Pablo’s Woodlife: Wildlife, Tracking and Bushcraft

Courtesy of the American Bushman, at the end of last year I received a NRA survival kit and Bark River PSK sample. Over these few months I’ve been looking closely at the contents and have already done a review of the BlastMatch. I will do a more detailed review of the PSK later, but now is the time to look at the kit all together.

First of all, I consider survival kits as an absolute necessity if you spend anytime in the outdoors. A survival kit must at the very least contain something to make a fire, start a shelter and attract attention. Any subsequent content will then depend on the area and conditions e.g. in dry areas or conditions you would need to gather water. After this, I believe it’s all a matter of personal choice. Do you take twine or a basic first aid kit. Do you make room for fish hooks, or wire for a snare? How big should the kit be? Rucksack size? Pocket size? Vehicle size? Perhaps now you can understand how difficult this can be.

So let’s have a look at the NRA kit starting at the container. This is what’s described as an OtterBox which is quite expensive in itself. The box is 6in x 3.5 in. and I would describe this as rucksack size, being slightly too large for regularly carrying in a pocket. This is probably the first minus point for me. I would prefer a basic survival container to be pocket size to fit in a belt pouch or jacket pocket. No chance of it being unavailable in an emergency situation. ‘Otter’ equals ‘water animal’ equals ‘waterproof’. Time for some extreme testing. I left the container and contents buried in a muddy pond last week and extracted it today. I also buried my bare hands in the same pond for a painful 5 minutes to simulate a possible survival scenario of a dunking whilst crossing a river. I was pleased to notice that the box floated which would be a distinct advantage if faced with the afore mentioned scenario. The two front opening clasps were easy to open even with numb hands. The contents were 100% dry. What a great start. Would it stand up to a bit of rough handling though? A tentative kick around produced no adverse effect. I lobbed the whole thing at a tree, not with a huge amount of force it has to be said and…ooops! The whole container burst open and spread the contents around the muddy ground. On inspection I immediately found the problem. The hinge protrudes at the rear obviously to ensure a waterproof seal around the box and being made of plastic it’s particularly vulnerable (pic). The lob might have been the equivilent to dropping the container about 10-15 feet on to a hard surface. It was probably unlucky to have landed directly on the hinge, but nevertheless, not too impressive if the survival kit container can’t survive.

Still with numb fingers, I tried out the WetFire tinder and what looked like a mini hexamine block. I soaked the WetFire tinder and applied the BlastMatch spark after preparing a minimum amout of kindling with the PSK. One push down on the BlastMatch and..bingo! The tinder caught first time. I fed the Hexamine on to it followed by the kindling. Objective achieved.

I’ve already looked at the BlastMatch, but I should reiterate that this is an excellent piece of kit. The main advantage is that it can be used one handed (great if you have a hand or arm injury). It does have a design fault but the main draw back is it’s size. To be incuded in a pocket/rucksack sized survival kit is, to say the least, a bit of an overkill. This thing is heavy, and takes up a third of the Otterbox (RIP). I would prefer to replace it with the Scout sized firesteel that American Bushman also kindly supplied.

The other contents of the kit are a JetSream whistle and a signalling mirror. The JetScream is brilliant. Extremely loud and and high pitched enough to be heard over a howling wind. I must say that I haven’t tried it’s range, therefore I cannot give a particulalry informed opinion. I can say that it certainly works when it’s muddy and wet (doesn’t taste so good though!) Again, the signalling mirror hasn’t been tested at all. The principle of a sighting hole is sound, but the proof will be in how long it lasts. I’ve had a BCB mirror hanging outside of my house for 15 years, and it’s only just getting tarnished. I would like to see something else on the NRA supplied mirror. The BCB mirror has a thermometer and a chart of wind-chill factors included.

Continuation from Saturdays entry… I had tracked the deer and spotted 5 of them on the outskirts of the wood. I originally identified them as Fallow but sitting under the poncho in the rain, I wasn’t so sure. The distance between us was about 50 meters, it was raining hard and even though one of them stood staring at me for a good two minutes, I was not convinced she was a Fallow deer. More likely a Roe. The easiest way of identifying between the two is to have a look at their rumps. Unfortunately, the deer I was looking at was side on. The Fallow has a striped effect rump (white and black rump with a black tail), while the Roe has a white rump (as shown in photo courtesy of museums.ncl.ac.uk). The Roe is smaller and is in fact the smallest of Britain’s native deer. They have become scarce in some areas of Britain. It seems nobody knows exactly why, but I believe they are becoming more widespread again. Certainly in this area of the country, they are quite abundant (except of course in these particular woods).

The more I mused, the colder I got. I had rearranged the poncho to stop the rain pouring through the hood (yes… a good idea to tie up the hood!) and I had angled the poncho to let the rain run off to my right. I had already had a good drenching because I had forgotten to do these simple tasks. It was not particularly cold, but I realised that a combination of damp clothes (what I was wearing had done a pretty good job so far), the lack of activity and the wind-chill was all having an effect of making me cold through to the core (or seemed that way). It was time to act and that didn’t mean walking to the van which was about a minutes walk away.

I gathered a few damp pieces of wood and tried to make a couple of feather sticks. I used my new Companion II knife for the first time and was pleased to say that it performed well. I, however didn’t and the feather sticks were not a great success. I pulled out the tinder from my shoulder bag and after making a small platform of wood and shavings, I lit the tinder with the fire steel. This wasn’t very successful either, and it was a good 5 minutes before the tinder caught. By this time, the shavings and feather sticks were damp again and it was extremely difficult to keep the fire going. The wind had also veered without me realising it at the time and was making matters worse by blowing strongly on the exposed part of the fire. On reflection, I should have a) kept more out of the wind by selecting a more sheltered spot and b) kept the tinder and kindling in a drier state.

All was not lost and at least I did get a small fire going. The fuel was very damp though and it soon petered out. It was certainly not enough to get warm and I considered that if I would have had to stay out longer, I would have needed to prepare the wood much better. Even though I was pleased with the knife, I certainly missed the axe for doing these wood chopping duties.

As it was, I had had enough. I had been out for 4 hours and I was getting colder and colder and wetter and wetter. My gloves were soaking and it was all I could do to take down the poncho and pull on my day sack. As with the axe, I certainly missed the tarp. Even the remnants of the flask of tea weren’t enough to warm me up. I retreated to the van and gratefully drove the short journey home.

An hour later, with feet still thawing even after a hot shower, I thought about the highs and lows of the day. I was delighted I had found the deer, but I wasn’t too pleased about the way I went about trying to ‘survive’. I had made a couple of fundamental mistakes setting up the poncho, the location of my site (nearly facing the wind and on top of a rise), and the lack of preparation for the fuel for the fire. I had nevertheless, actually got a fire alight even for a short time. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do that this time last year. I hadn’t panicked when things went wrong nor become frustrated and given up. Some of these things I might have done in the past. Still lots to learn though.