Spring Bushcraft Camp

This looks like a good spot to camp. How you doing guys? Thanks for tuning in again. I'm back up north. I wanted to do an overnight bushcraft camp, something a little different than my last couple videos. So I'm up at this awesome property, the nice river down there. Got some red pine up from behind me and there is some hardwoods down to the left of me. I've been walking around for a few hours this morning. I've been walking around for a little bit this morning, just getting a lay of the land. I've seen so far some fiddleheads that are edible. I've seen some trillium. I've been told you guys hear that woodpecker I've been told there is leeks wild leeks available too so it looks like we're gonna get a little bit of rain around 11 o'clock it's just past 9 right now so what I think I'm gonna do is get my tarp set up not worry about camp too much get my tarp set up and go around and pick up some of these wild edibles I can find yeah and then just set up here at the top of this river have a grand old time spend the night just relaxing mosquitoes are starting to come up pretty bad but that's okay once the fire gets going it should help. So I think I want to set up in this pine, this red pine stand behind me, but let me show you why I'm not going to set up right here on the edge. I'd love to. I'd love to set up an Adirondack style shelter right here on the edge and be able to look out and just kind of have the river below me, but there's this large aspen that has fallen and just kind of hung up there and that's right over top of where I would set up my shelter here. It's just not safe, so I'm just going to tuck back in a little bit it's nice and flat back in there anyways and i'll only have 10 feet to walk to get to the to the cliff here a few things i want to look for before i decide to have my camp here uh safety was number one with that big aspen tree falling over bringing it back here but one of the other things is having a fire and obviously in this pine forest there's a concern of just duff on the ground which would be needles and roots excuse me and just leaf matter which is going to ignite and char and smolder and possibly burn the roots and have a forest fire which is something i'm not going to be doing so let's just dig down a little bit and see what kind of soil or earth we're working with okay that's awesome so you can see we have pine needles all the way down then we start to get into the duff which is this organic matter which is like decomposing pine needles and stuff but then right underneath it straight sand nothing could be better for a substrate for the ground so this is gonna be totally fine I'll dig down to sand and yeah sand is perfect I'm going to be using my silnylon tarp my nine-by-nine I use this is the same one I used in Algonquin on my last big trip video my five-day solo thing I got a lot of questions about it this is the same type I've been using for years I have two main ones this is the one that Kyle made so this is silnylon again nine-by-nine a bunch of tie-out points great color you cannot cannot buy these this is a one-off like years ago but we are in the process of getting a bunch of these manufactured we'll probably do a run of them it might take a few months might take even a half a year but we're in the process of doing it same tie-out points same material same everything same dimensions so i think today what i'm going to do is do a high high set that way i have a lot of room to work underneath and have my fire run right underneath just kind of hang out if the rains do come and even if not i don't feel like i need a lot of wind protection today just something to keep maybe the smoke underneath my tarp to keep the bugs away so i'm gonna go above my head and set it up maybe from here to this one i've already i've already looked ahead above and there's no deadfall so this cordage is what i use always to set this tarp up there's a reason why it's got these toggles they're an old see the bugs They're an old arrow shaft cut down and grinded down to make knot hard or to make knot sharp. And they're on Prusik's, which can slide, which allows me to tension my tarp very easily. And it's also on this cord, I believe it's called Night Eyes, this old reflective cord, which is smaller, lighter, and easier to, more compactable, I guess, than paracord. And strong, very strong. I've already come around the tree. I'm going to pinch my two ends together. I take my tail, it's going to go inside the loop once, again, inside twice, and then I want to take it on the outside and put it through once. And now what that does is it allows me to tension it, loosen it over and over very easily. Let's say I never tell you nothing. Because this is not that big of a distance, probably right around nine feet across, my tarp is going to be close to the tree and it's going to be close to these old branches that are sharp. So I just want to go knock them down as much as possible to avoid any potential holes in my tarp. Why I like the toggles so well, it's super easy to connect and get on there. Not running around trying to cut toggles and all that fun stuff. I think I'm going to tie this last corner a touch lower than the other corners. And that way, if it does rain, the rain will have somewhere to drip off of it as opposed to pooling on the top and finding its own way down or whatever. spilling on my head. Keep this corner a touch short. Again, taut-line hitch, just so I can adjust. There you go. Ba-bam. Ba-bam. Just like home. I do want to clear away the sticks and stuff from where I'm going to sleep, but I don't want to clear away all this dust. All these needles is going to make for a softer bed, which is okay, but the main reason is I don't want sand everywhere. I don't want sand in my sleeping gear and on me and stuff like that. It's a pain in the butt obviously. Nobody wants a sandy butt. So I'm going to just pick out the pokies. I don't have a ground sheet. My sleeping pad is going to go right on the ground. So I'll just take a couple minutes here. Like I said, pick up the sticks, leave the dove, and then where I'm going to have my fire, I'll clear the whole thing away to the sand. This spot here is the spot I'm going to sleep at it's the flattest on this side of the tarp and i'll have the fire on that side of the tarp skeeto bite right in the old dome little third eye these bugs are nuts already so this is probably well for sure pushing it for no bug netting this is the last trip i want to do of the season without uh without a proper screen i'll probably start using my tent from now on but that's why i wanted to bring just the tarp and the uh the wool blanket because i haven't done a wool blanket spring thing yet um but yeah this is pushing it she's uh she's a bit buggy i see black flies and mosquitoes there's they're all over my microphone all over my face oh man she's lumping up pretty good bud can you see out of it all right the cow wow did you hear a cow you know what i might be able to do even i might be able to leave this on the ground and just kind of wrap it over my body that way my sleeping my sleeping pad is getting a little bit more protection i I don't think it really needs it, but I don't really need all that extra wool blanket either. I don't need to double it up or anything. Maybe this way it will, yeah, this way it'll protect my sleeping bag from the sparks of the fire as well. Or my sleeping pad, I mean. So that can just, once I'm on there, get wrapped over top of me, we're good to go. That's not bad. Oh, nice and flat. That spot is flatter than all my spots in my last trip combined. Now it's time to clear away a spot for the fire. shouldn't be too difficult yeah there's the sand perfect it's all wet it's perfect i don't need a big fire lay i'm not going to be using the fire for warmth tonight this wool blanket will do the trick but i do want to have my fire here to keep down the bugs like i was saying and just for extra fun camping style you know let's camp in without a fire next year there i'd say that this is big enough i don't even need to line it with rocks and the duff piled on the back and the sand is gonna act like some sort of a wind block and have the smoke travel up it so yeah good stuff i think what we're gonna do now is go search around for some wild leeks for some fiddleheads see if i can get any crayfish i did bring a small fishing rod it's called the m rod it's a packable rod take the take it apart somewhat there we go um but the thing is this river does have trout steelhead running through it actually i just missed it missed it by a couple weeks the water is very shallow as you saw before and there's no trout in it at all but i'm hoping i can find some crayfish or maybe some just scragglers or something but let's go down there explore a bit i imagine we'll be down there for a couple hours looking for food so bring a bag to put my stuff in and uh yeah wish me luck before i go down there i'm going to spray a little bit with bug spray i'm just getting eaten here mostly around my neck and my face they're doing it's the only thing that's exposed i guess okay let's play a game you all know how obsessed i am with with poops let's play name that scat what type of scat is this tightly coiled with a hair at the end a long hair at the end lots of hair in it wispy stuff at the end almost completely made of hair and if you look here the same thing wispy end curly end almost with hair tons of hair name that scat sweet i'm on the right track i found some trillium there's one here there's a bunch all under this pine Trillium can be edible the problem is it's Ontario's wildflower and I believe it's illegal to pick it I was doing some research and from what I can find you shouldn't be picking them so we're not gonna pick any of these it's cool to find them I'm glad that I found them tells me that the information about the leeks and the fiddleheads should be correct so good very pretty flower Ontario's Trillium so we have a normal Trillium here a white one and then a purple one here and i believe it has to do with the year first year or second year gets purple somebody who knows for sure why they get the purple coloration if it's the first year or second ones even if it's not that let me know in the comments please i'm sure somebody knows well not looking very promising on the crayfish front or as you can see the fish front just too late you can see right through it see how clear it is it's super shallow very no steelhead running through here right now and doesn't look like there's any kind of pan fish or any kind of bass or anything like that that frequent it i don't even think bass is legal yet it's not it's not open yet oh buddy so i guess i'm going to be doing wild edibles start better start finding some there's some fiddleheads around here a little bit too far gone but there's some that are small still an old pet still got the good curl on the head so you get a bunch of these for anyone wondering what fiddleheads are they end up growing into ferns not all fiddleheads are good to go but but these ones are trying to look for the small thin ones They smell a bit like a cucumber this is like the deepest part of the river and i can see right through and there's no fish at all too little too late too little too late way up there. That's where my camp is and those red pine so that's my view from up there pretty sweet eh you'd be able to actually see my camp if I set it right up on the hill there but i can see the wind starting to roll up there too Actually trees are starting to move back and for leeks and crayfish are what I need now I didn't bring any meat. I only have some rice and some I like two pieces of jerky or something like that But regardless wild foods it is looking under these logs for some crayfish Reality check Joe. This is a healthy River. I thought for sure they'd be crayfish. Oh that wind she's kicking up, bud Not looking too promising guys. I'm giving up on the trout for sure and the crayfish I don't know man I keep lifting up rocks and logs and everything and I'm only only ever finding like dragonfly larva stuff like that so might be doing a vegan day today unwillingly I do have rice no I guess I do have those few pieces of jerky that I can put inside my rice which is okay I'm not too worried about it I brought a little amount of food on on this trip on purpose I will supplement I will find I did find those fiddleheads and I hope to find leeks I know what leeks look like I deal with leeks all the time around my area it's just that I'm not in my area I don't know the lay of the land here. So we can continue looking. Rain seems to have been holding off, so that's good. It was supposed to have rained already. It's noon. Maybe I'll go up and fry up some of my fiddleheads for lunch anyway. We'll make our way back up to the camp. I cannot find any leeks for the life of me. I'm gonna pick some dandelion leaves. He's gonna add with my fiddleheads. Not half as tasty as leeks, mind you. Still edible and not bad. I don't mind. They're a bit bitter. Touch on the bitter side back at camp and my head is cut out off frame oh it's definitely warming up starting to take off my sweater but i'd eat in a life even more so so no leeks as i said i can't find them i don't know i looked everywhere i looked up in the pine which i didn't think it was going to be i looked in the hardwood forest i looked down by the river i looked in the meadow i looked in the field and the van down by the river i uh yeah i can't find any so that's okay i got a healthy portion of dandelion leaves like you saw and fiddleheads so this will be my lunch and that's pretty cool i've got this new to me titanium heavy cover frying pan super lightweight but it is a little bit more durable than you'd see by Snow Peak or something like that a little bit more heavy thicker but that doesn't affect the weight really it's pretty lightweight fit right in the top of my backpack i'm gonna fry these up with some butter i did bring some a little bit of butter as one of my foodstuffs as well as you know the staple M&M peanuts super primitive this trip I mean I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna primitive peanuts anyways the trick with these everybody says like oh you're gonna burn everything you just got to do low heat so what I want to do is I want to get a fire going just with sticks probably pine twigs because that's what I have right around me so even though I'm going to be using pine twigs to start my fire or to have fuel for my fire i think i'm going to walk out to the field and try and grab some old reeds like um some old grasses or maybe some old mullein stalks something like that anyways the field's right here so here we go getting old getting old okay lots of stuff to pick from here these old grasses will be perfect like the ones that are still standing nice and dry these old milkweed stalks gonna be perfect it's got thin at the top thicker near the bottom so I've got my grasses milkweed I might not even need to use my my birch I collected to start the fire with this is all disturbed soil here that's where this stuff grows good that's different Wow do you hear that be super yellow fungus okay well that's super easy man just walked around picked up a bunch of sticks like bigger ones like this to go on the ground on the bottom and then I was able to just grab a bunch of red pine twigs for kindling and then i can go around and grab some more fuel pieces as it's going because i'll have some time so again the reason we're putting this down is just to give it a buffer from the ground i've got my all my little starter pieces this is my grass in here probably the most fibrous part which i'll use to light it i'm not going to use my birch bark and then i will take the tops of the old milkweed really on top then the bottoms to go next and then my twigs so really i do have a few different sizes of kindling right off of here to light that fire i have paper matches this time there are a right way and a wrong way to light a match the wind's picking up right as i'm about to do this so you don't want to do that you really want to just protect the head with your finger style going let's just go away okay and that will go for a minute here because i make a mad dash to go grab some bigger pieces it's not really a mad dash that's going to be good for a minute and the picking up bigger pieces is a matter of running around looking on the ground and picking up pieces that aren't soaking wet which i just did here takes a matter of a second just like that the bugs are gone i'm not going to make a rip-roaring fire i'm not even going to put anything on more than just twigs so that i can cook on the ash and the coals again this is just my lunchtime fire i don't need this to stay all day or anything for my knife on this trip i only brought my swiss Army Bushcrafter. I got it in a Lone Woodsman EDC sheath. Sheath is pretty sweet. I talk a little bit, show a little bit more on my gear video, but it's a brand new company. Anyways, I can keep the lanyard attached to the bottom and still use it. This is the Bushcrafter, the Swiss Bianco Bushcrafter. It's got the saw, or sorry, the knife blade, the awl, and the saw, and that's all. So this is my knife for this trip, along with my 19 inch Wetterling's axe, my old school one. All I'm to do cut up my fiddleheads a little bit cut some of the stock off not too much i'll keep some some stock on this is a cool knife i've used this knife on canoe trips before um solely that's in conjunction with the hatchet or something probably even eat these stems you know just cut them up a little bit into pieces the uh the dandelion leaves are pretty straightforward i'll put a link in the in the description to where you can get one of these Lone Woodsman EDC sheaths if you're interested in it he's coming up with a few more leather products uh things that i have not seen from other people sent me a few so i'm pretty interested in it i know the owner we go back to the old Bushcraft USA days met him up in Ohio a couple times the Lone Woodsman what a good name i don't know how that was still available either so this is going to be very green a very veggie lunch for old Joe which is okay that rain seems to be gone it didn't rain but the uh the threat of it seems to be gone fiddlehead you know what i was planning on putting wild leeks in but considering i can't find any for the life of me i did bring a little chunk of garlic so i'm going to throw that in with the the fiddleheads and i have some butter and salt which i'll throw in as well chunk of garlic i'll just cut up a little bit and then maybe i'll try and still find some after some leeks but who knows do-do-do-do Are you guys sick of me singing yet? It's really key. Okay, so that's there. I will add some butter as well. Keep everything lubed up, you know? Keep it flowing. I do have salt as well. So I'll throw some salt on this make this unhealthy as possible, Joe style. And these coals are almost ready, it's just I gotta die down a little bit more. I didn't bring my spork on purpose so I'm gonna make up a little stir stick slash eating utensil. I'm going to saw off this pine branch. I'm going to saw it so it doesn't break off on a jagged angle. A lot of them are really crappy and rotten, but this one seems to be holding on pretty good. So I don't want to break it off. I'm going to saw it with my Swiss Army Bushcrafter. These saws are actually not bad. There is some resin in this. I can see it through the sawdust coming out already, so it might not be a good candidate, but we'll see. There's resin all in that, but maybe I can shave it down. yeah you know what it's only at the very end you can see it's completely done one two it's a little too hot still you see especially that one's flaming up move the flamey stuff over try to cook just on ashy coals not even on real coals just ashy kind of coals two yeah it's not bad we'll keep moving it away from the heat too you really need this butter to melt though coat everything i'm happy to see that the handle is pretty sturdy it's not flopping anywhere it has this um cinch so you can't so the way it closes obviously is you squeeze it and it goes down so if you put this lock on you can't squeeze it so it won't accidentally fall on you i think that's a really good uh oh there's a piece of wood on my i think that's a really good addition to it garlic's browning up nice nothing's burning we're doing all right they look a lot smaller once you start cooking them man i'm getting hungry oh snap the garlic really imparted into the the grill head that's not bad at all not bad at all all right boys and girls she's done she is done excited look it didn't stick it didn't burn anything you know what the secret is oil grease butter or oil grease or butter oh there's my plane following me around ontario and low heat obviously you saw what i cooked on very low heat so my eating utensil didn't really turn out as an eating utensil i guess it's more of a stir stick but maybe now garlic on there and a fiddlehead that's really good i've had fiddleheads before i just never put the garlic in with them i was hoping to do the leeks which would have been a wild garlicky onion kind of thing which would have been in theory a lot better this tastes really good but it would have just been cooler cooler anyways the dandelion leaves i got one on there too they're shriveled up completely i'm gonna show you oh it's hot don't put it on your lap don't put on your lap little dandelion leaf All bitter bitter as the day is long. Oh my goodness people put them in their salads and stuff eh the dandelion leaves Yeah, really good This would be really really good with some trout in here or some crayfish even little little bits of crayfish But in there like little popcorn shrimp that go over really well. That's okay This goes to show you man wild foods wild foods are not easy to come by a lot of times This is good. These fiddleheads are amazing. I imagine for supper. I will do my three pieces of jerky turkey thank you chris by the way three pieces of jerky left this is the best turkey i've ever had in my life and my rice i'll do that together i'll probably end up throwing some leeks in my rice or sorry some fiddleheads in my rice i do have this tiny piece of garlic left as well but that'll be okay i mean i'm not worried about it i don't need to need to eat a steak every time i go camping right i'm gonna put a link up to where you can get um at least titanium cookware like this pot or my canteen which i brought as well It's all heavy cover put a link in the description. Well, I'm all done. I sat here and ate this whole thing talking to you That was good. That was really good. Fiddleheads for the win and garlic for the win. I'm not hungry. Not at all All right. Well the hike down to the river rinse my rinse my pot out or my pan out Maybe take a little nap. Oh nappy poo. That won't be such a bad idea. Hey this this trip. I want to relax It's just an overnight a little bushcraft overnight. I want to relax I don't want to be going 12 hours like my last trip. You can understand that right? Let's go get some water I got a refill my water bottle. Anyway, we'll get it boiled up clean up my pan. Then it's nap time I think yeah old man Joe. Hey Doug good for cleaning out your pot and very good for cleaning it out Actually, I usually use grass, but when I can get sand point, you know clean that looks Lots more mosquitoes down here. All right, bring that up. Click boil. We're good What's really cool about the spot I'm camped at is that you can actually see my red pine forest right there where I'm camped in and to my right I'm on this ridge and to my right it's all into the hardwoods. I can see ash, maple, birch, oak, cherry, elm, so pretty good diverse area. I'll be getting all my firewood from that area. You can see tons of dead oak twigs ready for the taking. guess twigs is a small term branch oak branches but even right here like this this easy super hard deadwood this is uh maple i want to bring this back with me so what i am going to do is just pour a little bit of water in my pan and since it's so deep the pan it can act almost like a pot you boil water in it i'm just doing that to clean my my pan for my next use just going to boil the water right on top of there or put the pan right on top of there boil the water like that and then i'll put this right next to the coals as well i'll put it in there after this is the first time i've actually used this for uh boiling i always in i always use the cup it's no big deal though i don't care if that gets soot on it my cup i just cleaned i scrubbed this with the sos pad brillo pad and that's as clean as i could get it i actually like that it's a badge of honor to me i don't care if it sounds silly i like the amount of soot i literally couldn't scrub that off guys usage and this titanium heats up super quick, it's gonna be boiling in no time, danger i'm actually gonna pour that right back into my canteen now my pot is my pan is completely clean and my canteen has started to get warm water in it, hot water because of that so we will just push it a little bit closer there and that'll boil up no problem or let's go find some firewood i think I think I'm gonna do that before I take that little nap. My water's boiling anyways, so I'm gonna spend some time getting some firewood. Got a little bit of energy up those fiddleheads, surprisingly enough. It filled me up too, completely. I'm not hungry at all. Firewood, hardwood excitement. So these are all oak. They don't look the most dense, the most rot-resistant, but they are. They're actually very dense wood still. It's leaning a little bit up off the ground, so this is all really good wood for fire. I'm just going to collect a bunch of pieces like this. I'll show you after, once I get back to camp, how I can tell that it's oak, even though it's dead, but super dense, dry, dry enough, whereas it'll get good coal base and I'll be able to burn marginal wood. I need, like I said, fire to keep me warm tonight. It's just like an ambient thing. Gotta boil, gotta boil. I've got a pretty good haul of firewood here. With minimal effort, I've only chopped a few. You saw me chopping that ash, that downed ash. So I told you I'd go through how I can tell that some of this is oak. It's hard, okay, on this one itself here, you can tell because of the grain. It has sometimes these cross markings, but it has a ton of lateral lenticels and markings. So the grain is running this way. You can really see the grain on oak. You can see how dense it is. You can see the long-running lenticels, if that's what they're called. I'm calling them lenticels. It might be something else. That's one way. Super dense. You get a feel for it after, right? So that said you get the long line sometimes going across. There's just certain formation You can see in the grain, but then you get this which is also the same kind of oak But it's farther gone right you can see powder coming off of it You can still tell that it's oak it still has those long grains and stuff And then also it looks like it'll be crap I just grab my knife the quality of the wood looks like it'll be crap because of how much stuff came off of it how rotten it looks but really it's not true once you get down past that stuff there is solid solid oak and you can see that there I can let go of my knife because it's on a lanyard look what a lanyard will do for you hey anyways so you can still see I can't even dent that with my thumbnail a little bit but it's dense dense dense so no worry about this being too rotten looking forward to this a little snooze time a little lay down action the sun's out as you can see behind me it's actually a beauty day right now. Beauty time for a nap, eh? I'll check back in with you guys in a couple hours.