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Fire Watch Sleep Rotation, Tarp Set-ups, Kit Weight & Load-outs | #AskPaulKirtley 56

Description

Welcome to Episode 56 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about what plant can be used for midge repellent in the UK, processing horse’s hoof fungus, tarp set-ups, kit weights and load outs, sleep rotation for fire watches, fire reflectors, and efficacy of Platago major as a healing agent vs yarrow.

TIMESTAMPS:

03:16 Plant for midge repellent?

08:14 Processing horse’s hoof fungus

15:36 Tarp set-ups, kit weights and load outs

47:12 Sleep rotation for fire watches

1:00:50 Fire reflectors

01:13:38 Platago major as healing agent vs yarrow?

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Tags: bushcraft,survival,wilderness,camping,hiking,outdoors,question and answer,advice,questions,answers,bushcrafting,nature,self reliance,self sufficiency,outdoor skills,outdoor knowledge,Paul Kirtley,askpaulkirtley,ray mears,bear grylls,fire,campfires,tarps,outdoor gear,midge repellent,fomes fomentarius,plantago major

Video Transcription

in this episode of ask for curtly we're going to talk about natural mid repellents processing horse's hoof fungus tarp setups and kit weight sleep rotation for fire watch fire deflectors and planted Joe major as a healing agent [Music]

welcome welcome to episode 56 of ask poor curtly where I answer your questions on wilderness bushcraft survival skills and outdoor life now the year progresses a pace I've been very busy running programs around the country and planning more coming up in August and September trips abroad as well so there's a lot going on I'm going to try and record a sport Kirklees as I go and didn't manage to get one done in the Lake District unfortunately but you did see what we did on that day instead certainly on my youtube channel and on my blog you can see that River Creek trip that we did on there on the day off between those two programs that we did in the lakes but I'm hoping to get some a sport Kirklees recorded around the country also my podcast is being resurrected as well I had James Ruffin on for episode 20 I've got Sarita Robinson on episode 21 and if that isn't released already by the time you're watching this it will be very very soon that's available on my blog and on iTunes and on stitcher and various other platforms as well just search for the paul curtly podcast and on youtube i will put a link to the main page on my blog for that podcast so you can then go out whether you want RSS iTunes stitcher Apple podcasting app or just to listen to it on my blog you can do it all from there and they're really good informative interview based podcast normally I do do some other in-between so if you like I've got some plans but the bulk of those are guests experts people with experience in different areas of outdoor life or experiences of nature experiences of expedition experiences of native peoples or whatever it is around the subject of bushcraft and the skill set and knowledge within bushcraft there's something there for you and whether it's backpacking lightweight trekking expeditions in remote places indigenous skills all sorts of stuff there check those out if you don't know about them already they are a separate stream of podcasts to the a sport currently podcast and I'm excited about what's coming up there more coming in the pipeline so keep an eye on those but anyway on to today's business without further ado first question is from Danny Barrett and he asks hi Paul is there a plant in the UK that can be used as a midge repellent if so what is it and have you ever used it thanks for the great blogs and episodes you've done so far Danny Barrett well Danny yes there is a plant that you can use as a natural midge repellent it's called bog myrtle one of the names for it is sweet Gale and it is a plant generally of peat bogs spoky moorland around the margins of forests often in Scotland on to the Moors in Scotland but you find it in many other places as well and it occurs right around the northern hemisphere I found it in Canada on canoe trips as well and in fact I did a little YouTube video a number of years ago now a couple of years ago where we were on a short portage trail and I was with Ben my friend and guy who's a cameraman and we were filming various films out there and for one of my online programs and we stopped on this portage trail and just me and him no big no big camera crew in crews just me and him and a canoe out in the woods and a camera of doing making films but we stopped on the portage trail and it wasn't quite infested with mosquitoes mainly this portage trail and at the end of this portage trail where the put in was where the water came into the end of the trail there was a bunch of bog myrtle and so I grabbed this and I was rubbing it on my arms and elsewhere face and neck and what-have-you and it does help to an extent I mean it doesn't I don't think anything stops all insects from biting other than being covered in netting and or clothing but it does certainly help helps with mosquitoes and it helps with midges as well some natural come of the brand names but some natural insect repellents have been made using bog myrtle and you can also make insect repellents yourself using bog myrtle and it's a very timely question Danny and we did an article on the frontier bushcraft blog so not the porchetta blog we did a team blog on the frontier bushcraft blog about ways that we deal with creepy crawlies in the outdoors whether it's close to home or further afield and myself and some of the members of the frontier bushcraft team put in little snippets of information there and things we have got experience with and what works and what doesn't and one of the things that Alison mentioned was her bog myrtle balm that she made using bog myrtle and pine resin and oil and it's and a little bit of beeswax as well and it was something that people asked about and so Allyson then wrote a separate article recently on how she made that and some other properties that she discovered almost inadvertently that that balm has so it was made as an insect repellent but it also has some qualities as a balm as a soothing agent as an antiseptic and that's all in the frontier bushcraft blog so in the show notes on poor curly coat UK I know this gets a little bit confusing sometimes because most of my content personal stuff to do with me is on poor curly coat at UK but I do have Frontier bushcraft which is my training company if you like it's the company through which I organize courses I offer courses I offer training courses in bushcraft I offer training courses in canoeing and communiques perdition's and all of those things are within the frontier bushcraft Agreement that's the kind of legal entity and that has the systems and the people that deliver that including myself and Lake and spoons and all those are the guys that you may know about Alison and Henry and we all work within Frontier bushcraft to deliver those training courses and so there is a website from telecom and there is a blog on there as well where the team write things and I write things about frontier so that's sort of separate to what I do on my personal blog so if you listen to this on the podcast and go to the show notes of Paul Kelly code at UK and I will link to all of those things there if you're watching this on YouTube again go to Paul Kelly code at UK show notes episode 56 I will link to all of those things so yeah blog metal you can rub it on as is just crush the leaves or you can get a little bit more sophisticated like Alison did and make your own insect repellent out of it as well processing horse's hoof fungus this is a question from Instagram from Gavin Henry good to hear from you again Gavin hope you well and his question he's got a picture of some somewhat damp looking thermos from Ontario sorta two fingers and he says how do you process horse's hoof fungus

it feels damp in side yeah well it might be damp inside horse's hoof fungus famous Clement arias is a fungus which grows over a number of years it isn't one of these fungi the fruiting bodies which just fruits it sprouts its paws and it's done in a good quick process it grows slowly and you get those growth rings over a number of years equally once it's died off and it sits there for quite some time as well and it can become kind of full of grubs it can become very soggy and almost rotten on the inside so sometimes you will pull them off and it will be certainly past its best but equally when it's little woodpecker going over there kick it will be at its prime at certain stages and if it's alive still it will be is you pull it off it will be somewhat damp sometimes and so you may just have to dry it out in terms of processing it depends exactly what you want to do with it in terms of fire lighting it's the Trammell layer that you're interested in so it's not the outer dermis the sclera the hard it's almost like eggshell on the outside and you tap it it's quite hard it's not that bit that you're interested in or is it the spore tubes which are at the bottom and if you cut it through like you have done you can open the one that you've got those straight lines going down through a good amount of the body are the spore tubes it's not that it's the trauma layer which sits between hard outer dermis and the spore tubes that you're interested in and you want slices of that now the one that you've got broken there looks like it doesn't have much trauma layer actually and it also looks like it's a bit rotten it's a bit past its best and that's probably why you're struggling to to wonder how you might use it it's because it's not a great example Gavin generally what you want to do is take slices of that trauma layer and when it's in good condition it will come out in slices somewhat like a piece of chamois leather somewhere between a piece of chamois leather and buckskin it has that sort of consistency and that texture on the surface it's a little bit fluffy around the edges on the thin edges and with a modern sparking device if that's actually dry and with a modern sparking device that trauma layer you can drop a spark straight onto it and it will start smoldering and then that's your ember and then you can take it to a tinder bundle blow it to flame get your fire going for example that's one way you can use it with a modern fire steel and in fact I many years ago I wrote an article on that on my blog at Paul Kelly code at UK and called something like the easy way to use horses whose fungus something like that and that was that was an example those photographs are taken in Canada actually so this is a fungus which occurs in North America Europe Scandinavia right around again northern hemisphere and a lot of people confuse it with artists bracket Ganoderma after Martin but that has it's more of a bracket shape is less rounded it's more flat it's got white small tubes on the underside and if you score them they go Coco brown color and that's why it was used as a like a natural extra sketch and horse's hoof fungus by contrast is is more like a hoof it has typically creamy or almost like latte coffee colored and small tubes on the underside and the trauma layer is generally thicker other than one that you've got there's quite thin so that's one the simple way these days the the ultimo old-fashioned way of dealing with it when you've got smaller sparks

less hot Sparks is you take that trauma layer that slice of tremor layer and you boil it in an alkali solution and you pound it you make sure that that solution is well permeated into that piece of fungus and then you leave it to dry and then you need to scrape up the surface so it's fluffy and then use your flint and steel say to drop a spark in there and it will then catch a spark from more traditional methods such as flint and steel and if you want to go even more difficult if you like and you can use you can use iron pipe varieties and fool's gold and a piece of Flint for example to try and drop a very small spark and that is the way that people possibly used sparks initially the first regularly used as fire by sparks fire by percussion if you like but we don't know we don't know for sure certainly you know celebrated examples such as curtsy carrying it's a famous Thurman terriers bits of birch polypore and the means to light fire by sparks as well so it's it's possible it's possible and certainly dirty and and those people that's not that long ago we kind of keep looking at curtsy and kind of going it's a window into the past and it is in a way but it isn't that long ago it's not that long ago you know if we're for looking back hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years who knows what the first profession technique that was used was hard to say but iron varieties and flint definitely works and it definitely works onto prepared thermos Furman Terrace but it does take some time to get that little spark onto the piece of fungus leather say good quality Trammell layer sliced boiled in a lye solution easiest way to make a lye solution in the woods take some ash from your fire and generally quite alkali mix it with water boil up for their slices of Trammell layer in a Billy can take them out leave them to dry fluff them up drop a spark it should work with any fire lighting though it needs to be dry yet so the first thing you should be trying to do even with things like Balvenie a concentric ax which is King Alfred's cake or cramp balls and they don't work if unless they're dry you can take them off a dead ash tree and the consistency they need to have to work with what tells you if their dries they feel like expanded polystyrene a very low density if they're not if they're heavier in they're full of water and you try and drop sparks on to those they won't like so any fire lighting medium that you're trying to drop sparks into with the maybe the exception of birch bark which can get away being a little bit damp on the outside just because there's so much oil in there water doesn't really soak in very much with that exception everything needs to be dry and if you're not having success with something because it feels damp that's the primary issue often okay tarp setups and kit weight from up Matthew clues and he says hi Paul shamefully I have recently found your content and love it I think you mean shamefully you've only recently found it's not that you found it there's some shame in that I know what you mean I think my question is two-pronged first is when pitching a tarp do you prefer a high flat setup or a low to the ground triangle textile and why I'm in the latter camp at the minute but saw your video of you in the rain under the tarp second is pack weight I've read a lot about percentages of body weight etc I have a spreadsheet with all my kitten kit bearing so I can plan my load out but is the best mindset to pack for a scenario eg leisurely comfort long hike seasons so long hike seasons obviously or based on target total weight how do you track weight loadout there's a lot of questions and there's almost more than two but tarp I think you need to set your tarp based on a number of things one is the size of the top for starters you can get away with a higher tarp setup if it's bigger although for example last night it was a very stormy windy night it lashed it with rain most of the night and I had been using one of out kits bigger note no connection without kit I liked their equipment I have a number of things from them but I'm not there's no kind of backdoor sponsorship there or product placement and one of their bigger tarps I was using as a workspace yesterday with a student and because it was showering on an off during the day and we were working on various things which is out in the woods for the day and I brought the top with me it's silicon nylon tarp is quite small but it gives a good amount of space that you can work and then move around and and I left that up and I slept under that last night and it's high enough to stand up under and in the in the middle certainly and there was a bit of rain blowing in from the side it was very windy little rain blowing in from the side under the shadow of the top if you like but if I put that tart lower so that I could just sit up under it you wouldn't have got the rain coming into the side so it the height is part of it and you know I was in a

fiebag in my sleeping bag there was no water on the big bag you know I was in the middle of the tarp it's just it was a little bit coming in the side because it is you know it's seven foot off the ground and it was blowing a gale so if you're using a smaller personal tarp if you set it lower then you're not going to get the rain coming in the side the gap between the ground and the TAF is where the rain might come in and people say oh you know you always get wet in tarps now we've been there and the video that you're talking about refers to that but clearly the smaller the tarp you know the smallest tip that I've got which you can see one of my lightweight tarp setup videos I'll link to it on youtube because it's on YouTube and I'll put a link to it in the show notes as well and that lightweight setup does still keep me dry but you have to set the top lower in order to provide the dry space if I was to set that little tarp 6 foot off the ground and you get any angle of rain at all and you don't need you don't get much in it even last night in there in the woods it was very windy the trees were moving around a lot and outside of the woods it was it you could really feel the wind in the woods it was blowing around a lot the foliage is blowing around a lot but and I'm on top of a hill here as well so it's a little bit more exposed even though I'm in the woods because the wind's coming in to the sides of the trees as opposed to being in a flat area where you get more get more protection from the stand of trees I mean quite another large area of woodland but I'm on one of the highest points here and so the wind was definitely blowing through and under the tarp there's a little bit of rain coming in but even so the angle isn't that great it's not like being up in the mountains where you get sideways rain on a regular basis the woods definitely deflect the wind a lot you can have some space under a tarp and operate under a tarp without getting much water under one of the biggest things I see with people with tarps is just not setting them right not setting them

so that they're tight the number of saggy sloppily pitched tarps that I see pictures of around the Internet is incredible just get the thing tight for starters that will help water runoff and then the other thing that I see people do particularly bigoted apps is not get the is not get one corner lower than the other so the water's slowing off towards the corner people put them horizontal and then they don't get them tight this sagging the middle you get water pooling and you damage your tab doesn't work efficiently flaps around in the wind get the thing tight learn to do some good knots learn to do some good adjustable guideline hitches learn how to do how to attach poles on the corners if you need to to pitch the height exactly where you need it get good at those basics and then you can be flexible with how you set your top and as I say the smaller the top the lower it needs to be forgiven sideways wind if you like but you're never going to get rain coming absolutely sideways so I rarely bring it up all the way down to the ground you just don't need to and I like to set a tarp whatever the size personally so this will answer your question now I like to set it so that I can sit up underneath it that's the height so and really around about somewhere between sternum height and bellybutton height for most people if you if you tie your tarp off at the tree and you tie it tight around that level it means that when you sit down you should be able to get your head under the apex while sitting up take jackets jumpers on and off and be able to hang things up above you now clearly if you've got a big ATAR and you set it at that height you can bring the edges closer down to the ground if you want to and that brings us on to angles I don't like to flatter top because it's not going to shed the water I do not want something I want to go to sleep at night knowing that that tarp is going to look after me whatever happens so yes the range running on the top top thrumming on the top might wake me up when the rain starts but I'm not going to wake up worried that tarps not the knots are not going to hold that the water is going to run under the tarp that the because of the way that the lay of the land that the water is not going to run off the right parts of the top so it doesn't either come back underneath or just drip onto me or anything I want it set up so whatever happens the heavens open that I just go yeah okay it's raining and I go back to sleep that's the way I like to set my top and it doesn't need to be particularly flat even with a big tarp and because you then again risk pooling the biggest issue with big tarps is that you don't get them tight enough and you don't get the angles right so that water runs off them and then you get pooling and then when you get pooling that might start pulling pegs out you might stretch the tarp it might start dripping through a seam etc etc or it might just suddenly what you certainly don't want and I've heard of this happening a few times is you get a couple of gallons of water building up on the tarp one of the pegs comes out tarps wings you get a load of water coming down right next to where you're sleeping or even on top of you so do make sure it's all set right and that's them that's the main thing and sometimes I have used a couple of small tarps like the Australian who choose a good way of setting them if you want more of a tent style shelter use too if you're with a with a friend who's got a similar shelter they've got pressed hoods along the edge you can press them together you can put a central ridge line across and that can be a totally tied Accord across between two trees or it can be a couple of upright Y poles with a with a cross beam across between them and then you can make more of an a-frame shelter where that's actually pegged down to the ground so it's like an open-ended tent if you like in you've got more room inside still and you could you can make enough room for people to sleep in two hoochies put together like that when you can only really get one person under each when you're sleeping out with them individually set as a tarp at that sternum height that we're talking about or even lower if you want to set a little bit more tactically if you like so and I look at the size of the top I look

the prevailing weather conditions and if I'm in a relatively exposed place you know so if we're right on the edge of the woods then clearly you're more exposed to the wind you're more likely to get water coming site more sideways you're going to have to set it low or maybe set one side lower those are the sorts of considerations that I take when I'm when I'm looking at a tarp and yes I do look at when I'm planning what trips I'm doing what site top might be sensible so you know if I'm out in the woods in the summer and I use that lightweight tarp that you've seen a small silicon nylon part that's in that video that I'll link to that's the smallest type I've got I'm still happy to set that at sternum height and in the woods in the summer I can sit up underneath it it's going to keep rain off and it's not a big space I wouldn't want to be living under it and operating out of it at a base camp for example and I tend to take a slightly bigger tart for that and if I'm running courses and I might have spare clothes but equipment and other things that I want to keep while I'm living under a tarp rather than just stopping for a night bedding down moving on the next day living out of a rucksack and I might take a slightly bigger tart for that there I have an NEC tarp which I like and we see Scout tapas in Silicon nylon that's good and I've also got a venerable Hillenburg XP 10 which is my sort of standard one that I take to the woods and you've seen that in my videos about and blogged about in a basic bushcraft camping equipment so that's another one that I use and then I've got a number of expedition size ones more for group use as well but of course you can sleep under those as well and you can have multiple people sleeping under a larger tarp and of course as well so horses for courses look at the conditions look at the exposure and you know time of year do you need do you want a fire underneath it all of those sorts of things all feed into how I set the top and I'm not dogmatic what I don't like is unnecessarily putting it really really close to the ground without thinking about it them to crawl in and out like a little dog kennel what I don't need to be and I prefer to give myself the space if I can pack ways percentage of body weight yeah the old adage was don't carry more than thirty percent of your body weight and I my weight has gone up over the years and I'm currently about it's interesting it's interesting when I used to do a lot of backpacking like lots of that packing I was all that was also appeared in my life where I was doing a lot of mountain biking a lot of cycling I was very lean and I had a lot of leg strength most of my body strength was in my legs and my lower back and because of cycling and and then also hiking and I found that if I at that point I was maybe 80 kilo 70 to 80 kilos back in those days and 90 to 100 these days and what I found was and this is this is interesting and when I when I was in the sort of 75 to 80 75 kilo bracket let's say I found carrying 30 percent my body weight really difficult particularly if you know even though my legs were strong I just my shoulders ached and I know how to put a rock before people right I know how to put a rock stuck on properly I know how to get the weight onto my hips etc etc etc I'm talking about walking for many days carrying heavy loads my body used to struggle with that not from a leg perspective but just generally and used to find it fatiguing and whereas now I can't say I would enjoy carrying 30 kilos but I finding any given load easier to do I've got more upper-body strength and part of that canoeing part of its doing jiu-jitsu for years part of it is just I guess more balanced when I am working out and I can't always you know when I'm in the woods I don't do any sort of workout so I'm just working in the woods teaching in the woods traveling in the woods but then when I'm at home I do try and do some things to maintain strength and I guess I'm a bit more balanced in that that maybe when I was focused on cycling where I was all about for me it was all about kind of legs and leg strength and yeah I did laterally start doing some things with arms and lower back and what-have-you but even so the point is that I found find now even though I'm heavier and this is the point I don't have the cardiovascular absolute fitness that I had when I was younger and I was lighter I find it easier to carry heavy loads now than I did when I was lighter but maybe stronger in terms of my leg strength and my cardiovascular capabilities so and that's that's an interesting one so I think where I'm coming to without that 30% of body weight or any percentage of body weight it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt because it depends on your body composition it depends on how fit you are depends on how strong you are generally depends a little your cardio your strength and where how that's distributed around your body in terms of specific muscular strength and what-have-you so I think I think you need to be a little bit careful about that personally my advice would be trying carry as little as possible whatever you weight is whatever your fitness whatever your strength because the end of the day and if your packs too heavy it becomes miserable and of course there are times when you have to carry heavy packs you have to go long legs where you're carrying lots of food and at the end of the day you're talking about kicks a lot you can you can nudge around the margins of kick weight but the biggest thing that's going to make difference to your pack weight is how many days you're out for because that's going to make a big difference to how much food you've got to take that's it that's the big thing you know you're talking at least seven if on a proper hiking trip you're talking at least 750 grams of food a day I would imagine for most sort of reasonable trips at least and you multiply that up over a week or ten days you start getting a lot of weight and maybe you need to carry a little bit more than that depending on the circumstances depending on how big you are depending on how many calories you use depending on how cold it is so that is what's going to make a big big difference once you've got your baseline kit broadly sorted so big things that you know I started that lightening the load series it needs to be finished at some point but one of the big things the thing I started with number one was sleeping kit and camping kit so tarp bitty bag sleeping bag sleeping that you can make kilograms of difference depending on how you choose that kit lots of people over specify the warmth of their sleeping bag they carry heavy old synthetic bags they carry heavy sleeping mats they carry big heavy thick tarps and it always kilos and kilos by contrast we've been talking about tarps reduce the weight silicon island down bags lightweight sleeping mat lightweight vivvy bag or lightweight tent however you want to travel a lightweight hammock and tarp setup you can bring the weight down massively and that's that's a big thing and so personally I I do have I've got a number of synthetic bags that I use and and then kind of run-of-the-mill bags they're synthetic sleeping bags tend to be cheaper they're easier to look after they're easier to clean and they're much less expensive of course so they're cheaper and down bags are much warmer for their weight and on a journey when you having to carry the kit where weight is important down bags just come into their own so I have a number of down bags as well and I've got an old two to three season bag that I'm using at the moment it's really good and I've got that super lightweight pretty much two season bag for modes and equipment you've seen in one of my videos that's great for summer use as well anyways about 600 grams and then I've got a force

Pertex endurance out of that bag that I've had for years that's good for three to four season years even like cold spring nights frosty nights into the minuses and billion out boobie bags it is absolutely great that bag and then I've got a warmer down bag still that I use on on cold weather trips so you know ski touring in Norway Norwegian mountains and you know Arctic trips in northern Scandinavia etc so you have to choose horses for courses of course but you're always going to get the most warmth to the weight with a down with a down bag a lot of people say they're too expensive and some manufacturers are cheaper than others depending on what features you want whereas where's the down sourced and how ethically is it sourced all of those sorts of things and but look at a number of different look at Rab look at Mountain Equipment look at ALP kit look at PhD design you will find something that suits you and your bracket and then some people will moan about oh I don't like mummy shapes they're too tight well that's me maybe you need to loosen and being Frankie maybe you need to lose some weight and a lot of people who find you know a lot of really lightweight gown bags are made for Mountaineers and they are generally quite live quite lean quite muscular and often reasonably tall as well although not always you know you're talking kind of quite slim for the height a lot of Mountaineers and those real light weight down bags expedition kind of climbing bags are made for those guys they're not made for fat blokes in the woods unfortunately I'm being blunt there and and so that is that is one of the issues so yes you might have to buy a bigger older bag but again that brings me onto you know and being blunt there if you want to hike and you want to reduce weight and this is something I learned a long time ago with the cycling for example I got into mountain biking in the early 90s and it was a really interesting transition time back then for for mountain biking suspension for for just coming in I originally started doing a lot of cross country riding with a with a full-on heart not just a hardtail just you know hard frame it didn't have suspension forks it was just rigid and then you started getting G flex stems and it was at G flex G 50 Shakti flex yeah it was like a stem with a little shock absorber in it with a hinge and then they were quickly superseded by you know Manitou and rock shocks and pace made some good 40 so they were seem to do some good stuff come out but still people would be changing the bolts on their on their water bottle carriers you know steel bolts that came on the bike puttin titanium bolts on and saving a few grams you know changing the bolts on their chain set where it and whether where the chain wheels attached to their the cranks changing those four you know titanium subsets and all that kind of stuff you know you could get replacement titanium bolts for where your Shimano XD our group set attached or the derailleur attached in the back and all those sorts of things that's fine you might save yourself you guys though those things do add up but frankly if you're a bit overweight the best way to lose weight on the bike person combo is to lose some fat off your body and it's the same with hiking you can get that you know you can have to spend a lot of money to save kilos and kilos and kilos of weight on your equipment

you know titanium cook sets expensive down sleeping bags etc etc or just eat a bit less for a number of months and you will lose the same amount of weight off your body and you won't be able to carry that as long as you maintain your strength that's as good a way of losing the weight of the pack and person combination as spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds on expensive lightweight gear so you've got that as well and

and am being a bit blunt there but you know and it's not-- I have no idea what size you are these answers are always supposed to be general in their application for people as well but don't forget about that a lot of people focus on the kit look at yourself as well can you get fitter and stronger can you lose some fat off your body weight as well you can end up with a much better power-to-weight ratio as a result of spending three or four or five months on that then you can by spending thousands of thousands of pounds on expensive lightweight kit that said whatever size you are going back to my original point this is why I've had this sort of slightly historical and biographical thread through this answer that said having loads of however light you are and strong you are having loads of weight on your skeletal and muscular structure all day is wearing so if you can minimize the kit and sleeping kit is important I mention that but then the other thing to consider is just people tend to take too much stuff in the sense of I'll you know I'll take this I'll take that I'll take this pouch I'll take this and that and the other the end of the day what do you really need if you think about what you need for day hike in terms of waterproofs water bottle first-aid kit map case compass etcetera cetera what do you need over and above that for a few days out hiking well you need two sleeping bag you need two sleeping mat and then you need something to sleep in whatever that is a tent or a tarp or a hammock and as long as those things themselves are not too heavy and then you might need a bigger cooking pot you might need a stove if you're not having a fire and you might need an extra water bottle just so you can carry a bit more water spare pair of Underpants just in case small wash kit tooth pate little toothpaste toothbrush face flannel some wet wipes maybe but there isn't a lot extra there but then people start getting you know if you're packing candle lanterns you know oh you know oddly bosh bowls and axes and all sorts of stuff that you might not necessarily need your pack weights going to go right up and again I see that I see that with people coming on courses they turn up with massive ruck sacks and that's on courses where we're supplying a lot of the kit we're supplying the cooking they're not bringing any food and maybe they've got some snacks in there for you know just for their own you know personal choice or what have you but they're not bringing you know we're feeding them for the week we're supplying bivy bags and tarps supplying cooking kit and you should just about be able to turn up with a day pack for that you know of course some people have bulky sleeping practices leaping mats and things but and I had a guy earlier in the year and I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name but I was impressed by he was a cycle tourer and we did a lot of cycle touring and he came to my elementary course with a pack that this is my this is a 30 liter pack that I've got here with me today he had a bag not much bigger than that he had a sleeping mat underneath on the underside of it but he pretty much had what looked like a day pack with him for the weeks course was other guys returning it with 70 80 liter Bergin's full of stuff weighing a ton I've no idea what they had in there so that's part of the experience of traveling of knowing how minimal you can go and you can go really minimal and get away with it and be comfortable without then the burden of all that extra stuff so that's the other thing and then in terms of yeah it can be useful to have an inventory of your kit I find having it I used to be more organized with spreadsheets and things than I am now I kind of know what I've got I know what works I go out so often that I have sets of kit that I know that's sleeping bag that sleeping mat that for canoe trip in you know this time of year that one that one that one for just going out and working in the woods on courses where I'm not traveling too far maybe going a few miles every day or if I'm doing you know 15 miles 20 miles a day on a lightweight hike I want my best lightweight sleeping bag ultra lightweight sleeping mat titanium cooking pot etc etc that's all that's all going in to a small backpack and I am I'm minimizing the backpacking weight so I know that but yes you can do that in a and you can do that in this spreadsheet and I think having an inventory if you've got lots of different having an inventory is good particularly it's not all stored in the same place so you can have kit items and then you can have where as its stored it's in the Box in there under the stairs it's you know it's hop of the wardrobe or whatever you know where where do you keep it it's in the storage unit down the road whatever whatever you've got like that and then you you're not having to mess around trying to find things when you're planning a trip and then what you can have is another column of like UK three season hiking trip in the mountains and then you can just have a tick for all the items that you want and that's a really good way of keeping your packing lists all in one place as well so you know where everything is you know what you need for each trip and you know where to find it as long as it goes back there afterwards you know where to find it and and you can pack very quickly then because that's one of the things that I find there's a real friction point there I try and be efficient with when I get home getting unpacked getting things cleaned washed sorted back where they should be and then again when you're packing being efficient with your packing you have a good packing list you know where your stuff is you know where to find it and you can pack quickly because if I didn't do that I'd waste so much of my life unpacking and packing and I'd spend a lot of time doing that already so that's the way get get get to a conclusion on what works under what circumstances you know different seasons different types of trips what works really well what you need have a definitive packing list for that yes of course you can edit it and change it over time and that will happen as you get something new or something wears out and you get a replacement you get something better you can you can change your packing list but being able to go right I'm doing this type of trip this is what I need tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick that's super useful and so yeah I would recommend that and weight is important but I don't tend to do that at the packing I don't tend to sort of add it all up spreadsheet why's I just I've just worked through many years of experience to get to a set of kit that I know is as light as I wanted to because the flipside of course is durability you know you can eat I could spend you know risk you think getting over cold alone I could spend my time in the woods wearing light weight trainers I'd have wet feet all the time I left foot rot and and so I've got I've got heavier boots and yet you have to and also if I had lightweight and foot wear a lot the time rather than leather boots in the woods they'd get trashed going through brambles going to undergrowth etc the work that I do equally if I'm in the hills I might want something lighter but in the UK they still need to have some sort of waterproof ability if I'm in arid areas then then they don't so again it's specifying durability weatherproof nurse protection of the body and and weight so weight isn't the only parameter is what I'm saying so I don't just try and optimize down that line of minimizing weight yes it's an important consideration but equally things need to function properly and things need to protect you and you know if you're out with a gossamer thin flimsy waterproof in your trainers and shorts in Snowdonia and April and you've probably got it wrong yes it's lightweight but you're probably going to get hypothermia right that was a there was a lot of questions in there but hopefully that's useful to different people different reasons this question is from Trevor IVA Trevor his question is sleep rotation for fire watch hi Paul I really appreciate all of your instructive content so much for thanks so much for all you do to make such knowledge readily available and easily comprehensible for those of us trying to improve our ability to work with nature rather than against it so his question is supposed to or more individuals were in a situation wherein they need to keep a fire burning all night long

suppose they were forced to build a small enough fire that it wasn't practical to build a good self feeding apparatus and the fire may require periodic attention over the course of an hour or so for such a scenario might I get your thoughts please on how an effective sleep rotation might be assigned would it be better to have one individual stay up half the night then swap out or would it be better divide the job into short hour rotations if the last out how long might you suggest these shift be I suppose this question might also relate to keeping watch over camp for security reasons but as I've been unable to find any reputable guidance on this subject I really appreciate any professional input you'd be willing to share thank you for any of your valuable time and you spend on reading this sincerely Trevor well Trevor it's good question and and it depends on exactly the scenario you're talking about and in terms of the answer the general answer about sleep rotations and fire rotations and whatnot and so the times you need to keep a fire going typically through the night are when you need it for warmth directly so back to me you're sleeping right next to the fire you've built a shelter you have a fire in the shelter you're sleeping you need it for warmth in the shelter that's the reason for keeping the fire going other reasons for keeping a fire going overnight is you've lit the fire by friction but you're but it's been a lot of work it's not something you feel like you could easily repeat you could be low on food it could be low on energy you feel that it's touch and go could be really wet touch and go as to whether or not you get that fire lit again if you let it go out that's another reason why you'd want to keep it going overnight even if you had the means to light the fire it's it would be a struggle perhaps and then the other reason and heated tents and I've talked about that before you might need to do a stove watch and overnight both in terms of keeping the tent warm but also in terms of making sure the fire doesn't die down and smolder and start causing issues with incomplete combustion and carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke and the tent and all those things as well so I know I've got experience of all of those things and the thing I would say is that if you're relying on the fire for warmth then unless you're completely and utterly absolutely exhausted you will wake up when you start to get cold when the fire starts to subside so you get the fired up and this can be in front of a fire in the open or inside a shelter and I've done both many times and you get nice and cozy and your doze off and you go to sleep and comfy and then you start to feel a chill start to feel a chill around your your neck and on your shoulder or the side of you that's away from the fire you start to feel a chill generally and you'll wake up

and then you do something about it and hopefully you've got fire there firewood there that you can put on the fire and stoke up the fire again gets nice and warm and cozy and then you goes off again

and that that is probably what we've been doing as a species for a long long time

it just seemed quite natural once you get into it what you have to get over mentally is this idea of eight hours solid sleep I'm a good sleeper and I will at home I will go to sleep and I will sleep and I can sleep for eight hours without waking up unless I've had a lot of water or tea or something to drink before I've gone to bed and might need to get up in the night for that but I can I can sleep and I don't tend to have fitful sleep I don't tend to and just wake up for no reason switch my brain off go to sleep that said and the reason I say that is because then when I'm outside my sleeping patterns very different when I'm having to rely say on a fire for warmth I'm waking up when I get cold and I'm waking up when the fire gets smoky I'm aware even though I'm asleep you're aware of what's going on with a fire and you wake up typically now if you want to keep the fire fire going and have a fire watch yeah absolutely you can do that and there's no there's no issue with that and particularly there's more than one of you that can be good thing to do and and if you're going to do a rotation I would suggest do it on the basis of 90 minutes to two hours and interestingly I was talking to Sarita Robinson about this recently and again check out the second podcast I did with her episode 21 at the paul kelly podcast and we talked a bit about sleep cycles and sleet rotation there and it seems like you have a natural sleep cycle of about 90 minutes and if you sync your fire watch with that 90 minute cycle so you you know maybe you have two hours each way including the time to get up to get in position sit some fire wood on the fire sit in front of the fire go and so you're sleeping in sort of 90-minute two hour blocks and you're your fire watch 90 minutes two hour blocks that works quite nice quite nicely it's easier the more of you there are we tend to do that with winter camping trips where this form is in a tent we designate a ten hour period like quiet time because it's dark a lot the time anyway so ten our quiet time sleeping period during that period every one of the four people in the tent has a two-hour Firewatch stint and you're still going to get your your sleep in that ten hour period and and everyone does their to our watch and that works well and in shelters I found say where you're making a group shelter where the three or four of you in there I found that you don't tend to need to have a formalized watch as long as you've got a good supply of firewood in the shelter and your and somebody wakes up to throw a couple of logs on the fire and this whole idea about self feeding fires and you have this event that you see that sort of silly photograph which goes around the internet occasionally where you've got the fire in the middle and you've got these two stacks of wood feeding in that's complete garbage and it's got no it's a fun little trick thing it's our Heath Robinson style but in terms of in terms of the amount of heat it's going to kick out if you've got long logs going into a fire where you get the radiant heat is along the length of the log but you've just blocked it with that stupid stacking system so if you're lying along the side of it you're going to get the end of us you know the cross section of that fire which is small that's not going to heat you bodily and if you want a fire to keep you warm bodily you just put a lot of wood on the fire you know the classic long log fire the newing fire that you get in the in the north of in the north of Sweden for example two different main types the three log log log fire and the two log log log fire the two log tends to burn more stead it's harder to light but it burns more steadily and is less smokey the three log long log fire burns somewhat more rapidly and and once it dies down a bit does become a bit smoky and as the log start the top logs gots to burn up and away from the others and but I've spent time out by overnight at minus 20 to minus 30 in front of those without any sleeping equipment and they're absolutely fine and doing little fires little little kiddy fires with self stacking systems feeding into them that's not going to work yeah you're just wasting your time and with that stuff and I'm not saying you do do that but there's a lot of crap out there on the internet where people have not got any experience of applying these things properly and look at what people have done in the past when people had to rely on this stuff and and apply that first yourself and figure out why it works and then play around at the margins if you want to and I am not averse to innovation if somebody comes up with a new way of doing something that's better that's more efficient more efficient in terms of preparation time more efficient in terms of application I'm all for it but what I get annoyed about is people with no experience very little experience doing stupid things that they've thought up on their on their own time when they're away from the woods and then doing it in an afternoon in the woods taking a photo of it and posting it on the internet and it goes around the internet going oh look at this it's garbage most of it yet stick with a classic means of having a fire that keeps you warm and you won't go wrong that's the problem you know I don't I don't come up with a new way of plumbing a house when I'm sat in the woods and and sort of make a half-assed version of it and put a photograph of it on the internet go oh look at this guys you can replumb your kitchen like this or oh I've just figured a new way of piping gas into my house even though I'm not a certified gas engineer but with bushcraft and survival you get that all the time

and unfortunately for you guys there of you that are watching this and people who are interesting actually getting the proper skills there's so much noise and crap out there that is e people get diverted off down these alleys and yes I'm having a bit of a rant and I haven't had a rant for a while and I feel I feel good for that but it's important yet there are some classic proven ways that work and so in terms of if you want to lie down in front of a fire and stay warm it needs to be a parallel fire whether they're big logs or small logs the principles the same you want something that is like a bar fire a grill so if it's you and your mate what you want to do is put a long along fire this at least as long as your body say six foot seven foot whatever have a long fire have it burning along a good amount of that giving out heat along a good amount of that and then you lie down in front of it so you're getting that heat along the length of your body and your mate your friend your buddy is on the other side of it getting the heat that's coming out the other side of the fire that's the best way not these little fires not fires with funny feeding systems and with a with a with a parallel lay fire like it like campfire cooking you cannot with campfire cooking like with your oven at home set a temperature cook for an hour and a half and your dinner will be done you can't do that with a campfire and cooking you've got to monitor it you've got to manage the heat it's the same with keeping yourself warm overnight you can't just set a fire go to sleep for 8 hours and expect to be consistently warm the whole time you'll have to manage that fire it will get warmer it will get colder you want to have a good stack of firewood there so that you can feed it onto the fire when you need to that's the best way and then either do just have an agreement that one of you when you wake up and you're cold that you chuck some logs on or that one of you sits up for a while and then gives perhaps the other one wakes them up come on mate your turn you have a good sleep they keep they keep the fire a nice temperature while you sleep for a few hours that's the other way of doing it and like I say if you can organise that say on a two hour cycle that that in my experience works pretty well so hopefully that's useful and don't get distracted by all these self-feeding fire nonsense contraptions on the Internet and we'll come back to that in a minute because I can actually now know that there's a fire the fire question from Sean dear Paul in regards to erecting a wind of fire deflector near a campfire is there a minimum and maximum distance that the deflector can or should be before it's either too far from the fire to effectively flecked the heat back towards you or too near the fire that it catches alight itself I've watched quite a few camping videos on YouTube now and seen people put up a deflector only for it to be burnt down by the end of the video what is an optimal distance to maintain heat without the deflector itself igniting all of us Shawn phonetics I think you actually mean a fire reflector Shawn and I know exactly what you mean and again this is one of those things that goes around goes around the internet particular as you mentioned YouTube without there being a really thorough understanding of what's going on it's almost like people have seen it somewhere else and it is in some old wood craftsmen camping books they've seen it somewhere else and then they've done it because they think they should do it without thinking why am i doing this and for those of you that don't know what she was asking about she was talking about having a fire and then you're on this side of the fire the fires there in front of you and then on the opposite side on the far side of the fire away from you there is a construction which normally involves putting a couple of upright stakes into the ground and then having some rounds of

wood stacked up so that the you have a vertical or near vertical face of wood on the opposite side that many people claim then helps with radiant heat because it reflects the heat that's radiating from the far side of the fire it's reflected back towards you hence fire reflector some people also claim that it it helps the drafts so let's imagine you've got a fire you've built a one-person open fronted shelter whether that's a free-standing debri shelter or the sort I might teach people to do here whether it's a lean-to sort of thing I might teach people to in coniferous would learn the boreal may even have a raised bed if it's seriously cold so you can get some warmth up and under the bed and again there's plenty of material on that on my blog and I'll put links in the show notes gonna be a lot of show note links today and and then you've got a reflector on the other side and you're talking about wind to start off with well you've got the orientation of your shelter wrong just plain wrong if that reflector does anything in terms of wind and the fire because you want the back of your open fronted shelter with the fire in front of it to be neither away from the wind or towards the wind you want the front neither away or towards the wind so if the back of the shelter is facing the wind you get the wind coming over the shelter and then you get an eddy currents just like you do in a river with a rock with the water going around the rock you get eddy current coming back towards the obstacle and that blow smoke into the shelter you don't want that equally you don't want the shelter facing the wind because you're going to get cold wind coming in an equally you are going to get the smoke again what you want ideally is the wind going across the front of the shelter so it's not cooling you you've got the shelter coming round but sides on the shelter so that you're not getting cold and but it's taking any smoke away from you not into the shelter and if you imagine you and a friend we've got an open frontage shelter each so I sort of step up from the previous question where you're just lying in front of the fire you've got a little shelter here you've got a fire in the middle parallel fire and you've got a little shelter on the other side clearly you want the winds going down the middle you don't want the wind coming any other angle so that's the orientation so deflector is not going to do deflector reflector I'm saying it now is not going to do anything to help with that that's the first thing in terms of wind guy running through the woods jogger that's passing public funds not a public footpath here and but it's good to see people out in the woods so that's the first thing that then in terms of how much heat now those of you that have read my material and other people's material where they have experience with using fires and shelters in combination without sleeping equipment in cold environments will tell you that to stay warm with a fire in a cold environment you really need to be just a step away from the fire like if you if you put the fire too far away from you and as you rightly ask about reflectors but the most important distance to get right to distance you're away from the fire don't worry so much about other things how far away are you from the fire and I constantly see people getting this wrong they have two smaller fire and they're too far away from it to stay warm in a properly cold environment so whether that's sort of in the hypothermia bracket of plus 6 - -6 Celsius or colder yet to stay warm in that type of stay warm in that type of environment you need to be a step away where you're being properly physically warmed by the fire not just you've got a fire going and you're sat there you you want to be feel like you could actually start taking some layers off perhaps that's that's how you want to be warmed and you want to be a step away so if I've got a raised bed and I literally have just enough room to walk in between the fire and the bed if I'm using the fire to keep me warm that's the distance right so you get that right now you're going to put a reflector on the other side are you going to make the reflector the full length of your body probably not so you've got most of the reflectors that I see on the internet and I'm sure you're asking about are maybe at most three feet maybe at most a meter long the one you know two upright sticks some some more stuff that looks like firewood all stacked up like radiant heat or radiation in general follows an inverse-square law which means that if you double the distance you quarter the heat if you so you get this exponential decay if you like yeah so if I put the fire four times as far away it's going to be a sixteenth of the heat so getting getting the fire and new space correctly is the most important thing but then think about that you've got radiant heat going from the fire to that reflector and then all the way back to you even if that reflect is 100% efficient and reflects all of the heat it gets to it by the time it gets back to you it's like being four times away four times the distance away from the fire so you're not getting a huge amount of heat back and that's if it's perfectly reflective it's going to absorb some of that heat and yes it might admit some of that later on but excuse me the amount of heat that comes back it's going to be small and wood is not a particularly reflective surface yeah and it's not shiny it's angular it's dull in color it doesn't reflect a lot of light nor does it reflect a lot of heat so as a thermally efficient reflector it's not a particularly good material either and so I don't think and I don't know if anybody's ever done any proper scientific studies of this but just just on the basic physics of it and the nature of the material and the nature of how heat radiation works and I don't think there's much point in building them if they're just going to be there supposedly to reflect some of the radiant heat back across to you that's that you know that's me putting my line in the sand I think they're a waste of time from that perspective what they are good for is if you're in a cold and wet environment is just warming up the firewood before you put it on the fire and bring it up from minus 32 plus 50 is going to help excuse me when you put turning to Bob Fleming here it's going to help when you put that on the fire the energy of your fire is not going to be taken up with warming that material up to a level where it's going to burst into flames it's not going to be driving moisture out of the out of the outside if it's got moisture held in there and everything's got moisture this has got moisture and even dead standing stuff is going to be a moisture in it and so the more that you can prepare you know that in a damp cold environment does have to be minus 30 just you know cold wet hypothermia dish where you you know that kind of cold wet damp day in December in January in March in late October when it's raining and it's cold and the leaves are coming off and it started to sleet that kind of stuff being able to warm and dry your firewood before it goes on the fire that helps I think they're good for that but reflecting heat back to you that it's insignificant and and then you talk about some of them lighting fire actually if you do light fire if you do set them on fire then they act like a grill you're actively warming you're getting that secondary warming effect you've got your fire and you've got your reflector on fire that's going to warm you up but more than anything that it's going to do passively so and I've used that to cook meat actually and if you've got a leg of lamb or venison and you can you can create that reflector set up set fire to it and you've got this grill that's like a kebab grill you've got your meat and you've got this grill and you've got that raging heat in a short distance and that that works in terms of cooking and and that's often one of the best things to do with them I've seen in the old some of the old wood craft and camping books like bits of meat hanging from a pot hanger type of arrangement or crane type arrangement a little bit of fire underneath it and then a little bit of fight a fire here and they reflect to their or reflector on the other side of the meat various different arrangements the reflector doesn't do anything unless you set fire to it once you set fire to it makes a difference to the cooking in terms of reflecting heat to the fire back to the meat it does nothing it does nothing at all and so yeah so use it for warming and drying firewood use it for actively warming things or don't bother at all is my is my view on that hopefully that helps last question let's convert Instagram plant a geo major as a healing agents question is this is from Jura sir tech what are your thoughts on fantagio major was told it is every bit effective as yarrow for wounds cuts antiseptic etc any truth in that statement and I have to say that's a lovely little drawing and I know I've taken a while to come around to answering this but thank you for taking the effort to draw that and putting a nice little post on Instagram it's much appreciated well done good effort and so to enter question yes it is an effective healing agent and plant a Geo major plant a Geo lanceolata as well you can soar talking broadleaf plantain and rib work plantain here wrap them on a wound just just to cover it and to give a bit of protection as a starter that that's good any of the plant juices that can get into the cut they will help with antiseptic and they'll help with anti anti inflammatory to a certain extent they'll help with healing and if you if you manage to crush up a leaf and put that on almost like a poultice so we're just talking in the field as you go and then another leaf wrap around and the leaves are quite stringy both both species we're talking about quite stringing and so you can actually form quite good and we're in dressing with them as well tying them off can sometimes be a bit difficult but you can certainly wrap it around and uncover and then if you if you want to go to the extra stage if you actually heat up the leaf in water and in a bit of water and mush it up a little bit so it kind of goes like cook spinach and then put that on the wound that's very effective as well for bites for sting

for burns for cuts and it will help with a healing and keeping it free from infection with all of those things so yeah it is good and I'm not sure it's as much of a styptic as yarrow in my personal experience it's allegedly it does have some styptic qualities so I stopped bleeding

but I found DRI DRI so where you've got yarrow and you dry and it looks like a little packet of dried herbs you know and your first-aid kit and you put some of that powder on a on a cut it stings like hell but it does on it's like a sort of natural form of something like one of those hemostatic powders not in the same category of product at all but it does definitely help it soaks up the blood it definitely causes it's help stem the bleeding and it definitely helps Matt and knit the cut together again so that the arrow helps for that so I think they're both useful to know about and definitely both useful to use so you tend to use the the plantains wet and the I think the best use of yarrow is when it's dried and put onto a cut whereas the others are good on other sort of wet hot and things like bites and stings and burns and cuts that might be a little bit inflamed already or certainly saw and that's it some long answers there some short answers they're all very good questions all to do with what we do outdoors in terms of the equipment we take how we live when we're there and how we use natural materials when were there and how we operate as well the sleep stuff is important you know people are asking those questions means that really thinking about how they practically apply these skills in the real world you not not just going to the woods and playing around with tools for the day and then going home again you know people who are asking about how do they set up sit properly so they get a good night's sleep how do they do fire rotations properly so that they stay warm they get a good night's sleep how do they make fire reflectors work if they work at all all of these things are important because that's what counts that's what matters practical application of the skills knowledge of nature combining those with personal experience so that you can actually use these things in a real way not just play around and theorize about them on the internet that's super super important that we keep this thread of reality through the middle of this subject which sometimes seems to get lost so thank you for your questions thank you for your attention and links in the show notes and I will see you on episode 57 of a sport currently before too long keep those questions coming in and in the meantime take care and enjoy the outdoors Cheers

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About the Author

Paul Kirtley

Paul Kirtley

Bushcraft, survival skills and outdoor safety with professional instructor Paul Kirtley.

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