Survival v. Bushcraft - What is the difference?

Bushcraft - Planning to be there and wanting to stay
Survival - Surprised to be there and wanting to get out

The skill set is mutual
 
Neo-Bushcraft: Extended childhood. Adults with too much time on their hands and nothing more important to do playing with their toys in the woods. All about trying to elevate or enhance the emotional state. As a form of recreational hedonism it is no different from golf, X-box, playing Nascar etc. In the big scheme of things totally unimportant, which is a blessing 'cos most of it comes with fictitious imagery and advertising.

People are inclined to be precious about this one 'cos they chose it when they didn't have to. People are inclined to be silly when you tell them football is a child's game for the same reasons.


Survival: The only truly important thing, staying alive. Maintain homeostasis. Avoid adverse stimuli when possible. Dodge negative emotional states. It's not about winning or feeling smug about being better off in some way than your neighbour, it's simply about not losing.

They might exist but I've never encountered anyone that would get moody and have a tantrum after being told they are bad at survival and their ideas suck. That marks a clear difference to the Neo-Bushcraft mob.
 
baldtaco-II said:
Neo-Bushcraft: Extended childhood. Adults with too much time on their hands and nothing more important to do playing with their toys in the woods. All about trying to elevate or enhance the emotional state. As a form of recreational hedonism it is no different from golf, X-box, playing Nascar etc. In the big scheme of things totally unimportant, which is a blessing 'cos most of it comes with fictitious imagery and advertising.

People are inclined to be precious about this one 'cos they chose it when they didn't have to. People are inclined to be silly when you tell them football is a child's game for the same reasons.


Survival: The only truly important thing, staying alive. Maintain homeostasis. Avoid adverse stimuli when possible. Dodge negative emotional states. It's not about winning or feeling smug about being better off in some way than your neighbour, it's simply about not losing.

They might exist but I've never encountered anyone that would get moody and have a tantrum after being told they are bad at survival and their ideas suck. That marks a clear difference to the Neo-Bushcraft mob.
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I believe that you encapsulated every aspect of my character in regard to these topics. I take all this stuff 10% seriously, and the rest falls into my hobby interest categories. I remember several times riding my motorcycle out of town, with a fixed blade knife on hip and a metal detector bungeed across my turn signal stalks. Other than fire, water, shelter, I take most of this stuff with a grain of salt. I live in cities, I play outside of them,.... temporarily.
 
jdm61 said:
Now I know that Moras are very serviceable blades at a more that fair price, but has anyone ever wondered if they chose the thickness of their steel because it is the best for the job or because they are making a very cheap knife AND some of those steels the use like 12C27 are kind hard to find in thicker stock? ;)
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No idea, obviously they have no issues currently finding it in 1/8. Personally I think what we refer to as a Scandi grind works best on thinner stock since it only has the relief bevel no primary. That's probably why you don't see many zero ground Scandi blades much thicker than 1/8. But what do I know.
 
"Southern US" to escape the Boreal Forest? There is a tiny strip in very northern Minnesota. Here in northern Ohio, woods are predominantly oak and maple with lesser populations of others (also mostly hardwood). We do have the Eastern Cottonwood near water
 
I have spent a great deal of time in the woods in KY and TN. I grew up in PA which are similar to the Ohio forests. The forest is primarily Oak-Hickory in the SE, so for example the fall foliage change is not as colorful as say in PA or Ohio or the New England area where you see a lot more maples mixed into the forest tree population. You see the northern forest type distribution of trees as you move up in elevation say in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of TN-NC and so forth. One of the big differences I have seen is the tremendous amount of undergrowth in the SE on less than mature stands of trees especially where there is more light getting through the canopy. In a lot of cases, this is due to rainfall and a bit longer growth period between frosts/cold.

As I said, I really don't care what kind of knife these "gods of bushcraft" use other than I am interested in their choices. I choose based on what I like or prefer and I tend to prefer a blade with a bit more strength in the woods paired with a pocket knife which handles much of the finer cutting (which is probably 90% at least of the need). I have been intrigued by machetes for the last couple of years and have picked up a fairly practical selection for woods. I still buy beastly knives from time to time just because.

Moras or Mora-like knives don't do it for me.
 
baldtaco-II said:
They might exist but I've never encountered anyone that would get moody and have a tantrum after being told they are bad at survival and their ideas suck. That marks a clear difference to the Neo-Bushcraft mob.
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Don't come here much do you? :D

22-rimfire said:
I have spent a great deal of time in the woods in KY and TN. I grew up in PA which are similar to the Ohio forests. The forest is primarily Oak-Hickory in the SE, so for example the fall foliage change is not as colorful as say in PA or Ohio or the New England area where you see a lot more maples mixed into the forest tree population. You see the northern forest type distribution of trees as you move up in elevation say in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of TN-NC and so forth. One of the big differences I have seen is the tremendous amount of undergrowth in the SE on less than mature stands of trees especially where there is more light getting through the canopy. In a lot of cases, this is due to rainfall and a bit longer growth period between frosts/cold.

As I said, I really don't care what kind of knife these "gods of bushcraft" use other than I am interested in their choices. I choose based on what I like or prefer and I tend to prefer a blade with a bit more strength in the woods paired with a pocket knife which handles much of the finer cutting (which is probably 90% at least of the need). I have been intrigued by machetes for the last couple of years and have picked up a fairly practical selection for woods. I still buy beastly knives from time to time just because.

Moras or Mora-like knives don't do it for me.
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Interestingly, Lofty was the lead survival instructor for the SAS for about 18 years. Never heard him refer to himself as a bushcrafter. Mors calls himself a teacher of survival and wilderness living. You will be happy to know Lofty likes all sorts of knives, including bolos and khukurui, and Mors likes axes (A MORA and an axe inhabit a differnt realm pof thinking than a MORA alone, yes?).
 
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upnorth said:
I believe that you encapsulated every aspect of my character in regard to these topics. I take all this stuff 10% seriously, and the rest falls into my hobby interest categories. I remember several times riding my motorcycle out of town, with a fixed blade knife on hip and a metal detector bungeed across my turn signal stalks. Other than fire, water, shelter, I take most of this stuff with a grain of salt. I live in cities, I play outside of them,.... temporarily.
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On one of the forums I used to look at they kinda gave up on the idea of defining bushcraft because it has such a Humpty Dumpty “words can mean whatever I choose them to mean” element. They came to prefer the word “bimble”. I don't think that helped solved the polymorphous issue, but at least it sounded less pretentious.

I'm rather the same as what you said. My outdoor hobbies and interests are often dragged into the bushcraft rubric bucket. Accordingly, it can make for a useful place to look for information. It is a bit vague though if one can go straight for the brain instead. I think of it rather like a slow child unskilled in the ways of the internet and with little specific knowledge of the outdoors – he sticks in “camping knife” and has to sift through all the dross. I doubt someone skilled in macrame would have much use for a relatively crude book on bushcraft knots. Similarly a bodger or fence maker isn't going to mess about with “how to make a bushcraft bed from twigs”. And if I made gypsy crafts; clothes pegs, uncouth wooden toys and other rustic amusements [bagpipes?], I'd certainly be looking at the guy that was chuffed about being able to make feather stick or cut 5 “bushcraft notches” in a twig as somewhat of a n00b. Same goes for cooking. Some of that stuff the bushcrafters eat with relish when baked over a fire and called bushcraft-blah is the same stuff one used to knock up in pre-school as glue.

I think the bushcraft bucket is great to poke about in for inspiration, but no more than that. Above all it is excellent voyeuristic entertainment: 3 chimps sitting on a log waiting for their respective dogs to take a crap before work. 2 of them look down on the 3rd 'cos he is playing a game on his pocket something or other. The second chimp is oblivious to his surroundings. He's just cranking out the crossword in the newspaper whilst thinking “come on dog, shit, I'm going to be late”. 3rd chimp is looking down on the 2nd too, because he is aware of his surroundings and the 2nd really isn't. Chimp #3 really does feel superior. He's tied two crudely sharpened sticks together to make an bushcraft Apache death star. He couldn't hit a cat with it at 20 paces, and at 10 he couldn't penetrate a goat if we lined them up for him like a coconut shy, but he's a happy bushcrafter. Better still, if he takes photos of his sticks he knows the intwebz will reward him with kudos points if he posts them in the right places. It's bloody brilliant!
 
We are 'more' because of the workable knowledge we have, regardless of the source or what the source is called. Warm, dry and fed has meant so much to me on many occasions in past. Bafflegab, experience, puffery, science, silliness, accomplishment, pretensions ... aside, I appreciate what members share and filter it through my 'does it work for me' sieve.

I love BF. Keep it all coming.

Susan
 
Thomas Linton said:
"Southern US" to escape the Boreal Forest? There is a tiny strip in very northern Minnesota. Here in northern Ohio, woods are predominantly oak and maple with lesser populations of others (also mostly hardwood). We do have the Eastern Cottonwood near water
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Yes, I realise that much of the US is not boreal forest, but much of it consists of mixed forests where the winter conditions of the boreal can still provide crucial lessons. To my knowledge softwoods are still easily found in much of the US. Southern US, to me, seems like a complete divide from this territory, hence the use of it as the example (as well as the individual I was responding to being from there).

Here is an interesting venn diagram on Bushcraft:
[video=youtube;VxvVfgx9PBU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxvVfgx9PBU[/video]
 
Thomas Linton said:
Don't come here much do you? :D



Interestingly, Lofty was the lead survival instructor for the SAS for about 18 years. Never heard him refer to himself as a bushcrafter. Mors calls himself a teacher of survival and wilderness living. You will be happy to know Lofty likes all sorts of knives, including bolos and khukurui, and Mors likes axes (A MORA and an axe inhabit a differnt realm pof thinking than a MORA alone, yes?).
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Kochanski says that if you want to go without an axe then first you must master the axe. So it's not a different realm of thinking, it's thinking how to perform the functions of the axe when you don't have it.
 
Chignecto Woodsman said:
Yes, I realise that much of the US is not boreal forest, but much of it consists of mixed forests where the winter conditions of the boreal can still provide crucial lessons. To my knowledge softwoods are still easily found in much of the US. Southern US, to me, seems like a complete divide from this territory, hence the use of it as the example (as well as the individual I was responding to being from there).

Here is an interesting venn diagram on Bushcraft:
[video=youtube;VxvVfgx9PBU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxvVfgx9PBU[/video]
Click to expand...

How to say this more clearly? Almost none of the U.S. is Borial Forest and the woods above what we call the "South" are predominately hardwood. More softwoods are found in the "South" than the "North."
 
Thomas Linton said:
How to say this more clearly? Almost none of the U.S. is Borial Forest and the woods above what we call the "South" are predominately hardwood. More softwoods are found in the "South" than the "North."
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You seem confused. Nowhere did I say that the US is boreal forests. I said the lessons of boreal survival are more applicable to northern areas of the US, mainly due to the winters and having plenty of areas with softwoods and soft hardwoods like the boreal areas.

In terms of the density of wood, yes, you do get harder deciduous trees in the South. Oak, hickory, and gum tend towards central and southern regions. Perhaps there is more deciduous cover in the north, I don't know, but these trees are less dense for the most part: birch, ash, maple. Rock maple is the only real comparable tree, and it is still quite a bit less dense. And to my knowledge, the northern forests are predominantly mixed forest, not hardwood.

And the types of softwood trees in the south are quite different from northern mixed forest and the boreal, i.e. not a lot of spruce and fir which are crucial factors in northern fire lighting and, hence, the tools one can go with. Perhaps you mean there are more species of coniferous trees in the south, but this is irrelevant to the point made.

References:

http://www.seesouthernforests.org/gallery/maps/13-major-tree-communities-southern-forests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_Mixed_Forest_Province
http://geo.msu.edu/extra/geogmich/images/us-foresttypes.jpg
http://www.britannica.com/place/Eastern-Upland-forest
 
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Loblolly pine is supposedly the second most common tree species found in the contiguous US after red maple . It's range appears to consist almost exclusively of the lowlands of the Deep South. Hell, they farm the various "southern yellow pine" species down here like there was no tomorrow! Throw in slash pine, cypress, etc and you have some seriously softwood forest even though we cut down most of the long leaf stuff in the past. If you want to start a fire, find your self ahold old long leaf stump and boy, howdy, you have fire!
 
Chignecto Woodsman said:
You seem confused. Nowhere did I say that the US is boreal forests. I said the lessons of boreal survival are more applicable to northern areas of the US, mainly due to the winters and having plenty of areas with softwoods and soft hardwoods like the boreal areas.

In terms of the density of wood, yes, you do get harder deciduous trees in the South. Oak, hickory, and gum tend towards central and southern regions. Perhaps there is more deciduous cover in the north, I don't know, but these trees are less dense for the most part: birch, ash, maple. Rock maple is the only real comparable tree, and it is still quite a bit less dense. And to my knowledge, the northern forests are predominantly mixed forest, not hardwood.

And the types of softwood trees in the south are quite different from northern mixed forest and the boreal, i.e. not a lot of spruce and fir which are crucial factors in northern fire lighting and, hence, the tools one can go with. Perhaps you mean there are more species of coniferous trees in the south, but this is irrelevant to the point made.

References:

http://www.seesouthernforests.org/gallery/maps/13-major-tree-communities-southern-forests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_Mixed_Forest_Province
http://geo.msu.edu/extra/geogmich/images/us-foresttypes.jpg
http://www.britannica.com/place/Eastern-Upland-forest
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I defer to no man in my ability to be confused.

You said:
If you're from Tennessee it's a whole other story. I won't claim to know much of anything about the woods there, other than it being hardwoods, so boreal conditions don't really apply. I have to guess that dead branches on the lower parts of trees is nowhere near that of spruce; that is how the hardwoods are here anyways. I've said before how the Southern US tends to favour the bigger knives, and I'm guessing this has something to do with needing to chop - either to get dry wood or to hack at undergrowth.
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We, here in the Northern Ohio, have - I can go out and touch in fifteen minutes - ash, hickory, hornbeam, oak, sweet gum, beech, cherry, locust, and hard maple. Maples, beech, and oak greatly predominate.

The common evergreens are introduced species from New England or from Scandinavia or other parts of Europe, especially Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies, or the Rockies (Picea pungens). We also have rare pockets of tress uncommon to this area that are remnants of the last ice age, including birch, poplar, and white spruce.

While you may find the odd hemlock on slopes in our beech/maple "climax" forests, they are by no means diverse in the sense of having many poplars, spruce, or pine. Hardwoods vastly predominate.

Northern New England, from my limited experience, has large evergreen forests.

I have driven for hours thorough almost solid pine forests in the South and also hiked and hunted in mixed forests in extreme southern Kentucky as well. It was not my imporession that the wood down South was notably harder than where I live, but I defer to a Southerner. Would that be you?

I have not expressed, and have not thought about, whether Mors' lessons from the Boreal forest are more or less applicable in a particular area of the U.S.. I was merely posting about what I know from actual experience about the woods I have experienced.




3. It has been my impression from starting fires while visiting my family in the South that the pines down there are wonderful for starting fires. Real Southerners are, of course, free to express their greater knowledge.
 
Thomas Linton said:
Telling people on the other side of a matter of opinion, like Mors Kochanski, Lofty Wiseman, and Ray Mears who are on the other side of your denunciation of batoning per se, that they guilty of "mindless, thoughtless stupidity" may not be convincing to them - or many others.
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*sigh* That same lack of attention to detail is exactly WHY there are bushcraft myths and far too many fools foolishly using tools and materials.

In point of fact, they are not on the "side" opposite of mine. Watch closely how Mors batons with a knife, if he even uses a knife rather than an axe. A couple of whacks then he twists the blade to work the split down. Mors advocates batoning AROUND the wood, rather than right through the middle. The materials chosen are straighter, with less twists and knots, and of woods that are much easier to split. Then look at the fools using a 5" diameter chunk of knotty, twisted elm that is 3' long... with a 6" knife. As stark a difference as from Mt Everest to the Mariana Trench!! Skill matters!!

Attention to detail can make all the difference between forcing (and breaking!) vs enjoying. Attention to detail tells us what we need and how best to use the materials most readily available to us.

I have watched people strike F&S more than 50 times to get an ember then fail to get flame after dozens of breaths with a tinder bundle the size of six fists. I used their materials and had flame with one strike, a tinder bundle the size of a golfball and three breaths. Because I pay attention to detail and know exactly what those materials in that situation needed. Anyone can do the same thing with any task, be it F&S or batoning.

After four decades with thousands of hours spent stomping the woods, including several stints of living in the woods for months at a time, I have NEVER NEEDED to baton wood with a knife. Yet every knife review seemingly HAS to include batoning and 99% of the time it is done extremely stupidly. Come on people! We can do oh so much better than this. Why exhibit to the whole world the very LEAST that we are capable of??? Sad.

Wouldn't it be much better to show knowledge and skill aptly applied?!! That is all that I am advocating. Do what you want. Just if you are exposing it for the whole world to see, then please do it well.
 
You show lack of attention to my point. My seven decades dealing with people teaches me that calling people names is not persuasive. But you can't help yourself. Sad. You might have been a valuable contributor. Four decades is a good start.
 
jdm61 said:
Loblolly pine is supposedly the second most common tree species found in the contiguous US after red maple . It's range appears to consist almost exclusively of the lowlands of the Deep South. Hell, they farm the various "southern yellow pine" species down here like there was no tomorrow! Throw in slash pine, cypress, etc and you have some seriously softwood forest even though we cut down most of the long leaf stuff in the past. If you want to start a fire, find your self ahold old long leaf stump and boy, howdy, you have fire!
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To get back to what I was really arguing. My theory is that in the South many people prefer big knives because of the prevalence of very hard wood, as well as the swamps in which you may need a machete-like knife. As in, one may need to cut into hard wood in some situations, and in other situations have to slash through swamp/dense growth. The big knife offers this ability to do the everyday tasks of a knife while also acting as a machete when need be. If I am wrong I would like to know the reason for the prevalence of big knives there.

And regardless of what some may say here, axe differences clearly show this difference in Northern, Eastern, Central, and Southern axes, etc.. A different profile and grind works better in hardwoods, especially the very hard woods. Generally the hardwood axes have a longer and wider blade, along with a more durable grind.

Not an argument against big knives or batonning, just trying to get at the thinking behind the different styles and see how it relates to survival in different environments. In any case, we should get back to discussing the original idea of the thread, so perhaps a good transition from this would be to discuss what differentiates the cutting tools, cover, and clothing you take with you for bushcraft or survival. In my case, I live in a rural area so I pretty much rough it when I go out and bushcraft for me isn't anything fancy. Survival items are basically my bushcraft items, or the two are quite close.
 
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