Buying a couple of new axes.

Well, I am going to have very limited tracking and camping this year as I have ended up with a very painful rotator cuff tear in my left shoulder. It is so painful that my driving is limited to 20 minutes at a time. This is curtailing a lot of my plans for 2012 and I am having to rethink them while I heal up. I have my annual budget that I usually spend on these activities but am now going to focus on getting a few new bits of gear that I have had my eye on but have not bought as I would rather spend the money on transport to track or camp in a different place.

Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to carve a few spoons and am planning on continuing with that and progressing onto kuksa cups, bowls and canoe paddles. I have been looking at getting a new axe to use when carving and am struggling to make my final decision as to which I will get. I have a little choice in that as it s my 40th birtday this year I am going to spash out and buy two new axes.

At the moment I am looking at a Roselli as seen in this pic below. I came across this in this blog:

http://spooncarvingfirststeps.blogspot.com/

I have been following spoon carving first steps for a wee while now and find it quite inspiring. Thank you Jon Mac.

The other axe that I am seriously considering is the Gransfor Bruk Swedish Carving Axe.

I have used one of these axes and enjoyed using it. The one that I had the opportunity to try out had a single bevel and was designed for a right handed user. It did feel strange and tended to dig in a bit. Gransfor also do them with the standard two sided bevel. This is where my quandry lies. Do I get the single sided bevel or the one with the bevel on both sides? Or are there better axes out there for carving with that I have not heard of ????

http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/search/label/axes This link belongs to Robin Wood who is another blogger that I follow. In this he would tend to go for the bevel on both sides as it can then be used as a more allround bushcraft axe. I see some strong logic in this.

The other tools that I am planning on buying are a couple of mocotaugans or crooked knives. As far as carving canoe paddles I hape to get to the stage of making them with only the axe and crooked knife. I suppose all of this gear shopping is to motivate myself for getting healed up from this injury. I have another 4 weeks of physio then it is onto steroid injections. I just hope that with resting that it does not have to go to surgery.

While it is healing I am limited to reading about what I normally prefer to do. Really hope this retail therapy helps with the cabin fever that is starting to settle in.

Tracking and Martial Arts

When I used to practice martial arts, I quickly realised that even if you were practicing a striking oriented martial art, you would still learn groundwork; the groundwork just came at a different stage in the training. This was also the case with a groundwork oriented martial arts like Judo; it would start of predominantly with groundwork, locks and throws but would progress onto striking. Most martial arts if not all, by the time you have gone as far as you can go in that style include grappling and striking.

I have seen this contrast between tracking and bushcraft practitioners. Some see tracking as a sub skill set to bushcraft and some especially trackers see bushcraft as a sub skill set to tracking. I am one of those trackers, who sees bushcraft as an additional but useful skill set to tracking. I have recently learned a high level of respect for bushcraft practitioners and I have seen a wide spectrum of people who would use that term and some who avoid it by calling themselves survivalists or backwoodsmen.

The difference for me is in the independent streak I see in trackers who are not elitists but pragmatists. These are guys who would use a blowtorch to light a fire if there was one handy instead of a bow drill especially if time is of the essence. It is a hard mindset to attempt to describe. I guess the tracker from my experience is very competitive and result oriented but not only that they have a very inquisitive mind that needs answers to the mysteries he sees in the dirt. It is not enough to know that you are following a large man carrying a heavy load; there are loads more questions in the trackers mind: what is in the heavy load, why is he taking this route, where is he going, where did he come from, why is he traveling at that time, what is his level of fitness, what is the story in these tracks.

I wonder what a person with this mindset would be like if they had never discovered tracking and only had gotten into bushcraft. I would imagine the person would be a frustrated bushcrafter always trying to push the boundaries of what they can achieve. I guess this begs the question, is a good tracker born or made or is the question a false dichotomy?

It has been a long journey and a few years since my last post. I am now an instructor with Shadowhawk Tracking School and have continued to progress with my journey as a tracker. I decided to revamp my old blog which was named Stalk like an Apache and change it to something more descriptive to the purpose of this blog which is the journal of a Scottish Tracker.


This has been a long and hard journey and I could not have made it without the help of Ian Max Maxwell who has trained me as well as the other Instructors , mentors and students at Shadowhawk. Many of whom I consider to be close and personal friends. They are a real fellowship of like minded and like purposed people.


Many of my next posts will be retrospective bringing you up to this present point from my last posts in 2006.

One recent and upcoming event that I will mention is my being on TV fairly soon. I will be on TV with James May and Oz Clarke along with the Shadowhawk Hunter Force Tracking team. We will be on Manlab 2 in the episode called Prison Break. This is scheduled as far as I am aware for The end of October.

Here I am below in a pic with James and Oz and in another with the Shadowhawk HunterForce tracking team.






I would also like to thank Andrew from Bushwear for sponsorship of equipment which I used throughout the show. The waterproof socks were great in the boggy places and the Jacket was removed after the sun came out as it was a very worm day. I look forwards to getting more wear from it as the nights draw in.

Wild Boar in Portugal

I am off to Portugal to track on Thursday for a week. I was there last year for two weeks. When I was there I saw the tracks of a wild boar and I started to follow the trail. After a while I saw the boar rooting under a tree and I decided to stalk closer. The adrenalin was pumping and I was being sucked in closer. When I was about 25 yards away I saw the face, it was a sow and she had two youngsters with her. They still had not seen me so I stayed to watch but was not willing to get closer as I was not armed. Once they saw me she charged towards me for a couple of seconds and then changed angle and ran off into the bushes. Those piercing eyes!!!! Those eyes were burned into my retina, I saw them in my sleep for a few days afterwards and a year later can still remember them clearly. The wild boar is an ancient symbol in Scotland of courage and power in battle. Here is a carving done in the pictish style:


When I go to Portugal this week I will be doing tactical tracking. This is basically tracking an armed fugitive in lots of scenarios with arrest procedures. This will be my second week in two years training upon this aspect of tracking. Most of the instructors who work with Shadowhawk ( see sidebar links) specialise in tracking animals; I love to track people and would do this for a living if ever the opportunity arose. Last year I was training with a Royal Marine and this year there will be some Portuguese Police. I can do the tracking fairly well in the arid environment and will be challenged this year by focusing on control of the tracking team. last year I spent a lot of time as lead tracker and flanker. This year I hope to learn some controler skills.

Recognition by feather

I have been away for a week working as an instructor with Shadowhawk Tracking School. This was an intermediate and advanced course. This tracking included animal tracking and man tracking during the day and night. Yes it is possible to track at night with the correct equipment. An internationally recognised symbol of the tracker is that of a feather. This feather can only be given to you by a master tracker and can only be earned not bought. It symbolises the heritage of teaching passed on from one tracking generation to the next. This is respect for the teaching not veneration of previous trackers. It is not ancestor worship; it is closer to a rite of passage like a bar mitzva. So around the world other trackers will see me as a tracker not as a wannabe enthusiast. What is fantastic to me is knowing that I am the first and only person in Scotland to achieve this level of tracking. There are a handfull of others in the rest of the UK. This feather took the form of a silver pendant rather than an actual eagle feather.


A close up shows the arrow that is the symbol of Shadowhawk Tracking School. It has cost me a lot of time and effort to achieve this and I am well chuffed. I hope to be in a position in a few years where I can spend a lot more time tracking; possibly earning a living from it.