Did You know - outdoor edition

[WV Sawmiller]

    Did you know you can cook over an open fire using flammable materials as a pot? You can put a section of bamboo filled with liquid over hot coals and it will boil the liquid without burning the bamboo. In fact American Indians and some other tribes used to cook food using the animals stomachs as a pot by filling them with liquid and suspending them over a bed of coals.

[doc henderson]

you can boil an egg in a paper cup full of water in coals.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yeah but I don't eat boiled eggs. :D

   People also used to place hot stones in containers to make soup or stew or just to sterilize the water for drinking.

[Old Greenhorn]

Geez Louise Howard, you don't drink beer or coffee, you don't smoke, and now we learn you don't eat boiled eggs either! ??? That also leaves out egg salad and deviled eggs too. It's a wonder you have any meat of your bones at all. :D

 I found that you can only do one egg in a paper cup, but you can do 2 or 3 in a little brown sandwich bag. I often take a couple of hard boiled eggs to the mill or woods for lunch. Fit in a pocket real easy.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yes Tom. My only bad habit is my overwhelming modesty. ;)

Okay - on to todays topic.

 Did you know Orienteering is a sport involving navigation and normally is a race to find selected points using a map ad/or aerial photographs? The contestants use a map and a compass and are given map coordinates to find. The first contestant to correctly find all the selected points and return to the finish line wins. I assume GPS units are not allowed. :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering

  I remember land navigation classes we had to take as a young USMC Lt and one of the instructors was the first I ever heard talk about Orienteering. They had a club there at Quantico and he was a member and advised in favor of it.

  I well remember our final land Nav we were given a map, a compass and an aerial photograph. We had to find 5 map coordinates and 3 from the aerial photograph. They dropped us off on a paved road and gave us our starting grid coordinate and a list with the 8 points to find. We had to compare the map to the aerial photograph to determine the scale. We did that by finding recognizable points on both and computing the scale using the ratio of distances on the and photograph. The map which was a known distance/scale. Looking at the terrain it might be easier/faster to just run down the road or follow a creek or such.

  I knew I was not good at dead reckoning (Counting your paces to determine distances) for long distances so I would shoot an azimuth line from where I was to where I wanted to go and if I did not encounter my mark where I estimated I went to another known point (A bend in a creek, a hill top, a fork in the trail, etc ) close by and shot a new azimuth and dead reckoned again from there and then when I thought I was close I stopped and hung my shirt or hat on a bush and started making circles till I found the control point and wrote the verification code down. Often it was only 5-10 yards away but it was August and the foliage was thick. Classes doing the same thing in the winter in the snow and no leaves on the trees/bushes could sometimes see their market 500-600 meters ahead plus pretty soon there were trails in the snow heading to the mark from others ahead of you. I think most of my points were within a kilometer of my last point. They told us we typically traveled about 10 miles finding the 8 points.

 The biggest thing I learned from the exercise was to establish a stop point in case I overshot my mark (A creek or trail or such) then find another closer location for dead reckoning. Nobody completed the Basic School without becoming very familiar with a map and a compass.

 The guys in Orienteering get better at locating other terrain features and typically find their way on the run through often very rough terrain.

[Ron Scott]

A common task for a forester. Have also done a lot underwater which is a little more difficult with the water depth factor.

[Old Greenhorn]

So by that Howard you are implying that drinking coffee, beer, smoking, and eating hard boiled eggs are all bad habits? :D ;D I'll take my vices, thank you very much. They may shorten my life, but at least I have an enjoyable ride. ;D 8) Geez, you must find it very hard to be humble, but yet you do manage it. Kudos on you! :D
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Now on today's subject, Orienteering is quite the sport worldwide, particularly in northern Europe where they are crazy about it, it would seem. Lots of courses and coemptions here in the USA too. Those folks don't mess around and they do those courses at running speeds. I had a good friend who just passed away last week who was a navigation nut, among other passions I found endearing. He spent years studying celestial navigation and we also brought him in as a land navigation instructor. Given the right tools, I do believe he could find a needle in a haystack. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Ron,

 I never did underwater mapping. The closest I ever came was when I did my Advanced Open Water Diver's course I had to do a compass bearing from point to point. Of course the current could throw you off in that kind of work The closest I ever came to using it was once in the Red Sea south of Jeddah the water was so murky I had to use a compass bearing to find the beach. Basically the beach ran N-S so all I had to do was go East to hit it. I was not looking to hit a specific spot as distance was not that critical. (If worst came to worst I could surface and look for the coast but the surf was rough and it was easier/safer swimming underwater.)

 Of course when doing land nav if you hit impassable water you'd often have to turn 90 degrees for a distance, cross the lake/stream then go 270 degrees the same amount and continue. It was not hugely accurate so you'd have to adjust based on other terrain features in the area.

 I find navigation if flat land much harder than hilly/mountainous regions because there is so little difference in what you see.

Tom,

  Remember - the goal is not to arrive early at the Pearly Gates in pristine condition but to come sliding up in a cloud of smoke and dust at the last minute and say "Wow! What a ride!".

  I think our instructor pushing Orienteering said it was Scandinavian and maybe even said it was Norwegian in origin. The guys doing it had very large scale maps and photos IIRC but it was an excellent sport for anyone un the woods and especially military.

[barbender]

Orienteering is something I'd really like to have a good working knowledge of. 

[WV Sawmiller]

BB,

   See if there are any clubs in your area and attend their next meeting. Good luck.

[doc henderson]

orienteering and pioneering are still taught and practiced in boy scouts.  BB be sure and get good directions to the meetings.   8)  We practice how many steps to known distances, reading compass, and pick way points.  all of camp Alaska in February is done by compass to find each "town" and part of the points is getting to them in order.  

[WV Sawmiller]

Doc,

  I thought about you this afternoon as I was driving past the Boy Scout Jamboree/Camp Headquarters on Hwy 19 between Beckley and Fayetteville. They hold international BS Jamborees there frequently.

   Yes, counting your steps to learn have many paces you use to do something like walking 100 meters (Dead reckoning) is a great thing to know. However, I bet your measured courses are not on the side of a steep slope with deadfalls, briers and watercourses to cross. That is why I found I was not accurate for long distances. Yes, I could get pretty close if my waypoint was 50-70 meters ahead but me counting and trying to find a point 800-900 meters away was just not that accurate. Often the terrain features are more accurate such as looking for a hilltop or stream or such.

   Did you know when looking for terrain features on a map or aerial photo you need to consider the weather conditions? When looking at a map you may see a stream but if you are there in the dry season it may just be a dip on the ground or a low marsh may be a pond or lake if it has been a wet year.

  My final project in Wildlife Biology at AU we received a photo and were told to sample the land between the main road and 2 logging roads about half a mile apart with a creek as the boundary on the 4th side. We figured our survey running a line 100 meters then going 90 degrees and doing a sample every 100 meter and count the stems and ground cover and such. When we got to the next boundary we turned 90 degrees, went 100 meters and repeated. We estimated 8 such sample lines but when we hit #10 we did further investigation and found the photo was taken in January when the creek was out of its banks and we were doing our sample in July/August when the creek was well back in its banks so we had a much larger area to sample than we first thought and were told.

[WV Sawmiller]

  Do you know if a buttonbuck sheds its buttons? I was thinking about that this afternoon while watching my regular visitor under my feeder. I am confident they do but where do they go?

  I read on one thread they do and it suggested asking a deer farmer. Since the buttons don't break the skin if they shed - where would they go?

  I have shot antlerless deer late in the season and discovered instead of a big doe it was buck that had already shed his antlers. My son shot a buck one time in ML season and when it dropped both antlers fell off so it was ready to shed.

  I have seen plenty of buttonbucks, which are normally this years fawns, and small spikes with pencil sized 3-4 inch spikes, that were normally last years fawns, but I remember shooting antlerless deer on Ft. Benning one time the day before Thanksgiving only to find it was a real roly poly little buck with 1" spikes but were nearly an inch in diameter.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know that many, if not most, modern hunting scopes are variable power? A variable power scope allows you to change the magnification of the scope by simply twisting a bezel on the scope from a range of available settings. A typical scope my be a 3 to 9 power which means you can have magnification from 3 times up to 9 times the actual size. The higher power settings are typically used and real handy for sighting in your rifle and are used for long range shots with a steady rest. The lower power magnifications make it easier to find your target and are used for finding game quickly and off-hand shots.

 One big advantage of the higher power magnification is you can see how steady you are actually holding your rifle by how much movement you see in the crosshairs while aiming.

 Most of us have made the mistake of sighting in our rifles at 9-10 power magnification then forgetting to set the scope back to a low power setting when hunting only to have a nice game animal step out 10-20 yards in front and when we look through the scope all we see is a patch of fur instead of the whole animal.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know white oak acorns have less tannic acid in them than red oak acorns and are sweeter so deer prefer to eat them first? They tend to eat the red oak acorns later in the year when more of the tannic acid has leached out - and the white oak acorns have already been eaten.

[WV Sawmiller]

    Did you know that kudzu and honeysuckle are both invasive import plants from Asia, Japan I think? The odd part is kudzu wilts and drops its leaves at the first sign of a frost while the honeysuckle is pretty much an evergreen and very cold tolerant.  

[WV Sawmiller]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbender

    Did you know the largest salamander in North America is the hellbender - an aquatic salamander? 

    These salamanders are present in our local section of the New River and locally they are often called Mud Puppies. I have never caught one but my son and his buddies used to catch them below the Bluestone dam. I think the salamanders are harmless but they are big and they are ugly and many people seem to think they are dangerous and they not.

[twar]

I think our instructor pushing Orienteering said it was Scandinavian and maybe even said it was Norwegian in origin.

The guys in Orienteering get better at locating other terrain features and typically find their way on the run through often very rough terrain.

I don't know if orienteering is of Norwegian origin, but I can say the country is 96% "very rough terrian", and people love to hike and x-country ski. So navigating with map/compass/GPS is considered to be an important skill.

[WV Sawmiller]

Twar,

   Norway looks a lot like WV. Our Norwegian daughter, Ruth, said she felt right at home when she came as an exchange student to stay with us. The only difference here is when you get to the bottom of the mountain you will likely find a whitewater stream instead of a Fjord. You are a little further north and it gets colder there than we do.

[twar]

Yes, similar indeed. You're either going uphill or downhill, lots of tunnels and no straight roads. Lots of mountains, forest and you're never too far from water. Far more small towns than cities.

[barbender]

Sounds like my kind of place👍

[WV Sawmiller]

   Did you know the Candy Darter is a small, endangered, bottom dwelling fish unique to a handful of WV and VA rivers and watersheds? It is very colorful and looks more like a tropical fish than what you would expect in this region of the USA.

Protecting our Native Candy Darter - Gauley River National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)

[barbender]

That's interesting👍 Sounds like a name you came up with yourself, Howard😁

[WV Sawmiller]

   Naah. I'd probably have named it "streaked fish bait" or "colorful sushi" and really upset them environmental folks. :

[Ianab]

Did you know Orienteering is a sport involving navigation and normally is a race to find selected points using a map ad/or aerial photographs?

Rogaining is a version of orienteering that Lara has done with her schoolmates. As opposed to following a set route past checkpoints it's a competition to see who can tick off the most checkpoints in a certain time. The team can plan any route based on the map, and knowing that the shortest distances might not be the quickest. The social grade events might only be 2 hours, but top level ones have 24 hour times, so a real endurance sport. Seems it's a thing in the US too as the World Champs have been held there a couple of time now. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogaining