I don’t think I’ll write much more until August, when caribou season starts and I am back in the mountains.

A german primitive called Thomas, a British guy called Scott and me were for 2 weeks up in some mountains. Not much success in trapping, but we caught 3 kilo trout in nets under the ice. Weather was absolutely stunning (After we were stuck in a snowstorm for 4 days) as you can see from the pictures below. Read the image names for description.

After that I went on a trip with some students from the school which I work at. Yet another nice trip on which we did some ice fishing. I think we caught about 10 small trout.

After that I got my dog. The dog is a mix between East and West Siberian Laika. Very pretty and easily trained dog with loads of energy and interest in all sorts of game. On the day of writing this he barked at something for the first time. Only small birds, but he’ll build up guts for other things later I think. That is how these dogs work. They bark at animals in trees and on ground so the hunter can move in and shoot them. The barking distracts the game so you can come pretty close.

It’s a bit to early to tell on my own part, so most of this is taken from other people’s discription of them. But this dog seems ideal for serious primitive who wants to live off the land. They stay close to camp, warn you about anything that comes close, are very kind to people and don’t venture far from the hunter. They can sleep outside any time of the year. These dogs are direct descendants from the dogs of hunter gatherers in Siberia.

Well, enough about that. For the first time ever I have set up my lavvo with only stone tools. Took about 5 hours, not bad with a scapula for digging and a stone axe for chopping the 12 poles.

I’ll try to make it shorter until next time I update.

What I have done:

• Tanned 5 caribou skins and made a sleeping bag out of them. All of the skins didn’t turn out very soft, but progressively better.
• Made a stone skin scraper for doing the above task.
• Fleshed a few moose skins and a number of caribou skins.
• Made a fur cap of self tanned fox fur.
• Made a number of new bone needles.
• Braided several ptarmigan snares from sinew.
• Hafted my stone knife with cherry pitch, a success you can read about here.

Work is tying my life up and taking too much time, but I’ll have more time off some time in February or March, when I’ll head deeper out into the wilds for a while.

Some pictures:

Cherry pitch, an excellent glue.

Cutting one of the stiffer caribou skins with a flake.

A part of the sleeping bag, before finishing and wringing it. I later discovered that I hadn’t used the optimal stitch, if I had known, wringing wouldn’t have been necessary.

Some of my skins, in a piles and stretched out on the ground. You also see the moose skin coracle we made on a course this autumn to the left.

One of my brothers is making his first buckskin. We freeze dried them and worked them once with a wedge shaped stick. They still need some softening.

It’ll be back up in a few hours

Regards

Torjus Gaaren

I’ll be back tomorrow, with full force probably on Sunday.

Sorry

I have several hundred photographs on my camera, a lot of thoughts and stuff that needs to be sorted out, spam needs to be cleared and some more domestic things also has to be taken care of.

The experience in itself has been rewarding, but without any great victories. In such a situation the only possible motivating victory is a kill. Catching fish is something I already excel at so even if it is food, I don’t count it as an achievement, although it is food. I love fish usually, but the lean and spawning trout isn’t really much in the way of food.  I would have been better off with a bow (illegal) than a rifle, except the instance with the moose.  With a bow I could have shot trushes and other small birds, without as much loss of meat. Other than that, a shotgun would have brought me a kill almost every day.

Next year I will have a wild reindeer (caribou) license, so then I guess things might be somewhat easier. I’ll try to post something more later today.

There will also be some changes in regards to the goal of the blog itself. From strictly displaying skills, I’ll focus more on the experience of it all, in an attempt to catch the interest of more readers. Not that I’m not satisfied with the primitive skills nerds that already read this blog…

Regards
Torjus