Pig Dog Slut

If I may be permitted to explain, this is not a slur on the eating habits, character or lifestyle choices of the good citizens of Leeds. It's a history lesson.

The first recorded use of a tracking animal other than a dog in the UK was 'Slut' a pig owned and trained by A baronet from hampshire called Sir Henry Mildmay. His pal Charles Darwin said "Sluts sent was exceedingly good, and she was more useful than a dog"

OK more trivia than history. The book this fact is taken from looks a lot of fun 'The Keen Shots Miscellany' by Peter Holt 

All papers sat and passed. Off back down south.

Your pal

SBW

The Elusive Obvious Pt1

There's a fortune at stake, there are countless review sites and everyone has an opinion (or two). What to wear outdoors?

As regular readers will know I'm quite a fan of The Gun Nut. My family and friends sneer when I recommend this blog, but whether you’re interested in firearms or not, David E Petzal has a voice that leaps of the page and an understanding of his audience that anyone could learn from. A bit more worldly than many of his fans, (as judged by reading the comments section) he never acknowledges his expertise, choosing instead to portray himself as weary traveller, incidentally dispensing knowledge while dismayed at the way the worlds going.

On the Gun Nut Blog this week David E Petzal talks about the clothes needed take a hike and THEN to sit still for long periods of time during a hunt.

In the comments section I saw this pearl of wisdom

"The quickest way to figure out how to deal with all that is to go to the nearest construction site nearest to the area you want to hunt and see what the guys who are out in it all day long trying to do their job wear. It's not that different from the needs for hunting. They work, they sweat. They can't quit and run home every time they step in a puddle, get sweaty or it rains a little." - Jack Ryan

If you've got any tips for clothes that protect you from the worst of it without costing the earth - post a comment and let us know
Cheers
SBW

Bushwacker Edu. - A Knotty Problem

As James pointed out the other day, unless you come from a family who hunt or live in a small community where everyone knows everyone else, your chances of getting involved in hunting in the UK are relatively slim. The net result is that there are a few holes in my education.

John: Hey, Jeremy, what do you know about holes?
Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD.: There are simply no holes in my education.
Paul: You mean you haven't composed a "hole" book?
The Beatles - The Yellow Submarine

James has invited me to go Ferreting in a couple of weekends time. As you can imagine I’m fairly excitable at the best of times, so he’d no sooner invited me than I was starting my preparations.
“Apart from my hat & coat what will I need to bring?”
“We’ll need some Purse Nets”
“Where do I buy them?
“Your making them – a kit’s in the post”
“ How difficult is it?”
“ Just one Knot, tied lots of times!”

So I’m about to start making some purse nets that we’ll stretch over the exits to the rabbits warren, before sending in his business of ferrets to flush the bunnies out.

Wish me luck - thanks for reading
SBW

Really Actually Tasty?

Much to my surprise the office has yielded a lesson in preparedness and survival this week.

Due to the early January lull when the rest of the world seems to still be on holiday. Last weeks office life was at a much slower pace than could be productive. The morning football conversation extended beyond its mandatory 20 minutes and peaked on Friday at an hour and a half.
Work, as it was, centered around half-hearted researching, most of the day went on teasing each other and reading stuff out from the internet.
One viral email caught everyone’s attention and made me think about the nature of our dinner and our expectations of it.

LOOKS GOOD

EASY TO COOK

PLENTY OF THEM ABOUT TOO!!


As we watched to squeals of horror, the question everyone was asking, well more shrieking than asking, was ‘Would you? – Could you!”.
Mr. Bojangles (the resident song and dance man) has lived in Senegal for ten years so he speaks with an authority the others cant muster.
“In lots of the parts of the world people eat all kinds of stuff”
Would you? Have you? You didn’t!
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, in a lot of places people just need to eat, you never know what you’re being served ”

In the Southern US and much of eastern europe squirrels are well known as good eating, a few people shoot them to eat here, and a couple of the more adventurous London restaurants have them on the menu.

Well they call squirrels ‘tree rats’, maybe these fellas should be re-branded as ‘ground squirrels’. Hmmmm?

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

Easily Forage-able Resources. Online And In The Suburban Bush.

Every tribe or social grouping has its rituals and catchphrases, which let members identify each other, and let outsiders know they are outsiders. Sometimes these mantras set a frame of context, making sense of a situation and sometimes they serve to remind you how to do the business in challenging circumstances.

For as long as there’s been a fireside to return to at night, there’s been bush-lore passed on verbally by the light of the campfire, and now there’s the Bushcraft-Blog-Law. The law that dictates how a new tradition develops its tried and tested formulas, conventions and clichés. Leaving aside (for the moment), the obligatory pictures of knives, axes and hats that most of has used as symbols for our adventures. Every bushcraft blog must also pass on some timeless wisdom:
‘The-more-you-know-the-less-you-carry’.
Usually attributed to that wise old man of the hills Mors Kochanski.
Or if you wanted to ‘freshen up’ your pitch (or create your own trademark) it could
‘Make-up-for-what-you-don’t-have-with-what-you-do-know.’

As a culture develops there are also powerful totems which when invoked through stories and songs will provide insight and inspiration. Some people will find themselves wondering what Ray Mears would do. The wit and whiles of the coyote have served as a signpost to thinking beyond the expected in many North American cultures. In South Dakota I often wondered how BoB would have approached the task in hand and by emulating him was able to pass myself off as competent camper rather than reveal myself as a tubby desk jockey from the ‘burbs. But if I were to choose a guardian deity for suburban bushcraft it would have to be Wimbledon’s most famous residents…

I used to spend a lot of time with a really clever management consultant, who ran mind-bending workshops. A sort of Tobermory of consultancy, fixing up (and super charging) broken projects with stuff he found lying around. One of the really cool things that he taught us to do was, to see familiar behaviours (individual and organisational) as processes. Then to look at the process we’d uncovered in new and unexpected ways, until we could see other examples of when and where the behaviour or system attribute could perform another purpose. A bit like bushcraft and survival skills and of course just like the Wombles….

‘Making good use of the things that we find,
Things that the everyday folks leave behind.’

I really was starting to think that I’d seen all the bushcraft blogs of note, when I saw that a guy who posts on one of the bushcraft sites as Fenlander had started one, and its the best I’ve seen in ages. While most bloggers are enthusiastic amateurs afield (or incompetents-a-couch in the case of your pal the bushwacker) – This guy is skilled AND enthusiastic, what the Kiwis call ' a good keen man', check out the post where he and a pal test out the insulation provided by some woolen clothes. Brrrrr!!

As Fenlander demonstrates when the really skilled bushcrafters are out in the backcountry they find new uses for the thing that they find, stuff everyday folks would leave behind. Sadly my backcountry is more, well, suburban back-yard and it’s not so much things left behind, as crap folks throw over my back fence (everyday).

Look everyone SBW’s made a lantern!
(Without spilling any blood or severing a finger!!)

Meanwhile at the other end of the performance curve - Fenlander’s made a distress whistle that, ‘in a pinch’, could save your life.

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker

Ferreting Out Some Advice

I recently met with my new friend James Marchington editor of Sporting Shooter magazine.

If I had tried to imagine a quintessential English journalist afield, it would be James. Tweed jacket, spectacles and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything to do with guns and field sports. Sitting in his office surrounded by shotgun cartridges, rare books about deer stalking, ferreting and wildfowling he beguiled me with tales of life afield, cleared up numerous questions I had about firearms, their legislation, and the UK shooting fraternity. I had ‘popped in’ to see him for ‘half an hour’ and two and a half hours later I had to excuse myself so as to put in a token appearance at my own office. Wish I were still there.

James has kindly offered to induct me into the wiles and ways of the shooting gent, starting with an invitation to go ferreting for rabbits. With the proviso that I wouldn’t have to put any ferrets down my trousers, I enthusiastically accepted.

Ferrets? Rabbits? Trousers? What?
One very effective way of hunting rabbits is to flush them out of their holes by sending a ‘business’ of ferrets down there (great collective noun isn’t it).
You simply net off all the exits you can find and send a hob (male) and a jill (female) down the hole. When the rabbits come charging out into the net you kill them and eat them.

I’m from the south and you hear a lot of tall tales about the northerners and their strange rituals and antics. There has long been a folk legend about gentlemen of the northern persuasion using that that was intended for legs, as a storage place for these most able of helpers. Now it turns out that it’s true!! There really is a ‘sport’ called ‘ferret legging’ where you trouser ferrets and the last one to tear their own pants off in sheer terror is the winner. Probably more fun to watch than take part.

“Basically, the contest involves the tying of a competitor's trousers at the ankles and the subsequent insertion into those trousers of a couple of peculiarly vicious fur-coated, foot long carnivores called ferrets. The brave contestant's belt is then pulled tight, and he proceeds to stand there in front of the judges as long as he can, while animals with claws like hypodermic needles and teeth like number 16 carpet tacks try their damnedest to get out.”

The rules:"no jockstraps allowed. No underpants-nothin' whatever. And it's no good with tight trousers, mind ye. Little bah-stards have to be able to move around inside there from ankle to ankle."

For those of you without the inclination to read the full text here’s the punch line

The current record stands at an awesome 5 hours and 26 minutes!

Thanks for reading
SBW

PS One ferret, Freddie, is registered as an electrician's assistant with the New Zealand Electrical Workers Union.

Photo Credit

Swedish Survival Skills

I’ve been meaning to recommend Michel Blomgren and his site Bushcraft.se for a while. Not only is he very knowledgeable about the skills that will keep you comfortably alive should you get lost while in the forest, but he’s also a talented TV presenter who is not afraid to suffer, if it means imparting some knowledge.

If you do nothing else make sure you watch Episode 1 - Five points survival.
It could save you life, it will make an overnight stay in the woods more comfortable, and if you are trying to get your kids into the outdoors the skills he demonstrates are so simple you could be teaching them to your kids by this weekend. Genius!

Enjoy
Bushwacker

Bird Hunting From The Sofa

Bowman 2

"You will discover that to be a good shot is not the half of what it takes to make a tolerable bird slayer."
Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879

Playing this game's lot like the guilty pleasure of buying delicious junk food, the 'twofers' can really make your day!
Bushwacker
PS on the site where I found the game a fella gave one of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard in a while.
'Don't take life so seriously mate, no one gets out alive anyway'

Battue: French For Bushwacking.

Battue: Whacking (or battering) bushes to flush out game animals.


I’m back, the sojourn to southern France is over and I’ve a few tails to tell you about, some of them fishy and some of them boorish.

But first the bad news; bad news for the boars, the french boar-hunting season gets under way next week and there are more double express rifles heading into the woods than ever stalked the African plains. And it’s bad news for me. I’m a long way from the Languedoc. Bah!

Like most things french, hunting ‘french style’ is very different to the aristocratic traditions of their english neighbours. Airs and graces are unnecessary, as are bespoke red coats and pedigree horses. No one is wearing a necktie. Where (and whether) you went to school is of no consequence. This is hunting ‘come as you are’. In France la chasse (the chase) is a great leveller. It’s for the rich and the poor, its enthusiasts are from the town and the country. The doctor with his exquisite double rifle stands alongside the barman with his great granddaddies under and over. While people with American hunting experience will recognise the camo and the slug guns, the french attitude to health and safety during le Battue will leave you, if not shaken, certainly very glad you brought along that blaze orange vest.

For la chasse there is no need to hang a tree stand and get to it before dawn, in france the hogs and bucks come to you. Every Sunday during the season at 8am, you down a couple of stiff drinks in the village square, then a drive out to the forest. The hunting association for the area will have elected a captain, and he will nominate who takes up position in the line, where the guns stand and wait, usually about fifty yards apart on the edge of the forest, and who runs with the dogs in le Battue or the team of beaters.

The beaters follow the dogs, which like their masters vary in temperament from the highly trained pedigree terrier, to the farmyard mutt. Brambles and bushes must be whacked, spiralling french horns are used for calling and despatching the hounds, with more blasts to signal to the line. This is hunting for the cooking pot. All game is fair game so as boars, rabbits and stags break cover they are turned towards the guns. Some of the beaters are also armed to insure nothing gets away. Chaos reigns. As the beaters near the line, and hopefully no one on the line has been shot this week, the horn blasts to tell the beaters to stop shooting and the line to turn to follow the fleeing prey.
Then its back to the village restaurant for a massive lunch with anything upwards of four courses and lots of wines and spirits before the whole thing begins again.

The season lasts until February – There’s still time to get out there. Wish me luck.

Asterix models

What The Fox Happening?

Three hundred and ten days ago, while I still lived on the other side of the hill.
I was sitting in my living room working on my laptop, when I heard a noise downstairs.
It wasn't very loud, just the sound of something falling over.
Then there was a tapping sound on the stairs, not loud enough to be an adult, but defiantly the sound of someone coming up the stairs. I looked down the stairs and found myself face to face with an urban fox, the cheeky little toe rag had come right into the house!

We looked at each other for a tenth of a second before he turned tail and scampered out of the back door.
Further investigation showed that the bushy-tailed-interloper had come in through the back door, gone into the bathroom, and then (what is euphemistically called) 'scented' our bathroom floor, Phew!!

To add insult to injury the little sod then did a victory lap of the bedroom, leaving 'scented' footprints all over the bed.
Not content with this chemical attack he then chose one of Mrs Bushwacker favourite boots and dragged it outside for a chewing session on the deck.

In the words of the late Bill Hicks
Who'd-a-thunk-it?
Bushwacker

Found Myself; Thinking About Ishi

"He looked upon us as sophisticated children -- smart but not wise.
We knew many things, and much that is false.
He knew nature, which is always true."
Saxton T. Pope (see 'Getting Inspired' on this blog)

Getting Inspired

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, by Saxton Pope (1875 - 1927)

Inspired by Ishi the last of the Yana people and Robin Hood. The surgeon, bow hunter, and Edwardian wag Dr Saxton Pope offers this thesis on bow craft and hunting. Thanks to the non-profit Guttenberg project the book can be downloaded for free!

While the book is a thorough and enthusiastic introduction to making your own bow, arrows and hunting kit, it was also the first time I learned of ‘Ishi’ the last of the Yana people who lived to the east of Sacramento before the arrival of (or invasion by) Europeans.
In 1911 Ishi, the last living Yana, starved and disheveled, walked out of the Stone Age and into the 20th century. The game scared away and the rivers poisoned by ranchers and cattle he must literally have been at the end of his world. At first he was found by the local constabulary and as no one present could speak his language he was deemed to be ‘mad’ and incarcerated. His arrival, coming only thirty-eight years after the Mill Creek genocide of his people, was announced in the local paper. Professor T. T. Watterman, of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, came to Oroville to investigate. By some stint of good fortune the professor had a few words of the Yana language and was able to offer some comfort to Ishi and to give him shelter at the University.
Everyone has their own symbolic ‘Ishi’ political, spiritual and to some of us the ultimate expression of the bush-crafter as craftsman and hunter. He lived at the university where he worked as a janitor and living exhibit demonstrating his skills as a knapper, bowyer and fletcher.
Here is where Dr Saxton Pope joins the story: a surgeon by trade and something of a wag and an athlete by disposition, Dr Pope became Ishi’s physician and latter his friend and pupil in all things toxophilic.
Dr Pope himself is from a time that has passed, while his language and views are those of a man of his social standing almost a hundred years ago. His wit and wisdom come across as clearly today as they would have beside the campfire.

“...one must have a good pair of legs. If automobiles, elevators, and general laziness have not ruined your powers of locomotion, you may follow the dogs; otherwise, you had best stay at home.”

At a time when ‘progress was all, biggest was best, and most powerful meant most right, Dr Pope must have been quite the contrarian; befriending an ‘Indian’ learning his language and hunting techniques. And taking to the wilderness with a ‘child’s plaything’ in pursuit of the largest predators North America had to offer.

“She undoubtedly would have been right on us in another second. The outcome of this hypothetical encounter I leave to those with vivid imaginations.”

Along with his physical courage what comes across in the book is his enthusiasm: whether it be for hunting Grizzly bears (Ursus Horribilis) on foot, armed only with “old horrible’, (a bow of his own construction), or his love and respect for his friends.

“I learned to love Ishi as a brother, and he looked upon me as one of his people. He called me Ku wi, or Medicine Man; more, perhaps, because I could perform little sleight of hand tricks, than because of my profession.”

After Ishi’s death from TB most of Dr Pope’s expeditions were with his great friend Arthur ‘Art’ Young.

“It seems as if Fate had chosen my hunting companion, Arthur Young, to add to the honor and the legends of the bow.”

My personal favorite, gives a clue to the twinkle in Popes eye when he says

“Young is so abstemious that even tea or coffee seem a bit intemperate to him, and are only to be used under great physical strain; and as for profanity, why, I had to do all the swearing for the two of us.”

Wag, Edwardian gent, contrarian, friend and philosopher Dr Pope lead the American bow-hunting renaissance. Championing ethical hunting and the defense and preservation of the wilderness long before such interests appeared in the pubic imagination.

“All that we have done is perfectly possible to any adventurous youth, no matter what his age.”

You can download the book for free from the Guttenberg project


I love this book and hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and between it’s pages find the inspiration to take to the field in pursuit of breakfast lunch and dinner.
Bushwacker.