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Bushcraft Basics Ep21: Choosing a Bushcraft Saw

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Bushcraft Basics is back. In this episode we have a look at choosing a saw. But before we look at specific saws we are going to cover some terminology that will help you identify important differences between saws and enable you to choose the right one for the job at hand. I have also brought a range of saws with me in the woodlands and we take a look at each one, cover its pros and cons and examine the differences between them.

I apologies for having o remove this video and re-upload it. I have added some additional footage also.

Thanks for watching!

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Video Transcription

hi there guys is Mike from MC ki bushcraft here and welcome to another episode of bushcraft basics in the last episode of bushcraft basics we looked at fire feathers and that follow on from earlier episodes where we looked at ferrocerium rods but the further we start moving into fire lighting skills and other bushcraft skills we're going to need to process larger materials and we're gonna need to turn to heavier cutting tools to aid us in doing this one tool that you really may want to consider is a saw and I have in front of me here a range of source some very common some probably not so common in the bushcraft world but before we start looking at these saws and having a look at the differences between them their pros and cons and ultimately what they're designed to do we're gonna look at some terminology first and it's not just the same clever its terminology that will arm you with the knowledge and the tools to be able to look at a source objectively and understand what it is good for and why it's different from the one lying next to it there's a lot of different saws out there and they're all good at different jobs and designed for different things and it's important to understand the differences between them before you select one before we get started I've just made a cut in this piece of hazel here and if I move this all right like that you can see that I've actually created a gap in the piece of wood where I've been soaring this is referred to as the kerf it's actual gap we've created the cuts that we make with the saw and if you hear me use that term at any point for out the video this is what I'm referring to I've drawn a handsaw at the top of this chalkboard here mainly just as a point of reference later on we're gonna start talking about the rake on teeth which is the lean whether it leans towards the toe or the heel of the saw which determines whether it's a push or a pull saw predominantly so I've put this diagram here really just to show you that while I'm doing illustrations later that's the way the tooth is actually leaning if I reference it pointing towards the toe or pointing towards the heel you can understand that the toe is where the cutting ends where the teeth end at the very edge of the saw blade if we go back to the very beginning of the blade here it comes into the handle we have the heel just there so at least you have that point of reference but the first term we're going to have a look at on a saw is actually called the set and a lot of you may have heard of this if we pick up this crosscut saw here and we look down the saw just like this what you'll see is that the teeth aren't in a straight line let's say we've got a piece of wood here like this now a nice log running along that and if we draw our saw blade going in to the piece of wood like this that's the body of the saw whether it be any kind of saw at this point it doesn't really matter and at the very end the teeth actually offset like that we made that cut in that piece of hazel earlier if we didn't have that offset then this body of the saw would get trapped in the piece of wood it would get stuck and you may have all experienced this when you pick up an old bow saw with a very old blade on it this one's not too old but if we picked up an old bow saw and we started soaring into a piece of wood sometimes you can find that you're really having to push and you can actually feel the body of the blade rubbing against the kerf and that's simply because the offset on the teeth has worn away all the teeth of somehow been pushed back in like this very slightly so the kerf isn't wide enough to clear the body of the saw so now I've drawn the actual kerf they're in line with the offset teeth they're on the cutting edge of the saw you can see you can clear the actual body of the saw and you generally finds that um on green wood blades much like this bow sore here it has a Greenwood blade on it I'll tell you why in a moment you have quite a lot of offsets on the actual teeth much more than something like this crosscut saw here this carpentry blade this will be much more offset and it's simply to contend with the fact that you're dealing with a lot of SAP and sawdust mixing together and creating a paste that clogs up that kerf very quickly so you have to have large teeth and you have to have deep gullet in between the teeth which are these gaps in between the teeth there to allow all of the actual swarf that you're creating in the kerf to go somewhere so as you push the saw it moves it along the kerf and Chuck's it out the other end and as you pull back it does the same so you generally find on green wood blades you have a wider set than you would on a dry wood blade design to carpentry but at the same time there are pros and cons with that for example on a green wood blade you're not really too worried about producing a very very clean precision cut like you would in carpentry so what happens is is with that wider set you get that wider kerf the saw won't track is easy and it skates around in the kerf a little bit more leading to a rougher cut but even though that might sound like a disadvantage it's actually exactly what you need for green wood and it's fit for purpose and what you can see as well on this blade here if I draw it at the bottom is you have the pegs in sets of four like that and then you have a deep gullet and you have something called a raker blade like that and the raker blade isn't offset it's in the middle in line with the body of the saw and it's just there to aid and clearing all of that sawdust and SAP mixed together out of that kerf and allow you to keep soaring and if at any point all this got clogged up here the actual saw would stop functioning properly and it'd be very difficult to operate if we have a look at this Taylor brothers saw from Adelaide this is a crosscut saw you can see the teeth are very very small on this saw and the gullets in between the teeth are very small as well it's not designed to deal with Greenwood it's designed for accuracy and precision and you can see a very tall body on the saw which also aids in it going in a straight line through the piece of wood we'll talk about what a crosscut a crosscut saw and a rip saw is a bit later on but this is a crosscut saw and I'm it's designed for going across the grain nice and straight and you certainly wouldn't use something like this to achieve the same result but at the same time you wouldn't use this through a piece of green wood and expect it to be easy so putting the SATA side another term we're gonna have a look at is the rake saw what is the rake and I know we just talked about a raker blade on that green wood blade that's something a little bit different right now she means something slightly different on the saw and what it means is the way in which a saw tooth is leaning from a zero position and it's a really important thing to understand that it can be a little confusing because it doesn't mean which way the actual tooth is pointing whether it's pointing to the toe or heel it means which way that tooth is leaning from a zero position regardless of which way it's facing and that may not make sense at this moment but hopefully it will at the end of this so if we have a look at this to here for example and say that's a saw tooth there they're usually on these carpentry tools about sixty degrees like this but you can see that that is the zero position there but that line there if you imagine that as being ninety degrees that's the zero position now that's called a zero rake but you can have a slightly different rake as well you can't have a negative rake and what that would mean is that the teeth is still about sixty degrees but it leans back just very slightly like that and you'll see that on most cross crosscut saws in fact a lot of saws will be like this so that zero lines just there and let's say you've got um 45 degrees here and then you've got fifteen degrees here like that and that's a slightly more common set up that you see you normally see this in a rip saw and we'll go into what rip saw is later on and there's quite a lot to take in if you're not familiar of saws but you know hopefully this will all make sense and that's what you normally see on crosscut saws or any kind of saw that I've got here on a Bose or in actual fact you normally see a very even rake like this and that'll mean something different so we have

zero line 30 there 30 there like that so we still maintain that tooth geometry but we've divided it in half but on a Japanese pole saw you generally see what you call a positive rank and that means the teeth actually leans forward like that very slightly so there's your zero line there's your 60 degrees just here like that and the teeth is actually leaning but what does this actually mean for the performance of the saw well let's put aside whether it's a push or a pull saw for the minute so this here you most likely see this zero rake set up in a rip saw and we'll go into what a rip saw is a little bit later but basically a rip saw is designed to go down the grain line and rip out a portion of the grain like a chisel and that's why you see this set up and it is very effective it will crosscut but it's obviously better suited for the job it was designed for this setup here is very common in most source crosscut saws a lot of these green would work in pruning sors you'll see it in those and you have something that's predominantly gonna cut when it's going this way but when it goes this way it will skate over the cut a little bit more which has its pros and cons but mostly pros in what it's designed for and we'll have a look at some sores and relate that to it in a moment this here is what you generally see in your vows all set up a frame saw a blade supported at both ends a very thin blade it doesn't matter if it's thin because it's held at both ends and it cuts as equally as it does on the push or the pull regardless of which way it's going this setup here is what we tend to see on your Japanese saws a little bit more your ones that are designed for pull sauce not so much the silkies they're more like this but when you start getting into carpentry and you see they're the true Japanese pull sores they're set up like this and they're very thin source and there's a good reason for that and that's because you don't want it doing any cutting when it goes this way because it's such a thin saw that if it catches on the push the sole buckle you want it to skate over the cut going this way and then when you all back this way it does all of its cutting like that so you're clearing the kerf cutting

clearing the kerf and cutting and that's what happens there now the silky Zubat that I have just here as a blade more like this which is kind of a happy medium this is a pruning saw basically for arborists and wooden managers and green woodworkers going out cutting limbs it's design is completely suited towards that and we'll cover that when we have a look at the sauce specifically but we have this secondary line on the edge there and what that does is it allows it to go this way and not catch but come back that way and do quite a bit of cutting and it means that when you're soaring quickly outside in sort of awkward positions the saw doesn't catch and buckle like that you see a lot of people using these saws to quickly especially the folders and they snap the tips off because they're catching it too much you need to just have a nice steady motion and rely on the saw to predominantly cut on the pull stroke which is what this saws really for one thing that is worth mentioning is that when you start getting into these carpentry blades like this and they become very thin and that push sauce what will happen is is you'll see a rib form along the top and that rib is just to make this all very very rigid but still have a very thin fine saw with a fine set and fine teeth to be able to do a very nice cut into a piece of timber and give you some accuracy but let's go into our next term which is called the fleam so what is a fleam saw or some source have flames some do not primarily a rip saw will not have a fleam so when we look at a saw let's say let's take a rip saw where the teeth they're gonna be like this and we've discussed that why the teeth would be like that it's because the teeth are actually chisels now this saw here this henry and distance saw is a rip saw you can see that by the teeth but how do you know that for certain it could be a crosscut saw just with a very very steep zero rake on it but it isn't it's actually

a ripsaw and you can see that by looking straight down onto the actual teeth just like this and instead of seeing blades we see chisels and that tells us it's a rip saw so when we look at this front on what we see in fact if I draw an actual blade like that let's say we've got that set there we see that like that so the blade the actual tooth is flat so if this was face on like that we're looking down the saw like this and the teeth are flat they have no bevel on they have no knife edge bevel so what they're designed to do is if we have a piece of timber let's say we've got a plank just here like that and you know it's like a piece of 2x4 or something and all the grain goes this way like this what that saws designed to do is go down the grain like that it actually removes that column of grain that we see and that produces a very straight cut for us and it's very very efficient but what is a crosscut saw we've got our rip saw just there so a crosscut saw is a little bit different if we draw the actual sat on the crosscut saw it's like that so instead of flat chisels here and here we have blades cutting blades like a knife and it looks a little bit like this remember that set we talked about earlier where you have a slightly negative rake on the actual teeth they lean back slightly or like the bow saw which has a very even rake on it you know the teeth are absolutely even each side so it cuts on the push and pull what you would have is blades like that on the actual teeth now there'd be offset from each other so there's ant there are blades on this one too but they're round the other side they're one-sided effectively you have one bevel and they can be anything from zero to what we have here a zero bevel well we could have ten degrees or we could go up to a sort of twenty degrees even more sometimes on these hybrid souls that are coming out now they have really really aggressive flames on which is why they cut so aggressively so the flame will allow us to identify whether it's a rip solve or a crosscut saw and you have depth as well in these actual these bevels too so if this bevel came down like that this depth that the actual bevel protrudes into the body of the saw blade is called the slope you don't really need to know that and it's it's to be honest with you we probably should keep this simple but it's worth knowing it's it's the slope basically so you know you can have a really aggressive slope on it and quite an aggressive blade again like some of the silky sores that you see out there that are designed predominantly for for people who work in them woodland management that they're pruning tools so they're going to be like that as we said early have to deal with wet wood and sawdust mixed together so really you need as much help as possible allowing all that swarf to move around as we're cutting and not clog up the actual kerf that we're making in the wood so now we had a look at all of that terminology there we can start looking at sauce specifically and sort of relating back to that and you will understand what I mean when I say the teeth predominantly leans towards the heel or the toe or we have a very very sharp fleam on the very sharp bevel or steep fleam on the actual tooth they're deep gullets has a very deep slope on the fleam all these different things so and you'll be able to know why it's a push or a pull saw and it just helps you understand why the saw does what it does best and we're going to start with some of these most common sores here that you see used in in the outdoors in bushcraft in in woodland skills and make our way along and have a look at how they differ from one another we'll start with the backer lap

very common saw this very popular saw used people use it outdoors in bushcraft it's basically a multifunctional pruning saw the advantages of a folding saw straight off the bats are that it sheath is part and parcel of its entire design much like a folding knife that can be put in the pocket the advantage of a folding saw is that the saw is in side its own handle it can go in a compartment it can go in a bag it can go in a cargo pocket I put mine sometimes in this er raven pouch here and just carry it around with me if I go for a walk or something and that that's the advantage of it so it's not something you need a sheath for basically one massive advantage of the backhoe lap lat over a lot of other folding swords especially the silkies is that it locks when it's actually closed and there's a lot to be said for that if we push this button and open up the saw that's what we have to do to unlock it it locks in place and it won't move it's only got one locking position ergonomically handle rubberized designed to be used outdoors slight grip you can see it's a pull saw straight away although it will do some cutting on the push it's predominantly a pull saw you've got a little bit of negative rake on the actual tooth there so the tooth is is leaning back slightly from a zero position but it's still facing the heel of the blade so that's where it's going to do most of its cutting you have seven points per inch and that's how you measure how many teeth there are per inch that's how a saws kind of measured really in a way you've got seven points per inch which is pretty standard for a Greenwood blade this is a multifunctional blade on the backhoe this is the xt reg the three nine six xt range which is what comes with that exactly the same blade that you get with this orange one here the newer orange one the 396 xt we open that up exactly the same but orange I prefer this one because I don't lose it then when I drop it if I do or I put it down but this one has a non friction coating this one doesn't but we have another backer here if you bought one years in years ago I think this one's back in the 1990s you would have got a different blade with your backhoe in fact you would have this blade here which is the JT blade that they do 396 JT blade and you'll see straight away that there's a distinct difference so we have blade that is basically the same tooth pattern as the silky but I do a range of blades for their source as I say you can get the JT blade they describe what that good force is gonna be a very fast green wood cutter this blade cuts just as fast as the silky sauce I see a lot of videos of people saying that the silkies or a superior saw to the backhoe I prefer the backhoe personally and most of the people I work with in woodland management who are full-time professionals will take the back over the silky and I carry it in my pocket but it's not the only saw right unless I'm just going out for a walk or something like that it's not the only saw I carry and you've got to understand its limitations it's a folding saw it's a folding saw so you know that's the weakness really in a folder it's not join there whether it's a fixed blade saw is gonna be a bit stronger for you so you know you carry a folding saw because you want it to fold into itself and go in a pocket you know for me I wouldn't buy one of these and have it on my belt really in a sheath because that's not really why why I kind of benefit from it if you're gonna do that must just get a fixed blade saw if you're gonna wear it on a sheath but let's have a look at the silky very popular saw this is one of silkies smaller folders they do a huge range of folders from very very large ones or ones that like swords if we open this you can see straight away why this is going to cut a lot quicker than the standard xt blade on the back a lot lunda you've got an incredibly aggressive saw that with a very very hard steel a bit harder than this I think and then you can see there that that's predominantly gonna cut on the pull we've got a tremendously steep fleam so the bevel on the saw we have that secondary lean on the tip of the teeth so yes skate across my hand but when I draw back you can see it's biting and it's gonna cut predominantly on that pull stroke the silky just opens it's not a lot of locked when closed blade has a nice ergonomic handle you can see already it's in the pull saw shape as you're pulling back towards you you have that pummel just there or that lump to to be to pulled back and we've got this mechanism here it can adjust you can do that if you're a weird angle say you're pruning in a tree which again what this saw is for it's a pruning saw and we can drop it back like this and they do a huge range of saws I think one up from this is a good size as well but any bigger it starts to get a bit bit kind of ridiculous and you have to remember there is a folding saw at the end of the day so better to have a folding saw and pocket form and a primary saw in your pack then just relying on a big folder like this but that's the silky for you a fast cutter Greenwood does dry wood fast to you know good for the outdoors really in that respect we have a couple of silkies fixed blade stores here you can never pronounce this one what's it called the gum taro 240 so we have the gum taro 240 and the Zubat and these are fixed source so if you're looking for something that doesn't fold and you don't mind carrying a sheath on you you want it to be a little bit stronger than you know you can have these saws as well with the sheath you know if you're walking around all day and you need something that's quick to access on a belt and that's really where these excel you'll be walking around you'll be doing some coppicing you need to just pull the saw out and use it that's where this comes in on your belt come straight out do the cut go straight back in and that's really where these excel and you see people who are walking around managing woodlands they've got them on their belts hanging there they need to chop something they come straight out and obviously this goes in a pocket doesn't need a sheath that's the advantage of that so we have a curved blade on this one this is the Zubat and we have the same tooth geometry as this here we don't to talk about it it's an aggressive cutter hard steel it's gonna skate over the top like this no I don't have to worry too much about that at all but as soon as we pull back it's gonna tear my hand apart because that's where it's predominantly gonna do all of this cutting its gonna do all the cutting on the pull stroke this is a good blade though I mean you can tell it's a pull saw look at that design that's not gonna be a push saw that was a push short be flippin horrible to use I think anyone would buy it but um you know as a pulsar it's excellent it's ergonomic or it's comfortable and this curve means you don't skate in the kerf too much so when you're in that curve cutting you're always making contact you're always that the tips of these teeth are always applying a great deal of pressure into the kerf as they're doing their cut and that's what makes it such an excellent tool actually but you're gonna want to use these tools on a bench you're not really because if you're cutting a piece of wood on the end of a bench you're pulling up and this arm is then having to support that piece of wood as you pull against it that's why push saws excel at what they do really and if we take this crosscut saw here we're soaring on a sawhorse as we go down we're forcing the piece of wood into the bench into the sawhorse and we can keep that cut very close to the end of the bench meaning we don't get any delamination or fraying of the actual grain and it keeps it nice and clean for us as well it's a very bright day in the woodland today so I apologize so everything seems a little bit illuminated it's like someone's shining a halogen light on me in the dark but it's either that or the rain at this time of year so I prefer this but anyway both halls are very very efficient they cut on the push in the pool you can use them on a sawhorse effectively because of that push stroke you can use them to cough this high up if need be and there's different variations the only real downside to them is their size but you do get takedown frame saws like this one Christmas made for me this is his prototype the model made of soft wood he's doing some oak and other woods out of them but you can see that lovely saw and it's a take down quite easily you've got the tensioner here that you twist and that pulls less in here and here and it makes the blade nice and rigid for you I would probably put a dry wood blade on this because I find dry wood blades to be more useful for me because I presses a lot of firewood that's predominately what I'd use this saw for doing is processing firewood and the lovely thing about these frame saws when they're made right like this one balanced very balanced bit of kick it's lovely to operate the only downside is is you've got to assemble it but if you're on your way to camp and you're carrying a smaller saw in your pocket which is what I would be doing you do see anything you need and it's not too big you can use it at a whim and it's not too bad but yeah these swords are really useful and I probably will put it a dry wood blade on this and give it a a good test I've done quite a bit of wood with it already and you know really liked it actually so the advantage of this is it's lighter than a bow saw and it can be taken down and obviously the thing about bow saws is is the blades are cheap but the way this saw works is we move that paddle out of the way and we spin the paddle like that we let the tension off of the actual blade we take that out pop that socket out there you can let the saw hang then pop that out that comes out and then this folds round so because of this huge set on this either green wood blade it can be a bit bitey on the way in but that's easily remedied it's goes together like that and then this wraps around there and then you know you buy some kind of tube to put it in on the side of your pack to keep it water-resistant or you just make a leather or canvas pouch for it and you have it on the side of your backpack I'm gonna make something to strap it to the frame of my frame pack so this can be my my camp tool and I'm there in the evening I can I can basically get logging with loads of nice big logs and it means that fire burns all night I'm not having to walk around all the time grabbing pieces of wood and feeding it which is never fun you just want to chill in the evenings when you're around the campfire but there are lots of other types of bows saws as well we have small bow sauce like this this is a brilliant little saw use this one for years a little 11 inch backhoe with a dry wood blade on it good for green wood too because you've got such deep gullets in the actual teeth and sets of three and enough space there in that curve to let the green wood on all the mulch you create escape but you've got a bear in mind that if you're doing big bits of green wood that's when you're gonna run into trouble the little stuff then soars like this with the wrong sort of blade on it the wrong teeth don't really feel it too much is when you get into the biggest stuff but I like the design of these because they open like that and then you just put in a new blade and you tension it up just like this and it usually has enough tension sometimes they can need adjusting but it's very rare unless they get really old you might see bass or like this though I think why on earth is it that shape and you'll see coppices and people in sort of the woodland management sector use this quite a lot and the reason being is it fits into gaps and you can use that portion of the saw to fit into a gap this portion can be used for logging you start off with the hole saw and as you get through the log you start to go towards the back and go through then you can fit your the nose of the saw the actual toe gets into little gaps and you know it's really useful for that but this one has a sort of tensioner on the back that's like a bolt basically that you twist and it loosens it up and then you tension it and to be see some people really don't like these because they almost seem like they're prone to fail but I actually like them and the reason being is it allows you to the kind of feel the blade a bit and then just do a half-turn feel it a bit more little half turn and then the blade is rock-solid then and with these ones they're non adjustable you see this one you can extend the life of a blade that bit more but if you tighten it up too much it'll snap the blade usually at these eyes at the end where you've got holes in the in the blade but that one's nice and rigid I don't all have backhoes on me this is a Hercules and again you've got that latch on the back that can be a bit so this is a cheap one this was eight pounds nasty cheap Greenwood blade on it just listen to the sound of it yeah not great but the back a do a good one this is 21 inch backhoe with the twist design on the back give that a half turn very rigid dry wood blade on it and this is the one that I carry in my ax my 4 by 4 I have that and a pair of secateurs like a big pair of loppers and you know they do me pretty well actually so Basil's a good all-round as push and pull good for cross cutting because when you're out here cutting wood and you're cutting through rounds you're always going across the grain most the time it's very rare to go down the grain line you know in situations like this unless you're doing notches and such but then these saws will do that job anyway the one thing you will want to make sure you hang on to with these bozos is the guard you usually get a piece of plastic with them

and now you can clip it on and then if it goes in a pack it's not going to catch on anything and there are better things you can make for them you can make like a slip that they they sit in and have it on the side of a pack for example but do keep her keep an eye on that guard they get lost and very easily we do have this saw here I saw was made in Adelaide Taylor brothers tango Nia t8 so this is a crosscut saw it's been been sharpened like one nice saw these old saws are a lovely for working with if you have a workshop and um you're looking for good tools then I always try and go for the old stuff and you know try as long as it's got a decent blade on it and it's not been neglected but that's a lovely cross cut saw deep blade gonna go nice and straight narrow kerf saw track well now sometimes when these things don't track too well you need to look down them this one ISM is as straight as an arrow so that's pretty good and then we looked at this while you and we were talking about um the actual rake of the blade and the fleam so this one has no flame and it has a 90 degree rake on it so this is a rip saw a very aggressive rip saw and you can see that quite easily and this is the the Henry distant d8 and yeah lovely saw made in Philadelphia really nice bit of kit you can see the the ambulance there again you know these are collectors items really now but I mean this this was 25 pounds so whoever sold it didn't really know what they were selling but again that's for going down the grain as we talked about so it's not going over across the grain we got this plank here you'll be going down the grain then it's a really aggressive saw so you really want to be working on a proper bench or something so to use something like this so we've covered a number of things about swords there's actually much more to it as well but so I think this is probably enough for bushcraft basics and if you get into working with wood and carpentry and you start moving into Souls even more you'll learn more about it or even woodland management a lot of the tools you see in the pruning side of things which is all of this here in kind of wood woodland management basically that they're all very very similar in what they do and predominantly you'll see a lot of pull sauce simply because if you have a piece of wood sticking out at the ground like that a branch it's much easier to have a little pull saw and keep your arm nice and straight and pull towards yourself than it is to push and try and keep that piece

of wood from jittering around well there is this the opposite in the workshop where you have a bench and you're pushing down pushing that piece of timber in so the actual bench to keep it steady or on the sawhorse and it's only up to you to go out and try these things and work out what you want for what you're doing if you're going out and you're doing bushcraft and you're watching bushcraft basics because you practice bushcraft skills then I would probably recommend something on the sidelines of a small backhoe or silky in your pocket personally I prefer the backhoe and something like a frame store or a bow saw for when you're around the fire and you've got a process a lot of wood perhaps you don't want to do that so maybe you just carry a one saw like this that you just get used to using on the pull stroke and you know you can use this saw saw here just bear in mind that when it wears away you'll have to pay a lot of money but for a new one you know something along the lines of sixty pounds where there is a bow saw blade is two or three pounds so there's lots lots of trade-offs lots of trade-offs it's up to you to make these decisions I've made mine I do what I do when I'm outside and and that's the way it goes so I hope this video helped you out I hope you found it useful and I'll see you very soon in another episode of bushcraft basics

take care

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About the Author

MCQBushcraft

MCQBushcraft

I'm a UK based outdoorsman who started hunting and fishing with my friends when I was young.

Educating yourself about your surroundings and having the core skills to sustain yourself using your environment is a lost curriculum in the United Kingdom. We are well provided for, so well that "why do anything if somebody else will do it for you". This lifestyle has drastically disconnected people from having the knowledge and skills required to spend even one night in the woods and not get hungry.

I love being outdoors and have never lost the desire to learn and practice skills that I get a sense of natural connection from. Hunting hangs controversy in the minds of many, but in my eyes there is nothing more natural if you choose to eat meat. I appreciate that not everybody hunts in moderation though.

Thanks for reading
Michael McQuilton

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