A Thankyou to Tilley

All of us at Buzzard Bushcraft would like to say a big thankyou to everyone at Tilley Hats UK

Tinder Bundle Trials

All else being equal the quality and type of your tinder can make a difference as to whether you get a fire or not, so I decided to compare some, by no means an exhaustive list and it will be added to as I use other types



Flax tinder with a cattail extender,ember source was amadou lit by flint and steel, this produced a lot of smoke and took longer than usual to ignite..

Still, it did eventually ignite

Flax extender with dry grass bundle and amadou again,

This worked quite well and was certainly easier to get to flame than the previous one

Next was buffed dry grass on it's own with no extender,

No problems here,it worked very well

Next I started to broaden the horizons and use tinder I found on the day and an extender I'd brought, so dried (sort of) cleavers and cattail extender

No problems at all,it worked very well.

lastly tinder I found around me on the day,dryish bracken extender and dryish cleavers,

and believe it or not it was probably the easiest to blow to flame on the day, I was quite surprised by this but I do believe it had a lot to do with the available oxygen around the larger tinder enabling it to take flame much easier...we live and learn..more experimentation will come in the fututre.

DD Hammocks

We at Buzzard would just like to say a very big thankyou to everyone at DD Hammocks for your generousity, we greatly appreciate it !!

Faugh a Ballagh

Clear the way - and that's what we are doing. It's been a terrible day with non stop rain and this can lead to a lack of motivation sometimes but we need to get this new spot cleared to enable us to have a less restricted area to practice in

It's Jungle like but its all laurel and Birch and very dense so we need to put a lot of work into this place



Everybody,even the kids hard at it, clearing the ground and gathering wood for a fire which is sorely needed on such a wet day as this

Ivor getting his tarp prepared but you can see how wet it is just by his jacket and this happened on the walk in

Tarp up, ready to have someone tucked underneath and prepare for the worst of the weather..No fair weather bushcrafters here, if it's not raining you're not training!

Hard Times Hobo Stove

It's really one of the first bushcraft things a newbie ever makes and the poor things get a real hard time of it on the forums and amongst "professional" Bushcrafters, but when all is said and done they work,and they work well!!

It's been misty and damp lately but I still need my outdoor fix but I didn't want to bring a lot of gear and I didn't need a large open fire,so the hobo stove is a good fallback..

The ubiquitous stainless cutlery drainer cut and ready for action

The fuel...birch bark, dried hogweed and dead sycamore twigs

and a soft focus to catch the flames. Boil time for 3/4 pint was 6 minutes, now thats as good as many top brand multifuel stoves, and this one costs nothing to run!

Scouts Show and Tell

We spent another fun evening down with our local scout troop trying to expand their knowledge on the adaptability and practicalities of Bushcraft and survival, we brought down a number of crafted items that could be usable in the field if you were put in a difficult situation

All sitting in rapt attention, ( I don't know why, I'm not that interesting!!)

All the items I'd made on the table including cutting tools, arrowheads, harpoon heads,antler digging sticks, baskets, hides, cordage and steels, and spears and atlatl's against the wall behind

Even after nearly an hour the guys were still showing great interest and asking very intelligent and well thought out questions,working with a group like this makes all the effort very worthwhile

It seemed to go very well with a number of requests made for a few "courses" to be run over the next few months and especially over the summer when the schools break, so we look forward to running "From Bone to Broadhead" , "Constructive cordage" and "Basic Knife construction and sharpening techniques"...I think Buzzard will be very busy over the next year or so!

Drying some Jelly ear

 

January has always been a good month for me for Jelly ear fungi, and I found a great crop recently, I had some for lunch but wanted to keep a few for future use

Some lovely fresh jelly ear

I brought home about 1lb of the mushroom and had about 4 ounces for my lunch and the rest went in the dehydrator

end result was 2 1/2 ounces of dried mushroom, I think I'm gonna need a lot more if I want to make a game and wild mushroom stew when we head out sometime