Kit mentality Useage vs Investment

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http://www.thepathfinderstore.com

Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

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when folks take camera at a finer school stay with me got another video coming right now you're gonna see me use a lot of different pieces of kit throughout the course of nine hundred or thousand videos before it's over with and the reason for that is several things a if I haven't tested it or used it I can't tell you whether it's good or bad I'm not going to base my opinion on what someone else says I'm going to base my opinion on what I've used and what I've tested then I can tell you whether that product is good or bad or what my honest opinion is of that product the other thing that I want you to understand is that you don't necessarily have to go out and buy the most expensive kit on the planet and just because I show it in a video doesn't mean that I'm saying hey you need to go out and buy this I'm showing you an option understand that I spend a vast majority of my time in the woods so gear for me has to be as good as it can be because it has to last me if I'm going to spend a lot of money on a piece of kit and the kit that I showed in this video probably has a thousand dollars in it if I had to guess but a lot of people pay a thousand dollars for a whole lot less than something that's going to last almost their lifetime so what I want you to understand is that base your kit on your individual needs if you don't need something that's going to last for generations buy something that's going to last two years by what's within your budget but always bear in mind what your end use of that product is going to be and base your judgments on what's individually needed for you in your environment in your situation on your budget and for what you plan to do with that piece of gear morning guys Dave camera at the Pathfinder school what I thought I'd do today is I wanted to kind of go over the kit that I basically carry most of the time with me into the woods when I carry a kit into the woods I'm carrying that kit for anything from an overnight stay to a week or more and if you understand the elements of your kit you understand how to use those elements of your kit and you have a basic working knowledge of the landscape in your environment you shouldn't have to carry a whole lot to effectively do a whole lot and I think that's part of bushcraft that people fail to understand if you are bushcrafting

talking about survival situations or survival scenarios or zombie apocalypse or the brown stinky stuff hits the fan what we're talking about here is I'm planning to go out here I'm planning to stay for a few days I'm going to hike around and do some camping I'm going to do some enjoying myself around the fire and I'm going to do some hunting on the side so I can use a fresh game I find bushcrafting I have to have a knowledge of the landscape and a knowledge of my environment to craft the things that some of the things that I need so I'm going to carry the items that directly affect core temperature comfort and a couple convenience items and beyond that I'm going to bush craft or wood craft the other items that I need and that's an important thing to understand I see too many people talk about bush crafting and they carry you know this giant pack load of crap honestly that they don't need and that's where the five-and-ten cease mentality comes in and if you've got those five C's covered properly and the other five C's to make up your tendencies there should be nothing that you can't create or do with those pieces of kit and some type of firearm traps or bow or fishing rod or some way to conveniently capture or kill game animals that you can eat so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about a kit right here that I've got that I would carry for a day to a week to a month this kit will sustain all of that with no problem and it doesn't weigh any more than probably thirty pounds and I like to keep my kit weight down as much as I can but again you reduce the weight of your kit by reducing the amount of items that you carry not the weight of certain items and that's a key element to understand because people talk about oh I wouldn't want to carry an eight pound tarp around why wouldn't you it's going to last you forever and if you're not carrying you know six pounds of other garbage that you don't need then it's the same as carrying a two-pound tarp as far as I'm concerned so let's start off with the C's and we'll go through that a little bit at a time we'll walk right down the line with what I've got in this pack and I think you'll understand that you can do pretty much all you need with what I'm carrying at thirty to thirty-five pounds okay so let's start off by understanding that we're going to carry redundancies we're going to have multiple items and I like to carry my stuff tool heavy so let's talk about first our cutting tool elements of our kit well we have several cutting tools at our disposal we have a regular hunters axe which is about 18 to 20 inches overall we talked about add that in the axe video in our haversack we also carry a bahco laplander folding saw now if it was dead of winter really cold lots of snow I'd went a little bit bigger axe probably and a bow saw of some sort but again if I'm going to go with those options I'm probably going to want conveyance so these options will do what I need now I have a sheath knife on my belt this one happens to be a kept part designed knife that's made out of a high carbon steel it meets pretty much all of my requirements as long as I have an axe because it only has a four and a half inch blade but it is full tang high carbon steel 90 degrees spine non coated and it's sharp as a razor this thing will actually shave hair off my skin I keep my knives that sharp okay along with a belt knife or a sheath knife I also carry a folding knife or a jackknife and this one happens to be a baron sons cutlery trapper model a lot of knives are the same no matter who manufactures them you have trapper model hunter models Stockman models sod-buster type models this happens to be the trapper model it has two blades on it one more of a whittling type blade and then you have more of a skinning type rounded blade here this one happens to be made out of carbon steel it's marked made in the USA cs4 carbon steel it's made out of 1095 high carbon steel Berenson's cutlery makes this knife it goes along with the mentality of can I hit this thing with a rock and drive sparks off of it if it's high carbon steel I can do that so it just gives me that more versatility of my knife I don't like stainless so I carry that in my pocket

okay so combustion in my haversack carry a large ferrocerium rod that's like my backup rod in my haversack so if I lose all my other stuff I always have a fire-starting implement on me and I always carry a lighter in my pocket now in my backpack I carry a tinder bag when I call it tinder bag and basically it's just an oiled bag and it will linen bag that has a combination of fatwood candles and birch bark river birch bark so that gives me a tinder bag that I can put inside my oil cloth or inside my oil skin or oil canvas oil canvas backpack keep it pretty dry and I'm always going to have that dry tinder source if I need it inside that pack that's important to me so I keep that in one outside pocket of my bush pack and then a cup of course this is in my haversack now inside my bush pot is where I generally carry whatever type bush pot I'm carrying is where I generally carry most of my other elements of fire I carry several pieces of cut down fat wood in here another ferrocerium rod in here with some lamp-wick and it's a tubular lamp wick it's actually pushed up onto the ferrule rod to help keep it from oxidizing which also acts as a protectant and a tinder source because I can char the end of that thing and use this for a char cloth situation I carry some rawhide cordage in there for making bow drill fires I carry some regular 36 backline in there for making bow drill fires I carry a flint and steel kit inside here and this steel here absent happens to be an se Rowan model and this is a new thing that ESI's come out with and I already told him I'm going to knock this off and make one is shaped like an arrowhead for a pathfinder fire steel and he was all for that just so you know when you see it come out I'm not copying se I'm stealing it from se and he knows that good Jeff Randell and I are very very good friends but

what this is is it becomes a bow-drill handhold which heats up pretty bad your going to need to wear gloves we're going to need to put some type of piece of cloth over top of that that metal is going to get hot but it gives you that handled which is really the hardest thing to recreate on the bow drill itself is the handhold and the cordage it gives you a Flint striking device that you can use for flint and steel that throws sparks and it also gives you a 90-degree edge if you need an extra one for scraping a ferrocerium rod that works pretty good too so that's kind of like three tools in one and a piece of Flint I keep that in a pouch in here as well okay then I keep my magnifying glass in just an old fish hook ten which is just the bottom of a piece of binoculars and then I carry a large charring tenon here it's got a couple extra pieces of Flint in it it's got a few pieces up of pieces of greasewood and then a lot of charred inner material everything from you know inner barks I'm sorry too from punk wood to enter pith of different types of plants so we'll talk about that in future videos those are all inside this charring 10 and then all of that goes in the bottom on top of rag in my slush pot that's also 100% cotton like a small bandana and I keep all those things in here so that my fire-starting implements are handy when I need them and then like I said that's my main fire kit this goes in my hat or sack okay so that gives us basically our combustion element and our cutting tools okay

so let's talk about our container element before we move to cover because we've already got our Bush pot out so our Bush pot is our main camp type container this is what we're going to be boiling our water in making medicines in boiling meat in all of those types of things will be done in this pot you can see this is just an old aluminum coffee pot probably only cost two or three bucks at a secondhand store the container that I carry in my haversack is just a Swiss Army serves canteen so it's about a 1 little over 1 pint canteen but it's made out of metal it has a cork stopper that I can untie if I absolutely had to put the thing in the fire and it's got an aluminum cup with handles and graduation markers up the side that I can use to drink out of I keep this inside my hive or sack and this inside my backpack and that gives me all the containers I need to take care of my cooking my water disinfection and carrying water over distance needs ok so let's talk about our cover elements our cover elements obviously start with the clothes aren't back so we have to make sure that we're dressed for the season beyond that we have to be ready for any environmental changes that may come along with that so what I carry in my pack or in my haversack I mean is my oil cloth watch coat that gives me rain gear that gives me a wind barrier that I can put on over the top of wool to make sure that I'm protected and I carry a blanket pin because I'm sitting on a blanket shard this blanket shardis wool blanket shard which is about the size of a twin but it's hand-woven gives me an extra layer on the outside if I want to use it with a blanket pin I can then put over the top of that this watch code if I need to because it's plenty big enough to do that with it also gives me a ground pad for bedding to protect me against conduction from the ground as well as give me a little bit of padded area to sleep on so it's a multifunctional item this goes in the bottom I have a sack this goes in the bottom I have a sack there's really not a whole lot in my haversack there is you know obviously my extra cover element right there my water bottle canteen my spare Ferro rod my bahco laplander

and I usually carry a small roll of cordage in there 36 bank line and that would take care of all the components of my haversack other than throwing a pair of winter gloves in there like a pair of wool gloves for the season so now beyond that let's talk about our cover element ok our cover element really takes up the majority of my pack and I'll be honest with you my pack is really a container for my cover element for the most part I carry an extra wool blanket a queen-size and woven wool blanket combined with this wool blanket that will get me below freezing especially if I have a fire without a doubt no problem especially if I'm dressed for the season I've actually slept on top of this wool blanket in front of a long fire in just my boil bushcraft shirt and my wool pants in temperatures down around 15 degrees so you can do it with a wool blanket you just have to have the right combination and two wool blankets is always going to be your best bet one smaller one larger yes they weigh a little bit but again I don't have that much in this kit the second element of cover is always going to be some type of oil cloth this happens to be an 8 by 8 well cloth tarp because I have the tarp tent set up over there so I put this one in my kit either one of these will do either one of these will be fine I would prefer the tarp tent for a longer term and the 8 by 8 oil cloth tarp for the short term but either one of them will work for you and they will last you for a long time they're going to not need waterproofing very often if they need waterproofed again or you need to do something to treat them you can treat them with anything from fixing wax to special things that they make to retreat oil cloth with that you can buy off tenesmus website but I've had a lot of my loyal cloth gear like this haversack for several years and never retreated it and it's plenty waterproof so that's not an issue but these two items and this item take up my entire contents of my pack other than my bush pod as far as the big pocket on my pack goes the largest pocket in this bush pack is all taken up by my covering and that's fine with me I have no problem with that I got two outside pockets here I have one pocket in the flap that's all I need besides the haversack because I'm not planning on carrying a bunch of stuff I'm not going to use or don't need that's what bushcrafting is all about so this is my cover element then I put all of the ropes and stakes if I'm carrying them in this pocket which is left empty the other pocket has my tinder in it and it also has a 22 caliber adapter for my single-shot 12-gauge for small game hunting or just passing on the trap line other than that this packs pretty empty there's a couple items in this main pocket up here at the top that we'll talk about as we go down through the seas so for cordage obviously I'm going to put all of my ropes and stakes in the side pocket of the bushcraft pack I usually have at least 25 foot to 50 foot of mainline in there which is usually a hemp rope of some sort about nine millimeter diameter of hemp rope and then I have at least one full roll of number 36 Bank line that's usually all the cordage I carry and then if I have a partial roll of this I'll put it in my haversack if all I've gots a full roll I put it in my backpack here's my partial roll that came out of my hammer sock here you can see that about a quarter that's been used so I've got more than enough cordage to last me for a long long time okay so let's talk about some of the other elements of the kit that I have I don't have a whole lot of other items in here to discuss with you I do have my repair kit that we talked about before which has a couple different size sail needles in it it has a diamond rod and has a honing stone that's important to me to make sure I have that it also has a small tube in it with some hooks and sinkers in case I need to improvise a fishing situation with the bank line I have a pair of heavy work gloves and my compass those are the things that really go in the top portion of my pack along with a headlight and that's pretty much all that's in there so those elements make up everything that's in my pack other than spare ammunition which we'll talk about in a minute and my firearms everything that you've seen is the total of what I would carry okay so let's talk about food gathering I carry a single-shot 12-gauge the majority of the time this one is modified down to about 19 and a half inches so it's cylinder bore choke sacrifice a little bit of accuracy but it makes it a really good bush gun because it's compact if I combine that with the 22 caliber adapter I can use it for small game or anything else that I need to take care of while I'm in the wood okay I also carry a 22 single-shot pistol this is just a cheap el cheapo model we cost 100 bucks of the gun show single action the soap forest never let me down so it works for me in a holster like carry on my belt or my pack if I don't want it on my belt I carry 100 rounds of Remington Viper 22 and then I carry a combination in here of 12 shells between 6 shot birdshot and slugs so with that combination of ammunition and that combination of firearms 12-gauge in 22 I can take care of any type game in North America and you take care of as well as dispatching animals on the trapline and that's what I do most of the time is I'm out checking traps so I carry these type firearms for that reason so I can hunt dispatch animals on a trapline as part as well as personal defense for other types of animals that may come along and I put all of that goes into this bushcraft pack ok and I'm going to put all this stuff together for you to show you this kit obviously I can't show you the weight of this kit but I can tell you now it weighs less than 35 pounds for sure and like I said this is long-term sustainment as far as I'm concerned okay guys so there's the pack I'll pack up 12-gauge lean against it ready to rock and roll I'd ask to mate that thing at 30 35 pounds over here on the other tree I've got my hammer sock and my pistol so factoring in the fact that you've got to carry the hammer socket pistol and the 12-gauge you're probably looking at carrying 40 45 pounds of equipment over distance if that's what you plan to do but again this kit is a sustainment type kit once I set my camp up to walk away in scout or hunt I'm not carrying all this stuff so I carry it to where I'm going to set up set up done then I have an empty pack basically I leave most of my implements there except for an emergency bed roll of some sort and my hover sack take my firearms and go hunt and come back well folks I'm Dave calibrate the Pathfinder school and we appreciate everything you do for our family for our business for our school for all the people and folks that are affiliated with the Pathfinder school self-reliance Outfitters we thank you for your views and we thank you for your comments we'll be back to another video real soon thanks you

About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

There is no substitute for having a plan in the event of the unexpected.

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