Old School Scouting

[Black Jack]

I think this is a GREAT website on boyscouting and the old school non-pc scouting methods and activties. Just excellent and their is a TON of basic info in their on outdoor skills, common sense wilderness knowledge, hiking, survival, stalking games, trailing, tomahawk throwing, wilderness care, first aid, archery, blowguns, how to handle a ax, knife, firearm, how to make a ballista, all sorts of great stuff.

Teaching core aspects of personal responsibilty. Something that seems to be lacking in todays enviroment.

Reminds me of when I was younger and I hope to get my godchild in a good troop like this when he is ready and wants to.

Enjoy-

http://www.inquiry.net/

[Xebsball]

my cousin was on a boy scouting thing when he was young, when they had to go through some tracks and stuff, he dodged the whole thang and took the shortest/fastest way - just straight ahead on the road

[Oso]

I hear you Black Jack.

Not sure how old you are but I am 35 and saw the swan song of real scouting during my high school years.

My scoutmaster was 1/2 black and 1/2 indian and knew some sh!t.

We did stuff.

Then, about my junior year in hs(83-84), the new wave of yuppie scouts came in. I was a patrol leader and quartermaster and was bucking to be SPL my senior year. Then I got this new group of kids in my patrol that just whined, and their parents whined even harder.

I threw the towel in after we had a camping trip cancelled because it was raining.:eek: :confused: :rolleyes:
And those of us that still wanted to camp went down the the Eno River (2nd oldest river in the US after the New River) which was only a half mile from the scout house and pitched some tents.

Now...it did rain a bit as we awoke in the middle of the night and discovered the river had rose and surrounded us as we had pitched our tents on a rise between an old wash of the river and the main flow...but, that's the adventure part of it;)

ah, them were the days.

my second favorite scout story is from when I was still rather young and in a Richmond VA troop and it was the winter of '77 and it snowed a lot that winter. Well, we had the monthly camping trip planned and most of the troop backed out because in addition to the snow it was really dang cold. But, I think 4 adult leaders and 3 scouts still wanted to go (myself included) and one of the leaders was military and made a call and got us a cabin at Fort A.P. Hill in Va and we stayed in the cabin all weekend eating hotcakes and corn beef hash & vegetable stew and roamed the base sledding all weekend.





ok, so I have a few fond memories of scouting.......but then the politically correct yuppies invaded and still wet behind the ears kids starting getting eagle at 13 and sh it.......

da mn where's ma drink?

[Oso]

Snowball Rules

By Dan Beard


The rules of warfare governing a snowball battle are as follows:

Sides are divided by Patrols. The defenders of the fort it being supposed that one-third behind fortifications are equal to two-thirds outside. One Patrol might defend the fort, while two Patrols can join forces to attack. The Patrol Leaders decide, by lot, the choice of position. Only the attacking party is allowed shields and ammunition sleds.

At least thirty yards from the fort a camp must be established by the outsiders or attacking army, and stakes driven at the four corners to locate the camp. Imaginary lines from stake to stake mark its limits. Each party will have its Patrol Flag which it carries with it in the assault. The defenders of the fort must see to it that all damages to the fortifications are promptly repaired.

Any soldier from the fort who shall be carried off within the limits of the camp becomes a prisoner of war, and cannot leave the camp until rescued by his own comrades.

Any one of the attacking force pulled into the fort becomes a prisoner of war, and must remain in the fort until it is captured. Prisoners of war cannot be made to fight against their own side, but they may be employed in making snowballs or repairing damages to fortifications. Any deserter recaptured must suffer the penalty of being made to work with the prisoners of war.

When the outsiders, or attacking army, can replace the enemy's colors with their battle-flag, the fort is captured and the battle is won by the attacking party; all fighting must then immediately cease.

But if, in a sally, or, by any means, the soldiers of the fort can take the colors of the opposite party from the camp and bring them inside their fortifications, they have not only successfully defended their fort, but have defeated the attacking army; and this ends the battle, with double honors to the brave defenders.

No water-soaked or icy snow-balls are allowed. No honorable boy uses them, and any one caught in the ungentlemanly act of throwing such "soakers" should be forever ruled out of the game.

No blows are allowed to be struck by the hand, or by anything but the regulation snowball, and, of course, no kicking is permitted.

[Xebsball]

*sings*

climb a mountain
touch a mountain
cli-mb a moun-tain
touch a moun-tain...

[joedoe]

Geez Oso - so are they the McScouts now? :D

[Oso]

I would say so

a buddy of mine, now at Ft. Hood awaiting orders, is desparately trying to keep one troop back home 'real'

are the Aussie Boy Scouts still keepin' it real?

my respect if they are, America is way to frickin PC

[joedoe]

Originally posted by Oso
I would say so

a buddy of mine, now at Ft. Hood awaiting orders, is desparately trying to keep one troop back home 'real'

are the Aussie Boy Scouts still keepin' it real?

my respect if they are, America is way to frickin PC

I don't know - I have never had anything to do with the scouts. From what I have heard they are not, but again I really don't know much about it.

[Oso]

I've talked to my buddy a bunch about his troop. He's an assistant scoutmaster. He says mostly it's the parents preventing the kids from doing the stuff they want.

that really sucks.

stupid parents.

parents suck.

[joedoe]

Yeah, I remember when I was in high school there was a history teacher that would take a bunch of us out camping and shooting all the time. And I mean real camping - no tents, just a tarp, a campfire and out sleeping bags. Good stuff. Our headmaster put a stop to it because he was worried about the insurance implications for the school. Most sucky.

[Serpent]

Originally posted by Oso
And those of us that still wanted to camp went down the the Eno River (2nd oldest river in the US after the New River) which was only a half mile from the scout house and pitched some tents.


What the...?!

:confused:
:)

[CrippledAvenger]

Personally, I think Scouting's been in trouble ever since they got rid of the quarterstaff merit badge. ;)

[Oso]

Joedoe, yep there's no telling how many kids are growing up these days with only a tv/game sense of what a gun is.



Serpent, to the best of my knowledge the New River (which runs north out of the NC mountains and into West Va.) is the 2nd oldest river in the world.

The Eno (which originates in Hillsborough, NC) is the 2nd oldest river in the US, behind the New. Don't know where that places it in the world, though.


CA, agreed. I'm assuming you snagged the pics from the webpage someone posted here a while ago?

[crumble]

I remember those days. D**m we were pyromaniacs...

But -- like a lot of guys -- I dropped out when my voice started dropping. (I was one of those guys that was almost an eagle by the time I was 13!) By then I already knew how to camp. I really wasn't learning anything anymore...

I remember thinking, this would sure be a lot more fun if some girls were camping, too. Then an Israeli scout visited our troop for a while. He said out there scouting is for boys and girls together. Now that's more like it!, I remember thinking... He said a lot of European scouting was like that.

Any truth to that?

-crumble

[rogue]

Oso, we're currently Robert E. Lee Council!

I was a scout late 60's to the mid 70's troop 176, great stuff. Our scout master was a stickler for a well policed campsite. If we went to a place that had wooden sh!t houses the first thing we did after setting camp was grab the disinfectent, buckets and brushes and clean the thing. And then cleaned them twice a day everyday we were on site and keep them smelling clean. We hated doing it but we loved the results.

The dads were great role models, they'd swear, they'd nip at the hootch, they'd kick you in the azz (literally) if they caught you peeing anywhere around the campsite that wasn't the official latrine and made sure you went to church. They'd all be thrown out of todays scouts if not thrown in jail. :D

And the only rule for carrying a sheath knife was you had to get your totem chip. Still have my knife and still have my hatchet right under my nightstand.

And we'd hike, and hike, and hike.

[guohuen]

Great stuff! I used to be a scoutmaster and unit commissioner for the Daniel Webster council.

[Chang Style Novice]

" (2nd oldest river in the US after the New River)"

Okay, I'll bite - what in the world does this mean?

I got no probs with scouts learning to burn stuff and shoot stuff, but the church thing is why I wasn't a scout.

[shaolin kungfu]

When i was a scout all we did was sit in a gym and make crappy little wooden benches. It was totally gay.:mad:

Although, one time we did go on a campout and we got to shoot rifles and throw tomahawks. Even then there was no sense of "roughing it".

[Oso]

" (2nd oldest river in the US after the New River)"

just geological errata from the anecdote I was telling.





I got no probs with scouts learning to burn stuff and shoot stuff, but the church thing is why I wasn't a scout.

Southpark did a really good episode concerning this issue in Boy Scouts. They are a private institution and you don't have to join them. Not disagreeing with you, I feel the same, but they do have the right to be religious based if they want. As I understand it the Girl Scouts are much more diverse. The first Troop I joined was sponsered by a huge baptist church but there was hardly any religious activity at all. Our most commen activity in the scout bus was gambling.:cool:

My second troop was the coolest. As I described, the scoutmaster new a ton of outdoor skills and we had a lot of fun and were in the woods at least one weekend a month.

rogue, I think my troop in Richmond was Robert E. Lee council. We were Occoneechee(sp?) down here. And, yep, those were the days. I remember on that sledding trip that after us kids went to bed the leaders were definitely sipping on a bottle around the fireplace....I bet you've been to A.P. Hill, huh?

[Chang Style Novice]

Oh, I see. I guess I wasn't aware that rivers could be dated geologically, although now that I think about it it makes perfect sense that they can and must be.

As for religion in scouts, I agree that it's their right to be as exclusive in that regard as they want to be. But they should realize that if they start to exclude people on the basis of religion, (or make religion a major part of their activities, thus alienating scounts of other faiths or without faith) it makes them look like a bunch of intolerant d!cks to a lot of folks. Like me and my family.

[Black Jack]

Glad you guys like the post and no I am not that old school. I will be 29 this year but when I was younger in Topeka and it was only for a few years but I had a very good amount of fun hiking around, doing fun scout activties like camping, archery, making home-made compasses, chopping wood which for some reason always relaxs me even to this day, building fires, first aid, telling spooky stories around a campfire-which was always my fav, just good old fashioned being a young boy type stuff.

From what I understand about a lot of today's scouting practices is that the a soccer-mom would sh!t a brick if they found out the scoutmaster was going to teach their son the basic elements of gun safety and I could see them getting their panties in a ruffle over that snowball war game that oso posted from the site.

On the religous thing, I am an atheist but I have to agree with Oso, its a private institution and I am a big believer in that kind of freedom, a private institution it should be just that, not open to every tom **** and harry who wants to sloth their uppity arse in and change the traditional rules because they feel it unfair.

That goes for traditional mens golf clubs and old military schools as well ;)

[Oso]

I think there is a funny relationship between what we are all talking about:

The more rural the troop the more of the 'old school' type of activities but probably more of a religious atmosphere.

The more urban then less of the good fun and probably less of an emphasis on religion.


But, not all troops are the same. CSN, sorry you didn't get a good vibe or whatever. Scouting can offer a lot. For me it got old and boring when I was going to have to do the 3 'citizenship' merit badges: City, State and Country or whatever they were.



Funny, I was participating in a 5 year long snowball war between the grounds department and my maintenance department till I left that job. As soon as the first snows hit it was on. We salvaged a deep freezer to keep the snowballs in between snows and kept coolers in the trucks so we could ride around the property (doing our jobs of course) and still have a ready supply of ammo.

[rogue]

Here's some pictures of the REL scout camps. The cub scout camp has some really cool cabins. At the Fort the cabins look like barricks, the teepee outside the fort are huge and they now have mountain cabins and even yurts. Very cool.

Cub Scout Adventure Camp (http://www.relcbsa.org/camp%20photos.htm)

Boy scout camp (http://www.relcbsa.org/BrdySndr.html)

[Chang Style Novice]

Oso - the really wierd thing is that where I encountered the sort of goose-steppy intolerance from scout leaders was in Oakland CA 1979!

I mean, stereotypically, you'd think I could've gotten a merit badge in joint-rolling, but that's not how it was...

[Oso]

CSN, that's too bad that happened.

Just start your own organization :)

I'll join. Will I have to smoke pot?
or can I just drink?

[Chang Style Novice]

Heh.

See, that's exactly the problem. There IS no comprable organization. Of course, I'll be turning 34 soon, and lack wilderness skills almost entirely, although I still love to hike and camp and all that. So maybe you're right and I should found a secular group for building character and an love for the outdoors in our nation's youth.

How does the Nature Appreciation Movement for Bright Lucky Americans sound?:p

[Oso]

NAMBLA:eek:

[Royal Dragon]

Hmmmm Scouting...............Nope, never been there. My dad's idea of scouting was to take us all camping by driving out to a large wooded area, walking us into the middle of it, and going home leaving us with nothing but our pocket knives and the cloths on our backs.

When we got home (a week or two later), we always found him in the yard in his hammok kiccking back a few cold ones. the first thing he always said when we got back was "Hmmm, made it home again this year ehyy???? I'll have to drive further out for the next trip"


Actualy, what really happened is my mom forbade him to take us because there were always guns, and kinves involved. My mom was allways weirded out by the whole dead deer thing too, and would whip my sister into a fear fenzy. Basically, she thought Scouting was the little kid version of that, so in an effort to cut my evilness off at the root, I didn't get to scout.

Question, for us adults, are there places we can go learn the whole wilderness survival thing? I used to subscribe to a magazine called "Wilderness Way" Years ago. It was the coolest magazine on the planet. It had all sorts of articals about how to survive in the wilderness, and actually prosper with nothing but sticks and rocks and stuff.

I looooove to Camp and hike, but with my back, back packing is out I think (Although I haven't worn the brace in a year now, so I might be able to do it)

When my daughter was 6, we started doing 4-6 hour hikes every weekend. We'd grab some canteens, and home made beef jerkey, and drive to the woods kust west of Palos hills and just walk the trails. When she was a bit older, I used to plot courses through the wood with a compas, and we would practice navigation skills by gong land mark to land mark in a big circle till we found the car again. Somtimes in the middle, i'd stop us and we would make a fire with one of those little "Doan" magnesium fire starters. We'd let it burn for about 40 minutes or so till we finnished lunch, and got ready to continue on with our hike.

This year, for her birthday, I'm buying her one of those ultra light back packing tents. You know the kind, they fold up into a 14X18 little tube, but sleep 2? I'm getting her a good one so it will last through college.

I have this really really cools tent. It's a comercialy improved version of those WWII Or Vietnam hammock tents. It hangs in the trees, or sets up on the ground, and even though it says it's only for one, I fit a Girl i met on the trail in there with me once. It was tight, no room for cloths, but we did it :eek: :D (I wonder what ever happened to her???)

So, There's got to be some sort of "Wilderness Survival" school out there somewhere.....Right? I mean legit ones. Last time I tried to find one, I found this para military survivalits group preparing for dooms day. I would have had to back pack with a Jeep just to carry all the "Essential" survival equipment they required (About 3 different kinds of guns ranging form .45's to civilian M-16s and enough ammo to fight off the Marines. Water purifiers, 55 Gallon containers of water a pallet full of MRE's.......................Nice guys, but not what I had in mind. Besides, I didn't pass their inintial interview, something about me not liking tattoo's.........or was it, not caring about Black Heilo copters, one of the two, I don't remeber which.

[SaMantis]

scouting from a little sister's perspective ... I was lucky enough to have 3 brothers in the scouts and my stepdad was a scoutmaster, mid- to late-70s. So scouting was a family thing. I remember begging to go with them to troop meetings rather than go to stupid Brownies to make silk flowers & candy apples. But I did learn gun & knife safety and basic marksmanship alongside them because my stepfather thought it was important for everyone to know.

The troop used to go up to a scout camp in the Ocala forest every summer for 1-2 weeks & learn marksmanship, fighting skills, hunting, manly outdoors stuff. One day my brother & friends were messing around just beyond the patrol's campsite and -- it's unclear who -- but one of those little pyromaniacs set fire to a palm frond and the next thing you know there was a major forest fire.

So what did the forest service do? evacuate all the scouts? heck no, they grabbed everyone over 13 & put 'em on the line digging firebreaks. The patrol came back 2 days later covered with dirt & soot, no sleep at all. Try that in today's soccer-mom scouts.

[NorthernMantis]

Originally posted by Oso
I would say so

a buddy of mine, now at Ft. Hood awaiting orders, is desparately trying to keep one troop back home 'real'

are the Aussie Boy Scouts still keepin' it real?

my respect if they are, America is way to frickin PC

Hmm so I see you're a traditional scouter and not a modern huh??:D :D Well traditional scouting techniques are outdated and are not match for contemporary realistic asthetic techniques which are far superior to that classical mess. Traditional scouting techniques are unrealistic for todays age as we know 90% of all squirrel fights got to the gound.:D :D


...... wow for some reason I want to go play metal gear now:eek:

[diego]

Originally posted by Oso
I would say so

a buddy of mine, now at Ft. Hood awaiting orders, is desparately trying to keep one troop back home 'real'

are the Aussie Boy Scouts still keepin' it real?

my respect if they are, America is way to frickin PC

lmmfao at the mental image of freak'n' boyscouts keeping it real:eek:

that's cool tho your story, didn't know they weren't always wussys!.:)

[greendragon]

I was a Boy Scout in the 1950s. Although it gave us good wilderness survival experience, it was full of predatory **** child molesting 20 year old eagle scouts. although i was never a victim, i don't think it left a positive over all impression of scouting with me.

[Mr Punch]

Originally posted by Oso
... As I understand it the Girl Scouts are much more diverse. The first Troop I joined was sponsered by a huge baptist church...
Heheheheh, are you telling us you joined the Girl Scouts too! Heheheheh!:D

You know, you colonial boys should shut up and stop moaning... you don't know how lucky you are...! there is no wilderness in the UK!, and not so much in a lot of Europe. Considering the whole of that independence nonsense of yours was one big scouting trip, what the hell were we supposed to do? (Best Python voice...:o) 'Keep it real' larnin how to rustle someone's sheep, or the Queen's bleedin deer an' ha'larnin ha'whittlin' soft fruits? :rolleyes: It's no wonder you bleeders never hefta grow ap!:p:D


Occoneechee(sp?)But at least we don't have ridiculous place names in languages of people we conquered... er like, Lllanfairpwllgwytryslliochgrwgynwygogogoch (sp?!)... or the heminently sensibly named Chipshop.


And, yep, those were the days. And thank you all for your memories... of course I'm partly kidding, there's a lot of outdoorsy stuff in the UK, it just isn't quite the same doing that kind of stuff within view of the nearest church spire or sodding motorway!


just geological errata from the anecdote I was telling.For some reason I find this deeply disturbing. What didja do eh? Carbon date the water? (Reporting from the newest and largest archipelago er, between the er Sea of Japan and the Pacific... meh, save geology for the nerds' forums, rock boy!:p :D)...