an impossible discussion for so many reasons:

Do all people who pracice surival cache supplies or adopt a paramilitary approach ?

No

Do all people who practice bushcaft whittle spoons or wood spirits ?

No

Do people interested in either regularly make bows, or arrows, or knap flint arrowheads ?

No

Does whittling a spoon or bow have any real world value ?

No, usually not.

Does practicing either bushcraft or survival have to carry a label, demand a specific dress code or involve activities exclusive or peculiar to either handle ?

No, usually not.

From a Devil's advocate perspective many/most bushcraft/survival activities could be largely classed as wasteful since they consume time and resources and deliberately place you outside of the normal comfort zone with all the acoutrament of daily life needlessly.

Those interested in the subjects gain something very intangible from the experience, so where's the harm, provided the activity is practiced safely and with respect to the natural resources around you ?

My approach is not necessarily the right approach but it sits well with me.

Yours is not necessarily the right approach but it will no doubt sit well with you.

Both our approaches will have many crossover points and commonalities, regardless of whether we individually class ourselves as bushcrafters or survivalists.

Forget the label and forget any preconceived notion of what it means to be a bushcrafter or survivalst. Either can mean a million different things to millions of different people and neither categorically means anything in particular other than a very general concept which is naturally adapted to fit the individual, by the individual.

Look both ways before you cross the road and you just practised a survival technique. No cammo, cached supplies, paramilitary association or other identifiable factor comes into play and you can't accurately label it.

I am reminded of the first Rambo film where our hero gets run out of town by the local sheriff for 'wearing that jacket' and 'looking like that' (paraphrased). Ironic that bushcrafters now prefer olive green for various reasons, not least of which is an attempt to disassociate from the military look, while back then our hero was immediately picked out for wearing an olive green army jacket. Same misconceptions - only the target object has changed.

Big knife, small knife, stone knife, no knife, spoon carving, bow making - all highly relevant skills and activities to those practising them and, crucially, if you don't practice at least some of them you will never be in the position to use those skills if you have to, which is very different from using them when you choose to, under more controlled, planned conditions.

Bushcraft(er)
Survival(ist)

I have a foot planted very firmly in both camps and don't really care which of the two someone wants to think of me as. To me personally it's all a large interwoven net of related outdoor skills and all of them, to those outside the circle of interest, are viewed as more than a little eccentric.

Once again, I'll get my coat...

 

[Qwerty]

Excellent post Xunil (first one in particular)

There are many overlapping skills and experiences, I don't see it as a them or us situation?

 

[Badger90]

the chances of needing survival skills are low.
bushcraft skills would help in a survival situation,obviously.
but the person most likely to survive will need more than physical skills he will need big heart
i am ex army,i am here to learn about bushcraft skills,not survival but they do crossover.

what if a told you on basic training [at 16 years old] we didn't have any knives in the field.we could only use what was provided by the mod.
just poncho,sleeping bag,water bottle,mug,mess tins,hexamine cooker,mess tins,kfs and ration packs.

no knives,axes,open fires,waterproofs,sleep mat,bivi bag and poor clothing.
it was just called fieldcraft

Did the same myself, straight from the school gates onto a train into the life of shouting and discipline. One thing you learn from the start is discipline, but more than that you learn to discipline yourself, to know that when the sh!t hits the fan, you can rely on yourself to to do what needs to be done. Your taught to catch your food, skin and eat it ( even worms, right buggers to catch they were lol ) and use what's around you to live comfortably, but whatever you're taught, which ever way your taught it, if you don't believe in yourself to do it, you may as well go home.

Any type of living is about the right mindset, whether it's urban living, bushcraft or survival, if you don't have the mind to do it, you're never going to succeed in what you hope to achieve.

Believe in yourself

 

[Siberianfury]

whats with all the suvival vs bushcraft, large knife vs small knife and axe threads?


as ive already said, i carry a finnish belt combo, which includes this,

and this

now they certinatly arent "tacticool survival knives" they are traditionaly hand crafted (by myself) bushcraft tools, that wear lightweight on my belt.
if i need to i will use an axe, chainsaw, bowsaw, giant rubber chicken ect ect.


now rather than labeling what i do as bushcraft or suvival i just go out for a night or a few, learn and pass on a few skills, have a laugh with mates ect.
strictly speaking a survival situation is not going to happen to you in the UK, if you wanna go by the mentality that you must aways be prepared incase you get lost walking the dog in the park fair enough, but for me i just like to enjoy myself.

imho, the tools and equipment you carry make about as much diffrence to wether your a "bushcrafter" or "survivalist" as the colour of your hair does, its all in the mind, those afraid of dieing and those who love to live.

 

[Tiley]

Bushcraft and survival are one and the same IMO with the difference being in the practitioner and not the skill set.

Survival skills are learnt in order to get yourself back to civilisation in one piece in the event of some form of unplanned event.

Bushcraft is learnt by folks who plan to head away from civilisation for a certain period of time.

The skills are the same, the mindset and direction of travel are the main differences

This says it all and succinctly, too.

When it comes to choosing kit for bushcraft (after all, in a survival scenario, you wouldn't have the luxury of kit choice - just what you've got available), it's an entirely free world. Big knife, machete, leuku or small knife or hatchet or saw - it doesn't matter at all what you choose as long as you utilise it safely and with the skill required to produce what you want or need. That last does, of course, rely on the stuff between your ears, as has been mentioned, along with experience born from practice.

The issue of sustainability remains a vexed question though...

 

[Manacles]

I agree with the idea that your kit is not your only tool - the space between your ears should be full too.

I also appreciate there's little pont being a master with the axe and then find you have no axe when you loose your comforts - I tend to practice my shelter building,fire making skills ect. with a non-locking sub 3" blade - not always with sucess but atleast I know what I can achieve with the folder I will likely be carring when I need it

I like this posting Corso - well said!

 

[Soundmixer]

All of the above are valid, especially Corso and Xunil.
Bushcraft teaches you how to get on in an environment that is no longer the norm for life today. It takes us back a few hundred years and makes us learn what "minimalism" is actually about and not how little we put in our living rooms. This education will allow us to "survive" when the doodoo hits the aircon.
"Survival" has two forms.
1 - Having 2000 rounds of .45 ammo and two Colts, 1000 shotgun shells and a pump gun, and a semi automatic rifle with 5000 rounds, a Hummer and three good friends to watch your back.
2 - Being able to use what you have in the situation that you find yourself in.
Now I carry a torch and a knife at all times so I know that I have some tools to get by. A guy I know on another forum puts it this way
"you are the weapon"
Adapt, survive and get on with it.

I for one like the fieldcraft, bushcraft thing. Come the zombie apocalypse, I'll have a better clue of what to do because of what I do now.

My 2p.

 

[Bushnoob]

Wow some really great responses. I mainly made this because I don't like it when I know someone has no knowledge of the outdoors and they dare say that bushcraft is useless and just surviving in any situation is the only practical route. I don't always agree to that. I do understand people carry large knives and kit and I am 100% fine with it, that is preference, and I also think that even though you have that kit you should always have a backup plan and the knowledge to work without those tools. If you say that you can survive with nothing but a knife than do it with a small knife is mainly what I am saying. I've had people that seem to use nothing but the largest of knives and have no knowledge of the wilderness and say they are good at what they do.

This is nothing more than a rant. And I find bushcraft does croos routes with survival to do more of a comforable living style with knowledge to adapt and utilize what ever is around you. Whether you'd be making shelters, hunting, gathering berries, building a basket, carving eating utensils, etc....

How might one practice survival without the thought of bushcraft? I would like to try lol. I don't want to be a fool and go into the Canadian outbacks with no knowledge or tools but how might I get some more survival knowledge? where are the stepping stones?

Fire with no tools, hunting with no tools, shelter with no tools, making tools with no tools, etc...

 

[Jacknife]

I was amazed the other day while on another forum to be told that 'survival skills were useless in the disaster in Japan'
Yet I've heard reports that hundreds of these poor souls are sleeping in cars, have no cooking equipment, and are in
quite a desperate situation. Would survival skills help? Well I think you could at least make a cooker to boil water
to make it safe, something like a benghazi burner should be possible, plenty of wrecked cars for the petrol.

Anyway, whether survival/bushcraft skills would help in such a disaster is open to debate I suppose, but why do some people
get such a bee in their bonnet when others promote the idea that preparedness and self-reliance isn't a bad idea.
It's refreshing to read the above posts. Live and let live I say.

 

[Soundmixer]

Exactly Jacknife.
People are really conditioned to expect Big Brother to be there to help.
Just to give some background, back in the distant past I used to shoot competively, pistol and rifle so when the zombies (or anarchy because we hate the government, or WAR) happens then IF I can get weapons then I will be at home.
If I just happen to be out in the woods with a bottle of grouse, a hammock and a hobo stove with means of ignition, then I will be just at home and looking not to be bothered by the rat race.
Be READY, but be patient and expand your knowledge.
This post started about big knife,small knife. Try putting yourself in Fukushima without a prepared pack and ask yourself how you would get on.
Me? If the wave didn't get me, I'd be just fine.

Would you?

 

[Laurentius]

Survival on it's own as a word does not mean a lot?

What are you going to survive, a motorway pile up, a night stuck in a snow drift, a ferry capsize, major fire in a shopping mall, floods, power outages, widespread destruction due to natural disaster, a serious fall out on the mountains? the list goes on, and each situation demands it's own preparedness.

Some events are too huge to make detailed plans for, You can't survive on your own living off the land when thousands of others are in exactly the same situation and they are all around you, as in Northern Japan, salvation has to come from outside, food must be brought in.

Hunter gatherer lifestyles are not the most efficient for survival either, that is what agriculture is for. I see something like BBC TV's Tales from the Green Valley as more about survival in the long term, with primitive technology where you have to make and grow practically everything for yourself. It's light years away from the stock your house with 2 years worth of canned goods, and make sure you never sleep as you sit on the porch with your armoury fighting off the neighbours. Likelihood if you did behave like that in a major emergency, as soon as the army got in, they would take it all from you and redistribute it.

Survival is not about making it on your own, it's about preserving the society around you. Living around disability has taught me that dependency is no bad thing, another word for it is co-operation

As for Bushcraft, I am one of these people who does not think there is such a thing as bushcrafting, only bushcraft skills, most of which were everyday survival skills in the same way that opening a tin and cooking on the gas is now. To some it is a hobby, to others more a way of life, but it isn't survival and all the better for that.