Cottage & hunting weekend

Good friend of mine have rented cottage to have three families gathering for weekend. Cottage was big and meant for larger groups and located just near sea. After nearly 4 hours driving on harsh weather when snow pouring from sky we finally arrived there and didn´t get stuck on snow on narrow forestroads which was near. So after got kids sleeping it was time to have a supper and put hunting equipment ready cause we have decided to leave for hare hunting early in saturday morning and come back in afternoon when 3rd family will be there already and some other friends of hosts who came to visit on saturday.

Saturday morning had perfect weather for hunting. Snowing have stopped at night and new tracks of animals were quite easy to spot. Our hunting area was just around 10-15 drive away and some half hour hike with skis / snow shoes. I wanted to try snowshoes and my friend E used his old swedish army forest skis.

These new snowshoes are much smaller than my traditional style us army snowhoes, but  carries very well also.

An open fields where snow was not that much skis were pretty good even near 0 deg temp they didn´t slide that well. But when we came into rocky forest area there snowshoes could show it´s "claws". E left his skis and trusted his long rubber boots being enough cause skis were extremely difficult to use there.

After some seeking we found fresh hare tracks and started to follow those to get it out of it´s hiding place. Soon I got firs eye contact on snow white forest hare, but it run over narrow open area bit too far for me to try to shoot with a shotgun, so I followed it´s tracks to it´s hiding place (where they often come back after some running around) and E went after the hare. I waited some 40-50 minutes there and no sign of returning hare. Then E called me that he and his brother have found tracks that hare have went more far and seems not coming back so I changed my position. That time there was 4 of us hunting together and trying to trap that hare. 

We did our very best and still that forest hare was more clever, good for him! We were thinking to leave when we discovered new tracks this time brown hare and I started to follow them with E´s brother. Then suddenly I saw big bird somekind of hawk on tree and it attacked on hare! We discovered some hair and blood on snow after the fight so we lost that chance aswell.
We have been already out around 6 hours and we didn´t take much food with us cause ladies are going to prepare good meal on cottage so we headed back it would take anyway some half hour to reach our car.

Leaving my passplace game didn´t come over here (note the taped barrel of gun to avoid snow getting into barrel when roaming in woods).

On that trip I carried very minimal amount of gear that I could fit on my shoulderbag so basicly I had:

• Shotgun with 5 shells
• Sissipuukko knife
• Firesteel
• Suunto compass
• GSM phone
• Hunting licenses etc.
• Small survival kit
• Plastic bag
• Cordage
• Small muesli bar for snack
• 0,35l thermos of hot tea

On cottage we ate well and went out for snow fun with kids and later took long bath, sauna & ice swimming which mighs sound grazy but is actually very good for health!

In the bush and gear testing

On christmas time I decided to check my small woods property if there was any damage by the storm that run over second christmas day. Wind was so strong that big spruce from neighbour side fell on top of my woodshed that I just built year ago.

So there was no damage on my land only one tree was fallen cutting logging road which leads to area. I was prepared for that and had chainsaw on trunk of my car so I could continue fast.

I have been planning to build kota-shelter and fireplace to make permanent camp on area and later cabin of some kind. So I started wandering area to look good spot for camp and when found started to look fallen trees to make poles for shelter and carry stones for fireplace. There I also had chance to test out old famous finnish "war knife" Sissipuukko m95 (known as "Ranger knife" in english), Sissipuukko is designed by J.P.Peltonen and these are made together with Fiskars.

Sissipuukko m95 is general purpose knife designed for army and outdoors professional use. It have around 5mm thick and 15cm long blade. Because it´s wedgelike profile blade don´t feel like thick at all but it splits very well when batoning firewood. Carbon steel blade have coated with somekind of teflon coating to prevent rust. Knives handle is rubber that is just molded over tang.
Sheath is made of thick leather and it have very unique rubber roll which secures knife in it´s place in sheath.

I have thought to prepare lunch on woods, but wind was still very strong so I ended up to make my fire on small hole to get cover from strong wind. It was getting dark already so I have to act fast. I took small fallen halfly wet small 6-7cm diameter tree, sectioned and batoned it for firewood. It was too damp so I needed something more dry stuff also. I collected some lower dead branches of spruce trees. Those was not completely dry neither.
After that I prepared my fire place on bottom of hole by adding some sand there with small folding showel I got from my buddy sometime ago. I haven´t really used it before that. Showel was surprisingly sturdy and worked well for small digging tasks. I also noticed that inside of the hollow handle there´s space for some essential small items if you want to, toilet paper for example?
I started to prepare my fire and noticed that it was still a bit too windy so I grabbed my poncho from backpack and build a bit of extra cover with that and few meters of iron wire I always carry with me. Now I had good means for cooking so I whittlet some tiny fuzzies with my knife and prepared bunches of spruce twigs nearby. It took quite long while that I got fire going well enough and got enough coals and heat that even bit wet wood will start to burn.

I have prepared very simple meal for me: can of peasoup, rye bread, some xmas ham leftovers with mustard. Now I also had chance to test brand new Zebra pot (got it xmas gift from a friend), smallest 10cm diameter and I found it just good size for one man´s soup. I have used bigger 14cm diameter pot for years so I knew what to expect. Those pots are great for cooking over fire and being stainless steel will last forever and won´t contaminate your food at all like aluminum can do (I don´t consider that so serious anyway). After forawhile I had nice hot soup ready to eat. It´s incredible how delicious simple food like that can be in the bush when you feel a bit cold and make a lot of effort to get your food heated. So I happily enjoyed my meal while watching stars and slowly dying fire. After last red coals turned black I packed my stuff, poured water on my fireplace and threw some sand and soil on top of it to hide black remains of my cooking fire. Time to head back to the logging road and car. Moments like that alone in woods just with your own thoughts staring fire, sounds of nature surrounding makes great things for my head after all christmas hassle and busy family life.

Merry Christmas

I wish merry Christmas and happy New Year 2012 for all my readers.
Have a peaceful Christmas time and take care your loved ones!

Jätkän kynttilä (finnish candle also called lumberjack candle) made and used novadays especially for celebrations like Xmas and New Year. This one I made from dry pinelog with chainsaw.

”Parang” from Philippines

My friend came to visit for Christmas in Finland from Singapore and she bring me a knife from her trip to Philippines cause she knew that I´m kind of “knife nuts”. She asked there parang and something handmade. So she got this and it´s somekind of mix of a parang and western style bowie with sawback and weird notch on back which is maybe decoration.

I can see that it´s definitely handmade due the unevenness, but I think blade is “machine cut” into shape and then heat treated and sharpened. Tang is stick tang and goes through handle. Handle is bent downward and have decorated head . Handle looks like ones parangs have. Handle material something hard black stuff I´m not so professional to tell what it is, but I think it´s somekind of natural material.

Blade is around 4-5mm thick and made of carbon steel. It have concave grind and secondary bevel just like bowies normally do. Sharpening starts quite far and there´s 2-3cm of unused part on the blade so I thought to make choil for fingers so I can choke up for finer tasks like whittling something or so.

 Sheath is cheaply made somekind of fabric / nylon riveted together with maybe carton(?) insert. I have to remake sheath definitely. Traditionally parangs have wooden sheath that is wrapped around waist with piece of cord.

Cause all my blades are users so also this will not end up on the wall so I´m going to test it today how it works. It´s anyway very interesting and different from my other blades so I´m interested to see how it works out for me.

Erätulilla tv-show again

Last week Erätulilla show contained interesting 3 minutes clip of blacksmith / bowmaker / handcrafter Ilkka Seikku making traditional longbow. In the video you can also see his great full tang bushcraft knives in action (Bush punisher in rough shaping and Bush prowler for fine carving) More information about Ilkka´s bows and his knives you can find from his website

Some of you might think why he uses plastic Fiskars axe to fell a tree for bow, but It´s not so much about the tools more important is how you use it and what you do with it ! That bow won´t be any better if Gränsfors Bruks axe have been used on felling. J

I enjoyed that short clip and it was better than the whole 40 minutes other content together. ;)

Recent Erätulilla-episodes you can find from: YLE-areena

Bow hunting

I got my first brown hare (rusakko in finnish) with bow & arrow couple of weeks ago.  I was wandering on area where I knew hares like to be. It was already getting dark when I noticed some tiny movement on distance. I walked calmly and as silently as possible to direction of movement rounding it a bit. Same time I slowly raised my bow and took good aim (hand bit shaking, so excited) at max. of 15 meters. Hare have noticed me but thought to trust his camouflage and lied on ground hoping I will pass it. Then I stopped for just nano second to release an arrow. It didn´t know what was that, death for immediate. (Sure I forgot to take good pictures after shot, damn)

After gutted hare I thought that was good end of the hunting day and head back home with heavy backpack.
At home I took head and front legs of and let it hang on my woodshed for few days cause there was just good few plus celcius degrees outside, so didn´t have to worry meat get frozen and cold enough that there´s no more insects interested of body.

After couple of days I skinned hare and butchered it to suitable pieces. Spine with some meat on it I saved for soup. Liver and heart we ate immediately after gutting.

I thought to save it´s fur for some future use so I stretched it round wood plate and cleaned. I left it to dry for overnight into my woodshed. Place was not so well chosen cause I forgot my cat and she devasteted it totally.. :)
Ok, maybe some fur works later in the future then..

Knifemaking

I found YP-taonta (http://www.yp-taonta.fi/) puukko-blade from my garage few days ago when I was rearringing stuff there. I was supposed to make knife out of it long ago, but that project had been buried somewhere so I thought to start it NOW.

First have to get handle some shape. I like traditional puukko handle with big knob that it´s easy to pull out of sheath so that was easy decision and handle material would be plain birch.

After made brass bolster and hole to handle knife was ready to build up to see what it look like. For handle hole I used drill bit and home made small saw you can see in picture. It´s made out of jigsaw blade.

Next step is to rivet tang into the handle and use epoxy to glue everything together. I like her slow epoxy so you can work without hurry and disassemble parts if there´s some problem without hassle.

Everything looked good so I needed somekind of vise which allow me to press parts together and rivet same time. I made a makeshift tang rivet, from shortened ammo cartridge of .222. I took the primer off from it and reamed the hole big enough for the tang to come through it snugly (saw it done before somewhere like that).
Vise I build up from trashes I found my garage and it worked pretty fine.

So after glue was drying 24 hours it looks like this:

Next step is to shape bolster and leather to fit the handle and oil the handle. Then it´s ready to use after I have made sheath for it. This was actually my first puukko I have ever made. I have made one knife with different technics about 20 years ago, but that´s whole different story.