Wilderness Survival

[heydaralon]

I get the practicality but it really rubs me the wrong way seeing that stuff as a traditional archery enthusiast. I would rather see some primitive bow stuff than *ugh* plastic. Not going to lie.

Do you have a bow that you have hunted with? Did you make it yourself? I know you can get them at bass pro shops or wal mart. I have never used a bow, but it looks pretty damn fun. Some of those bows will like pulleys and gears on them look pretty wild.

[TheReal_ND]

I get the practicality but it really rubs me the wrong way seeing that stuff as a traditional archery enthusiast. I would rather see some primitive bow stuff than *ugh* plastic. Not going to lie.

Do you have a bow that you have hunted with? Did you make it yourself? I know you can get them at bass pro shops or wal mart. I have never used a bow, but it looks pretty damn fun. Some of those bows will like pulleys and gears on them look pretty wild.

No I haven't shot a bow since I was a kid but i sometimes go to bass pro shop and act like I'm buying a bow to test it out in the indoor range. I've had both a compound and a longbow. The mechanical bow is no doubt superior but traditional bows are fine for hunting too. They take more skill. You can get mechanical bows to be a point and click operation with the right set up and minimal range time.

[Speaker to Animals]

I have a trad longbow. It's definitely more challenging.

I feel like a Victorian longbows would provide a happy medium as an alternative to what I have.

[C-Mag]

I get the practicality but it really rubs me the wrong way seeing that stuff as a traditional archery enthusiast. I would rather see some primitive bow stuff than *ugh* plastic. Not going to lie.

Do you have a bow that you have hunted with? Did you make it yourself? I know you can get them at bass pro shops or wal mart. I have never used a bow, but it looks pretty damn fun. Some of those bows will like pulleys and gears on them look pretty wild.

I've shot since I was a kid, I've hunted with bows too. I grew up a traditional recurve bow guy, I've taken Elk and Deer with a bow. The new mechanical bows(compound bows) are ridiculously fast and powerful. But I still like my old recurve. Very instinctive shooting and much faster than a compound bow.

Just go to bow shops, pick up a traditional bow for cheap, and get on with having fun with it.

[heydaralon]

So I have a canoe in my yard. I'm going to take it out on one of the many lakes in my area of my off day from work. I am now single so I have more free time than I've had for years before. Its been several years since I canoed, so all my j-strokes and whatnot need some work.


I am a really big fan of the Wooded Beardsman and I love watching his survival challenge stuff. During one of his challenges (which usually consist of attempting to maintain your current body weight by living off the calories from meat and plants found in nature for 5 days), he made a couple of striking observations:

1) Surviving off the land is hard as fuck.
(this is not particularly striking to me. Shit when we did the wilderness survival campout in boy scouts, we cheated our asses off (snuck food in) and still got pretty damn hungry without doing even 1/10 of what this guy does)
2) Many survivalists you see on discovery channel are really just "starvivalists." They aren't dead, but they are rapidly losing weight due to an inability to get sufficient calories to maintain. They are essentially starving at a slower rate. A real survivalist would theoretically be able to live indefinitely in the wild and store enough energy to stave off starvation.

This dude was brutally honest in the video about this. He had caught lots of fish, eaten several pounds of berries, but he actually concluded at the final weigh in that he lost more weight foraging and fishing (even taking into account the added calories he got by consuming the food) than he would have if he had simply sat underneath a tree for 5 days and ate nothing. That is fucking crazy. This dude is not at expert level in everything, but he is pretty hardcore. If he is having these issues, what does that say about how most of us would do in a situation like that?

3) The woods are not as plentiful as they used to be for this sort of thing and this is likely a result of the huge human population and industrialization of society. In the vid, Beardsman points out that in the past, natives and settlers often survived off the land, and would follow game to areas of plenty. In especially good areas near bodies of water, this often was the place where cities grew. Shit, even before cities, savages would follow game all down the western hemisphere and hunt large animals to extinction. There used to be big ass camels and sloths in N. America, but the Indians likely hunted them all. Same thing happened with Australia. The Sapiens author discuss the reason that so many Koalas live there is because the hunters used to burn the forests down to drive game out. Eucalyptus trees are fire resistant and so they spread in the burned out forests and Koalas diet consist primarily of their leaves. Before the mass extinction of large game animals, imagine how awesome being a hunter gatherer would be. Shit, there are still some in Africa that live far better than Chinese sweatshop workers or Mumbai slum children.

I'm not an environmentalist, but it is worrisome to me that there is a wide feeling of a looming disaster coming in America. Many people with diverse opinions from SF to StA are very pessimistic about the longterm viability of our civilization. I don't know what to think, but after seeing these survival videos and attempting to make simple tools like a bow drill, I realized that I would be fucked if some serious shit went down. I am going to continue to try and learn more, but right now my chance of surviving are slim.


Btw I did make a successful fire in my backyard with flint and a knife so there's that.

[GloryofGreece]

I get the practicality but it really rubs me the wrong way seeing that stuff as a traditional archery enthusiast. I would rather see some primitive bow stuff than *ugh* plastic. Not going to lie.

Do you have a bow that you have hunted with? Did you make it yourself? I know you can get them at bass pro shops or wal mart. I have never used a bow, but it looks pretty damn fun. Some of those bows will like pulleys and gears on them look pretty wild.

I've shot since I was a kid, I've hunted with bows too. I grew up a traditional recurve bow guy, I've taken Elk and Deer with a bow. The new mechanical bows(compound bows) are ridiculously fast and powerful. But I still like my old recurve. Very instinctive shooting and much faster than a compound bow.

Just go to bow shops, pick up a traditional bow for cheap, and get on with having fun with it.

Is that your general advice for someone mildly interested in trying to learn how to use a bow?

[Speaker to Animals]

My longbow was about 140 dollars.

It's only 6o lbs, though.

[C-Mag]

Do you have a bow that you have hunted with? Did you make it yourself? I know you can get them at bass pro shops or wal mart. I have never used a bow, but it looks pretty damn fun. Some of those bows will like pulleys and gears on them look pretty wild.

I've shot since I was a kid, I've hunted with bows too. I grew up a traditional recurve bow guy, I've taken Elk and Deer with a bow. The new mechanical bows(compound bows) are ridiculously fast and powerful. But I still like my old recurve. Very instinctive shooting and much faster than a compound bow.

Just go to bow shops, pick up a traditional bow for cheap, and get on with having fun with it.

Is that your general advice for someone mildly interested in trying to learn how to use a bow?

Yes, for recreational and small game hunting like rabbits and birds. But for big game, if you don't have years of shooting behind you, get a good compound bow. Shooting accurately at 40 yards with a new compound is pretty easy with a little practice.

[TheReal_ND]

My longbow was about 140 dollars.

It's only 6o lbs, though.

My grandpa gave me his fiberglass long bow and that's what I learned on. It was either 60 or 80# iirc so of course I could only draw it to my face and only if I started pointing at the sky and bringing it down while I drew. I tinkered around with that thing quite a bit but stringing it was very hard so I left it strung always and one day in the garage in the heat it just snapped on it's own. My dad got me a cheap compound bow to fuck around with after that and I would shoot it till my fingers were pretty much hamburger meat. I got fairly accurate with it even though I was using basically walmart field arrows. Probably not balanced right or anything for the bow and draw length.

Good times.

Also this guy is pretty much the king of American wood trad bowsmiths last time I checked the internet. He custom makes them for your draw length and is helpful with any questions. Someday I will buy one of his bows.... if hes still around.
https://omegalongbows.m.webs.com/site/m ... network=fw

[Hastur]

So I have a canoe in my yard. I'm going to take it out on one of the many lakes in my area of my off day from work. I am now single so I have more free time than I've had for years before. Its been several years since I canoed, so all my j-strokes and whatnot need some work.


I am a really big fan of the Wooded Beardsman and I love watching his survival challenge stuff. During one of his challenges (which usually consist of attempting to maintain your current body weight by living off the calories from meat and plants found in nature for 5 days), he made a couple of striking observations:

1) Surviving off the land is hard as fuck.
(this is not particularly striking to me. Shit when we did the wilderness survival campout in boy scouts, we cheated our asses off (snuck food in) and still got pretty damn hungry without doing even 1/10 of what this guy does)
2) Many survivalists you see on discovery channel are really just "starvivalists." They aren't dead, but they are rapidly losing weight due to an inability to get sufficient calories to maintain. They are essentially starving at a slower rate. A real survivalist would theoretically be able to live indefinitely in the wild and store enough energy to stave off starvation.

This dude was brutally honest in the video about this. He had caught lots of fish, eaten several pounds of berries, but he actually concluded at the final weigh in that he lost more weight foraging and fishing (even taking into account the added calories he got by consuming the food) than he would have if he had simply sat underneath a tree for 5 days and ate nothing. That is fucking crazy. This dude is not at expert level in everything, but he is pretty hardcore. If he is having these issues, what does that say about how most of us would do in a situation like that?

3) The woods are not as plentiful as they used to be for this sort of thing and this is likely a result of the huge human population and industrialization of society. In the vid, Beardsman points out that in the past, natives and settlers often survived off the land, and would follow game to areas of plenty. In especially good areas near bodies of water, this often was the place where cities grew. Shit, even before cities, savages would follow game all down the western hemisphere and hunt large animals to extinction. There used to be big ass camels and sloths in N. America, but the Indians likely hunted them all. Same thing happened with Australia. The Sapiens author discuss the reason that so many Koalas live there is because the hunters used to burn the forests down to drive game out. Eucalyptus trees are fire resistant and so they spread in the burned out forests and Koalas diet consist primarily of their leaves. Before the mass extinction of large game animals, imagine how awesome being a hunter gatherer would be. Shit, there are still some in Africa that live far better than Chinese sweatshop workers or Mumbai slum children.

I'm not an environmentalist, but it is worrisome to me that there is a wide feeling of a looming disaster coming in America. Many people with diverse opinions from SF to StA are very pessimistic about the longterm viability of our civilization. I don't know what to think, but after seeing these survival videos and attempting to make simple tools like a bow drill, I realized that I would be fucked if some serious shit went down. I am going to continue to try and learn more, but right now my chance of surviving are slim.


Btw I did make a successful fire in my backyard with flint and a knife so there's that.

If there is a collapse of some sort you won't be able to live on wildlife. That stuff is for survival LARPers. There is way too little wildlife to sustain even the small part of the population who know how to hunt or fish.
Stock up on seeds, preserved food and ammo.