Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

TOMAHAWK SHELTERS22smovable articles can be made in the same way. Italso makes good fencing around a camp in a wildhog country. To illustrate the process, let us supposeyou want to make a spring bed-frame to holdhay, browse, or whatever your mattress stuff may be.As many sticks as are required are driven firmly intothe ground (make holes for them with a pointedstick). Then take willows or other flexible wands,previously suppled by soaking, and weave them inand out from stake to stake as shown in Fig. 64.To keep the outermost stakes from drawing together,cut a strong stick with a fork at one endand a notch cut in the other and set it between thestakes to keep them apart, shoving it higher up asthe work progresses.Slab Camps.—In the mountains round aboutwhere I live there are many slab camps made bythe native hunters and herdsmen. They last foryears, and are welcome shelters for any wandererswho know their location or who chance to come uponthem when the weather is bad. Very often themountaineers go far up into the wilds withoutblankets or shelter cloths, carrying only their guns,ammunition, frying pan, tin cups, and ''some rationsin a tow sack." This, too, in freezing weather.But I omitted one thing that they always takealong: a full-size axe. Having that indispensabletool, they can get along without tent or bedding, nomatter what kind of weather may ensue. Fromchestnut, basswood, ash, spruce, pine, balsam, orother suitable wood, they split out, with axe andgluts a lot of 9-foot slabs. A stout ridge pole islaid across heavy forked posts or in notches cut intwo adjoining trees to which the pole is withedfast. The slabs are laid, overlapping lengthwise,from ridge to ground. A big log fire is kept goingall night in front of the shelter. Usually that isall. It must be bitter weather that would urge asouthern mountaineer toenclose the sides of such acamp—in his vocabulary there's no such word as"draughts,"