18 sep 2015

24 Hours in the forest with no food.

by | posted in: Bushcraft, Gear, knives, Knowledge, Nature, skills, Survival, Wild food | 0

The biggest challenge came as a surprise though.

02w

How little gear do you need to live in the wild?
I set out to challenge a few of my fellow survivalists / bushcrafters encouraging them to bring less gear than they normally would. 4 things only to be specific.

The challenge started on Saturday 22. of August at 13.00 and ended 24 hours later. 
You could choose to sleep in a tent, you could bring a rain coat or you could challenge yourself and go more primitive like I did. The choice was yours. The only rule was: EVERY item counted as one of your 4 items. Even your backpack if you chose to bring one. This was the Undepend 24 Hour Challenge:

The idea was not to test whether you could survive or not. Everyone can survive 24 hours in the wild during summer in Denmark. Even without food and water. The idea was to encourage the participants to challenge themselves. To get them used to get by with less gear than normal and learn from it.

It’s all about priorities.
24 hours isn’t a long time. It is long enough for you to start feeling the effects of no or only a little food however. And it’s long enough to feel miserable during the night without a fire. Or to catch a cold without a shelter. Every participant was allowed to bring 2 liters water.

At 13.00 we all met up in Gribskov in Denmark on the specified location which was right next to Lake Esrum. After a short chit chat and exchange of thoughts and strategies we went straight to work. My approach was to follow the priorities of the rule of 3: Shelter first. Water was already taken care of so after I had built my shelter I went out to forage the area.

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Building my shelter and a fire.
It took me about three hours to finish my shelter. And I didn’t even bother to make it completely waterproof all over. The weather forecast had said it was going to be a clear sky all weekend and there wasn’t any signs that it was going to change. My main concern was insulating myself from the ground as well as getting out of the wind really. It always takes a while to find the right materials and I think it’s a valuable routine to know by heart. You don’t want to get caught by darkness before you’re done with your shelter. I built a classic lean-to using a young tree as one of the poles. For cover I used fern leaves. They’re easy to harvest and they effectively cover large areas. The advantage of this kind of shelter as opposed to an A-frame is that you can use it both as place to sit as well as a bed for the night.

Before heading out to forage I went to collect some birch bark to use as tinder. I would rather get a fire going first and risk not having any dinner than to have to sit in darkness all night. It turned out I had plenty of time for both however. When building my shelter I cleaned the branches in the vicinity of my camp. So I had plenty of small twigs at hand for building my fire. Mind you I didn’t cut down fresh branches. It is also easy to find small twigs with no bark on in the forest. You just want to make sure they’re completely dry when using them to start your fire. If conditions are wet you may want to look at the bottom of spruce trees instead of picking twigs straight off the ground. These were dry conditions though and I had brought my fire steel as one of my items. So getting a fire going wasn’t a big deal. I built it to a level where I was sure to have at least a coal burning when I returned from foraging.

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09w

Foraging for food.
It’s funny how you’re able to set aside your body’s needs when your mind is focused on other things. I wasn’t particularly hungry after building my shelter even though I spent a lot of energy doing so. I had also just been without food for about 3 hours so far. But I figured it wouldn’t be long before my inner clock would strike dinner. So I went to look for whatever edible plants I could find. In a real survival situation I would probably have dug out som spruce roots to use as snares as well. That would be both illegal and unnecessary in my present situation of course.

I managed to find quite a few blackberries, wild raspberries as well as some other edible plants such as wood sorrel and some nettles. I had expected to find a lot more mushrooms than I did though. I know that mushrooms are not recommended as survival food in general. However if you can positively ID them they are a very nutritious and can provide you with both moist and vitamins.

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06w

I had planned on giving ants a chance on this trip but I just didn’t get around to it really. It is still something I’m keen to try however. I’m not picky when it comes to food in general and I’m not appalled by the though of eating insects.

I can’t exactly say I was satisfied when I lay myself to sleep later that night. But I wasn’t starving either. I had managed to collect quite a few berries. And even though they didn’t fill my stomach they kept my spirit up.

The night.
Everything was good when I decided to go to sleep. I still had a fair amount of wood left from when I built my shelter that I could use as firewood. On top of that I had collected enough big logs to keep my fire going through out the night.

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At about one o’clock I woke up however. My fire had died out and the night was much colder than I had expected. Being restricted to only four items I hadn’t brought an extra jacket or a blanket. So I had to build my fire again. This time I moved it closer to my shelter to make sure I would get more heat from it. I hadn’t built a reflector so I wasn’t getting the maximum heat return from the fire. It was sufficient to feel comfortable though. The rest of the night went on like that. Me waking up every hour freezing because the fire had died out. Rebuilding the fire then going back to sleep. Until about 5 o’clock where I decided to get up. I wanted to go out and get myself some breakfast as well as some more firewood.

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28w

Foraging some more and watching the sunrise.
I was away for an hour or so. It was a really beautiful morning. The sun was coming up in the horizon as the mist was still hanging over the lake. At this point I was getting hungry. It had been 18 hours since I had my last proper meal. I found a fair amount of berries as well as a couple of small penny buns (Boletus edulis). The berries kept me going but I was missing some protein. I went back to my camp and fried the penny buns. Or rather cooked them. I had no fat or butter to roast them in so I added a tiny bit of water to avoid them sticking to the pot which decreased their culinary qualities. Since food was scarce I found myself drinking more water than I normally would. I wasn’t running out of water but I had to ration it a bit. In spite of the other participants bringing food, I was still the one with the least amount of water left. I think I consume a bit more water than the average person actually.

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Hungry and facing a surprising challenge.
As we entered the 22nd hour everyone was running out of pastime activities and I was really feeling hungry now. I guess it’s a psychological thing. You’re hungry and you know feeding time is getting closer so you start focusing on getting a proper meal. There was nothing else to do. I had nothing to pack basically, my camp didn’t need any attention, I had no food to prepare and I didn’t bother collecting more berries. Everyone was just waiting it out really. But two hours is still a long time so we decided to take another walk. We basically just walked around. It’s really interesting how boredom gets to you. We even talked about breaking up earlier because we had already “made it”. This would have meant failure in fact, but I guess it’s the same thing that happens when lost people die after they have been rescued or found. It is common knowledge among SAR Officers that many people give up mentally when they think they have been rescued. They simply stop fighting too early.

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We walked back to our camp and had a little talk about what we learned from this trip and what we would have done differently. It was an interesting talk that made us forget about time for a while. But the last hour of this challenge was a long one. Everyone just hung out. We were ready to leave. As the clock hit 13.00 we were on our way and I was looking forward to get some proper food.

Undepend 24 Hour Challenge
My four items were a hatchet, a knife, a fire striker and  a pot. The other participants didn’t go quite as primitive. One brought: A tarp, a lighter, a blanket and some meat. Another one brought: A poncho, a sleeping bag, a knife, a lighter and a can of food.

 

 

17 sep 2014

My favourite bushcraft knife – and why.

by | posted in: Bushcraft, Equipment, Gear, knives | 0

Just starting out with this blog, what would be more essential than to talk about the ultimate survival tool – the knife?

 

I have heard as many views on this subject as I have talked to people about it. I guess your knife says a lot about your philosophy and approach to the outdoor life. So here are my thoughts:

Before I get into the knife talk, let me say that I’m beyond the “strong fixed blad” and “full tang” subject. My guess is that everyone practicing bushcraft or wilderness survival knows these are the basic demands for a knife.

I purposely wrote “bushcraft knife” not “survival knife”. There’s a big difference between the two in my opinion. A survival knife is supposed to solve all tasks you might encounter as you try to find you way OUT of the wild, or while on a military operation. It should be able to function both as a weapon, a chopping tool, a carving tool, a skinning tool for game and so on. It must also be extremely reliable, as your life may depend on it. You might say the same goes for a bushcraft knife. The main difference lies in it’s purpose however.

 

Let’s take a look at the survival knife.
The need for solving many different tasks with one knife makes the survival knife mediocre at each of these tasks in my opinion. Remember most knives are designed to perform a specific task. So having one knife for everything means you have to make compromises. The first compromise is weight. If you need to use your knife as a chopping tool you want it to be somewhat heavy – and longer. The next compromise is it’s handling. If you want to use your knife for carving, you want a knife that is easy to grip in different ways. Survival knives often have finger guards on the handle, that makes it very impractical to carve with. Because you can basically only hold it one way. It’s a great idea if you are going to stab someone with it, because (obviously) you don’t risk injuring yourself. Precision is also an issue. Most survival type knives come with a convex grind, which makes them very sturdy,  but it also makes them less suitable for carving. The convex grind gives you less precision. This brings me to the bushcraft knife.

 

My definition of the bushcraft knife
The bushcraft knife is primarily a carving and skinning tool. It is not made for war. It is made for living IN the wild. Your life may still depend on it, so you want it to be sturdy. I wouldn’t normally use it as a chopping tool though, so I wouldn’t choose a convex grind (I always bring a hatchet for coarse work). I wouldn’t choose a long or heavy knife either. For carving I prefer a fairly short sturdy scandi grind. It is very precise and it’s also safer, because the knife doesn’t slip as easy as a convex grind does. A downside of the scandi grind however, is that it chips much easier than the convex grind. For carving, I want to avoid finger guards. If you’re going to carve holding your knife backwards, when carving a notch for instance (see different techniques here), finger guards are in the way. Now for the compromise. As I said, most knives are designed to perform a specific task. So for field dressing, gutting and skinning an animal, it would be desirable to use a hunting knife. Hunting knives often have a hollow grind, because it creates less friction when cutting the hide. Hunting knives vary a lot, but for field dressing a thin, short, sharp and point knife tends to be the choice. The compromise here is possibly the scandi grind, but it comes much closer to the hollow grind than the convex does, and many people use hunting knives with scandi grind as well. The bushcraft knife blade tends to be a bit thicker than the hunting knives too.

 

So to the point. My favourite bushcraft knife is this one:

Enzo Trapper. Full tang, scandi grind with micro bevel and dangler sheath. Wild Olive handle. Finnish made in D2 steel:

Enzo Trapper 2

 

The Enzo Trapper has a great balance. It looks simple and it is a great carving tool. The drop point blade also makes it ideal for field dressing game, because it gives you better control over the knife. I think it balances well between a great carving tool and a hunting knife. It has a 3,6 mm thick blade, making it very sturdy. And it has all the qualities that I mentioned in the section above about the bushcraft knife. Another detail that I have come love is the dangler sheath that it comes with. It really comes in handy when you’re outside, because it gives you greater freedom of movement. The knife is out of the way no matter where you sit. So you avoid getting poked in your ribs by it’s handle. It is also really easy to access your knife even if it’s raining because you can just swing the sheath outside your rain pants. I realised the other day that the stitches on mine had loosened though, so I guess I will have to write Brisa one of these days to have it fixed or to get e new one.

As the description says, my knife has a micro bevel. If you look really close at the first photo, you can actual tell. It’s really a compromise, because I had chip in it after using it the first time. So I wrote Brisa (the maker of these knives) and they offered me the possibility to send the knife back to them and have a micro bevel put on it. It works really well and I haven’t had a chip since, although some of the scandi feeling is gone. I could also have chosen to have my money back, but it was a great solution. On top of that they treated me with an extra product for my inconvenience AND payed for shipping both ways. Great service from Brisa.

I have read that some people find the handle a bit short for their hands, but it fits me very well. If I had to change one thing about it though, I would probably grind it a bit more round. It can be a little rough on your hands when carving for longer periods of time or when doing hard work with it. But you could always do that yourself. Actually you can buy this knife as a kit that you can build from scratch. I didn’t though. I trust the knife makers at Brisa more than I trust my own skills in this regard.