View Full Version : BushCraft UK Website: Qualifications and Experience
bush_baby
22-02-2004, 17:32
Hi all,
This website seems very comprehensive and Gary and Tony seem to be very knowledgeable and have lots of reviews of courses and kit etc.
Can I please ask what level of bushcraft experience and bushcraft qualifications that you guys (Tony & Gary) have?
The qualifications interest me particulary since I want to pursue this subject and it would be helpful to know what experts like yourselves have actually studied and gained in terms of courses and qualifications. Also, how many years have you guys been bushcraft experts?
I look forward to your response guys.
Many thanks,
Martin.
Hi Martin.
Hi Martin and welcome to Bushcraft UK, it’s great to have you and it’s great that you have got stuck in on the forum. :biggthump
Many thanks for the complements on the website, it’s feedback like that that make it all worth it. :uu: As for me….Expert! No way! Years spent outdoors (a misspent childhood!) a few courses and a very enthusiastic participant in the huge subject of bushcraft just about sums me up. I think there are very few people that you could really call experts. Some may have a good knowledge of certain aspects but to know it all……that would be fantastic As for qualifications I doubt anyone has them, bushcraft has always been about experience, most of the people that teach bushcraft qualify because of experience, and I must say, that for the most part they have a lot of experience and are great at teaching others what they know. :ekt:
Saying that there are a couple of schools that have introduced courses orientated around producing bushcraft instructors, if you are interested in pursuing bushcraft as a career and would like some sort of formal recognition from a bushcraft school then it would be well worth your time to contact them to learn more. I know that this question has come up on the forum a few times before, do a search or start a new thread and you can probably get the answers you need to successfully pursue the subject. Good luck to you, I really hope that you achieve your goal.
:super:
Welcome to buk bush_baby :wave:
I havn't seen Gary on here for a while?? I think he has a website.....Ahh..www.bearclawb ushcraft.co.uk I think that's the one. It's probably got some information on there about him. :o):
Yep web site has it on there - but i think tony has summed it all up anyway.
Harry - HK your not Harry the Kipper from 3 R Anglain?
i don't have much experians at all, no real "bush" anywhere closeby, i went to a small local "forest" to test mine saw and mine new trangia stove, with mine new snowpeak track 900. I saw 5 people walking by in less than one hour. Wenn most people see you with a knife or sawing down branches, they will have bad thoughts of you. SO i don't really like going there very often, so i can't really practise things in comfort.
i don't have much experians at all, no real "bush" anywhere closeby, i went to a small local "forest" to test mine saw and mine new trangia stove, with mine new snowpeak track 900. I saw 5 people walking by in less than one hour. Wenn most people see you with a knife or sawing down branches, they will have bad thoughts of you. SO i don't really like going there very often, so i can't really practise things in comfort.Being covert is an important skill in IME. I know it can be uncomfortable to be out trying out your skills & equipment, but perhaps if you can be more stealthy about it, you will feel better. Not just so that other people aren't alarmed by you, but also so you can better observe nature (hunt etc etc). As long as you're not actually doing anything illegal ... no one will see/hear and so no one will care.
Or another way that might be better for you is to be *overt* - an orange dayglow jacket/vest for example makes people think you're a worker here and that you're buzy doing your job, so they'll just ignore you completely.
[From my own point of view, as a woman with small children it is important for us to be unobserved when backpacking in remote places ... because well you never know... and when we do come across a bunch of rowdy blokes on a hiking/boozing weekend (as we have on occasion), it's much better that they pass by without ever noticing us. :wink:]
stuart f
23-02-2004, 13:49
I agree with Kathie, whenever i go out ,i go out of my way so as not to be seen or heard by others because some people might not understand that ,i,m not there to do the wood any harm. For example i was sleeping out last week in a coniferious wood and cut down branches from the trees,now if somebody just happened by at that moment i was cutting those branches, they may have jumped to conclusions, and think that i was damaging the woodland. But infact i was cutting said branches because somebody sometime before had broken them, which could let infection into the tree thus causing its demise. So i left a neat cut as to let the trees heal properly and i got the branches for my bed.
Covert works for me because i don,t have to explain to people who don,t know or understand what bushcraft is about. To me it,s about respect to the enviroment & nature. CHEERS
STUART F
Sorry a bit off topic. Anyway my experience IS being outdoors!
Dutchman
24-02-2004, 00:56
some wise words and reading between the lines in this threath indeed.
nice to see how you people in UK can handle subtle things with much feeling and lovely humor :-D a beautiful precious family
nature shows its best!
cheers
well the thing is that you can see the end of the woody bit from the beginning, how the heck are you going to hide there ? i'm already almost intirely dressed in green, except for mine jacket. Have to wait till the tree gain there green layers back, before i can disappear in the woods....
i haven't seen any game of here either...
Dutchman
24-02-2004, 12:25
PC2K,
Buy yourself a small boat, you will get away from it all.
Also try exploring the rest of our country, much to discover.
cheers
well the thing is that you can see the end of the woody bit from the beginning, how the heck are you going to hide there ? i'm already almost intirely dressed in green, except for mine jacket. Have to wait till the tree gain there green layers back, before i can disappear in the woods....
Well the overt approach might be better for you then. Try wearing something that will make people think you are meant to be there. What clothes do workmen wear over there? (here it's bright yellow or orange dayglo jackets or vests).
[We have to do this in geocaching at time because it is important not to be seen while retrieving caches. In some locations that's impossible, so it's better to pretend like you're meant to be there. :wink:]
Bushbaby, one thing I would like to point out, as an after thought is that I am actually nothing to officially do with BushcraftUK - Have reviewed a few items for them and I have offered a few articles which have been accepted but on each occasion this wasn't as a member of staff or anything of like manner.
I, like you, am simply a member of the forum with an interest in Bushcraft and survival and as such any advice etc I offer is given in the same respect - as if I were chatting to a friend. And while I appreciate your comments and agree the site is good in bringing information to light I must say I take no credit for it nor do I endorse all the information that is on here, some of which is (in my humble opinion) incorrect.
Anyway I hope that has cleared things up for you.
i have never watched what workman wear here, never seen one there.... i don't like screaming colors and mine wallet doesn't like a new set of clothing either...
For me, I have no qualifications in bushcraft - I'm not aware of any nor would I be interested or have any desire to have such a qualification. My experience I've picked up over the years, but many stem from childhood. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area where there were many people who had used 'outdoor skills' not as a weekend thing or hobby or to push themselves, but to live. I knew many people who I could only class as expert trappers because if they didn't get meat for the family pot, the family might have gone hungry. Same for edible plants and fungi, which all supplemented what was grown in the gardens in good times and became what they fell back on in hard times. Same when it came to collecting and purifying water.
These people were also, for want of a better word, experts, in medicinal plants because at the time doctors were few and far between. They were people who looked on the skills that we try to define or categorize here as simply a way of life. Their qualification was that they lived. Their information didnt come from a book or course but it was the lore of the land, and I have immense respect for that.
I was lucky and grew up around people who were willing to share their knowledge and skill, to pass them on so to speak. Many were very happy to do this because there was less need for them and they wanted to keep the skill alive. I learned a lot that way - but as always, there's a lot more to learn!
I try to think of bushcraft not as something we've discovered, something new, but as rediscovering the past. Yes, we use a few different tools but that's progress, but I'd important to realize that people lived before ferro rods, goretex, fancy knives and so on. They also lived without needing or wanting to know how to make bow drills.
Most of the information I share here I have tested myself and since it hasn't killed me, I assume it's right. For any omissions or errors, I humbly apologize to those I gave the false information to and to those to which I didn't pay enough attention to when I had the chance.
some good points there, makes me wonder if there`s a group of natives in some dark corner of the earth who sit round talking about what kit they`ve got and what they`d take with them to "survive" the big city. "you`re gonna need a mobile phone with a video on it, a car that costs loads and some fancy clothes and shiny trainers with e mail capability" :-D ,
the "What Qualifications do you have?" question has always been an interesting one in Bushcraft, since no formally recognised qualifications for the subject exist and there is no nationally recognised standard.
The number of informal qualifications (by this I mean non-nationally recognised) that a person has rarely gives any indication of a person’s competence in the bushcraft skills.
For example many of the people who have visited this site have become familiar with Jack and his often amusing rants :lol: (sorry jack :-D)
Jack who makes his living as a hurdle maker has no formal qualifications in bushcraft at all, but he has lived and worked in the woodlands all his life. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to spend some time with him know that every morning jack feeds livestock and milks his goats (and makes nice rugs out of them :shock: ) before setting off into ancient coppiced woodland to start a days work making hurdles just the way his ancestors have for hundreds of years.
Jack makes his living from the woodlands, He is by this very definition a Woodsman.
Yet he holds no qualifications as a woodsman and to argue that someone who has done some 'courses' is a better and more competent woodsman is absurd and ridiculous.
In the time that it takes for a person who has done all the 'courses' with the best schools to build a debris shelter, Jack could build a wattle hut! and would probably be busy converting some goats into rugs to decorate it :-D
After all what qualifications do people like Ray Mears, Mors Kochanski etc have? Yet no one would argue that they are not qualified
And remember that having all the knowledge and experience does not make you a good teacher, many of the best woodsmen in the world have great trouble teaching others, and in the same respect being a good teacher does not mean that you have the knowledge to pass on
Those that have the knowledge and the ability to teach it will earn the respect they deserve
Another problem is that bushcraft does not have any clear boundaries it is an endless learning curve with millions of different disciplines, the tracker, the falconer, the hurdler, and the botanist all have there place in bushcraft yet rarely could one do the job of the other.
As someone once said to me: It all depends on who you use as a benchmark, Ray Mears is an extremely competent woodsman yet the Evenk reindeer herders of Siberia make him look like he still has paint on
And I know that when Ray reads this he will not be offended, anyone who has watched his time with them on TV will have seen his immense respect for them and their abilities.
After all everyone learns from someone!
The simple point that I am trying to make in a very long-winded way is that not having qualifications does not mean you do not have more experience than a course could ever provide
Remember that next time you ask, "What courses have you done?"
As for me, I have only ever done one bushcraft course and all my experience of living outdoors comes from 6 years in Saudi Arabia
All I have learnt comes from watching the bedu nomads whose knowledge of desert survival holds me in wonder.
All my experience is of the deserts of the Middle East, I have little or no experience or knowledge of the temperate north, but I'm Learning
As are we all
I'd suggest that one of the main qualifications needed for bushcraft is being humble. Nature is a powerful force and that shouldn't be forgotten. Bushcraft isn't about machismo and showing off and chest-beating, but about being quiet and peaceful and listening to what nature has to say and learning from it.
stuart f
02-03-2004, 13:50
ADI could,nt agree more!
...listening to what nature has to say and learning from it.
First you have to learn to listen, before you can here what it has to say...
Bushcraft is not something hard to do, just do as all kids do. Try and see what works and what don´t works, some call it learning by doing.
Ray Mears and all others are not gods, they have just found out what works for them, that does not say it the best for you, give things a try.
Absolutely!
...listening to what nature has to say and learning from it.
First you have to learn to listen, before you can here what it has to say...
NickBristol
02-03-2004, 14:22
As a relative newcomer here, I'm still impressed by the range and diversity of experiences that people have and are ready and willing to share.
I think that the points Stuart and Adi make are really well argued and I agree wholeheartedly that experience outweighs qualifications in almost every situation. Combining the two is the ideal and hopefully something that 'bushcrafters' can achieve in the not-too-distant future. If I had the money to go on a course soon I'd choose one that was recommended to me by people like you all, although one small caveat I can think of is the minimum qualifications in 'recognised' skills, such as First-Aid and H&S.
In my small and insignificant opinion the question of courses and qualifications is mirrored by the "what's survival and what's bushcraft" question. I'm fairly confident that I can survive 72 or so hours on my own with the bare minimums in the majority of environments on our planet, and I've been on courses, both civvy and forces, to teach me the basics to help me achieve this - plus my own bloodimindedness not to give in! I've learnt a lot from courses about how to survive but I know that I'd rapidly come up against problems that I can only guess how to overcome after only a few days. This is where the experience of people like Jack (who I'm only singling out as everyone else is too!) come into their own because he can draw on many years of experience of his own, and cummulatively from the people he learnt from, to make the educated and intuitive guesses needed to overcome a difficult situation.
To me courses can only teach you the very basics - be it navigation, hurdle-making, plant identification or first aid - it's then practicing and refining those skills amongst others who know more - and less - that adds up to the real knowledge.
Some very good points and all well made - but I would also add that as well as entering the subject with a sense of humility and learning from nature dont forgot to enjoy what your doing as well.
It is far to easy to become preoccuied with earning badges like a boy scout or collecting togehter all manor of gadgets, far to easy become egotistical about what you kniw or what you think you know and it is far to easy to let these blinker you until you literally cannot see the wood for the trees!
Sometimes the best teacher is the students.
A great point ... I find it almost impossible not to be enjoying myself when I'm outdoors. With hindsight, a bad day outdoors always seems a lot better than an average day in the office! things smell better and taste better!
:-D
Some very good points and all well made - but I would also add that as well as entering the subject with a sense of humility and learning from nature dont forgot to enjoy what your doing as well.