Shelters

I guess no one reads carefully anymore...

Your land, do what you please. Public land, not so much.

A lanyard attached to a knife makes it easy to find. A long sharp pole is a better defensive weapon.

Ottoshot, you're being obtuse again. I've already responded to that a couple of times in this thread stating I've done it myself and that it is a skill one who wanders into the backcountry should know. Want to build it with deadfall, great. Live trees, no unless it's a life or death situation.

Anyway, I've made the points about this topic I wanted to make. Some of you get it and others don't or disagree. Your prerogative.
 
CSG said:
I guess no one reads carefully anymore...

Your land, do what you please. Public land, not so much.

A lanyard attached to a knife makes it easy to find. A long sharp pole is a better defensive weapon.
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exactly a long poll cut down and sharpened with a large knife. And I read what you wrote, and I wrote that to say that I atleast partially agree with you.:thumbup: Why are you being so combative?
 
I cut em down and practice with live material all the time. Practise as you would have to in a real situation. I use dead wood if available but the difference is I am in the middle of nowhere and nothing beats conifer branches for bedding insulation in a pinch. I do not clear cut and carry out garbage and make an effort to hide my stay within reason.

The hypocracy of some who criticize when they show up in their 8 banger SUV driving 50k a year and worry about a tree in the middle of nowhere. Think people it isn't that hard.

Dont even talk to me about environmental footprints, most dont know the meaning of the phrase.

Skam
 
Reminds me of this phrase on a t-shirt that I saw a long time ago:

"Only when all the trees are cut, the last waterfall damed, and the last patch of grass paved will we realize that we can't eat money."
 
Nothing wrong with large choppers, and imho noting wrong with cutting down trees and building a bough shelter if you want to. Carry whatever you want to in the woods but use some discretion. Don't to limb a bunch of trees along a trail just to try out your big knife,because it is unsightly, not because it is "bad for the environment". But as was suggested, it is the straw man doing all that chopping, I doubt many people here are doing that kind of thing. Enough with the preaching to the choir.
 
Living in Canada, I need a shelter. But thats because i hardly ever go out in the woods in the summer when its 100 degrees F out. instead I go out in the middle of the winter- and this year there wasn't much snow for shelters ... lucky i have a good sleeping bag.
 
Thomas Linton said:
I thought folks built shelters out of trees all the time in Finland.

Houses. :D
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Yeah. I did, too. But darn, it takes a long time to do that when you're out in the woods! :D

To sum up my side of the argument, I believe shelter finding and building is a very important survival skill. At least as important is the skill to know when you actually need to build a shelter, and when it's just a waste of time and energy. As for the environment side of the issue, yeah, I do consider it a "waste" for people to go chopping up live trees on state property and such. On your private property, do whatever the heck you will - that's what I do, too. Then again, I'm not one of those modern green types that spend their days blabbing about global warming while driving around the city in massive SUVs. I'm more the old-fashioned woodsloafer type. I simply like nature, and respect it, and don't want to see it getting chopped up even in the least extent for no good reason.

Shelter building itself, I wish more kids understood. It's kind of sad to see how most of them think they're screwed without a huge flash orange tent and stuff. Oh well.
 
I suspect that a lot of the guys that MAY be guilty of what's being complained about are those that will tell you it's too hard to carry a tent/tarp and sleeping bag. Of course, they are ALSO the ones that can't bear the weight of a big chopper (a big chopper is a hatchet/axe, kukri, etc. A 9" knife is not a big chopper).
Yep, I carry a big chopper. Why? Because it's easier to chop with (duh). That doesn't mean I'm cutting down everything in sight and making the Keebler elves homeless. I just don't see the advantage others do in splitting wood by beating the hell out of a 4" knife.
 
skammer said:
I cut em down and practice with live material all the time. Practise as you would have to in a real situation. I use dead wood if available but the difference is I am in the middle of nowhere and nothing beats conifer branches for bedding insulation in a pinch. I do not clear cut and carry out garbage and make an effort to hide my stay within reason.

The hypocracy of some who criticize when they show up in their 8 banger SUV driving 50k a year and worry about a tree in the middle of nowhere. Think people it isn't that hard.

Dont even talk to me about environmental footprints, most dont know the meaning of the phrase.

Skam
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Let me see if I get your philosphy right; as long as someone else is doing wrong or at least what I don't think is right, then it gives me the right to do whatever I please.

WOW, I might have to adopt this ideal, you can do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it. I mean, unless you become Satan incarnate, there is always going to be someone worse than you are.:confused::confused:

I don't care if you drive the biggest gas guzzler in the world, denuding public forest to practice a "survival" skill that will probably never get used or get used because someone is too lazy to carry proper gear is not right no matter how it is justified.

If we were talking about gas guzzlers then I would be chiming in on my thoughts about them, however, we are not, we are talking about needlessly hacking down trees for your own selfish amusement. Chris

EDIT: As far as nothing beating conifer branches for bedding, I've tried both and my thermarest beats them all to hell.
 
runningboar said:
Let me see if I get your philosphy right; as long as someone else is doing wrong or at least what I don't think is right, then it gives me the right to do whatever I please.

WOW, I might have to adopt this ideal, you can do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it. I mean, unless you become Satan incarnate, there is always going to be someone worse than you are.:confused::confused:

I don't care if you drive the biggest gas guzzler in the world, denuding public forest to practice a "survival" skill that will probably never get used or get used because someone is too lazy to carry proper gear is not right no matter how it is justified.

If we were talking about gas guzzlers then I would be chiming in on my thoughts about them, however, we are not, we are talking about needlessly hacking down trees for your own selfish amusement. Chris

EDIT: As far as nothing beating conifer branches for bedding, I've tried both and my thermarest beats them all to hell.
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Until you walk to work, your home is made of dirt and your power is from solar stop bitching about my six trees a year, they will grow back. Place the save the planet efforts where they matter most.

BTW in winter 2 feet of boughs kicks thermarest ass so bad you dont even know.

Skam
 
skammer said:
Until you walk to work, your home is made of dirt and your power is from solar stop bitching about my six trees a year, they will grow back. Place the save the planet efforts where they matter most.
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I am not worried about your 6 trees, I am worried about everyone else's.

skammer said:
BTW in winter 2 feet of boughs kicks thermarest ass so bad you dont even know.

Skam
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Since I LIVE IN THE SOUTH I will have to defer to your judgement on this. I wonder what people that summit Everest use since there are no trees to hack? Chris
 
I'm sort of in the middle on this one, you know? I don't want to see every Richard Cranium with an RTAKII or Hatchet out chopping everything down...but the reality is guys...on both sides of the current disagreement...is...we are an extreme minority. It's not going to hurt anything.

If survivalism becomes some sort of massive envirotrend or some sort of socio-economic necessity due to a Second Great Depression or something, this might be a consideration...but, then again, the trees being chopped down would be the least of our worries.

My Dad used to blow steam out of his ears when he saw some of the things I did in the woods...it's a funny thing now, thirty years later, the "woods" I used to do all that stuff in? They're gone anyway. There were always pyros in the neighborhood who would light catface on a punctured pine and stuff like that, I could have made all of the tree forts and lean-tos I wanted to and the little Freddy Krugerites could have burned the woods to the ground...it wouldn't make any difference...the people that owned the woods sold it to people that build shopping malls. My woods are a vast expanse of asphalt that collects a lot of transmission fluid, a little tiny bit of gasoline, a lot of oil, the occasional Tabasco-squirt of brake fluid (yummy!), engine coolant, windshield washer fluid with deicer in it...chemicals put down for snow and ice removal and control...and funnels it all quite neatly into the area...

If the stuff is urban or suburban, it might not be there in twenty years anyway, if it is rural or wilderness and it's not private property, it's probably not going to matter either.

I think we become very insulated in this forum, just like people do on forums which are gun based or knife based or self-defense based, we think there are so many of us, fact of the matter is, we're a fairly rare breed.
 
CSG said:
I want to add that my comments in this thread are from viewing pretty much the entire content of this forum over the past month. I like blades of different sorts as much as the next guy but it seems that a great number of people here equate blade ownership, especially large blades, to somehow conquering the wilderness by chopping down everything in sight. We don't know the age or experience of most posters (I'm in my 50's and have been doing this stuff for a half century) or even where they live. My guess and opinion is that many people here are making up for something "lacking" elsewhere and/or have very few true outdoor skills.[/QUOTE]
CSG, I surely did see where you said it's a "good skill to know" and that public property may be treated differently from public property. But other things you said showed a far more negative and judging attititude. For example, you also described building shelters as "clear cutting" or "chopping down everything in sight." I know that you know that the one does not equal the other, but that got lost in the verbiage.

In fact, most (not all) have supported restraint in this thread and in other threads over the years when the issue comes up. That is the "conventinoal wisdom" here.

It is also the "conventional wisdom here that smaller knives are more widely useful than "big" knives (although what is "big" is never established). When the discussions stay polite, the utility of "big" knives is also conceded.

It appears that you are overgeneralizing (as in "no one reads carefully anymore") to make a point that most here already support, if not all to the same extent.

Once you start accusing the "guilty" of "lacking" something "elsewhere" and having "few skills" the discussion inevitably heats up, reason departs, and information/experience stops being shared.
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Im not even sure what is being contested here anymore... Naysayers are not sure weather or not there is a difference between teaching, demonstrating and practicing over building live tree shelters every time you stay overnight in the woods.

Debris shelters are easier to build in my area over cutting down live trees. If one needed evergreen broughs or straight limb poles for a SURVIVAL situation that would be a different story. Here in the north, insulation and fire is key to SURVIVING (ie; not dying) the night if you are caught without the proper equipment.

ice fishing and snowmobiling remote areas are examples of this. It is not as simple as one might think to just get up and walk out to safety. nobody takes sleeping bags and tarps out with them when they snowmobile, even though they probably should.
 
Ottoshot said:
ice fishing and snowmobiling remote areas are examples of this. It is not as simple as one might think to just get up and walk out to safety. nobody takes sleeping bags and tarps out with them when they snowmobile, even though they probably should.
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Man I don't know if I would make it up there, the high here today was 38 and I think I nearly froze to death. :p

It is supposed to be back up to almost 60 this weekend though, think I will get the canoe out. Chris
 
It gets cold up here Runningboar... but you would feel right at home in the spring, summer and fall in your canoe. The shield is an awesome place to be.
 
So what about not buying the manmade modern materials, like plastic and nylon tents/tarps/etc., that are produced by polluting factories that consume fossil fuels and eat up greenspace and just sit at home instead of going into the woods? How many resources get obliterated putting up the sporting goods mega stores that house them?

anyone can be demonized for what they do.
 
Legitimate question.

Most of the polyester fleece is made of recycled PETE (AKA "PET") bottles.
Wool comes from ruminants, a major source of greenhouse gases.
Global temperatures are rising on Terra -- and Mars and Saturn.
Lofty Wiseman and Ray suggest BIG knives AND little knives.
What are we to do?
Discuss in 50 words or less. :D
 
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