Bear Grylls - Omnivore

bear grylls - born shit eater from twobob.tv on Vimeo.
NSFW - unless work is plumbing I guess
Silly, yet somehow, silly.

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SBW

In The Woods Pt2 The AccuCover Review

In the morning we breakfasted on noodles and eggs before pumping the rifle up and sighting-in. The Northern Monkey is very well practised at laying out ground works and has a pace pretty much bang on a meter. So forgetting the tape measure wasn't a big deal.  We used James Marchington's free air gun targets, which are conveniently scaled so one square equals one click of the scopes adjustment at 25 yards. Handy.

Friend of the blog Nick Matthews has designed this neat accuracy accessory that he was kind enough to send me for testing. Like all the cleverest designs he’s taken one thing and got it to do more than one job.

Apart from the obvious role in protecting the lens of your scope from harm, the Acuccover’s big bright markings promote eye-to-scope alignment, first: by starting the process of adjusting your focal length before you’re close enough to see the cross hairs, giving speedier target acquisition. Then the outsized bright markings help to eliminate parallax error by exaggerating your perception of level and plumb so you look dead straight through the scope. Nick explained to me that the Accucover also helps in reducing 'cant error' AKA rifle tilt which is particularly important with lower velocity rifles. A nice bit of kit and available to fit most sizes of scope.

More to come
Your pal
SBW

In The Woods Pt1 Escape Velocity

'First thing you learn is you always gotta wait' Lou Reed

I was to be snaring Rabbits with another blogger over the weekend. But as is so often the lot of the self employed, one thing leads to another, a client sets a meeting back and a Friday departure disappears over the horizon. 

Seeing as I already had the weekend booked, I roused The Northern Monkey and we resolved to visit the permission in the forest. 

Saturday: one thing leads to another and we finally leave at the end of the afternoon. The drive out of town is uneventful, and we're making good pace, too good to be true. We spend an hour or so sitting in the car, gridlocked, with the engine off. By the time we're finally back on the move it's getting dark. 

Then follows a hilarious [you had to be there] interlude where we drive round a village trying to find an unmarked turning before we get to the wood. Then, for shits & giggles, we repeated the process on foot in the wood itself.

SBW [on phone]: So we're in the wood, where's the hut?
R [on phone, losing patience with SBW]: If you're in the wood, you're standing next to it
R [talking to E] They're in the wood they can't find the hut
The sound of splashing bath water and laughter
R [on phone, laughing]: Good luck, call me in the morning. CLICK

Now we'd scared off any inhabitants the wood may have had, we spend a relaxing evening in the hut eating our bean stew and bickering.

SBW: the deal was I cook and you pump up the rifle
TNM: I'll do it in the morning
SBW: I bet you if you don't do it they'll be Squirrels outside first thing
TNM: What! After a night of us two snoring like a pair of chain-saws they'll be long gone

I don't remember the highlights of the next argument, which was about who sleeps where on the sleeping platform, but I remember that it revolved around who was more likely to want to go for a piss in the night. TNM's getting on a bit so I let him have the easier route to the door.

Sunday-first light

SBW: Are you awake?

TNM: Yeah man

SBW [fighting his way out of a hooj duvet and now straddling TNM on his way to the door]:
Good, I just wanted you to know I'm not trying to mount you

Of course there was a Squirrel perfectly poised on a tree not ten yards away.

More Soon
Your Pal

SBW

A Ferreter Of The Old School

I saw this video by Will Halfacree on James Marchington's blog. It reminded me of our day ferreting, only Frank, 90, is a lot fitter!

Frank, a legend from East Budleigh, still continues to use the traditional method of Ferrets to catch rabbits in the Devon hedgerows.

Enjoy
SBW

Skull Pix 2

Just got back from a trip to the forest. Where I found this beauty.

Chances are you already know what it is. As usual, the challenge of being the first to comment with a correct identification wins FIVE SOLID GOLD BUSHWACKER POINTS.

Additional points may also be awarded for, style, scientific interest, flair, wit and misanthropy.

More of our adventure as and when I get the time to write them up

As ever
Your pal
The bushwacker

Weekend reading: Rasch of Kandahar

On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains to Jellalabad. That was Dr. Brydon, the sole person to tell the tale of the passage of Khourd Caboul.

More than 16,000 people had set out on the retreat from Kabul, and in the end only one man, Dr. William Brydon, a British Army surgeon, had made it alive to Jalalabad. The garrison there lit signal fires and sounded bugles to guide other British survivors to safety, but after several days they realized that Brydon would be the only one. It was believed the Afghans let him live so he could tell the grisly story.

The English in Afghanistan” from North American Review July 1842

The blogosphere's best armed apiarist, has taken a few moments out from his busy schedule, keeping the world safe for democracy, to share his ponderings with us. This missive takes us from the graveyard of empire via apiary to the potential for permaculture to rebuild damaged lands, and back again.
This one is a MUST READ, Rasch of Kandahar at his best!

More soon
Your pal
SBW

Unboxing: Boker SubCom F Knife Review

Boker Subcom F [unit of scale .270]

Ahh Subcom. I've been a fan of theses ‘discrete folders’ [AKA ‘small penknives’] for what seems like an age now, but due to the ill thought out BS of UK knife law, locking folders tend to stay in the drawer, so there are always other things to spend the money on.

I needed a dry-bag for a forthcoming trip so I was foraging a forum I frequent for bargains when I noticed I was able to pick this one up, in decent condition, for roughly what I'd have paid in the US of A. Before I knew what was happening it was in the post to me. Opps!

Let the Unboxing commence:

First things first, minimum bid: Any locking folder is judged first on the tolerance of its lock-up. Any play in the blade’s locked position is unacceptable. The Subcom’s lock-up is 100%. Flawless.

Chad Los Banos, the Subcom’s designer, has pulled off the difficult trick of making the ‘littlest big knife’; pocket-able and compact whilst feeling full-sized in the hand. He’s not followed much of the orthodoxy of knife design and as is so often the case the ‘clean sheet’ approach has paid off. The blade is comparatively short, but the cutting edge is comparatively long. The handle is slim but deep, giving the feeling of holding a much bigger shape. Clever stuff.

"either too small or too big, too skinny a blade, and not enough handle to fill the hand." The Subcom series of folders and fixed blades were designed to fill the hand, while remaining small enough to "stay out of your way,"

The Subcom’s blade is AUS8; not the best of the best, but some way up the performance curve from the generic tool steels and lower cost than the super steels. For the price you pay, very good value.

Of all the ways to lock a folding knife, frame-lock is my preferred choice, you get a really solid feeling and the absence of moving parts such as rings or pivots means there is little to wear out or fatigue. Part of the frame is sprung so it locks the blade in the open position. The steel is thinned and heat-treated so it’s flexible enough to be bent out the way letting the blade be folded into the handle. As the blade is opened the sprung section snaps back into the locked position. One of the things that attracted me to the Subcom’s design was the moveable element of the frame is full sized. Quite a few of the production folders use a section of thinner steel as the catch and as a result always seem less satisfying in the hand than the customs, and higher priced production offerings.

Where Boker, the manufacturer, has made a production saving is with the use of Fiber Reinforced Nylon for the ‘scale’ side of the handle, less rigid than G10 or Micarta, it’s had to be stiffened with a thin steel plate, from a manufacturing-to-a-price point of view it’s an intelligent choice and probably a lot of the reason the knife can be such a reasonable price.

In summation: you get about 110% of the design, and about 70% of the build and finish you’d get from a custom folder, for about 10% of the price. Highly recommended. Highly pimpable too… TBC

More soon
Your pal
SBW PS There are more knife reviews in the 'kit' tab at the top of the page, or click HERE for my knife buying guide, you might like it.