Your favourite bushcrafters - past, present, real, mythical

[crazydave]

I think they are better refered to as 'natives' they probably wouldn't even know what a 'bushcrafter' was for the most part they are just doing whats required to stop themselves starving to death

A bit like if I'm paid to fit a kitchen for someone then I'm a tradesman, if I do it for myself then I'm a diyer if I'm classed as anthing at all. We used to say that the difference between a joiner and a fitter was £3k in tools. Most skills are tradional trades but now regarded as crafts because they are not general skills anymore.

In my short lifetime firelighting has gone from being an everyday event for millions to becoming a skill which needs learning to do successfully. The same goes for sewing, and the way cooking has gone after the ready meal boom that too. If my missus breaks something then it gets given to me to fix and theres only 5 years between us, the same at work where everybody calls me 'workdad'.

We've lost the basic skill sets so we relabel those who know them as specialists - my grandma tells me tales of being a child early in the century and what they got up to on the farm where she grew up or as a girl guide - total bushcraft - not to mention how she improvised her way through the war and raised two kids without a father

so if we want a role model then I nominate - my granny

 

[crazydave]

Maybe its better to redefine bushcrafters as those keeping skills alive from where they were once lost.

After all we all saw Ray teaching amazon natives friction firelighting where the skill had been allowed to lapse due to the introduction of matches and lighters.

Native peoples given the alternative and like us would choose the easire options as their lives are hard enough.

anyway enough of the serious stuff what about Rambo John J - anyone who when asked 'what would you hunt with knife' says 'name it' gets my vote

 

[Matt Weir]

for the most part they are just doing whats required to stop themselves starving to death

Yip - bushcraft

A bit like if I'm paid to fit a kitchen for someone then I'm a tradesman, if I do it for myself then I'm a diyer if I'm classed as anthing at all. We used to say that the difference between a joiner and a fitter was £3k in tools. Most skills are tradional trades but now regarded as crafts because they are not general skills anymore.

But it all falls under the umbrella term of carpentry doesn't it? Much like the range of skills and knowledge that encompass the term bushcraft.

We've lost the basic skill sets so we relabel those who know them as specialists - my grandma tells me tales of being a child early in the century and what they got up to on the farm where she grew up or as a girl guide - total bushcraft - not to mention how she improvised her way through the war and raised two kids without a father

so if we want a role model then I nominate - my granny

You even say it yourself - total bushcraft - bushcrafting by bushcrafters

 

[Matt Weir]

Maybe its better to redefine bushcrafters as those keeping skills alive from where they were once lost.

After all we all saw Ray teaching amazon natives friction firelighting where the skill had been allowed to lapse due to the introduction of matches and lighters.

Native peoples given the alternative and like us would choose the easire options as their lives are hard enough.

anyway enough of the serious stuff what about Rambo John J - anyone who when asked 'what would you hunt with knife' says 'name it' gets my vote

Ah - Rambo! Now he was really up against it. lol

 

[swagman]

Ben Mcnut

 

[traderran]

My grandfather he tout me everything I know about the old ways

 

[crazydave]

Yip - bushcraft



But it all falls under the umbrella term of carpentry doesn't it? Much like the range of skills and knowledge that encompass the term bushcraft.



You even say it yourself - total bushcraft - bushcrafting by bushcrafters

carpentry how dare you! - fitting is a totally different skill set to joinery or carpentry and its not hard to work out whether a proper fitter did your kitchen or the site joiner - for one thing a joiner will just bang two bits of wood together then send you the bill, a fitter will decide on how best to make it look right to hide the screws then ask you if you're happy with it

my point was that grandma never classed it as bushcraft and neither did anybody else till we forgot the skills and had to relearn them, thanks to our desires to hang a name on everything it became bushcraft, prior to that some called it woodlore and everybody else called it camping which is a better umbrella term understood by all

does anyone kow when the term bushcraft was first used or should I write to balderdash and piffle?

anyway back to heroes - jeremiah johnson springs to mind when 'bushcraft' was the realm of the mountain men and settlers making a new life for themselves.

If he wasn't such a potential dodgy character then baden powell did more to keep the skillset going than anyone else in this country I reckon even if was only to keep kids off the streets

 

[Boatswain]

Don't think anyone has mentioned this guy yet

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so's he knew every tree,
Killed him a bear when he was only three.

 

[Aaron]

Don't think anyone has mentioned this guy yet

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so's he knew every tree,
Killed him a bear when he was only three.

George W. Bush?

 

[Boatswain]

not dubya although

He went off to Congress and served a spell
Fixin' up the government and laws as well.
Took over Washington, so we hear tell,
And patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell.


cheers Roy

 

[JonnyP]

TooMuchKitToCarry is my favourite bushcrafter....He stands a proud man, safe in the knowledge that his gear in his back pack will see him through every eventuallity that life has to throw at him....He can often, not, be seen in the woods, in his DPM clothing looking for badgers (he likes badgers). He carrys an arsenal of knifes, some on his belt, some in his pack and one tucked down his DPM sock. Some say he is just a legend, but I have seen him in the flesh, and he is my hero.....

 

[Too Much Kit To Carry]

TooMuchKitToCarry is my favourite bushcrafter....He stands a proud man, safe in the knowledge that his gear in his back pack will see him through every eventuallity that life has to throw at him....He can often, not, be seen in the woods, in his DPM clothing looking for badgers (he likes badgers). He carrys an arsenal of knifes, some on his belt, some in his pack and one tucked down his DPM sock. Some say he is just a legend, but I have seen him in the flesh, and he is my hero.....

Jon it's not true that I wear DPM socks.

But thanks for your kind words and your hero worship

Phil.

 

[Aaron]

not dubya although

He went off to Congress and served a spell
Fixin' up the government and laws as well.
Took over Washington, so we hear tell,
And patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell.


cheers Roy

I imagine most Iraqis and the victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans would probably disagree with ya there mate, but thats politics and not for this forum.

 

[Boatswain]

Aaron

I was proposing Davy Crockett for his backwoods skills not his politics, Although I expect anyone whose had to get close to nature can bring those skills to anything they do.
and lets not forget he also had a mate who was a knifemaker/designer.

Cheers Roy

 

[Harmonica]

Ben Mcnut

Bens great but you cant have Ben without Lisa - that would be like fish without chips

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

BP (baden powell) ?
The old guy, 70s 0r 80s, who was the beaver trapper come mountain man
in the Ray Mears programme.
Huck Finn ?

 

[Boatswain]

Ben Gunn ... 3 years on a desert island... nutty as a fruitcake

 

[Carcajou Garou]

Pierre Esprit Radisson et Medard Chouard des Groseiller spent a good deal of time travelling the bush before the "Voyageurs" actually were the instigators of the Hudson Bay Company.

 

[cccc]

who are everyone's bushcrafting hero's?

Constable Benton Fraser ( Due South ) would be up there with many of the ones mentioned in my mind

A true gent and a real outdoorsman.