Wilderness Survival Skills Pt 3/4: Hand Drill, Tarp Shelter, & Resource ...

Hand Drills:

Matt: “Hi, I’m Matt with Boulder Outdoor Survival School and what we are gonna talk about here this early afternoon is hand drill fire. We are gonna go ahead and make a fire, I think its tea time so I think we are gonna boil up some water and make a natural tea. To do that we are going to use and hand drill set to light the fire.”

“Hand Drills are a very, very universal, very ancient way, to make fire by friction. Some of the benefits of making a hand drill over a bow drill are that it is much simpler to make. Not as many moving parts and not as fidgety. On the flip side of it is one of the cons is that it takes much more practice and really perfect material and perfect form to be able to perform hand drills reliably.”

“So, here are some various iterations of a hand drill set. What I recommend and what I teach in the field is usually starting with some sort of spindle that will be from arm pit to wrist length. Much longer than that and you will get to much play at the top. Almost like trying to spin a car antenna or radio antenna. It wants to whip around. Any longer than that is not ideal. Shorter than that is going to be harder for someone just learning. The material that I am using for these spindles is generally some sort of flower stalk that has a piffy center and this ones been used so it’s a little harder to see.”

“The other component we are looking for is what we call a hearth board. A hearth board is these three items here. You’re looking for generally looking for things on the softer side than you would for a bow drill. So, something like yucca or our local material, my personal favorite, is the root of the cotton wood tree. I am going to go ahead and do a demonstration.”

“With anything fire, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a match, or a lighter, or a Ferro rod, or a hand drill. Proper prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. (Editor’s note: Say that five times fast. Lol) The old military saying, so, everything that I want to make a sustainable fire needs to be ready to go before I start putting this into service.”

“So, we’ve got our tinder bundle ready, we’ve got kindling and a fire lay ready to go. I’m going to get myself in a comfortable, level position. Get myself in a nice comfortable tri-pod and I’m actually going to wet my hand slightly to give me traction on my spindle. Seat my spindle and then I’m gonna start warming the board. So, what I am doing, this technique is called floating. Floating is kind of a modern, aboriginal innovation as far as I can tell, but it is very useful. The reason being, I don’t have to migrate down the spindle and then quickly move back to the top. I can continue spinning just by adding a little rocking motion with my hand. I can keep my hand stationary and actually warm up the board and start creating. 

You can see already I have a notch full of dust and it’s smoking pretty heavily from the periphery of the spindle. It’s not an ember yet. I am basically just building my heat and budgeting my energy.”

“At this point I’ve got a full notch and I’ve got some good heat so I am gonna go ahead and start adding some more speed and downward pressure. You can see I just have to move my hands back up to the top really quickly. And now, I have an ember and the reason I know that is because that smoke is coming from the pile of fuel I created. So at this point I am actually not in a hurry. A lot of people see that ember and get excited, they’re tired, out of breath, and their hands are probably shaking. “

“You have time with this. What I’m gonna do is gently pull the board away from the ember and let that ember collet into a nice solid material. Right now it is basically a pile of powder or piled dust.

If I gently fan it you can see it starts to glow. So I want to bring my nest to my ember. At this point it is held together well enough that you should be able to gently lift it up without it falling apart. Then I will gently tap it in to my tinder nest.”

“Here is where this little glowing ember becomes a flame. It’s got more fuel to grow into but it needs oxygen so I’m just going to gently start blowing on it. There we go.”

Making Teas:

Tyler: “To make tea one of the things we are gonna use is pine needles which has a lot of vitamin c in it. We have what’s called Brigham tea or Phedra tea, which is a stimulate and then some elder berry. This is a little prudent so they kind of balance themselves.”

Matt: “So there’s some wild tea brewed on a fire made with a hand drill.”

A-Frame Poncho Shelter:

Kirsten: “What we have here is an A-Frame poncho shelter. To start with you want to make a very taught ridge-line. I’ve connected it between two trees here. In general you want to start at at least a waist level in height. If it’s lower it will keep you warmer. If it is higher it will be a little more spacious but you’ll have more wind flow through it so it could be a little bit colder.”

“On each corner of this you want to pull out from the grommet to about a 45 degree angle, once again making sure your poncho is very taught so that you can have water slide off of this and wind not blow your shelter everywhere. So making sure things are very tight is important in any shelter but particularly in an A Frame.”

“I’ve gone ahead and tied off the hood. Tied it off so no water or precipitation can get in there, but also tied another piece of P-cord to the hood and extended it to the nice tree behind me, once again creating even more tension in this poncho.”

“With two ponchos like this you can fit about three people in there comfortably. The more you put in there the warmer it’s going to be from shared body heat, but two people, one person, this would be a good size for any of them.”

“So when you’re sleeping directly on the ground the biggest problem is the heat transfer from your body to the cold ground that wants to rob you of all your heat. The easy way to take care of that is to build up what we like to call a BOSS duff. This could be anything from dried grasses, leaves, pine needles like they have on the ground here. Bows of trees would do. What you want to do is create insulation to get yourself off the ground to slow down that transfer of heat and allow it to kind of sit around in those empty air spaces so the air pockets in the duff below you.”

“So now that I’m all set up, my shelter is taken care of, I’m gonna go walk the area and look for resources I can eat and use fore other crafts that I have in mind.”

Foraging:

“When we are in survival situations we don’t always have a book telling us all of the wild edibles of the area but those types of food may be really important in your diet if you’re only living off mice and a few greens.”

“So if you’re testing a new plant the first thing you want to do is take a tiny bit of it and rub it on the inside of your wrist and then you want to wait a number of hours to see if you have a reaction. If you don’t have a reaction, you believe it to be something edible you can take the tiniest of bites. Leave it on your tongue for a few seconds and then spit it out and then rinse with some water. See what happens after a few hours, if you have anything going on. If you don’t then maybe you want to take a tiny piece, chew on it, actually swallow it and take it down with some water. If you don’t have a reaction in a few hours go for a small, but larger gathering of that plant. Have that, and then wait a full day and see what your system actually does. Anything that gives you diarrhea, anything that gives you an itchy throat, anything that gives you a stomach ache maybe that food isn’t even poisonous but it is new to your body. If it is causing you harm then maybe you shouldn’t be eating it. That is part of the progression.”

“Alright, so here we have a Ponderosa pine that has been struck by lightning actually. A couple things that are great. One, we have all these fantastic pine needles here on the ground. Nice, duff material right? So we would gather all these perhaps in a large cloth, take them to our camping sight and have bedding material. If we take a closer look at this pine, we actually find that there is a lot of pitch wood on here. Remember that pitch wood is great for flames and making fires and holding onto it. Then throughout all of this we are looking at sap basically. Sap has a lot of uses. I will take pitch and fill in different wounds that I have, cuts or things that are bothering me. Just to patch it and be done with it. Then these pine needles themselves, these larger pine needles are very high in Vitamin C so when you come across this tree with green needles on it you can take off the needles and make a tea. It taste good to. It’s a little bit sweet.”

“So this is a great plant. This is a big sage brush. Its foliage is a anti-microbial. So just by rubbing this in-between my hands it is sort of like hand sanitizer which is fantastic. If I take a bunch of it and have a pile of it we are looking at some fantastic toilet paper and when you look at the shape of this particular one and find a larger example you will find nice straight pieces that don’t have the curvature of the older sage. This is what I use for my bow drill fire kit. Pieces of sage brush. It also has some nice pealy bark on it which we know is great for nest materials. A lot of uses from a big sage brush.”

Knife Sharpening:

“Nice. So this is a good example of something that is getting close, but not quite what we are looking for for a sharpening stone. Sand stone out here works great to sharpen our Scandinavian bevel knife anyways. But you want a very flat surface and of course you need to get to the grit that is appropriate for your knife. These would rip them up and not quite a flat surface. “

Tyler: “Can we grind them out?”

Kirsten: “Yeah you can do some grinding for sure to flatten it a bit but it is nice just to get the perfect stone. Nice, flat and easy to carry. We have so much around so if you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to find something naturally.”

“So when we are looking for sharpening stones a nice place to start might be in the bit of a washer or drainage. Something like this where there has been more abrasion from water. Until you can find smoother pieces, flatter pieces or potentially something you can sharpen your knife with. Consequently out here we are able to find a lot of silk stuff which we use for our socket rocks very frequently. It’s grind-able but holds enough durability that your spindle isn’t actually going to burn into your hands and through the rock.”

“Another thing that is great about these larger slabs of sand stone is they will work very well for dead fall traps. This isn’t a good size or anything but you can see it is fairly flat in surface so we should be able to have a solid drop against another hard, durable surface and really compress and compact the animal for a death blow. Then there is also a little bit of texture to it so I might be able to get my bait sticking in a little bit of a nook without having to use a knife tip or something like that to actually create a little notch on the bottom of my trap. So, our sand stone slab works very well for dead fall traps.”

Cordage material:

Kirsten: “We have some examples of milk weed here. I use this plant for cordage material but what we need to find is dead, second year stalk. This is a small example, but this is a second year stalk from a milkweed plant. So what it can do is crush the plant all the way up to the tip. Open it up, take one half, and bend off all of this hard stuff we don’t want. What we are looking for is the fiber right here and you just peel it off. Once I’ve gotten all of my fiber clean I can twist it in a reverse rap cordage method and ultimately come out with some rope.”

Hand drill:

Matt: “So I mentioned that the hand drill and the technique for the hand drill is deceptively simple and it is. It is basically rubbing one stick against another. But when you get into trying to do this and learn this, especially the beginner. It is extremely difficult to get the technique down and the muscle memory and also just the hand toughness essentially. It is hard on your hands and also hard on your muscles. There are muscles you use doing this that probably never get used for anything else. So, you have to kind of develop those muscles over time and build up to it and not burn yourself out in the process.

World faces wave of epic debt defaults, fears central bank veteran

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned.

"The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

"Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem, too."
William White, OECD

"Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief," he said.

"It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something," he told The Telegraph on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians."

The next task awaiting the global authorities is how to manage debt write-offs - and therefore a massive reordering of winners and losers in society - without setting off a political storm.

Mr White said Europe's creditors are likely to face some of the biggest haircuts. European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.

The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new "bail-in" rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it.

The warnings have special resonance since Mr White was one of the very few voices in the central banking fraternity who stated loudly and clearly between 2005 and 2008 that Western finance was riding for a fall, and that the global economy was susceptible to a violent crisis.

Mr White said stimulus from quantitative easing and zero rates by the big central banks after the Lehman crisis leaked out across east Asia and emerging markets, stoking credit bubbles and a surge in dollar borrowing that was hard to control in a world of free capital flows.

The result is that these countries have now been drawn into the morass as well. Combined public and private debt has surged to all-time highs to 185pc of GDP in emerging markets and to 265pc of GDP in the OECD club, both up by 35 percentage points since the top of the last credit cycle in 2007.

"Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem too," Mr White said.

Mr White, who also chief author of G30's recent report on the post-crisis future of central banking, said it is impossible know what the trigger will be for the next crisis since the global system has lost its anchor and is inherently prone to breakdown.

A Chinese devaluation clearly has the potential to metastasize. "Every major country is engaged in currency wars even though they insist that QE has nothing to do with competitive depreciation. They have all been playing the game except for China - so far - and it is a zero-sum game. China could really up the ante."

Mr White said QE and easy money policies by the US Federal Reserve and its peers have had the effect of bringing spending forward from the future in what is known as "inter-temporal smoothing". It becomes a toxic addiction over time and ultimately loses traction. In the end, the future catches up with you. "By definition, this means you cannot spend the money tomorrow," he said.

Federal Reserve

A reflex of "asymmetry" began when the Fed injected too much stimulus to prevent a purge after the 1987 crash. The authorities have since allowed each boom to run its course - thinking they could safely clean up later - while responding to each shock with alacrity. The BIS critique is that this has led to a perpetual easing bias, with interest rates falling ever further below their "Wicksellian natural rate" with each credit cycle.

"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem ... It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit."
William White, OECD

The error was compounded in the 1990s when China and eastern Europe suddenly joined the global economy, flooding the world with cheap exports in a "positive supply shock". Falling prices of manufactured goods masked the rampant asset inflation that was building up. "Policy makers were seduced into inaction by a set of comforting beliefs, all of which we now see were false. They believed that if inflation was under control, all was well," he said.

In retrospect, central banks should have let the benign deflation of this (temporary) phase of globalisation run its course. By stoking debt bubbles, they have instead incubated what may prove to be a more malign variant, a classic 1930s-style "Fisherite" debt-deflation.

Mr White said the Fed is now in a horrible quandary as it tries to extract itself from QE and right the ship again. "It is a debt trap. Things are so bad that there is no right answer. If they raise rates it'll be nasty. If they don't raise rates, it just makes matters worse," he said.

There is no easy way out of this tangle. But Mr White said it would be a good start for governments to stop depending on central banks to do their dirty work. They should return to fiscal primacy - call it Keynesian, if you wish - and launch an investment blitz on infrastructure that pays for itself through higher growth.

"It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem when all they can do is tackle liquidity problems. It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit," he said.

the official “unemployment rate” has become so politicized and so manipulated that it is essentially meaningless at this point

Last April, we learned that the official “unemployment rate” has fallen to 5.5 percent. Since an unemployment rate of 5 percent is considered to be “full employment” by many economists, many in the mainstream media took this as a sign that the U.S. economy has almost fully “recovered” since the last recession.  In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, some Federal Reserve officials believe that “the U.S. economy is already at full employment“.  But how can this possibly be?  It certainly does not square with reality.  Personally, I know people that have been struggling with unemployment for years and that still cannot find a decent job.  So what in the world is going on?  How can the government be telling us that we are nearly at “full employment” when so many people can’t find work?  Could it be possible that the government numbers are misleading?

It is my contention that the official “unemployment rate” has become so politicized and so manipulated that it is essentially meaningless at this point.  The following are 10 reasons why…

#1 Since February 2008, the size of the U.S. population has grown by 16.8 million people, but the number of full-time jobs has actually decreased by 140,000.

#2 The percentage of working age Americans that have a job right now is still about the same as it was during the depths of the last recession.  Posted below is a chart that shows how the employment-population ratio has changed since the beginning of the decade.  Does this look like a full-blown“employment recovery” to you?…

#3 The primary reason for the decline in the official “unemployment rate” is the fact that the government now considers millions upon millions of long-term unemployed workers to “no longer be in the labor force”.  Just check out the following numbers…

The number of Americans participating in the labor force has been on a decline for the past few years. Nearly 33 percent of the Americans above age 16 are not part of the workforce, the highest number since 1978. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report issued recently has found 92,898,000 Americans above age 16 not a part of the labor force of the country as on February 2015.

When President Obama took over the office in January 2009, nearly 80,529,000 Americans were not a part of the labor force. The number has increase by nearly 12 million over the last few years.

#4 Over the past couple of years, the labor force participation rate in this country has been hovering near mutli-decade lows…

The labor force participation rate hovered between 62.9 percent and 62.7 percent in the eleven months from April 2014 through February, and has been 62.9 percent or lower in 13 of the 17 months since October 2013.

Prior to that, the last time the rate was below 63 percent was 37 years ago, in March 1978 when it was 62.8 percent, the same rate it was in February.

#5 When you add the number of “officially unemployed” Americans (8.7 million) to the number of Americans “not in the labor force” (92.9 million), you get a grand total of101.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.  Does that sound like “full employment” to you?

#6 The quality of our jobs continues to decline.  Right now, only 44 percent of U.S. adults are employed for 30 or more hours each week.

#7 Millions upon millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find, and wages for American workers are at depressingly low levels.  The following numbers come directly from the Social Security Administration…

-39 percent of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

-52 percent of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

-63 percent of American workers make less than $40,000 a year.

-72 percent of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.

#8 The average duration of unemployment for an unemployed worker is still about twice as long as it was just prior to the last recession.

#9 Most Americans feel as though the Obama administration has done little to nothing to help the middle class.  Just consider the following poll numbers…

According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, Americans see government policies under the Obama administration as having mostly benefited wealthy people, large corporations and financial institutions.

Seventy-two percent of respondents said government policies have done little or nothing to help the middle class, and 65 percent said they have done nothing to help the poor. Sixty-eight percent said the policies have done nothing to help small businesses.

Meanwhile, 45 percent said the policies have done a “great deal” to help large banks and financial institutions, 38 percent say they have helped large corporations, and 36 percent say they have helped the wealthy.

#10 If the unemployment rate was calculated honestly, we would all be talking about the horrific “unemployment crisis” that we were currently enduring.  According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, the real unemployment rate in the United States right now is above 23 percent.

Markets suffer their worst start to the year since Great Depression

The start of this year has been the worst for financial markets since the onset of the Great Depression, with stock prices slumping around the world amid mounting concern over the situation in China. 

A wave of selling has swept the world’s leading financial centres over the past two weeks, with the value of Britain’s leading companies falling by more than £110 billion since the start of the year.he year. 

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest quoted companies fell 114 points, or 2 per cent, to 5,804 yesterday — the lowest close since November 2012. Indices in Europe and America have fared even worse: the Shanghai market was the worst performer, closing down 3.6 per cent, taking its total losses to 18 per cent for 2016. This was prompted by the price of a barrel of Brent crude dipping below the $30 mark, for the third time this week. In America the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 391 points, or 2.4 per cent, at 15,988. 

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest quoted companies fell 114 points, or 2 per cent, to 5,804 yesterday — the lowest close since November 2012. In America the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 391 points, or 2.4 per cent, at 15,988.

The Shanghai market was the worst performer, closing down 3.6 per cent, taking its losses for the year so far to 18 per cent. This was prompted by the price of a barrel of Brent crude dipping below $30 for the third time this week.

David Buik, of Panmure Gordon, the investment bank, suggested that the “financial carnage” in stock markets in the first two weeks of the year was the worst since 1928.

Investors seeking safe havens have turned to gold, sparking a 2 per cent recovery in its price to $1,094 an ounce.

George Osborne underlined the pessimistic mood by warning last week of grave threats to the British economy, the chancellor saying that it could be “the year we look back at the beginning of the decline” if the country abandoned his agenda. Fears of another crash were heightened by a research note by an economist at RBS advising clients to “sell everything except high-quality bonds”.

Some economists have said, however, that the risk of contagion from China has been exaggerated. It is only Britain’s sixth-largest export market, representing no more than 3.6 per cent of overseas sales, behind the Republic of Ireland.

In China, interventions by the Communist party to prop up markets have done little to reassure investors, and the plight of the world’s second-largest economy is gripping markets. There is strong evidence of a slowdown, after an unprecedented boom between 2000 and 2014, when the size of the Chinese economy ballooned by a factor of eight. The Beijing authorities have set a growth target of 6.5 per cent for this year, but scepticism over the accuracy of its economic data is growing.

Fathom Consulting, an economic forecaster, thinks that growth in China could be as low as 2.4 per cent, rather than the official 6.8 per cent. The difference between those figures, in dollar terms, equated to more than the entire economy of the United Arab Emirates, suggesting that a severe jolt is in store for the rest of the world.

The Chinese government’s botched interventions in local stock exchanges have heightened the nervousness, and added to the steep fall in the price of oil. It tumbled to below $29 a barrel yesterday, its lowest since 2004.

2016 CERT Class Dates

ESEE 3 Long Term Review

Manny: “I’ve got a lot of knives. You might have seen the 30 minute video I did on YouTube a couple years ago that shows pocket knives and survival knives and all kind of cutting tools, but one thing I didn’t have was a knife that I could deploy horizontally off the belt. So, now I’ve got one of those and I’ve had it for several months and using it. I am going to review it for you today.”

“Whenever I had a knife on my hip it was always getting tangled up in my seat belt when I sat down or poking into the chair or somebodies leather couch or the seat of the car. I wanted to find something horizontally at the belt. So what I got is the ESEE 3. I’ve had it for six or eight months now and been using it really hard. It’s my go to knife now. I wear it all the time, every wear I go because it is so handy. Yes, it’s short but you can get it longer if you want.”

“The ESEE 3 is 3.88 inches from tip to the handle and its got a 3.38 inch cutting edge. The four is longer. The five is longer than that and the six is the longest. If you want to wear it horizontally I think a three or a four is as long as I would want to wear comfortably at the belt. If you’ve got to much stuff in your pocket or your belt it’s gonna pull your pants down and be uncomfortable, but this is not bad at all.”

“So I can take it out one handed like this, but then when I put it back I can hold the sheath and as long as I can I do it visually to make sure the tip is going into the sheath and not gonna cut into my hand. So I watch the blade go in there and then I pop it in.”

“You can do it one handed okay. Put it in like this and then grip up here on this grip and squeeze it in. So now it’s in there.”

“When you get the knife you get the knife and this ABS plastic sheath. Now I have read on the forums that there are people complaining about the fact that it’s not Kydex but ABS is perfectly adequate for what this needs to do. You don’t get this clipthat is a separate item you have to buy separately. You just get this clip that closes down over your belt. These things you can adjust up or down narrower for a smaller belt or wider for a bigger belt like mine. To open it you just pull this and then squeeze these open.”

“The sheath has this drainage groove in case you get water in the sheath which is important because the blade is made of 1095 Carbon Steele which does rust. As you can see I’ve already got some rust on the cutting edge. On top where this protective coating has worn off from all the batoning I’ve been doing. So there you see a little patina.”

“So is it a problem for it to rust? Well, yes. You don’t want your carbon steel blade rusting. But you can prevent it by using rust inhibitors or like you can buy a cloth you rub on the blade and it prevents rust or you can oil it.”

“So why carbon steel? Why not get stainless steel and not deal with the rust? For me, it’s a practical issue. I have had a lot of 1095 knives all my life and I know how to sharpen them and that really is the issue because when I go for my knife I am not reaching for an ax, or a hammer, or a screwdriver or a pry bar. What I need is this thing to cut. I’ve pretty much got it down as to how I can get a good cutting edge on it.”

“I like it relatively for the factor of the whole thing. Just because of the way I carry it, horizontally. When you first get the knife the mycarta smells. It’s got kind of an offensive burnt plastic smell to it that is pretty unpleasant, but it wears off after a time and no it has no odor whatsoever.”

“It’s a one eighth inch thick blade. If you get the mill model it is gonna come with a sharpened spine and a partly serrated edge right here. A sharpened glass breaker pommel. It also comes in another model that has a rounded pommel. This one comes with a good coating on it, but it’s wearing with all the batoning I’ve done on it.”

“This finger toil is good if you ever need to do any very close carving work right here near the end of the blade. It always makes me nervous to do that because I’m afraid I am going to cut myself so I’ve just learned to grip it like this and keep my index finger on the grip and then get what leverage I can like this.”

“The blade is wide and instead of cutting off this belly and going straight to a point right here you have this big rounded piece of metal. Now what does that do? Well. Let me demonstrate. Okay, because of this belly, if I wanted to feather out a fire stick carving it like this. I can work using the belly near the tip of the blade and use all this longitude force and what that does is it doesn’t tire out my wrist so much. Here is what I mean, I am feathering out here using the big fat belly on the blade.”

“An interesting thing for you guys is it actually comes with more of a belly than you see here, but I’ve used it so much I’ve sharpened it down so now it is flattening out a little bit.”

“If you do break it, these guys guarantee it for life. So if you break it, send it, they will replace it. About this coating wearing off, I would say that is probably normal wear and would not be covered by a warranty. I don’t know if they would charge you to resurface it but I don’t think it would be a problem to put a new surface on this. The thing is, it is kind of pointless because as soon as I get it I will wear it off again. So, I’m just gonna live with it like this.”

“Well, that is my long term review of the ESEE 3. I am really pleased with ESEE knives. I have found nothing about it that I don’t like. I have no hesitation recommending it to you. If you don’t like this kind of knife, if you don’t like 1095 steel just leave a nasty comment OR go find a knife you do like.”

Wilderness Survival Part 2/4

Wilderness Survival Skills Pt 2/4: Flint Knapping & Atlatl 

Heath:” Hi, my name is Heath and today I am going to be giving a short demonstration on flint knapping. Basically taking hammer stone and striking them against some obsidian, or some other type of crypto crystal and quartz like jasper. Hopefully making a blade of some sort. A tool that we can use to make some other piece of equipment we might use in the field.”

“People have been flint knapping ever since there were people. Just about everything that our natives used to survive with had to do with sharp rocks needed to make for hunting food, make tools for farming, for skinning animals, to processing meat, to making cordage, to making fire sets, to making back packs to making t-pees. Everything they did had to do with how much of this sharp rock was in their area.”

“Flint knapping was something that man has done for a long, long time. Basically you take a round stone that fits in your hand really well. You strike it against a bigger piece of obsidian like this here. Trying to knock of edges, flakes to shape into simple tools like a knife or arrow head.”

“They also use animal hides as safety equipment. I wouldn’t want to just put this thing on my leg and start banging on it because it could cut me and could still cut me. This stuff is really, really sharp. It is just like glass. It basically is natural glass.”

“So what I am looking for is a platform. A platform is two faces of the rock that make less than 90 degrees. So either 90 degrees of less. So I see an angle that is less than 90 degrees and there is a flat top on the rock I call that a platform.”

“So what we’re doing is not just banging on the rock. There is actually a lot going on here. A lot of hand eye coordination is involved, the speed of the hit, how far back you hit, how hard you hit. One thing I like to show people that are learning is to try on your hand first. Just getting the feel where my arm is in relation to where my hand is and the rock in my hand. I am just hitting the edge of my hand. I’m trying to keep my upper arm in the same spot and using my lower arm like a pendulum. Letting the rock fall, letting gravity do most of the work. But this is just letting my hand guide that rock into the right spot. This is the big challenge for me and any flint knapper is making those really, really nice flakes. Which comes from really, really nice swing consistent swings, hitting the spot you want to hit and getting the result that you want to get.”

“Shattered it. Would have been a pretty good one but it broke into a bunch of little bitty pieces. That’s breaking rock. It doesn’t always go as planned but the key is to get at least something out of the chunk of rock.”

“Alright, just a while ago I had it down to a flake about this big around and sort of an oblong round shape. I just sort of started shaping it with pressure flaking which is basically just putting the projectile point on top of your hand with a leather pad. Finding the little high points and just lightly, with not very much force at all, taking off little bitty flakes to fine tune this edge.”

“There are a couple of thick spots earlier on that had to remove, that I actually had to go back to some percussion stuff. Back and forth and I was knocking off larger flakes like this size right here. The shape I want is basically sort of a tear drop or sort of a triangular shape. Very thin at the bottom on the corners and what that allows you to do is put notches in there for hatching on an arrow shaft. Just have to cut more of a grind in the arrow shaft. Extend that further up and just latch it down with some sinew. Then you will have fletching made for turkey feathers. This is just to give you an idea of what an arrow head is used for. “

Kirsten: “We’re gonna look at some Atlatls and some darts. The Atlatl so far as Ive been able to tell is the oldest hunting tool used on all continents and pre dates the bow and arroe. Basically what it is is a leverage device where a spur fits into the knock of my 6ish ft dart. As it leaves it adds extra power and force so I have some blanks for us, I have some turkey feathers and we’re gonna go harvest a quicky atlatl and make this using the awesome bark river go locks knife. In general the atlatl in length should be about from your arm pit to a little past your wrist. The biggest deal is also that you want the bottom of it to end where it is comfortable in your palm. If it gets to low it gets caught on my wrist.”

“So we’re gonna go grab some willow by the creek but instead we came across this beautiful service berry tree. A great wood to make arrows and darts out of when you can find straight limbs but we found something that will work well for a quickie atlatl. I am gonna go ahead and harvest it.”

“The field expedient version this can be done in a matter of minutes. All I went ahead and did is billowed it out at a 45 degree angle and cut about a third of a way into the wood. Then very carefully without wrecking this sharp tip right here, the knock and the spur fit together that way so you don’t want to wreck that tip.”

“One difference you’ll note between these two is this one actually has a bit of a dip where as this one is flat. It is a faster load of my dart to have that extra bit taken out. This one I have to fidget around a bit to actually get it to lock in. So it is mostly a timing thing.”

“Other things to note are sometimes you’ll see bone or different type of stone attachment for your spurs and they can come out at different angles.”

“Alright, atlatl is done.”

Tyler: “Now I just need a rabbit.”

Kirsten: “Let’s make a dart.”

“So Tyler is gonna go ahead and make a 2 feather fletch on the top of his dart. One thing to know when making an atlatl dart is actually the fat end is the point that is going into the animal you’re hunting whereas the skinny end is where we are gonna put the atlatl attachment.”

“The first thing we are gonna do is find 2 feathers that are of the same wing. In other words they both have their mass and curve in one direction.”

“First thing to do is shave off the back of it. So the next thing we need to do is remove some of the feather from the top of this so we have the spine to actually bind around.”

“Alright. Before we actually go ahead and fletch what I’d like you to do is use your knife to carve out the tip of this so that your atlatl has a place to rest into. Not a lot. A little hole.”

“Take some of our fake sinew. This piece of cord. What I want you to do is make a loop. You’re going to want to go all the way to the feather.”

“For the tips, you actually have a lot of options. What I’ve done on the end of this one is actually add a piece of bamboo that is just a tad wider in diameter. A little bit bigger than the actually dart itself, bound it a few times. It is hollow on the inside. Then I have the opportunity to switch tips. I have something like this I can throw into hay bales for practice. I can make a proper sharp point to go hunting with. Or I can shove a bunch of sticks in side and have a fishing prong style tip.”

“Alright should we go throw darts?”

Tyler: “Let’s go do it.”

Dutch Oven Fish Fry (Video & Transcript)

BG: “Hey folks what we have here is something that most people in Florida consider a trash fish. This is Southern chain Pickerel. Okay, it’s lost a little color because I just brought him off the ice. He’s a predator fish, he’s got pike. Look at the mouth on that joker. He can eat a lot of stuff. Old timers use to just knock these guys in the head, kill em and through em back in the water. This ones got something big in his belly. We’ll try and see what that is. He’s eaten something very larger. For his size he can wolf down a huge fish. Like I said, most people either just through these guys back or just kill them or leave them out there for the gators. The old timers call this fish in Florida a Fresh Water Jack. It is a cousin to the northern pike. Much smaller. This one is average size but they get much bigger than this. Maybe 3-4 pounds. I’ve even seen a few around 6 pounds but this is a very good fish to eat.”

“Skin off. Like I said, those look like 2 beautiful fillets of fish. The problem is just like every other pike there are those Y bones running the entire link of the fish. Now that we have this filleted you can go down this middle and you can feel the Y bones and may be able to see the little tips of them. They extend down like your spread fingers all the way through that filet. So we are just gonna try to find the edges of them all the way down there and let the knife just kind of follow them. I can feel the pressure of them as I go down and take this strip off you’ll be able to actually see them. This is, believe me, I would never go through this trouble with this particular fish if this was not worth it. You can see there is the Y bone there, but that piece right there is completely boneless. You can feel it with your fingers. Beautiful piece of fish right there so we’re gonna save that one. Now it does the same thing on the bottom side. I see a few bits of the bones, a little piece of the rib left. Down here at the tail end we are gonna kind of do the same thing. We are gonna cut down until we feel that Y bone. Let the knife follow it. Even if these pieces are very small, they are delicious. “

“We got a couple nice crappy today to. We are just gonna go head and filet them out. Another tutorial filleting we are just gonna go ahead and get these guys ready for the Dutch oven and go ahead and cook these guys on an open fire for you guys today. I try to do the least wasted meat as possible. Fish is ready to go on the fire and the Dutch oven warming up with the oil. 

“What we are gonna do is a very simple hush puppy mix. One cup of corn meal, one teaspoon of baking powder. So dry ingredient’s a teaspoon of garlic, a teaspoon of pepper and salt. Boom. Combine the dry ingredients alright. Next thing we got is about a half a cup of finely chopped sweet onion. Optional. It’s really good in hush puppies though. Throw that in and then we’ve got one beaten egg and a little bit of water to bring it up to ¾ of a cup. Pour that in and incorporate that. While we are looking here our consistency we are looking for on this is a little thicker than corn bread. We want it to be able to hold together enough that we can drop it into hot oil. That’s about right. Really thick cake batter or pancake batter. Not as soupy as corn bread. We’ll just let that sit a minute and we’ll be ready to make hush puppies.”

“Alright we’re gonna go ahead and dredge our pickerel strips, this is a half cup corn meal, half cup flour, and a good couple tablespoons of butt rub. Go ahead and dredge those and get em good and coated. We got a couple of good fillets there. Crappy or as we call them here in Florida, speckled perch. Dredge em up and let em set over here on the pan and get em ready. Got a couple people to feed. (Dropping in hot oil)”

“Okay folks, as usual we’re gonna plate this up backwoods gourmet style. Got some fresh Romain from the garden here. Gonna go ahead and place that on the bottom of the plate as part of our garnish and also a nice, fresh cool component. Over the top of that we are gonna squeeze a sour orange. These are all over Florida where peoples trees have frozen and they don’t make sweet oranges anymore. It is a lot like a lemon, very sour. Gonna go ahead and arrange a couple fillets here. A couple pretty ones cooked in the Dutch oven. And then strip of our pickerel. Most people call it trash fish. Then we got three beautiful hush puppies to go with that and then a couple of wedges of the sour orange segment’s to compliment the dish. Alright so another beautiful plate cooked on an open fire. You can do this and it is delicious.”

Bug Out Fire Starters (Video & Transcript)

Bug Out Bag Fire Starters

Shane: “Hey welcome back You Tube, it’s Shane here with another episode of Lone Wolf Survival and we’re here to talk a little bit about fire making and some of the commercial and non-commercial applications that are out there. Now later on we’re going to talk about some of the more primitive skills stuff but I’m gonna more or less key in on what you’re going to carry in your Bug Out bag or your camping gear. Something more portable than fire bow systems like that.”

“So what I’m gonna start with is one I always start with any time we’re out there and people want to know what their building their fires with. A .89 cent Bic disposable. It’s what I use okay? Fire in my pocket okay. I carry several of these. Some people won’t do it. This very rarely lets me down. It takes very little effort. Its compact, throw it in my bug out bag, throw it in my survival bag. I can put it in my day bag or in my pocket. So that’s one.”

“Number two is plain ole water proof stick matches. Coleman has a water proof stick match you can strike anywhere. I can throw em in a zip lock bag or bug out bag. Good for that.”

“Then you start looking at some of the strikers. Here is one made by UST. Pretty good little system. Compact. Ten, twelve, fourteen dollars is what you’ll spend on systems like this. Make sure on these you get the coating off of them or you’re gonna stand there for a good period of time. Good little striker, compact, inexpensive.”

“Then we go back to my favorite which is always my Smith Multi tool that I have. It has a sharpener, a compass and it has a fire striker located in the handle. Like I said make sure you get the coating off it. This is a good little system as well. Inexpensive and light weight.”

“Then we go to a product that Coleman puts out. This is a magnesium block. The neat thing about this is it has what appears to be part of a hack saw blade. That’s what it looks like, a hacksaw blade. I’m gonna call it what it is. I’ll always shoot ya straight when we are looking at products. A magnesium block is a metal that burns very hot and very high temperature, very fast. So I take the blade part and I scrape some of the magnesium off into my tinder bundle. Then I turn around and hit my striker. These are about 12 bucks. Neat little product.”

“Then we move down to a 9 Volt battery and steel wool. We’ve used this many times before. Am I gonna carry this in my pocket instead of a light? No I won’t, but it’s a neat little system, the good thing about this is I can wrap my tinder bundle around the steel wool and with the steel wool you want to open it up. Almost bird nesting to get plenty of oxygen in here and take your 9 volt battery and drag it across and if I’ve got this in a tinder bundle then I can start nurturing my tinder bundle. I can get some oxygen to it, blowing on it and I can use this to start my fire. So that is a really neat application if you’re in a wet environment. It always works.”

“Then some of the commercial stuff. Coleman has a strike fire starter and we’ve used these before. This takes the place of the tinder bundle. Now they’ve put a match head on it. I mean, what will Coleman come up with next. Strike pads on the back, drag this thing across. Boom! There ya go! So it’s a match on a tinder bundle. How great is that? Another great product put out by Coleman.”

“So these are just some of the stuff that we use out in the field. There is a lot of stuff out there and the reason we do this is to give you an idea of what’s on the market and some of the stuff we use and try that you can go ahead and start shopping for to put in your bag now. Later on in some other episodes we’ll start doing some of the primitive stuff. How to use a bow drill, a cauldron, a ladle and stuff like that. Make sure you shop around. Try to have at least two systems. Don’t limit yourself to just one.”

“As always, thanks for watching and make sure to subscribe to our channel. Thank you.”

CampMaid Dutch Oven Solutions ...This is brilliant!

Skills That Every Prepper Should Know Pt 3

Skills That Every Prepper Should Know Pt 3

EP: “Welcome to Ethical Preparedness. In this segment of the video series we will be talking about another skill set that every preparedness minded person should know and that is how to defend yourself. Instead of giving a generic explanation of how, knowing how to defend yourself is important to preppers I’m gonna bring up some really good points that most people don’t realize they should be thinking about. So if you want some things to consider that you very may well have never even heard about before regarding self-defense, I really urge you to watch this video.”

“If you haven’t seen any of the other videos in this series, they will be titled Skill Sets That Every Person Should Know Pt 1 or 2.”

“But first, always remember, you are ultimately responsible for protecting yourself and for providing for yourself. Live your life with honor and integrity. And always be the wolf hunter; don’t be the sheep. Nor the wolf.”

“Now, I want to start off with that every use of force, especially deadly use of force, should always be a LAST resort and NOT a convenient option. This means that if you have to use deadly force it is because you believed that you absolutely had to and not just because it was a convenient route to take.”

“Also, only use deadly force against someone to save a life. Not just to take a life. This means that you only use deadly force to keep an innocent person OR yourself from being seriously maimed, raped or killed by a bad guy. And you’re not doing this to exact revenge or to teach someone a lesson.”

“I am a big believer if we have a true SHTF grid down situation or economic collapse or anything like that, that violence and danger will become an everyday part of our lives. As people who failed to prep start to see their children suffering from hunger they’re more likely than not to start to resort to whatever means they have to go through to keep their child or loved one from dying from hunger.”

“Do you know for certain that you could bring yourself to use deadly force against someone trying to harm you or your family? Or do you just imagine that you could? Do you prepare yourself mentally for the possibility of this? Do you train with your weapons? And I mean GOOD training. Shooting and movement type of training. Not just your standard  point and shoot at a cardboard target type of training.”

“Have you ever considered how you may react if you do have to shoot someone. Many people react in different ways after they killed someone in self-defense. Some people react in elation. Not because they got to kill someone but because they faced a deadly encounter and they survived to see their family again. Then some people almost immediately become overcome with grief and guilt about what they were forced to do. While some people may never fully, mentally recover from having to kill someone else, some go about their business saying it was either me or him. If you just quickly think that you can just brush off killing another human being and go about your business like nothing happened you really need to stop and do some real soul searching and think about it.”

“You need to prepare that you may have guilt or depression about what you were forced to do. You need to prepare yourself that you may second guess yourself to death wondering if you could have handled the situation differently. You also have to realize that other people will second guess your actions too, adding to you questioning yourself even more. Even if it were a clear cut self-defense situation.”

“The more you learn about the average humans emotional reactions. I’m talking about the emotional reactions that you will have that will take place over the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks and the months after you’ve been forced to kill someone. The better you learn about these emotional reactions the better you’ll be prepared to deal with those emotions should you find yourself in this situations.”

“You may also want to study more on the human body’s reaction to an actual life or death situation. When you’re forced or put or face a life or death situation. Many people have auditory exclusion. They absolutely do not hear what is going on around them. There have been many a police officer that have been involved in police action shooting that stated after the shooting was over and they told what they remembered of the situation when it happened was that they never even heard the gun shoots when they were firing their gun. The way they realized their gun was actually firing was not because they heard the shots but because they smelled the burned gun powder in the air. So people will think they fired only one or two or three shots and then when they investigation happened and the investigation is over with, the investigation shows they fired their whole magazine when the person only thought they fired their gun a few times. The reality is that people will pull the guns trigger until they went throw the oodleloop and realize the threat has stopped. When somebody is faced with an emanate and deadly threat and they are thinking they are about to die, a person can pull a trigger many times without realizing it because they are focused on saving their butt and they’re focused on the threat.”

“Now I have seen many a keyboard command on the internet talking about how they don’t understand how a cop or somebody else can shoot a bad guy and only hit them once. I don’t think these keyboard commandos truly understand the dynamics behind a deadly force encounter and how fluid and rapidly changing these events are. I don’t think they truly understand a body’s reaction to these situations and how our body goes into fight or flight. They also don’t understand how our eyes will become pin pointed and cause tunnel vision and how our hands naturally want to ball up to become impact weapons. How we have auditory exclusion because our other sense are taking over as our fight or flight reaction begins taking over.”

“I think these keyboard commands are Hollywood educated and they don’t know what reality is. I think they envision the bad guy standing 20 ft away and will be standing still like their card board target does at the range. Then having time to take careful aim and pull their weapon and take careful aim before they fire. I believe that another person can never judge another person’s reaction to a deadly force situation unless they were in those people’s shoes when it happened or unless they had had the same exact situation happen to them in the past. Until they have experienced a deadly encounter they just can’t truly and totally comprehend or appreciate what that person was going through emotionally and physically during a deadly force situation. “

“So the next question is do you practice shooting at moving targets? Targets that are both moving from side to side or coming at you. Do you practice while YOU are moving? You need to train yourself to move so you don’t make yourself such an easy target. At least start moving towards cover. The reality is that a bad guy is not going to be courteous and stand still for you like the cardboard target at the range. He will be moving and trying not to get shoot and probably be coming at you with his weapon.”

“Do you train to give voice commands as you pull your weapon? You want voice commands and movement while you shoot to become motor muscle memory. That you just automatically do it. You know like our mouths automatically open when a fork is near it, you want the same thing to happen with you when you pull your weapon. With voice commands, besides letting the bad guy know you’re not going to be an easy victim and besides letting him know what is in store for him if he doesn’t rethink his actions towards you. Giving loud voice commands may create witnesses. These witnesses may not have actually saw what happened, but having them testify that they heard you yell a command to the bad guy for him to stop or drop his weapon will help solidify your account of what happened. You want the truth of what happened, the truth that you were forced to protect yourself the truth that you weren’t a willing combatant to be known to the world and the use of voice commands is another tool to help you with this.”

“Also, speaking of Hollywood education, people that are educated by Hollywood. Are you prepared that if you shoot someone that more than likely they will NOT immediately fall down dead like they do on TV? Are you aware that handgun rounds are horrible people stoppers and the real fact that there is a chance the bad guy may remain at attacking you until he starts to succumb to his wounds even after you shot him? Are you prepared for the real fact that until the bad guy dies from his wounds that he might ride the ground screaming in pain and agony until he does pass? Or how about if the bad guy runs away after you shot him and now you don’t know if you have a dead bad guy lying dead somewhere around your property or if you just have a wounded and now very angry bad guy out there in the darkness?”

“Think about it. When we shoot a deer that many of times is smaller than an average adult male. We shoot that deer with a large rifle rounds and they usually run a few hundred yards before they succumb to that rifle shot. So now you take a possibly larger man and if you’re forced to shoot him with a much smaller round, how long will he go on with his attack against you or how long will he run before he succumbs to that hand gun round?”

“Also, if you are forced to kill someone in a SHTF situation, there is a good chance it will be at night and it will be a neighbor or neighbor’s kid. Many people don’t understand how darkness and fear plays with your eyes and what you perceive at that moment. A neighbor kid may be stealing from you at night and when you confront him you may believe that you saw something in his hands and shoot him and while it could very well be that he had a gun in his hands, or could be that he had nothing or a tool like a crow bar or a hammer or whatever he used to break into your shed or house or whatever.. And if you shoot someone that had anything less than a gun or a knife in his hands, even if he attacks you with that hammer or crow bar, people will not understand how that tool is able to be used as a weapon and will be calling for your head. If you are forced to shoot a neighbor or his kid, are you prepared to deal with the remaining family member’s? What are the chances they will want vengeance on you? Now if this is a normal life you will get law suits done against you. If it is post SHTF, his family will want to take physical vengeance on you.”

“So if this is post SHTF, will you end up being forced to evacuate your home due to the fact that your vigilance would have to be so high that you know you could not go to sleep without waking up to your throat being slit by the dead kids family member. Also, you and your group should consider how you’ll record any use of forced actions that you take. You always have to remember that things will come back to normal. Or your area could set up a form of government sooner than people realize. If that happens you should consider the fact that this newly formed government might start investigating violent incidences that happen during the WROL time period. Having what happened recorded and the names of witnesses may save your butt should the person you had to kill has a family member that wants to get revenge on you by lying about what happened.”

“Also, do you train with weapons other than just guns? Do you train with edge or impact weapons? Do you carry back up weapons? What if you’re knocked down or pinned down and can’t reach the gun? Do you have a secondary weapon on your body strategically placed so you can reach it if you can’t reach your primary self-defense weapon? Do you practice drawing your weapon on an almost daily basis. You should practice it so much that it becomes motor muscle memory. How quickly can you deploy your fire arm?”

“Anyway folks, if you found this video to be informative please subscribe to this channel as I will be making more videos on these skill sets. I will also be making many more videos on matters that deal with preparedness and self-reliance. Again folks I am not trying to pass myself off as a expert prepper or expert in self-defense, I am just trying to pass on any knowledge that I’ve learned to people that may want it. If you’ve made it this far, thank you very much for watching and have a good night.”