Points of view hmmmmm....

[klickitat]

I found this forum relatively recently and was very happy. I have spent countless hours going through the site besides posting. I specially like the how to threads with pictures and videos. I can't help it. I am a visual kind of guy.

I have learned a lot from this forum and that has actually astonished me a little. Not that I can not learn, that is why I am here, to learn. I have spent my life in the pursuit of knowledge. I usually learn at least one or two things each day, but when I find one particular site where I can learn one or two things every other day, well it is exciting.

Let me back up a little and explain why. When I was a young child, I grew up dirt poor. My dad cut cedar shake bolts, picked the transfer station and worked the flea markets so that we could eek out a survival. As young as 7 years old I was hauling the firewood and sharpening my own ax. I had a trap line at 8 with my dad loaning me my first trap and then having to earn traps by trading pelts to him.

I grew up raising animals, gardens, hunting and fishing. Then I was taught how to preserve those foods. I picked berries in the summer to earn school clothes money.

By the time I was 12, I was doing 2 and 3 night trips in the bush with my buddies. At 16 I was hunting by myself every day that a season was open. When I was 18 I started building stock removal knives. At 21 I wanted to start forging knives so I built my first forge from a chevy wheel and a canister vac. My anvil was a piece of rail road track.

I spent the 17 years learning anything and everything I could. First by asking questions, reading and then doing. I do not believe you have learned anything until first you have actually done it and then taught it to someone else.

I get board really easy when I am not challenged or learning something new. Some think I have no stick to it-ness. I like to think I am more of a renaissance man. I have been retail management, work at the Washington State Capitol for legislators, worked as a carpenter, millwright, police officer, blacksmith, gun trader, antique dealer, dish washer and built some of the best high performance 2 stroke engines in the world. Now because of injuries I am actually back in school.

I am a self taught machinist, drafter and gunsmith.

So what does all this have to do with anything other than beeeep beeeeping my own horn?

It's a justification for the statements that I am about to make.

The more you know, the less you need to take with you, but the better your equipment the more comfortable you are.

Learn everything! Buy the best you can. Go play in the woods and see what works for you!

You will soon learn what you miss, what you know you have to have, what you are willing to live without, what is extra weight and what makes life easier. Never quit learning from others and never quit teaching.

I am going to leave with this tidbit. I took a black smithing class to learn some basics. While I was there one night I had a conversation with my teacher about mountain men and what he would take into the woods for a gun. I almost fell over when he said an FN FAL. He then told me any mountain man worth his salt took the very best equipment he could possibly get his hands on and plenty of it. Remember that they also had a string of animals. Usually a horse and at least 1 or 2 pack animals as well. Very seldom did a man go into the woods with just a pack and return after any length of time alive.

Those words ten years ago have stuck with me and changed the way I look at heading into the mountains.

[Rick]

Nice post. Good words to live by. Learning is a life long ambition of mine, too.

[hunter63]

K, I agree with your post 100%, very well said.
My life is still being an education, and look forward to learning as well.

[kyratshooter]

Lot of folks do not realize that the intrepid "longhunters" went into the wilderness as parties of 5-30 men with pack strings of 200 horses. I have record of one 7 man group that had 2,300 hides stolen from them. It takes a lot of horse flesh to tote 2,300 deerhides!

Bridger, Walker, Jediah Smith were "brigade" leaders.

Not only can you not carry much in the way of supplies into the wilderness in a pack, you can not carry any profit out in a pack. Those men were not just walking around the wilderness with a rifle, a knife and a BOB.

[BENESSE]

Lot of folks do not realize that the intrepid "longhunters" went into the wilderness as parties of 5-30 men with pack strings of 200 horses. I have record of one 7 man group that had 2,300 hides stolen from them. It takes a lot of horse flesh to tote 2,300 deerhides!

Bridger, Walker, Jediah Smith were "brigade" leaders.

Not only can you not carry much in the way of supplies into the wilderness in a pack, you can not carry any profit out in a pack. Those men were not just walking around the wilderness with a rifle, a knife and a BOB.

Thank you for saying that. You read my mind. If it's to be believed, it has to come from the right source. And that ain't me.

[tsitenha]

Spot on Kyratshooter, we fantasize about living out there with our wits and a knife, but the frontier also had many who succombed to nature by either being ill prepared, under kitted or just plain unlucky.
Fortune favors the prepared....mind, body, knowledge and a good kit
Look to history to reveal the lifestyles of the ones who came before us.

If I could would give you "points"