Ultimate bushcraft sin!!!!

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British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
I cut down six twenty foot healthy trees today (ash and elder) - am I goin to hell? :)

If bam was closer he cold come and do his thing with the stumps!
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
I mean:
Don't try to shoot an animal that's out of your reach.
Don't leave garbage that birds get tangled into.
Don't let your dog chase roe deer calves away from their mothers.
Don't leave snares unchecked for long.
Don't destroy ants nests because you think it's fun.
Don't catch a fish that you want to eat and wait to kill it until you go home, kill it right away.

I could go on, these are just examples.

Agree with most of these. But the fish is gonna stay fresh (meaning live) until I'm ready to cook it. That means once caught, it's either going into a live well or on a stringer and back into the river until I leave for home (unless I'm gonna have a shore lunch) If it's a catfish there's really only one way to kill it anyway, cutting it's head off. And that's not happening unil after it's been skinned or there won't be anything to hang on the hook while I pull the skin off.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
As long as they didn't suffer, probably not:D

Twas a clean death! Although my buddy climbing with a top handle saw in this wind gave me the "I can't looks" (he is a professional arborist and knows his stuff - I just hate climbing and hate top handles more)
 
Mar 15, 2011
1,118
7
on the heather
Chopping down living trees for fire wood.
I’ve been out with blokes that claimed to be outdoor experts “ Yea self clamed experts” and as soon as it got dark they start chopping down green trees, and I talking good trees perhaps a foot or more through the bole, I sez to one guy, "what you doing" ,He must’ve thought it was a question. “ Getting firewood” he sez, it will be years before that wood is dry enough to burn, The bloke then had to chop off the bottom 3 or 4 feet because it was too big and heavy to drag over to the fire , and the Pine log still wasn’t burned through in the morning.
It was my mum that told me not to burn green wood, My mum wasn’t the outdoor type she just wasn’t stupid.
 
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santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
Chopping down living trees for fire wood.
I’ve been out with blokes that claimed to be outdoor experts “ Yea self clamed experts” and as soon as it got dark they start chopping down green trees, and I talking good trees perhaps a foot or more through the bole, I sez to one guy, "what you doing" ,He must’ve thought it was a question. “ Getting firewood” he sez, it will be years before that wood is dry enough to burn, The bloke then had to chop off the bottom 3 or 4 feet because it was too big and heavy to drag over to the fire , and the Pine log still wasn’t burned through in the morning.
It was my mum that told me not to burn green wood, My mum wasn’t the outdoor type she just wasn’t stupid.

I've never burned anything BUT green wood in the fireplace at home. In the South, wood doesn't "season." It rots within a few months. That said we don't burn pine as fuelwood, only as kindling. We've been doing it that way for generations.
 

Ivanhoe

Forager
Aug 28, 2011
173
42
Sweden
Worst bushcraft sin ever:

Bringing one of those sausage holders, made from an old radio
antenna, into the woods and using it!
sick0002.gif



Grillpinne-500x500.jpg


If you're artificial enough to bring that, you might just as well stay home! ;)


Choosing and carving a natural sausage grilling stick is one of our last
rituals as men, and trying to replace it with a technical gadget is very
bad karma, indeed!
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
Chopping down living trees for fire wood.

I cut down six of them today, for the sole purpose of firewood. Weed trees on my own land, that will be replaced with far rarer trees. But heck, yeah, if people cut down weed trees, or manage woodlands, they must be wrong, we should all use fossil fuels to heat our homes and criticise those who use sustainable fuels and work hard at fuel rather than use horribly polluting gas and fossil fuel electricity.

<sigh>
 

Bowlander

Full Member
Nov 28, 2011
1,353
1
Forest of Bowland
I cut down six of them today, for the sole purpose of firewood. Weed trees on my own land, that will be replaced with far rarer trees. But heck, yeah, if people cut down weed trees, or manage woodlands, they must be wrong, we should all use fossil fuels to heat our homes and criticise those who use sustainable fuels and work hard at fuel rather than use horribly polluting gas and fossil fuel electricity.

+1 for that! Fair enough only to collect dead wood to make a brew while in a bimble but woodland needs management.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
+1 for that! Fair enough only to collect dead wood to make a brew while in a bimble but woodland needs management.

+1 for British Red too. Young growing trees (and conversley old redwoods) store more carbon that mature trees. And considering I used to plant up to 1800 trees a day at one point even with natural wastage (toilet paper adds saying we plant three trees for every one cut make me laugh) I think I'm allowed to burn a bit of dead standing timber. I did one of those carbon footprint things a while back and was so low that I'm more like a carbon mouse in slippers.
 

Stringmaker

Native
Sep 6, 2010
1,891
1
UK
I cut down six of them today, for the sole purpose of firewood. Weed trees on my own land, that will be replaced with far rarer trees. But heck, yeah, if people cut down weed trees, or manage woodlands, they must be wrong, we should all use fossil fuels to heat our homes and criticise those who use sustainable fuels and work hard at fuel rather than use horribly polluting gas and fossil fuel electricity.

<sigh>

That's a bit unfair; I read from his post that he didn't mean management like you do it but cutting down a healthy mature tree through wanton ignorance.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
Yeah probably a bit of an over-reaction on my part. Myapologies if so.

I do get frustrated though when cutting down trees is seen as a "bad thing". There are many reasons to do it - for fuel, to open the canopy and get light into a wood, for safety reasons, to create a margin, ride or glade, to improve habitat quality, to harvest the wood for paper, or timber ...well you know all this.

I firmly believe that, to get more woodland, woodland needs to work and be worked. That means felling as well as planting. Woodlands that are "static" are often choked by bramble and bracken understory, inaccesible and producing poor trees.

I recommend the BBC show "Tales from the Wild Wood" as a good programme on managing trees and woodland. Sadly not on iPlayer at present, but it must be on the web somewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ndkwq

Cutting down even healthy mature trees can be a good thing - although I agree, not wantonly! :)
 

Stringmaker

Native
Sep 6, 2010
1,891
1
UK
Yeah probably a bit of an over-reaction on my part. Myapologies if so.

I do get frustrated though when cutting down trees is seen as a "bad thing". There are many reasons to do it - for fuel, to open the canopy and get light into a wood, for safety reasons, to create a margin, ride or glade, to improve habitat quality, to harvest the wood for paper, or timber ...well you know all this.

I firmly believe that, to get more woodland, woodland needs to work and be worked. That means felling as well as planting. Woodlands that are "static" are often choked by bramble and bracken understory, inaccesible and producing poor trees.

I recommend the BBC show "Tales from the Wild Wood" as a good programme on managing trees and woodland. Sadly not on iPlayer at present, but it must be on the web somewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ndkwq

Cutting down even healthy mature trees can be a good thing - although I agree, not wantonly! :)

I saw "Tales from the Wild Wood" and loved every second of it.

I only wish I had the land or opportunity to do the same thing.
 

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