USA Certified and Approved.
Leading Supplier of Military Field Gear for Over 30 Years

Modern Day Buckskinner: Some Ruminations of Days Gone By

ArdyJan 10, 2022Adventures,Current events,Hunting0 Comment

 

I’ve always believed that I am a man who was born in the wrong  era. I would have preferred to have been born in the 1870’s. Notice that I didn’t say the 1810’s, and there is a reason for that, actually there are two.

The first is the fact that the percussion cap was invented in 1807 by Scottish clergyman, Rev. Forsyth, who came to the conclusion that it was too hard to prepare for an emergency when one had to jack around with sharpened rocks and two different kinds of powder in order to get a gun to fire. I’m not by any means dependent on modern technology for survival; however, I do appreciate it very much. And the percussion cap was definitely a step up in the utilization of the firearm for advancement to the best of defensive weapons.

The second  reason I wouldn’t have wanted to been born prior to 1870 is that I would not have wanted to have gone through any part of the American Civil War, not even the reformation period immediately afterwards. The reason for this I think is obvious; it was a bloody and brutal time and it would have been hard to have lived in this era without having a heart full of hate because of all the meanness that was prevalent.

If you’re like me then you are likely a big fan of the 1972 film “Jeremiah Johnson”. This is a story of a mountain man named John Johnson who lived between 1824 – 1900. He was nicknamed “Liver Eating Johnson” because he was at war with the Crow Nation and whenever he killed a Crow Warrior, he would cut the man’s liver out and eat it. He used a pair of Hawken Rifles and a brace of pistols that shot black powder and used percussion caps. He also used tomahawk and bowie. This movie was a deciding factor in my boyhood when I decided I wanted to be a mountain man. I still hunt deer and other large game with a muzzleloading rifle; however, now I do it while wearing a blaze orange jacket pursuant to state law, and carrying a camouflage possibles bag.

Tags: , , , , ,

Survival 102: Making a Quiver of Survival Arrows, 3 Things You Should Know

ArdyDec 06, 2021Adventures,Current events,Earthquake Preparedness,Emergency Preparedness,Hunting,Prepper0 Comment

 

As a follow up to the need I addressed for a survival bow comes the need for a whole quiver full of arrows to make it more beneficial to you than a rustic cigarette lighter. There are several ways to make arrows and they can be as complex or simple as you have the time to bother with.

First off you want strong, straight shafts that are flexible. Some people make arrows out of various reeds because they are hollow inside. However, I and my acquaintances have made it a practice to predominantly use cedar shafts for arrows for several reasons. They are strong, straight, and superabundant. You can literally find some type of cedar tree everywhere in the continental United States and abroad. However, you are not limited to cedar for your arrows and ash, oak, or pine shafts will work as well.

Your points can be as simple as a sharpened end, (hardened in a fire), or intricate to the point of perfection with the making of knapped flint arrowheads, aluminum or steel arrowheads fashioned from soda or soup cans, or any other combination of mechanical or metallic devices that are literally limited in scope to your own imagination.

Pine pitch and sinew makes an excellent binder to hold both your point to the shaft, and the fletchings to the other end. Sinew or natural cordage are used to bind the arrow together tightly, and  remember; in a rustic situation, the main goal is to simply keep it together for one or two uses before any part of the arrow breaks off. They’re not likely to be used over and over again without repair of some sort. Here are three things that you must consider in the manufacture of your arrows if you are to use them successfully.

  1. The shaft should balance with the point. If the arrow is too tip heavy, the drop in velocity will be considerable and each and every arrow should be practiced with to get a feel for how it flies before being shot into game or enemies. If you find your tip to be too heavy, consider a denser or shaft or one with a bit more girth for distribution. A very big pile of dried grasses twisted together, (think of a bale of hay), makes for a nice impromptu target in the bush, as does a body of deep water that you can retrieve your arrows from after you’ve shot them.
  2. Fletching should correspond with the arrow notch to avoid stripping. If you examine the diagram, you will see that an arrow is set up with three veins of fletching to help it achieve maximum stabilization during flight. These veins must be set up and used in such a way so that there is a bare area of the shaft that is going to make contact with the side of the bow as the arrow is launched from it. Otherwise your bow will strip that fletching right off as it is launched and the shaft will go everywhere except for where you want it to.
  3. Notches should not be a “V”. Traditionally notches are thought to represent a V shape; however, that is not what you are wanting to produce in your survival arrows. The best type of notch is to think of one that looks more like a “U” than a “V”. The notch should cradle your bowstring rather than pinching it so that it doesn’t launch off center.
Tags: , , , ,

Survival 102:Making a Survival Bow

ArdyNov 22, 2021Current events,Earthquake Preparedness,Emergency Preparedness,Uncategorized0 Comment

One of the best skills that you can have in regards to survival is the ability to create both tools and weapons that will give you the ability to survive indefinitely. One of these items is a survival bow. One thing you need to realize is that a survival bow can have more than one use. There are three uses I can think of right off the bat. You can of course hunt with it, you can use it to build fire, and you can use it to drill holes with in order to construct more permanent structures.

A survival bow on a base level is a pretty easy thing to build, and it can become as complicated and elaborate as you want it to; however, for a survival bow you’ll need to know just a few basic things to get started. Probably the most important factor to understand in the manufacture of your bow is the proper knots to fashion in your cordage. One of the easiest and most versatile knots is a variation of the hangman’s noose. This knot, when tied around a shaft with some length, will self tighten to the point that it is almost impossible to get loose. Also it will strengthen weak points on your bow, work as a handle, and affix fletching and arrowheads to your arrows.

Here are the important factors to consider when you are building your first survival bow:

  1. You have to use the right wood. My preference for anything survival is durable. The best wood I’ve ever used is Osage Orange, some people call it hedgeapple. It is extremely hard and yellow as the sun. Your stave should be slightly bowed, 3 to four feet long, and free from knots. It’s also best to get it a little green so there’s some flexibility to it.
  2. Follow it’s natural curve. Make sure that the bow already has a tendency to bow a certain direction. It will do you no good to try to produce a curve against the grain in any way.
  3. Trim consistently. The bow should remain thicker towards the center and gradually taper towards the ends consistently. It is up to you to shape your bow slowly using a knife of sharp rocks. And when you get the tips of the bow flat and somewhat pointed, make sure to notch the ends to hold the bow string.
  4. Prepare several strings for your bow. There is nothing more frustrating in the wilderness than not having the proper tool handy when you need it. Therefore, you should prepare three or more strings for hunting, (strings that will stretch tight from one end to the other, causing the bow to curve slightly to keep it taut. ) These hunting strings should be greased with animal fat to prevent rotting and should only be used when needed as they don’t usually last long. Once they are stretched out they can be used for bowdrill or for turning other spindles.
Tags: , , ,

Woodland finds: 3 Reasons you should never leave feathers in the wilds

ArdyNov 18, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Earthquake Preparedness,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

I was recently walking through the woodlot that my wife and I have acquired for a little getaway hunting spot when I spotted a pristine turkey feather lying in the underbrush, and immediately to the left of it a second one. I immediately grabbed both of them up and took them to my car to keep for later use.

I consider things like this to be a gift.  And, I make no bones about my belief that this gift is from a Creator God who loves me and provides for me. “What kind of a gift is two feathers from God?” you might ask.  Well, I would counter by asking what makes a Godly gift valuable? Is it the amount of money that another man would give you for it, or is it rather more valuable simply because God gave it to you? I’ll go with the latter.

In any event, I never walk by several things in the wilderness. I never walk by a good piece of flint, I never walk past an empty birds nest, and I never walk by a feather of any sort.

There are many reasons to acquire feathers for survival situations, and the need and use of them goes well beyond  simple survival. Writing utensils for instance. Quill pens were in use by early Americans for centuries before the common writing utensils were invented, and if times get hard again, I can see them becoming fashionable again. Ink isn’t hard to make either, a very simple ink can be crafted from lamp black, egg yolk, gum arabic, and honey. (Inmates make tattoo ink in prison by burning petroleum jelly in the bottom of their footlocker and letting the soot collect on the top of of the lid from the smoke as it burns).

Here are three uses for feathers in a survival situation:

  1. Camouflage.  Native Americans didn’t just wear feathers as a status symbol. They offer a practical use as well. Much like a multicolored, three dimensional ghillie suits offer superior camouflage capabilities, so too does the advent of nature’s camouflage to your kit and apparel.
  2. Fletching. It goes without saying that adding fletching to your arrows or atl atl bolts will increase accuracy over distance. Never let an opportunity to save feathers go so that you can maintain a quiver full of arrows if needed.
  3. Fluff. Never forget the need for insulation in a wilderness survival situation, and never pass up the opportunity to gather some of nature’s best insulation.

 

Tags: , , ,

Getting Back to Basics: 3 Things You Must Do in a Post Covid World

ArdyJul 02, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Current events0 Comment

Whether you’ve noticed or not, ever since this Covid pandemic, people haven’t been congregating to the level that they used to.  I, personally, am fine with that. I’ve never been a crowd loving kind of guy. And the fact of the matter is that it seems as if this level of isolation might very well become normative in our society.  As we reconnoiter from the effects of this first wave of Covid, it seems possible that we as a race might have to face many more variants of it or other viruses.

So, that being said, here are three things that you must do to get ready for the future, at least in regards to the entrainment industry.

  1. Go camping. While a well loved and basically traditional endeavor, camping also is a skill that can become centered around survival. One of the things I have done over the years is to slowly take some of t he modern conveniences out of my camping trip and substitute something rustic in it’s place.
  2. Go fishing. While an excellent form off relaxation, fishing also benefits from a survival standpoint. Good fishing skills can be replicated in a survival situation with nothing more than raw materials found in the wilderness. So go fishing at every opportunity and take your skills in fishing to the next level.
  3. Learn storytelling. In the old days, storytelling was the national pastime. Way before movies or books, humans were meeting around their campfires and keeping accounts  of their exploits in the form of the oral story.  It is just recently that the digital age has made storytelling obsolete. In this post pandemic world, s we get moved back into our clan mentality and away from the globalistic viewpoint, we will find the need to talk to each other again.  For me it will be a welcome change of pace.
Tags: , , ,

Fathers in Focus: 3 Reasons That You Must Take the Role Seriously

ArdyJun 21, 2021Current events,Fishing,Hunting0 Comment

As we move out of Father’s Day and into the coming summer, I want to write to you and stress the importance of that most sacred of roles that we all celebrated yesterday, that of being a dad.

If you are blessed enough to find yourself fulfilling this role in someone else’s life, you need to bear in mind that this honor is one which God has ordained to you and is so important to Him that it is actually a role that he claimed for himself first.

For you see, whatever Holy Book you read, (be it the Bible or the Torah), it doesn’t take a genius to see two things very clearly. They are that first: God planned a big family,  and second: that he wanted each person in it to be involved in it’s continuation. ( I can’t speak for any other writing due to lack of exposure to them). That being the case there are three main concepts about God’s relationship with mankind that I believe stick out and are vital to the place that we as men have in the lives of our sons and daughters.

  1. We are their protectors. Not all mammals are born utterly defenseless like humans are. Deer and horses for instance will be up and running in just a few hours from birth. Many in the animal kingdom are vulnerable for weeks and months; but very few if any are utterly defenseless for years at a time. I believe that is by design and that it serves to mold us as men for the better part of our lives.
  2. We are their providers. Though this aspect of fatherhood is very similar to the first, there is a distinct separation between the feeling of safeness and satiety. Both are different aspect of existence that we as fathers produce in our offspring and both are vital to growth and emotional maturity.
  3. We are their teachers. And with this we come full circle. Through protecting, providing, and teaching we create that great circle of life in conjunction with the God who created us to commune with Him. As fathers we represent our Father in Heaven who made us co-heirs  and advocates of His wonderful plans.
Tags: , , , ,

Ernest Hemingway: 3 Reasons That You Must Watch This New Documentary

ArdyApr 10, 2021Camping,Camping, Adventures,Current events,Uncategorized0 Comment

If you are an outdoor enthusiast and sportsman, then there is a new documentary out there that you absolutely must see. This documentary is just released on Monday April 5, 2021 and is available at no cost through the PBS channel.

I have always been a huge fan of Ernest Hemingway. His minimalist style of writing and life experience were second to none.  He was definitely a man’s man, and and any serious look into his life will illustrate that. He was the epitome of a survivalist and made do in war torn Europe and Spain on many occasions; he thrived with little of nothing or with great affluence the same. One of my favorite stories of Hemingway involved his life in Paris as a starving writer trying to learn the craft:

His first child, Bumby, would accompany him on walks to the park where, with old bread purloined from the dumpster of the bakery near his flat, pigeons would be enticed to come to the baby’s stroller. Here, the illustrious old man would snatch and wring them and then  stuff the still warm and feathery body into the folds of the baby’s blanket until there were enough in hand, (or swaddle as the case may be), to proffer a full meal of squab for the family for the evening.   It can be surmised that it was said; at one time,  by the locals, that Hemingway was an learned and dedicated ornithologist of the first order… though his genus of regard lacked any form of particularity. 

It is for these following reasons that you must watch this most informed and inclusive of documentaries:

  1. Hemingway was a hunter and an avid outdoorsman. His hunting writing gets so in-depth that some people have learned how to wing shoot simply from reading his narrative on the technique involved.
  2. Hemingway was a warrior and a poet. And though this cliché is quite common in  todays literary world, this is exactly the case in regards to Ernest Hemingway.
  3. Hemingway was a purveyor and user of military surplus equipment. Whether he was fishing in Michigan, hunting in Idaho, or on safari in Africa, Ernest Hemingway was a prolific user of military surplus tools and equipment. He stayed in military surplus tents, slept in old army cots, and even hunted big game with military surplus weapons. This expose and documentary are both enlightening and conducive to having a fire lit in your belly regarding the understanding of the impact of the written word. The air of nostalgia that surrounded Hemingway is eloquently captured here. Ken Burns, along with Lynn Novick, were able to show you the man without telling you how to take or partake of him; and they did it in an Ernest way.
Tags: , , , , ,

Springtime Dandelions: 3 Uses You Have to Know

ArdyMar 17, 2021Adventures,Camp Cooking,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

One of the memories I have of my childhood, (I won’t call them fond so as to avoid deception), was that of my old grandma gathering a spring mix of greens for the family to eat. Now, to those of you who are less cultured, “greens” amongst the mountain people is actually an accumulation of any leafy weed that sprouts up from the recently thawed ground. For some reason, it was thought that fresh and tender equaled edible, and while that might have been true for the most part, it certainly didn’t equal palatable.

However, this isn’t true for dandelion greens. These are not only palatable, they are downright tasty and I’m actually surprised that they aren’t included in most spring mix salads you can get at the grocery store, considering their prevalence across the landscape.

In any event, here are three uses for the common dandelion that every serious outdoorsman or survivalist must know:

  1. They are edible. Both the yellow flowers and the leafy greens associated with the plant are food worthy. My favorite way to eat them is to have the flowers fried in batter like a hushpuppy (called fritters), and to have the greens freshly washed and sprinkled with vinegar and oil. I’ve also had them boiled like spinach with bacon and onion.
  2. They are potable. You can actually make a coffee of sorts out of the dandelion root. You can literally do  this with any root, but dandelion coffee is pretty ok, compatible at least with chicory coffee, (neither is as good as the real thing). To make the dandelion coffee, you must finely chop the root and then parch it in a pan over low heat of a fire. When it is brown and brittle, grind it up as you would coffee beans and brew as you would coffee… it’ll get you through some cold nights.
  3. They have down that is multifunctional. Whenever the flower goes to seed it leaves a head of down that can be used to enhance your tinder bundle, or if gathered in enough quantity, add insulation to clothing or bedding to create dead air space.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Uncle John’s Truck: The, (next to), Final Chapter

ArdyJan 21, 2021Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures,Current events,Emergency Preparedness0 Comment

That Fall arrived subtly, it was a very smooth transition and arrived more from the acknowledgement of the date on the calendar than it did from an awareness of the change of season. It had been a fairly mild winter, not too sunny and mostly rain for some reason. This had made it pretty insignificant in regards to the various sportsman adventures that I was used to having. Political unrest in the venue my dad worked at kept him pretty busy and he didn’t have much time to run to our fishing hole, even on the days that were nice and sunny.

And so I went about my routine, I was working at McDonald’s still even though I had finished my training. I was volunteering at two different fire departments, and since that was my passion, I focused my energy there. But with the advent of deer season coming into the scene, I suddenly started getting buck fever.

Over the summer my grandpa had died and he had left my mom some acreage in the woods of hilly eastern Ohio. It was a long way from where we live, but it was definitely teeming with wildlife and I decided that I was going to have a deer hunt there to enjoy my first deer camp as a full grown man, (I had just recently turned 18), and would be eligible to finally hunt without adult supervision. I also wanted to test myself as I had never been in any sort of survival or wilderness situation without the supervision of my dad or older brother.

I took advantage of the local Black Friday Sales to purchase a deer stand and a really good sleeping bag. My dad offered up grandpas old military surplus army tent for me to use since work wasn’t going to be able to let him go to the regular deer camp we usually pitched that year…

Tags: , , , , ,

Uncle John’s Truck: A Story of Coming to Manhood in Rural America (part 5)

ArdyDec 15, 2020Adventures,Camping,Camping, Adventures0 Comment

… I can’t really describe the taste of those fresh fish fillets fried over a hot little fire on the river bank. I was by myself which wasn’t really what I preferred, (my dad had other obligations over the weekend), but even so, as I settled into the little bedroll I had pitched in the bed of Uncle John’s truck and I listened to the screech owls scream at each other in the creek bottoms, I couldn’t really imagine that life could get much better.

I was wrong about that.

It was a few weekends later that my church youth group announced that there would be a creek run and that we would be participating. For those of you who are uneducated, a creek run consists of gathering any and everything that will support your weight through buoyancy, and floating it down the river. While you’re doing this you will be laughing, splashing, fishing, and trying your best to drown yourself and all your friends. It was a really great time, and unlike in the past, where I would have had to ask my dad to strap the two kayaks to his Subaru and take me to the drop off, this time I was able to throw both kayaks in the back of Uncle John’s truck and head out by myself. I also invited along the particular object of my affections at the time. Unfortunately for me I hadn’t bothered to tie my swim trunks particularly tight, and while I was showing off at some point they came of and got swept away in the current. I ended up having to borrow the object of my affection’s towel to wrap around my naked waist, and then I had to drive her home with no pants on. And “that” so they say, “was the end of that”.

Summer was a true blast in that truck, regardless of my failed attempts to woo the opposite sex, but the real excitement of having a truck came with the fall and winter…

Tags: , , ,