Two New Blogs - Well New To Me

Hiya

The feedback from my OBS interview has exposed me to a couple of blogs that are well worth a mention.

First Rabid Outdoorsman's The Maine Outdoorsman
"Greetings fellow outdoor fanatics and welcome to the Maine Outdoorsman Blog. I started this blog as a way to share some of my favorite hunting, fishing and outdoor experiences with the general public. My goal for this endeavor, is to work to improve my writing skills so positive comments and suggestions are much appreciated. With that said please sit back, make yourselves comfortable and join me in conversing about a few of my favorite outdoor memories."

And Fish Hunter's Hunting Knive
"When you are in a position to indulge in it, hunting is one of the activities that can provide both a great deal of physical activity and bragging rights, not to mention an impressive amount meat and a truly epic trophy at the end."

Both struck a chord with me, hope you'll enjoy them too

Thanks for reading - leave a comment or two
SBW

Road Kill Rules

A little while ago the three ring circus that is the clan de la bushwacker were driving through the leafy lanes of Kent. As we entered a village I implored Mrs SBW to pull over. Bushwacker Jnr. and yours truly ran back down the road and recovered this delicious hen pheasant that had recently meet its demise at a passing vehicle's wheel and had not been there long.

How do I know it was safe to eat?

Well I'm no Tom Brown Jnr. but there were a couple of tracks that even I could follow:
1. It was about 11am and reasonably sunny - her blood was fresh and no flies had gathered.
2.It was about 11am and she was still there, if she'd died during the previous evening a fox would have had her during the first available cover of darkness.
3.Hung game has a strong smell and is still completely safe to eat. This one had hardly any smell.

At the butchers shop/game dealer you can buy a nice plucked pheasant (looking a lot like the one pictured bellow) that was shot on a shoot near by, it then sat around in a field for a few hours before being taken to the chilled game larder where it resided until at least the next day, when it continued its journey to the butcher/game dealer, where it sat in the chiller until it was plucked. Only then did it make it onto the shelf of the shop. We're talking £5.50 or eleven bucks from the butcher nearest my house, cheaper if you live out of town and up to a tenner if you live somewhere really swanky.

Mine had probably been clipped by a passing car that morning, took ten minuets to pluck (it would be less with practice) cost me nothing, and I got a really cool bag of feathers to use later.Bushwacker jnr. and I tucked in after Mrs SBW came over all squeamish and pushed hers to the side of her plate.Sucker!

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

SBW Interviewed Again

The Outdoor Bloggers Summit have interviewed me!

Why did you start blogging and why do you keep blogging?
What is your "vision" for your blog - how do you see it developing?
Do you have more than one blog? Do you have another website?

1) Why did you start blogging and why do you keep blogging?

I've had a growing interest in wild food and hunting for it over the last few years, I'd seized the opportunity to hunt a whitetail 18 months before i started the blog but had done nothing since. I started blogging as a way of tracking my motivations, activity levels, and most importantly as a way of goading myself into getting on with it, as opposed to just talking about it.
As a wily old sales director once told me  "What gets measured gets done".

What keeps me writing the blog has been two things; its given me massively increased confidence with my writing (my grasp of grammar and spelling may be poor but at last I've found a 'voice'). The feedback I've received from my friends and complete strangers has been amazing.What I hadn't expected was the number of people who have dropped by to read it. I was over the moon to have six readers and gob-smacked when six became six thousand! Being an attention seeker by nature i, of course, feel compelled to keep writing the blog for my audience.

2) What is your "vision" for your blog - how do you see it developing?

That depends from day to day. Sometimes i see Brad Pitt playing SBW in the movie (we look so alike its uncanny!!) and sometimes I'd just be happy to shoot my compound bow at a target instead of watching it gather dust in my shed! I'm still a long way from my ultimate aim, but the journey has so far proved to be most entertaining, i've met some really cool people online and in person; James from Sporting Shooter magazine and Jeremiah from Jeremiahquinn.com have been kind enough to give me some lessons. It had never occurred to me that I'd hunt rabbits with Ferrets, or learn to FlyFish within the confines of the city! As for the future further adventures beckon and I'll be updating the blog with my preparations and the trials and tribulations as i go. 

3) Do you have more than one blog? Do you have another website? If so,
what are the URL's of the additional blogs/websites.

With a group of friends I have been making and collecting everything needed for a suburban smithy. The forge has been welded up and I've been collecting scrap brass to smelt and steel to work.http://suburbansmithy.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading and be sure to have a look at the other OBS blogs, some of them are really good!
SBW

Wild Camping - The Responce

This Government appreciates the potential benefits of wild camping in England and its attractiveness to campers who already have the opportunity to camp in the wild in Scotland.

The Land Reform Act in Scotland allows for wild camping, but the land issues and the legislation in England are somewhat different. The introduction of wild camping in England would be a controversial issue, which would require both significant consultation and legislative change.

On open access land wild camping is prohibited under Schedule 2 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which lists all restricted activities. Therefore, new Regulations would be required to exclude wild camping as a restricted activity. Any change to the current rules on wild camping in National Parks and Ministry of Defence land would require new primary legislation.

The Government has no plans to allocate the necessary resources to consider proposals for such legislation at present, and is concentrating on following up the successful introduction of 750,000 hectares of open access land with new legislation on access to the coast in the Marine Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.

So that's two petitions and twice the government has decided to do nothing!

I was going to write you a long post moaning about the state of the nation and the lackwits who are governing us, but to be fair Aktoman has raised all the necessary points without sounding like an old fart so I'll just point you in his direction.
And for those of you resident in the UK, or carrying a UK passport, urge you to get involved in stage two of the campaign for us to be able to take a nap in the big out doors that our forefathers made such sacrifice for, before some bright spark in the cabinet office invents a way to put a meter between us and the fresh air.

Hurrumpf!!

Bushwacker

Knots And Brolly

BoB was in town over the weekend and was appalled to hear how bad a job I've been making of learning to knot my own purse nets for Ferreting. Ever the gentleman he limited his disappointment to a weary sigh, and offered to set me on the road. As James had first said "just one knot, tied lots of times". With BoB's patient guidance I'm finally getting the hang of it. I would have a picture to show you by know if it weren't for a curious incident that took place. The Garden umbrella BoB is pointing at in the picture came tumbling over the garden fence and missed braining me by about six inches. Much to BoB's amusement. By the time we'd finished laughing about that the oven was beeping and it was time for me to make the gravy and get dinner on the table. Such is suburban life.

Your pal
The Bushwacker.

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

Wood That I Could

I cant remember where I saw this, but I liked it and thought you might too.

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.
Chestnut's only good, they say
If for long it's laid away.
But Ash wood new or Ash wood old
Is fit for a queen with a crown of gold.

Birch and Fir logs burn too fast,
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is by the Irish said.
That Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
Elm wood burns like churchyard mold;
Even the very flames are cold.
But Ash wood green or Ash wood brown,
Is fit for a queen with a golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Applewood will scent your room
With an incense-like perfume.
Oak and Maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter cold.
But Ash wood wet and Ash wood dry,
A king shall warm his slippers by.
- Anonymous

Go on! Light one, you know you want to!!
SBW

Ashleys Site - Natural Bushcraft

Imagine if you wanted to find (nearly) all of the cool things that appear on the bushcraft websites and forums but you didn’t have the time or inclination to wade through the arguments and pomposity. Good News. A fella called Ashley has painstakingly collected together most of the best bits! Natural Bushcraft has the videos, the tutorials and a fantastic bushcraft quotes section. Life just got easier!
Well worth a visit, he really puts a lot of effort in, every time I visit I've seen something else interesting.

Thanks for reading
SBW

BASS Petition

Way back in the early days of my blog I posted about Dr Mike Ladle and his site, I added a link to a petition to increase the minimum size of landed sea bass. Well time has passed and in its wisdom the government has decided to do ........wait for it...nothing. I used to know a very dry and funny Russian chap who introduced me to the expression
"We wanted it to be different, but it happened just the same"
Ho Hum
Your pal
The Bushwacker

Photo credit

SBW interviewed!

I was recently approached by the folks who run a website dedicated to helping you find presents for people who are a problem to buy presents for. They asked me to answer some interview questions. Obviously as the worlds leading authority on my own opinion I jumped at the chance!

"As we're heading into Father's Day, it's time to have a man back on interview of the week, as the women have been dominating for a while. The Suburban Bushwacker blog is on Dr T's feed list, and SBW is a man with a mission and a passion. You might not agree with it, but it makes great reading, and, as with the answers we got to our questions, really well argued."

From Fat Boy to Elk Hunter.

It's a long journey between the rotund desk jockey my family and friends see me as, and the super fit backwoodsman Elk hunter I really am. My blog is about all the things I do outdoors and all the stuff I buy to do those things. Hopefully it’s also about the stuff I learn on the way to the hunting and fishing adventures of my dreams.

What do you do for a living?

I work in the sales industry, usually as a sales trainer.

I like to make out that hunting and fishing are my hobbies, but really it’s blogging and buying kit.

Owing to the positive feedback I’ve had from the blog I now have delusions of grandeur and see the blog as a starting point of an internationally acclaimed (and syndicated) newspaper column of the same name. Brad Pitt will be playing me in the movie.

Why did you start blogging about this topic?

There are plenty of self-proclaimed experts blogging away out there. A lot of them are a bit po-faced for my taste.  My angle is: while i may not be able to give expert advise i doubt you’ll meet anyone quite as enthusiastic as me.

The main reasons are:

1.The journey would be more achievable if i kept a record of it, Keeping a record would keep me honest about how much i was actually doing to achieve my goals.

2.As I’ve started reviewing equipment it would be good to have a second opinion after a few months of using the kit. Most people seem to have a box of junk they never use which they bought having read a review written by someone who either, only had the thing for an afternoon, or worked on a magazine that was funded by the manufacturer advertising.

How long have you been working on this blog?

I’m a relative newcomer to blogging I started this blog in may of this year (07)

How many visitors does your blog get per day?

I’ve not put a counter on it yet, but 111 people have now viewed my profile and a few people have emailed to say nice things.

Does your blog have an income? Which ways have worked, which haven't? How succesful has it been?

I do plan to put ads on my blog, if only so i can claim its a business to the tax office and claim back all the money i spend on kit!

What kind of person would be interested in this type of blog?

Irreverent bushcrafters, hunters, fisherfolk, lovers of wild foods, and gear freaks.

When i imagine my reader he’s a guy who’d love to get out more but the house, the job, and family life always seem to come first, he maybe a desk jockey at first sight, but really he’s an adventurer! It could be I’m just talking to myself!!

About how much time do you spend blogging per day?

I aim to post at least every other day, sometimes the average drops well bellow this. Most of my posts are written in one sitting. Due to work, getting the kids off to bed, ect i usually spend no more than an hour on a post.

Tell us why we should subscribe to your blog.

For the same reason as every other blog you subscribe to. It was funny and thought provoking the first time you read it, so you put it in your RSS feeds. And now it only takes a second to see if you’re interested in the latest offering. More often than not it’s quite funny so you’ll keep looking in case you miss a good ‘un.

What advice do you have for other bloggers trying to succeed?

The same advice my writing coach gave me

“Only one thing separates writers from non-writers. It’s called writing”.

What are your favorite blogs? (List at least 3 urls)

http://americanbushman.blogspot.com/ 

the American bushman comes across as such a nice guy, and we have similar interests.

http://www.urbanscout.org/\

The trials and tribulations of this lad’s life are life affirming. He’s not happy and he’s doing something about it. Gotta love a tryer.

http://www.thegreenwichphantom.co.uk/

The phantom can really write and he’s very knowledgeable about the area we both live

in.

http://www.fishing-blog.co.uk/

Thanks for reading, post a comment or two
SBW

Guns,Bows,Trebuchet and Pumpkins

flyingpumpkinsthemovie.com

C'mon what's not to like?
SBW

Happy Blogday To Me! Bushwackin’ 365

Suddenly it’s time to do one of those ‘that was the year that was’ reviews that TV stations use as cheap programming on new years eve. A whole year has passed since I formalised my journey and started telling all of you about it. I’ve not been deluged with animal rights nutters telling me I’m a cheerleader for the forces of darkness, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who have told me that they couldn’t do it themselves but understand why the wild food journey is so important to me. First things first, I’m always a bit amazed that you are actually reading this, and enduringly grateful to those of you who could be bothered to chip in with the odd comment, it’s made keeping the blog going a lot easier. The year has been full of soaring highs and crushing lows in my other life, the one I lead outside of the adventure in this blog, and the blog has helped. It’s given me a focus outside of work, a perspective, a purpose. The other positive output has been a new found confidence in my writing. Like it or loathe it, mock my spelling and poor grasp of grammar, but there’s no one else writing anything quite like it, it’s mine and, there are a growing number of posts that I’ve started to feel quite pleased with.
I’ve done errhm ‘some’ work on the skill set that my hunt will require, re awakened the kit fetishist within, took a bit more exercise (ok babe a very little bit – but I have dug the vegetable patch over!), expanded the range of my reading, learned the basics of bare bow archery, hunted rabbits with ferrets, used a shotgun to turn flying ashtrays to dust, and cast my first fly at a wild trout. My compound bow still languishes in the garage, certainly not unloved, but unused. I’ve found an archery club I could attend but they are stickbow only as their secretary told me her butt wasn’t big enough. I was confused too until I remembered that a butt is the traditional name for an archery practice ground!

Lessons in feral failure?
When I stared fishing I learned three knots, and for some reason my brain has only assigned enough memory to its knots database to remember those three, I can tie them in the dark, in the rain, wherever. Regular readers will have noticed that while I confidently announced that I would be making my own set of purse nets for rabbiting, so far all I have to show for my efforts are some tangled pieces of string – described in the word[s] of one observer as ‘shocking’.

Tanning Hides?
Firstly I’d like to try to shift the blame onto Mrs SBW – she found my rabbit brains in the freezer and chucked them out. So that was brain tanning out the window. Sadly the rest of the failings are mine. Tanning hides is harder than it looks, one rabbit skin is now hard enough to make a knife sheath from and the other two are still hiding from Mrs SBW in the freezer.

Fitness and Mass Reduction?
I’m too embarrassed to talk about it; there is only one worthwhile prescription.
Eat less and do more

The wild food highlights were;
Bunnies ferreted out by James’s little helpers. The legs cooked with tomato, paprika, and black olives. The loins rolled into spirals, poached, browned and served on top of large slices of black pudding (traditional English blood sausage).
A haunch of Muntjac; which turns out to be the perfect size of eating deer for suburban dads on portion control, skinny bints and picky city kids. I casseroled mine in a gravy of shallots, plonk red and Hoisin sauce. Yummy.
GMT Chestnuts (harvested in Greenwich park) eaten with pancetta and leeks in a cream sauce.
Road kill Pheasant – Although I haven’t had the opportunity to either attend a traditional English pheasant shoot (which looks from the outside like a sort of real life video game shoot ‘em up - for £1000 ($2000) a day!!) or join a walked up woodland hunt. I have been keeping my eyes open and have been pleasantly surprised by the number of daft birds who made the mistake of playing in the traffic. With delicious consequences!

As with every ‘that was the year that was’ round up there are of course some awards to dish out.

On the kit collecting front the Best in Test award is shared by the
Fallkniven F1, covered in scratches, sharpened, blunted and sharpened again, a genuinely bombproof confidence inspiring tool.
The Bahco Laplander Saw: which has proved itself to be thoroughly deserving of its ‘bushcraft’ reputation - lightweight, cheap and a very, very efficient cutting tool. [Apparently there are; hardwood, softwood, and greenwood blades available, but the card mine came attached to made no mention of which blade it’s equipped with. It has happily cut all three.

If there were a category for best gadget (ok there is) it would have to go the spyderco Sharpmaker. It does what it says on the tin.

The Bushwacker Style Award
Rogue for their great hats – described by one observer as ‘Like and outdoor Bez hat, way cool’

Services To Bushwacking – furthering the cause.

In the afield category
James Marchington – for teaching me to hunt with ferrets

In the a-stream category
Jeremiah Quinn – for his inspirational fly fishing lesson

In the best blog comment category
Mungo – Butcher, Bushcrafter, Project manager and Surrealist.

Thanks for reading, stick with it – it gets better!
Your pal
SBW

First Catch A Pike Of 10-12 Pounds

Just beyond the suburbs a Pike, grown old and wily, has stationed himself to take advantage of the deeper water as the stream narrows. He (and I always imagine him as a he) stirs, but not for anything with my line attached to it. Would that I were at the water now; there’s an evening rise of Trout and Grayling snatching anything half hatched that’s failed its Promethean mission and fallen to the stream. The old predator waits, confident that guile honed on long experience will let him feast on the easy pickings of youthful enthusiasm. I can almost feel his slow eyes watching as he waits to flick the hunters switch, turning the stillness of the wait into the lightening of his strike. But alas I’m far away, helping Bushwacker Jnr with his homework and the bait shop is closed.

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

Photo credit

With Jeremiah - Bushwacker On The Fly

Finally managed to get back into it for a few hours earlier this week, and went in search of that most elusive of prey – The Sub-Urban Wild Brown Trout.

Myself, and the living legend that is Jeremiah Quinn, have long been promising to go fishing together and finally, after many false starts, this was the week that was!
I fish in the salt, either in the Thames estuary or down on the south coast with Jonah. We use a mix of tactics; Ledgering Rag and Lug worms, Spinning hard baits and Freelining slithers of Mackerel in our quest to catch that ‘double figures’ Sea Bass. Jeremiah fishes almost exclusively for wild trout and always on-the-fly. Our shared interest is in a kind of low-cost travel-by-public-transport kind of Trout hunting with the holy grail being a Brown Trout taken within the confines of London’s orbital ring road, the M25. A truly wild fish; taken on the fly, and without payment to landowner or fishing club.

Regular readers will know of Jeremiah’s recent west London successs in Admiral Lord Nelson’s river Wandle so we headed east to a Kentish chalk stream fished by Charles Dickens, the Darent (River Darenth).

The best thing about meeting up with other bloggers is that having sat in front of your computer bashing away for all those nights, writing your blog, there in front of you is a real live human being who has not only read what you wrote, but cares enough to ask questions about what is for the most part a personal obsession. We spent a happy hour on the train to Kent chatting about each others adventures and the blog posts that describe them.

Kent is a lot like New Jersey – Jersey is the garden state, Kent is the garden of England. Kent is also home to many of the commuter ants who make their way, by bridge and tunnel, into the city each morning. Both of them are home to mob bosses, fictional and real. One of the things that will always strike a city dweller visiting Kent is the way that the further away from London you go the sooner the locals thrown into the conversation how close to London they live and the stronger their mockney accents become. The bit of Kent we visited is basically one big suburb. Just it’s a suburb with a few fields for horses, a bit of small scale farming, and as the climate changes, ever growing numbers of vineyards taking advantage of the chalky soil. It’s pretty in a manicured sort of way, much like the girls who hail from there, and it’s plastered in KEEP OUT signs…

I’ve been to the villages that straddle the Darent many times and have made sight of fingerlings plenty of times. Once or twice I’ve also seen some pretty decent fish but I’ve never had one of them for my tea. Jeremiah was delighted with the opportunities the river presented and after a quick lesson had just let me loose with his 7# rod when a trout of a ‘dinner invitation’ size leapt out of the pool whose surface I was thrashing with a Sawyer's Pheasant Tail Nymph, snatched the real thing from the air and disappeared, leaving us grinning like enthusiastic idiots who’ve taken the bait. We didn’t have completely unfettered access to the river bank as we’d keep coming to sections liberally (or should that be illiberally) signposted KEEP OUT and NO FISHING, where we’d have to back track to the road skirting around a farm house before rejoining the water. The whole right of access issue is enormously complicated in England. Many farms and estates are crossed by public access rights of way and the land owners have a duty to provide styles to allow the pubic to safely cross any fences without damage to fence or trouser. For the most part as long as you treat the fields with a common sense courtesy and don’t damage crops or let animals escape farmers tend to be fairly tolerant, but there are exceptions and we were both keen to avoid any run-ins with shotgun wielding yokels shouting ‘getorfmoilaaand!!’

Jeremiah looked quite the country gent in his tweed cap and waxed jacket,
I on the other hand looked like a complete numpty with my oversized fleece and screaming YELLOW wellie boots.

As we reached Farningham we stopped for a small libation at the hostelry by the bridge and snacked on samosas before heading further east to the more easily accessible parts of the river.

The path down the river has recently benefited from some drastic pruning, the last time I walked that way there were trees over hanging the river from either side, and now only the most established specimens remain. The chalk streams of southern England have changed dramatically in the last hundred years. Where they used to be a lot deeper they were also a lot narrower giving far more cover to the fish and allowing larger blooms of vegetation for the nymphs and larvae to live in. Letting trees grow out of the banks has weakened them, and with the banks undermined they have slumped and now most of the stream is ten feet wide but only six inches deep. The local dog walkers told us that there was a release of grayling last year and they’ve all seen good fish from the bank. One dog walker pointed us to a deep hole which was holding two Pike; while upstream I tried to master the dry fly with his 4#, Jeremiah made them an offering on the 7# which was instantly accepted, with the Pikes razor sharp mandibles severing the leader quicker than those nifty little cutters they sell in the fishing shops.

At the end of our tromp we fished the pool under the flyover, managing to spook the trout who live there all year round unspooked, by the overhead roar of the M25, that separates our ever growing metropolis from the manicured fields of England’s garden.

In short: excellent company, short train ride, a not too taxing walk, in a managed version of the country, where real life thrives between the abandoned car number plates, all set against the reassuring whoosh of traffic. Just how we like it!

Thanks for reading
SBW

PS if you’re planning a visit to the chalk streams of Kent, or to fish anywhere else that gets graffiti get in touch, let me know how you get on.

PPS the real life ‘don’ of Urban Fly Fishing lives north of the border. His blog. And his site.

Digging That Victory

Since I put up that post about suburban homesteading it seems that; either the great and the good of English journalism are reading my witterings or (more likely) I had my finger on the pulse of the weeks Zeitgeist. According to this weeks papers there are now as many people growing their own foodstuff as did during WW2!

If like me you've been thinking about getting started here's some food for thought.

If we were all to follow the advice of eating five portions of fruit and veg a day, we would probably spend at least £1 every day, or around £400 a year, at supermarket prices. But seeds for vegetables to keep a family going for a year usually cost less than you would pay for one kilo of the same product in a shop.

You can pay £1.29 for two beef tomatoes in Sainsbury's [This should be a joke surely - I checked it's true!]while a packet of 30 seeds from costs £1.25.

A Sainsbury's shopper buying a kilo each of courgettes (AKA Zucchini), beetroot and radish this autumn would have paid around £8 while packets of each of these seeds from costs a total of £3.75. And if you have neighbours with vegetable patches, you can always swap packets, as they always contain more seeds than you need.

If your aim is to save money, then you should grow more exotic produce

'Growing main crop potatoes is insane if you look at it economically,I don't think there is any more lucrative crop than hot peppers. Garlic is very expensive to buy. Rocket is quick and easy to grow but can be expensive to buy. Herbs are good. Rosemary and thyme - you can't have too much of those.'

Young apple, cherry and other fruit trees or berry plants can be bought for under £20 each, while organic raspberries, for example, cost more than £23 a kilo in Sainsbury's this year.

Richard Murphy has been growing vegetables for 18 years. This year, he has included pumpkin, salad crops, beetroot and carrots in his vegetable patch.

'For the price of one bag of salad you could grow 50,' he says. His main aims are eating well and introducing his two young sons to this part of the natural world. 'The skill level you need is pretty low. My six-year-old can quite happily plant seeds.'

All sourced from http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/30/food.ethicalliving

Thanks for reading
SBW

PS for picture credit and loads more cool home front posters

Really That Long?

Yes i know its been a while since I added to the chronicle of my journey but life, as they say, keeps getting in the way. First i crashed my scooter (painful but no lasting damage), then came the stag do (joint second in the clay pigeon shooting - 14 pairs and 4 singles smashed after a two year hiatus - yeah yeah, kids stuff, you can do better, write yer own blog) the wedding itself (THE social event of the year - congratulations to Sir Hiss and the newly crowned Mrs Sir Hiss) and then a family holiday to the coast (an evil conspiracy of childcare time and tide banjaxed any fishing, there was a little bit of gathering but no hunting).

Now that i can get back into it I'm very happy to tell you that I'm due to take my first fly fishing lesson early next week.In class bound Blighty 'on-the-fly' is still seen as the way toffs fish, this is mainly due to the massive cost of fishing on the classic 'beats'.
North of the boarder, where our Caledonian cousins have perfected the art of marketing their waterways and fieldsports heritage, there is one Scottish fly fishing blogger, Alistair, who is starting to redress the balance with his tales of low-cost fly fishing on the Kelvin just outside Glasgow. Through reading his blog I found out that down south a blogger called Jeremiah Quinn has taken on the mantle and is chronicling his exploration of England's (mainly urban) low-cost Trout waters. Not for him the stocked lakes around London where bloated rainbows rise, secure in the knowledge that if they have bitten a man made fly they'll soon be back home in the water.He turns the traditionally costly country pursuit of fly fishing in to a low cost urban adventure.

During our email conversations it became apparent we're both fans of a writer (and later TV presenter) called Charles Rangeley-Wilson and his book (and TV series of the same name) 'The Accidental Angler'. For the most part C R-W travels the world to visit some of the most amazing destination fishing, then the story moves closer to his home as he investigates London's disappeared rivers, and takes on the challenge of catching a trout within the M25 (the orbital ring road that encircles London). He dismisses my local river, the Ravensbourne, and heads west to the Wandle a chalkstream transformed by the intervention of fishing enthusiasts calling themselves the Jet Set Club and local school children. C R-W wasn't successful on the Wandle, but did later do the business on the Chess. Also fished by Jeremiah

In the 18th century the Wandle was regarded as the premier trout stream within easy reach of london. In 1828 Humphry Davy wrote in his classic Salmonia:
"...of the blue dun, there is a succession of different tints, or species, or varieties, which appear in the middle of the day all the summer and autumn long. These are the principal flies on the Wandle - the best and clearest stream near London.
In early spring these flies have dark olive bodies; in the end of April and the beginning of May they are found yellow; and in the summer they become cinnamon coloured; and again, as winter approaches, gain a darker hue. I do not, however, mean to say that they are the same flies, but more probably successive generations of Ephemerae of the same species."

For navel and fly fishing history buffs it's also worth noting that Admiral Lord Nelson liked the Wandle so much he commissioned a house there, and with the cunning that made him such a great leader - he wisely told Lady Hamilton it was a present for her!

Those halcyon days were followed by 200 years of using the river as a convenient way to dump rubbish, but thanks to the efforts made the river is now one of the cleanest in europe, and as Jeremiah's picture testifies fish are thriving.

Thanks for reading
your pal the Bushwacker.

PS
If you want to know more about fishing the Wandle i found this blog
If you want to get involved in a clear up later this year the dates are:
May 11 Sutton
June 8 Merton
July 13 Wandsworth
August 10 Sutton
September 14 Merton
October 12 Wandsworth
November 9 Sutton
December 14 Merton

Get A Handle On - Restoration

I always think of myself as being 'not all that' at handy crafts so it was a pleasant surprise to see how easy some of them can be. On Friday The Fat Controller gave me a shed he'd found while hiking in the highlands of Scotland. Regular readers will know that BoB brought round a whole box full of knives and assorted kit from our folks place.Lying unloved at the bottom of the box was the knife pictured above. It's handle a particularly unconvincing piece of faux antler (note the 'charming' depiction of a stag!). The blade had several different grinds, in parts flat,and convex, is also pretty soft steel. It was the kind of knife given to lads as a first sheath knife. The sheath itself was pretty cruddy, the leather un-nourished and the stitching failing or failed.
A few hours later and it a whole new story!
Antler is much easier to work than it looks at first sight. I cut off the bottom left tine with a hacksaw, used the side of an angle grinder blade to sand the surface that meets the finger guard, trued it with an orbital sander. It stinks! Like burning fingernails!! Drilled the first hole with 4mm wood bit in a powered screw driver. Making the hole into a slot to take the blades tang looked difficult, but once I'd convex'd the point of a pig-sticker (you know a spike on a handle - don't know its real name) into a mini blade - it was surprisingly easy to get the recess the right size and shape.
I used two-part glue to set the blade to the tine.
The sheath wasn't in good shape so I roughed off any remaining finish and stained it blue, did some lacklustre back stitching, stained it again to cover up the crappy stitching, and using the cooker hob as a heat source melted four coats of boot wax into the leather.I left the retaining strap in the original colour, took out two rivets from the top of the sheath and replaced them with hollow rivets so the knife can be worn dangling as a 'necker'. All it needs now is a boot lace to hang it from.
Now if I could just get on with that Kuksa.

Hope your weekend was as productive for you
Thanks for reading
SBW

Our First Hunt

The last two cuttings I put into the envelope were; an article about the aftermath of Hunter S Thompson’s suicide and a feature about an attempt to retrieve a body from Bushman’s Hole (the deepest fresh water on earth).

This story is from when I lived on the other side of the hill, where Greenwich overlooks Deptford; home of the shipyards that sent their work to the commonwealth of Virginia.

I’d collect the kind of articles we’d show each other at Sunday brunch and every few weeks I’d post them to Stuart. Although he’d lived stateside for four years, Stuart read the websites of English newspapers everyday; I sent him magazine cuttings, PG Tips tea, and his favourite liquorice cigarette papers. We’d talk on the phone, make endless plans for a road trip and it was like he’d never left. I know people who live down the road who I have less contact with.

Ginger Mick’s call on Boxing Day changed all that. By the 28th I was on my way to meet Stuart’s brother The Northern Monkey and collect his body.

When Stuart was still alive, after marrying and divorcing the heavenly Celeste, he became the live in caretaker of an old homestead off Canby road in Loudoun County.
Unlike the showy new build McMansions around it, it’s hidden from the road. Although the nearest house is only at the end of its drive, it’s not somewhere that encourages visitors, if you hadn’t been there before you’d never find the place. The world is kept at arms length.

As recently as the mid-nineties Loudoun County would have been the back of beyond, now the locals are moaning it’s become a burg of sub divisions. McMansions for defence contractors who commute to DC and pay the priced-out Loudouners to work their hobby farms. One of our hosts told us how amazed the locals had been to hear how, two weeks before, Stuart had been woken to find a bear raiding his dustbins, “This is the suburbs now! You just don’t get bears here!”

The stone farmhouse is framed with recycled Oak beams, you could easily imagine them leaving Deptford creek as parts of a sixteenth century ship, they’re heavily studded with hand forged square nails and scored with the rebates of previous uses. The house has twisted over the years, it creaks, whistles and groans like an aging mutt making itself comfortable by the fire. Its rough block work walls and wide balconies are, like the locals when viewed from an English sensibility, the point where an east-coast folksiness meets the trimmed goatee of southern charm.

Stuart: ‘Come on out you’ll love it, I’ve given my republican gun nut neighbour permission to hunt on the land, and he’s given me a freezer full of venison already’.
SBW: Will he take me hunting?
Stuart: ‘He says he’d love to, he tried to take me, so I told him about you. He’s right up for it.’ By the time I arrived at the farm Stuart was dead and I’d forgotten all about republican gun nut neighbours.

The Republican Gun-nut Neighbour came by to introduce himself on our first morning.
Short, with white hair, his lively eyes clouded by dismay. Walking on eggshells, he tries to get the measure of us and of our grief. We are bound together by the feeling that suddenly the world’s a different, less pleasing shape.

When someone really is your friend you don’t need to agree with them to enjoy their company. The contrarians are drawn together, which side of the argument they’ve planted their flag on is less important than the joy of the argument itself. If Stuart ever had two friends who agreed, he’d fall out with one or both of them. The mark of his friendship was how many times you’d fallen back in with him. To keep the world on its toes he employed an unusual mix of prickliness and open hearted charm that was by turns confusing and beguiling. In counterpoint to RGN’s republican-gun-nut-ism, Stuart was a dyed-in-the-wool lefty, but I could instantly see how they’d have been such great pals. If you’re really good at arguing, and have well thought out supporting evidence at your fingertips, the one thing you’d crave is a worthy adversary. Preferably a self-employed worthy adversary, so that the whole day can be dedicated to thrust, feign and riposte.

We stood around looking into the hole in our lives, drank coffee, smoked Marlboro and cried a few manly tears together.

Later we walked over to RGN’s place; we thought to meet Mrs RGN.
“Now boys there’s something you’ve gotta see while you’re here”.
RGN has dedicated a whole room in his house to trophies from his trips to the plains of southern Africa, really, if it’s smaller than a rhino, walks on four legs and lives on the savannah, there’s now one less of them and it’s nailed to RGN’s wall. Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life but I’ve never met anyone with an Africa room in the UK. Not even once.
“Everyone must see the Africa room” confided the long suffering Mrs RGN.

RGN “ I know you spoke about this with Stuart, and I’d be honoured if you allow me to take you both deer hunting”
Mrs RGN “ No! This is your obsession! They don’t want to hunt!”
TNM and SBW “We’d love to!”
SBW “I’m not sure we’ve got the right gear though”
TNM “won’t we need camouflage clothes?”
RGN “you wont need anything special, this is gentleman’s hunting, dress warm I’ll pick you up in the morning”

At twenty to too-early-to-even-think-about-getting up I was woken by RGN standing over me in the dark, asking me why I was still asleep, he added (a touch indignantly – we were on the cusp of wasting valuable hunting time) that The Northern Monkey was asleep too! Stumbling down stairs I found RGN dressed from head to foot in Realtree camouflage, brewing coffee in the kitchen. I was just burning my lips with the coffee when TNM slouched into the room still fitting his front teeth. He looked a bit alarmed when RGN picked up a hunting rifle that had been obscured by the kitchen table. I looked a bit alarmed too when RGN walked away from the backdoor and carried his rifle up stairs. TNM didn’t help calm my nerves when he whispered “Is it just me or can you hear banjos?”

On the first floor balcony that looks out over the pond RGN had set up three folding chairs. As dawn broke over the woodlands RGN started to make radio contact with other hunters in the area, he turned to us and in a stage whisper told us to keep very quiet. In the grey light of dawn, sharing a pair of binoculars, we scanned the light grey of the woods looking for the light grey of a deer. For a good twenty minuets we excitedly had a tree under rapt observation.

While we were trying not to laugh RGN tells us that his friends are hunting on the other side of the woods and are likely to drive the deer towards us, ‘this is the best hunting place for miles’ RGN goes back to scanning the woods. TNM has taken him at his word and starts whispering questions, before turning to me and whispering “I think all this shooting has made him a bit deaf”.

If you grew up in the city, you’ll be used to seeing ‘meat’ as a commodity, one totally divorced from ‘animals’. Milk comes from a carton, meat from a plastic tray.
I spent a few years as a vegetarian health nut in my late teens and early twenties before I found myself challenged by two conflicting beliefs. I believed that meat wasn’t good for us to eat (mainly due to the effects of industrialised farming) and I believed that my body would let me know what I needed to eat if I had the clarity of mind to listen. One morning I was chatting with one of my fellow food nuts when he casually mentioned the chicken kebab he’d enjoyed the day before. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Then he hit me, right between the eyes, with an idea. ‘When you think of eating meat do you salivate?’ I checked “yes” ‘then you need to eat meat’. For lunch that day we had chicken kebabs, with a side order of sacred cow.

I’m not really one for evangelising, but I do like to debate. Right down to the bone. Especially with people who disagree with me, but are smart enough to fiercely debate without bearing a grudge. I’ve enjoyed debating the meat eating issue with vegans, vegetarians, and the people I just can’t see eye to eye with, the meat eaters who are afraid of their dinner and appose hunting.

Would you prefer the animal to die instantly never having seen a hunter coming, or to die from being eaten alive by a predator in the wild?

Apart from the odd hysteric, the consensus is ‘if you’re prepared to kill it and grill it yourself who am I to tell you that you shouldn’t eat it’. And have I talked a good fight about doing just that! Most meat eaters seem to do a spot of hand wringing and say something like ‘I would but, well if I had to, to eat, then I would’, while that might be good enough for them, that’s never been good enough for me.
Every time the debate has been aired I’ve proclaimed how much I want to earn the right to eat meat by killing it myself. It doesn’t have to mean killing every meal but killing a meal is something I must do.


I’m sitting in the freezing cold, on the other side of the world, looking out for a deer to shoot. Am I all mouth and trousers after all? Will I be able to pull the trigger and end a life? Kill a living thing?

Stuarts death had generated a swirling cauldron of emotions, my soul was fragile and exposed, things that should have been said will now forever remain unsaid, adventures we’d planned will never happen.

Suddenly a buck and his harem of does have emerged from the woods and are standing at the far side of the pond, RGN is handing TNM, the rifle and instructing “ at this range you’re going to have to aim about an inch lower than you want to hit, wait for your chance and hit him just behind the shoulder”.

While my experience was confined to air guns; shooting bottles in suburban gardens and tin ducks at fairgrounds. TNM later tells me he was once invited to a rifle range by the chief of police in a province of northern Pakistan. One shot with a Lee Enfield 303 was all it took to leave him with an aching shoulder and a ringing in his ears that lasted all morning.

Steadying himself against the uprights of the balcony TNM takes a deliberate aim and a massive bang shatters the stillness of the dawn. The deer jump, with all but one of them spinning 180 degrees in the air and they’re gone. Alongside the shock of the noise, I’m flooded with a torrent of conflicting emotions; the deer have gone I’ll not get my chance to face the test today; TNM looks frozen to the spot for a second before his face breaks into elation. I’m delighted for him – he got to test himself and passed, RGN couldn’t look happier! He knows he’s just been present at the birth rite of another hunter, his tribe has increased. RGN takes the rife, ejects the spent cartridge, and flicks the safety on. The realisation hits him, TNM has a thousand yard stare as he stutters “F-fork in hell, th- that was amazing”. We’re doing the back patting bit and TNM is putting the spent cartridge case into his pocket when the deer gets up. You didn’t need the field glasses to see that TNM has shot one of its legs off. RGN hands me the rifle and his voice is full of steely certainty as he tells me “You must shoot and kill the deer”. I work the bolt and disengage the safety catch as time slows to a crawl, TNM latter told me that I was so still and calm that he assumed I’d been shooting all my life, but in the moment, my moment, I was so far outside of time that in between my heart beats I could hear an action replay of a sports psychologist I know talking me through the process he’d modelled from expert shooters. I knew nothing of the mechanics of making a shot and gripped the rifle like it was going to stop me from drowning. Each juddering heartbeat sent a tremor through my body that took an age to subside; in the distance I heard RGN’s voice say ‘steady’ while the crosshairs danced over the doe.
She gave a second spastic lurch towards the cover of a bush and my moment of truth had come. The sight picture magically stabilised and time slowed again as my finger tightened against the trigger. During its glacial journey towards its breaking point I just had time to wonder if I’d actually put a live round in the breach when the roar of .300 WinMag told me the rifle had defiantly been loaded. The doe dropped to the ground. I stood up and turned to face the others wearing the same stare I’d seen on TNM.

There is a sharp pinch of regret in that moment, Deer have a alive-ness to them that is made slap-yer-face obvious by its absence, their trembling super sense; once so energetic to every shifting air current, as if hearing sounds before they’re made, the spooky ability they have to react to intentions. Gone. Meat on the ground.

The test of my resolve had been met, I’m still troubled by the industrialised meat that forms so much of my diet, but I have sacrificed my disassociation. In that moment I reconnected with the food chain. Honesty has a flavour, one I’m delighted with.

RGN was more than delighted. The birth rite had produced twins!

TNM and myself walked, still shaking with adrenalin, over to the pond and round to the deer’s body. Amid the florid swearing and expressions of delight we knew we’d managed to pull it off, we were blooded deer hunters. England’s honour was safe once more.

SBW: Why didn’t you shoot the one with antlers?
TNM: Which one with antlers? I only saw the one I shot.

The Northern Monkeys shot had taken off the doe’s front left leg off just below the shoulder, mine was at least level with her heart but it had entered a way to the right as she’d twitched by (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). Much further to the right and this would be a story about despatching a deer tracked through the woods.

After dragging the carcass back to the farm and hefting it into the back of his jeep we drove up to RGN’s place full of questions about rifles, deer, and when we’d get to do it again. As we drove up RGN’s drive way I became overcome with a sense of my own deer hunter-ness and started to profess my desire to learn the whole process (later to become the subject of this blog) from tracking to marksmanship to butchery. As we parked up outside RGN’s garage he dropped the tailgate, letting the deer slump to the ground, clicked open a Buck knife and handed it to me with the words “Go on then Mr Bushcraft”.

One of the things that I’ve learned by spending time with the management consultants and renegade psychologists is that the starting point to a new experience tends to define how the experience is encoded, if there are enough points of familiarity the ‘can do’ program kicks in – What’s a dead deer? It’s a very big chicken and I butcher them every week. No problem. The unexpected difference between field dressing and kitchen butchery is the temperature; chilblains rang through my hands as I heaved the gut pile out onto the driveway. A flock of turkey vultures waited impatiently from their perch.

Our victory and joy at holding up the honour of old England was short lived, as TNM pointed out “every time we leave the room someone asks RGN ‘is it true it took two limeys to kill one little whitetail’?”

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.

From BoB

Just got this tip from BoB, Wired magazine has a poll to see what readers reckon should be in a survival kit. There are some pretty silly things on the list and you can add your own suggestions. Remember folks your vote counts!
Thanks for reading
SBW

SubUrban Harvest

After my own efforts with chestnuts and blackberrys I'm pleased to report that one of my friends has taken the urban foraging in a new direction, with delicious results.
Last night I popped in on R&E of Stoke Newington and was delighted to try their Sloe Gin. Made with Sloes gathered on Hackney Marshes and gin gathered in from the off-license (liquor store) at the end of the road. Much better than the commercially available stuff. Interestingly E has booked herself on one of Ray Mears' six day courses. And after a bit of arm twisting WILL be writing a guest review of proceedings.

She also under taken a bit of guerrilla gardening, well more guerrilla small holding actually. She came to know where the local council were planting ornamental plants in areas where the public could see them but not walk all over them. These beds are weeded watered and fertilized by the council, she has already harvested her first crop of gooseberrys with more variety's on the way this summer!

Well Played E!!

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker