Where can I go to legally practice all aspects of Bushcraft without permission?

[mrcharly]

With the greatest of respect, (I think ) and your ( opinion ) mean nothing... Read the Code... and perhaps give Billy a bit of credit, he did say, You guys can call the shots on your patch, I have no problem with that, but not up here, whether you like it or not, Scotland has the ancient and traditional right to roam. SAOR ALBA

I've now read it. I've read the access code as well.

I'm amazed at how much freedom it does grant.

However, the access code explicitly says "leave no trace".
So I stand by my original assertion that the minute anyone starts cutting branches from trees, they have "ceased to act responsibly".
However, it does seem that outside of plantations and seasonal fire-restricted areas, Billy could roam in Scotland, gather dead wood for fires, camp pretty much anywhere, as long as he responsibly cleared up and 'left no trace'. All his postings lead me to believe he is a person perfectly capable of doing that.

 

[FKeate]

No to get too involved in this, rather heated, debate but I will say don't rule out Sweden. The älamansraten law gives you the right to hike and camp anywhere you like, as well as making fires, as long as you respect property and again it's all about leaving no trace (the swedes are very friendly but will give you deadly stares if they see you drop any litter). Fishing in some lakes requires a licence (sea fishing is all good legal, no licence) but they are generally pretty cheap and easy to get, generally from the local shop or something. Not tried it personally but hunting (mainly elk) is a pretty common thing. The cutting live trees could still be an issue, but if you were to go down the buy some land route then it's pretty cheap up here.
OK this has ended up much longer than intended, but I've just spent three months hiking round here and it's pretty bloody good.
In Sweden it's actually the national parks that are the hard places to camp. Check out an area called Jamtland, the lads there are known for being rough, tough outdoorsman. Living half off the land is still pretty standard for a lot of folks around there.

 

[Alan 13~7]

Some of the comments to this thread are bordering on the ridiculous when you consider a few 'minor' points......

wow what that dewi said 100% +1 very well said. I feel like that on here quite often, I am not overly blessed with verbal expression skills, manual dexterity is more my skill set, & I am a bit dyslexic to boot... thanx dewi you hit the nail on the head for me with that one...

 

[cappi]

This site is "BUSH CRAFT " NOT survival the aim is to gain and use your skills and knowledge in the bush {woods} in the UK USA etc and to co-habit with Nature RESPECTING all things Trees, wildlife .You enter with the basics SHELTER, FOOD, WORKING, TOOLS etc AND LEAVE as you entered not damaging anything using only DRY dead wood .SURVIVAL on the other hand throws all that out of the window for the short or long time you need to SURVIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TOO MANY PEOPLE ON HERE THINK I NEED TO GET OUT HACK AND SLASH BUILD HUE SHELTERS to then spin the yarn, as some people said there are groups formed in regions of the UK to support this teaching technique to pass on the survival side of bush craft but all so to limit the FOOT PRINT left by us..On closing if you approach a farmer of land owner and explain what you plans are i`m sure they would accommodate you .

 

[Martti]

By this I mean camp where I like, have open fires, make shelters and other camp items (including cutting live trees when necessary), hunt and fish for food and have absolute freedom to do this sort of thing. I have every intention of doing this responsibly and with minimal impact to the environment, I just want to know where to go... And it must be a forest!

I would recommend examining the eastern parts of the Urho Kekkonen National Park and the Lemmenjoki National Park in Northern Lapland.

- Camping is allowed almost everywhere, except for a few very small restriction areas.
- Open fires are allowed if made using twigs, dried branches and small roots. Cutting down live trees is not allowed.

- Angling using a reel is allowed with a small fee of 50 € per year, fishing with a simple rod is free.
- Hunting is not allowed, unless you are a resident of the municipality.
- No limitations on picking berries and mushrooms.

- Expected temperature range is between +20C (in July) and -40C (in January).
- Gold panning is allowed if a claim is made.

 

[crwydryny]

you could try having a word with your local council see if they have a map of local authoraty land in need of manegment. (or enviromental/forrestry agencies) where I live in wales it's kind of odd, the land around the towns and villages (i.e the mountains) actually belong to the people who live here (got that in writing from the welsh assembly) while the plantation forrests (spruce/larch ect) are owned by NRW (national resources wales) while the natural ancient woodland belongs to the people.
many local authorities actually have large plots of land that they have no use for and are looking for people to take on manegment orders of the area which basically just involves keeping the area clear, waring them of dangerous trees so they can come and remove them and stuff like that (usually they limit premissions at first but once they get to know you they will open it up to allow more activites. just don't expect to be allowed to fell trees or have fires straight away)


the group I work with has been jumping through all kinds of hoops to get access to patches of land for setting up sustainable community businesses (logging of the non native larch forrests, replacing them with coppiceable/edible woodlands, ect) we had some trouble at first where the top level managers were all "yes you can have all the land you want we're all behind what you're doing" while the lower down local middle managers did everything they could to stop us.... turns out is was because the mid level guys had gone and sold the trees to a logging company. but now things have turned around, and just yesterday the guy in charge of the group went to survey a large plot of land given to us by NRW with plans to start developing it in the next 12 weeks.


on a personal level I don't see any problems with someone going into a patch of woodland and practicing bushcraft skills I used to do it all the time growing up. so long as you don't cause too much damage (heck felling a few trees can actually help promote growth and bio diverserty in densly packed woodland) and a lot of woodlands in britan are either coppice woodlands (which can be identified by multiple trees growing in small patches right next to one another) or plantation forests (usually of spruce, larch or pine) planted for the lumber industry which means they tend to be dense and lack ground vegetation and animal diverserty

this past month I've probably felled more than a dozen trees, (granted most of those were because they had died due to how dense the woodland is thus had become a danger while other's were simply to clear the area and promote growth) the felled trees were used for firewood at various events, used to make brash piles, make camp equipment for the work camp and various other jobs so none of it went to waste, granted my group has a maintenance order on the local woodland with premissions for felling (which took a lot of work with NRW to allow them to agree to it)

This site is "BUSH CRAFT " NOT survival the aim is to gain and use your skills and knowledge in the bush {woods} in the UK USA etc and to co-habit with Nature RESPECTING all things Trees, wildlife .You enter with the basics SHELTER, FOOD, WORKING, TOOLS etc AND LEAVE as you entered not damaging anything using only DRY dead wood .SURVIVAL on the other hand throws all that out of the window for the short or long time you need to SURVIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! TOO MANY PEOPLE ON HERE THINK I NEED TO GET OUT HACK AND SLASH BUILD HUE SHELTERS to then spin the yarn, as some people said there are groups formed in regions of the UK to support this teaching technique to pass on the survival side of bush craft but all so to limit the FOOT PRINT left by us..On closing if you approach a farmer of land owner and explain what you plans are i`m sure they would accommodate you

actually if done correctly hacking and slashing (as you put it) can be benificial to woodlands. especially here in the UK. lots of woodlands were planted after WW2 and were intended to be coppiced and maintained on a rotation (7-35 year intervals depending on the wood) but have instead been left to their own devices, thus they tend to be densly packed resulting in lack of ground vegetation, limited biodiverserty (many once common animals have become rare due to the lack of manegment of woodlands) regular thinning of densly packed trees, coppicing and other techniques can be used to both provide useable material for practicing skills and for improving the biodiverserty of the woodland

 

[Jamboh]

Pre apologies for resurrecting such an old thread. I found this a very interesting read as a newbie and never truly thought about sustainability and not cutting down trees..

I have a question though, If you're not cutting down trees? Where are you getting your fire wood? Are you pre buying it from companies?

 

[Ozmundo]

Mostly naturally fallen dead wood.

When I had the time (and cartilage) to do long distance walks I used wood as a back up only as I tended to travel higher level areas which are pretty denuded in the UK.

These days if I can swing an overnighter past the “guvnor” I’m in local wooded areas and have all the fuel with 25m of the camp. There’s a lot of small dead branches shed by mature deciduous trees.

 

[slowworm]

Pre apologies for resurrecting such an old thread. I found this a very interesting read as a newbie and never truly thought about sustainability and not cutting down trees..

This would be a rare, good use for AI, summarising an old thread into a sentence or two.

 

[slowworm]

I have a question though, If you're not cutting down trees? Where are you getting your fire wood? Are you pre buying it from companies?

Well I cut downs quite a few, thinning woodland and removing ash die back at the moment. I also get quite a bit of windblow etc so have plenty of branches and large trees to clear.

If someone asked for something specific and I could help I would.

 

[Ozmundo]

A mate of mine always asks roadside tree fellers and is never short. But this usually big stuff and of course being rural and having a car helps.

He also drives a Subaru so they may just be feeling sorry for him as he is so special.

 

[Glow_worm]

Interesting reading through this from almost 10 years ago.

I'd suggest attitudes have advanced even further and now many people are aware that standing deadwood, for example, is arguably the most important habit in woodland. And fallen deadwood is often full of invertebrates trying to live out their lifecycles, and if not it will be much needed by other life forms soon.

On the occasions when I used real fire in the woods I tend to bring my fuel in with me.

 

[Broch]

Interesting reading through this from almost 10 years ago.

I'd suggest attitudes have advanced even further and now many people are aware that standing deadwood, for example, is arguably the most important habit in woodland. And fallen deadwood is often full of invertebrates trying to live out their lifecycles, and if not it will be much needed by other life forms soon.

On the occasions when I used real fire in the woods I tend to bring my fuel in with me.

^^^^^^^ this
You've just saved me a rant

 

[Ozmundo]

Pre apologies for resurrecting such an old thread. I found this a very interesting read as a newbie and never truly thought about sustainability and not cutting down trees..

I have a question though, If you're not cutting down trees? Where are you getting your fire wood? Are you pre buying it from companies?

I had perhaps misinterpreted your question. For example.

Are you asking about large quantities of fuel for something like a wood fired heating in a home/van/canal boat? The latter ones having limited space to store and season it amongst other things.

Or

Are you asking in the spirit of the initial thread, possibly travelling on foot? If you are trying to do this with as “primitive” as means as possible (bushcraft larp) it has different implications compared to using a more modern approach.

 

[haptalaon]

*devil's advocate hat* part of me thinks that a practice of producing your own fire-wood in some way - making friends with a tree surgeon, doing your own seasoning, foraging in the woodlands - is the more ethical way to go. It puts you directly in contact with the 'cost' of what you do.

Some of my bushcrafty interest is about buying less, and the pleasing challenge of making string (or whatever) instead of participating in that whole thing, where the processes of creation are out-of-sight-and-mind (and with them, the human and environmental cost of manufacturing).

Firewood you buy in, I would hazard, isn't created in an ethical fashion: it'll be a hideous monocrop somewhere or illegal felling of old-growth forest like Ikea was doing, and if you get it kiln-dried then the drying process has an energy cost and that'll be awful too. It doesn't harm the forest in front of your face, but it's almost certainly causing harm somewhere you can't see.

But if you're thinking 'whenever i take from the wild, i'm taking away from another creature' naturally leads one to either less taking or giving back in some way, and maybe that ethical weight travels with you more intrusively if you're making the choice to take or not take every time. Or when the act of taking is coupled each time with the responsibility of doing extra labour.

i suppose it depends on where you see the edges of bushcraft being. If you're trying to replicate historic & traditional lifestyles and skills, then the process of making fire is holistic, and factors like 'how do i maintain this area of land so i can make fire next year and my grandchildren can make fire in thirty years' is part of your craft.

 

[Glow_worm]

Firewood you buy in, I would hazard, isn't created in an ethical fashion

If you were to by bags of softwood from a petrol station you may well be right.

But in every county in England there is a wildlife trust coppicing native woodland, which would eventually die if they didn't. They will generally supply wood if approached.

There are usually many other voluntary organisations which do the same, and are always in need of cash for bow saw blades, teaa and biscuits, in exchange for coppice products. It's not difficult to track down local, truly sustainable firewood in any size.

Sure it's been covered many times before on here, and I mean to educate not patronise, but the term 'forest' historically covers an area to which forest law applies. This may be woodland, or it may be heath. If you're in a load of trees in the UK, you're often in 'woodland', unless forest law applied or applies to the area.

It got confused a bit by the arrival of the Forestry Commission, in reality they tend to manage plantations, sometimes in forests, sometimes not!

 

[Hammock_man]

Why not just come to the MOOT....simples

 

[Pattree]

Two of our local wood yards sell logs and off cuts. I don’t know where they are sourced (One is the Weston estate) but I may as well burn them as anyone else. I’m not increasing demand.

A very local wood yard used to import birch from Latvia on backloads. (Birch is a nurse tree/ weed tree in their managed forests). It was great but they only sell by the tonne now and there isn’t much birch.