willysjeep

Sorry about the typos guys, I'm on really slow dialup so it has to be a pretty big mistake for me to go back and edit it. I guess it is all right there in black and white. I think my troop had a stack of really old PB cards laying around with the old requirements on them still. This could have led to a lot of confusion. Glad to hear the award is still around. Thanks for all of the responses.

Hi everyone, There has been a rumor floating around that I would like to confirm or dispell. I just got back in to my troop after graduating from college. There are rumors going around that the Paul Bunyan woodsman award has been dropped. The rumor goes that felling trees is now prohibited for youth, making the award impossible to get. Any truth to this? Is this going around elsewhere?

I've got some more historic gear questions for those of you who might know. I just saw an OD green army pup tent half on eBay, but instead of having army numerals it had THE CUB SCOUT stenciled on the end flap. I'm thinking that some contractor decided to market an overrun of government tents directly to civillians. I've read on the web where people remember using army style shelter halfs in scouting. I was wondering if there really was an official scout shelter half, or if a lot of troops didn't just use army surplus ones because they were inexpensive. I've seen old posters from the 60's showing all of the scout tents, and I don't remember seeing the shelter half. As a discussion starter, what types of official tents do any of you remember camping in?

It all depends on the situation I guess. On a hike where we might only have a patrol's worth of scouts and adults combined we probably cook together and share duties. At summer camp when we have two patrols of youth and four or five adults, the adults eat with the patrols on a rotation. If we have too many adults to just place them in youth patrols we might make an adult mess patrol. When we place adults in youth patrols for meals at summer camp for some reason it is tradition that adults don't do any dishes or cooking. On a smaller campout with a higher percentage of adults to youth that would be unfair to the youth, so the adults eat together. The adults usually eat together on camp-o-rees, or when we want to instill some competition in the youth so they raise the bar on their cooking and meal planning.

My troop uses kids size steel spades we found at an old hardware store. The shovel blade is about 1/3 the size of a standard pointed shovel. The ones we have came with 24" wooden handels with a D grip. I think you can still get similar small shovels at most lawn and garden stores. I also use an old entrenching tool occasionally. I bought a german surplus one for like $5. It is heavy though, but nice for moving coals in a permanent camp.

Less expensive nylon tents with only a single layer are usually waterproofed. The double layer(tent+fly) design on modern tents is supposed to allow moisture in the tent out. I find that if I don't leave the front door somewhat open on my one man single layer backpacker I will get condensation all over the foot of my bag even on a dry night. Of course, I camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where the nights are usually cool. I think that ventilation is an often overlooked issue with modern tents that often don't breathe that well.

I always find it funny that the BSA endorsed sheath knives for a while. You could get a 4.5 inch Marbles Woodcraft with an official BSA logo on the blade and sheath. Now they are trying very hard, I think, to look politically correct. I think this zero tolerance idea is supported by the lack of sheath knife safety in totin' chip any more. I figure that scouting should prepare you for life. Even if you don't need a sheath knife for scouting, you might need one later, and I think it would do everybody some good to learn how to safely use one. It would also help to dispell the idea of a nation wide zero tolerance policy. That's my personal dream, but I know changing the status quo is difficult, so I don't make too big of a deal about it.

I can't take all the credit for that. It was my first year as assistant, so a lot of those ideas came down from the vetran director. We sure did a lot of stuff in six weeks, and I think we couldn't have without all of the experience he has. Good luck to you!

According to what the inspectors said when they completed the inspection of Camp Hiawatha, they didn't find any infractions at all. Camp Hiawatha is in Chatham, close to Munising Michigan in the U.P. I don't know how the other BSA camps rated.

I was just assistant director at Camp Hiawatha last year. One big thing we did was to find ways to involve everybody. We had a parent sugjest that we "get the bear cubs in the water and looking for bugs". Needless to say, this would definately NOT be popular with very many uniform-washing cub moms. What we did was to get a big plastic kiddy pool and fill it with muck and water from the bog. They could get elbow deep in the muck and have a good time looking for water insects, but they couldn't really get too muddy. It also meant we didn't have to worry about lifeguards or buddy tags. We still had adult supervisors, but that was mostly to keep the pools from getting broken. Sometimes scouts expect to be spoon fed when they are not familiar with a subject. I had a list of possible experiment ideas for the Energy merit badge, but I didn't give the proceedures. If somebody was stuck on how to demonstrate something they could see a few examples. They then had to come up with the proceedures and demonstrate to me the idea they were trying to communicate. Not exactly spoon feeding, but enough of a prompt to get them thinking. We had a few nature trails that crisscrossed the camp. Unfortunately the land owner next to us had a part of his property clear cut. He had given us permission, and we had built a nature trail across the corner many years ago. We spent most of the summer sending crews down this trail and hauling out short lengths of brush to make the trail visible again. We had rubber knee boots available for people to wear in our beaver pond. We also had many hand nets available for catching things. We had about 6 aquariums donated by various people. We had no electricity, so we couldn't keep fish for very long in the summer heat. We did keep turtles and frogs for a day or two, and garter snakes were pretty common too. The big trick is to release the animals before they get too stressed. We also had to make some collecting rules so that we didn't get fragile reptiles or mammals in. Still, many scouts had a ball chasing frogs through the mud when they had nothing else to do. We also had jars of alcohol to embalm any dead specimines we got in. It was just gross enough to be totally fascinating to younger scouts. We wouldn't keep mangled or decayed samples. There are very few opportunities for scouts to see a real finch or robbin or giant beetle up close. This was just a way to preserve them in sealed jars for others to see later on. Creepy, but interesting.

That's pretty much the boat i'm in right now. I was registered from 18 to 19 as a troop comittee member, and then from 19 to 20 as an ASM, so I guess it was OK for me to be more than just an ASM. I do have an easier time to associate with the current batch of youth because I was just recently their SPL. Unfortunately there is also a temptation to over step my bounds as an adult sometimes. I catch myself though, and remember how it was being lead by the nose by an adult. Actually, I want to remind the other adults in my troop of that some times, and tell them to back off. It is truely an interesting position to be in. I'm sort of the in between man for the youth and older adults because they are more comfortable around me I think.

Camp Hiawatha staff patrol names: 2004 The One- no yell- cardoard "1" as patrol flag Badger- badger badger.....mushroom- red totem badger flag Sausage- "SAUSAGE" said with a lisp- white flag with real BBQ fork stuck in magic marker sausage drawing Chef Bryan's Fan Club- Thank You! - cooking apron with Chef Bryan's Fan CLub drawn on, given to staff cook when he left camp Fog Horn- PL had an air horn for patrol yell- flag had "Fog Horn" in magic marker. We also had a cub pack who called themselves the "raging retards" patrol, and many less out there boy scout patrol names

Just three years ago I got both emergency preparedness and lifesaving not because I needed them both, but because I saw them as both being skills that would be useful. I allways see the activities of scouting as having a twofold purpose. Not only are they a uesful skill in their own right, but they help to support the overall goal of the scouting program. Like being prepared to help. Lifesaving barely scratches the surface of what lifeguarding entails. BSA lifeguard is much more in depth, and is much more demanding. Lifesaving is so whoever has the badge is prepared to assist with unexpected emergencies around the water. To be truely competent as a lifeguard where you can expect to use lifesaving skills the lifesaving merit badge falls a little short. It is never the less an important skill, not just an "introduction to" merit badge like some are, and I feel that if somebody is capable of taking it they probably should. There are a lot of badges that are eagle required that some people think are pointless, or too hard to get. Physical fitness catches a lot of people, and so does Environmental Science. These aren't things that a boy is likely to make a career out of later on, but they are both skills that everybody should probably be exposed to at some point.

The campaign hat of the BSA and that of the army from the 1900's to 20's are identical. In fact, they were produced at the same factory and originally came with no pin at all. Once you earned your first class pin you could put it on your hat. The hatband and sweatband are more modern additions. Nobody has actually taken the time to make the two diferent, so the military contractor that now makes them and the BSA contractor are essentially making hats to the exact same specifications. For mackinac island service camp one year my patrol was "D patrol" until we changed our name to "delta force patrol". Our patrol leader got us all big square delta force patches which we put elastic arm bands on. We looked like dorks probably but it was a memorable fun time. It's sort of a hard call I guess. I mean, you are a boyscout, not a soldier, but then again, it is a youth run organization more than anything else.

I just found a site with repro canvas 1912 army uniforms for sale. They wany $150 for the coat and breeches as a set. All I would need to do is replace the army buttons with a set of BSA buttons off of e-bay and I would be all set. $150 seems like a lot to spend on a hobby at this point for me, but I am considering it. After all, it would be about an almost exact copy, and I wouldn't have to worry about things like the seams coming apart in the wash, which happens to my homemade stuff occasionally. Mabey....mabey... Until then, I get to wear my current "old fashioned" kneesocks and campaign hat and dream of getting more of this cool old stuff. http://www.aefsupply.com/uniforms.htm EDIT: Wow, mabey I don't need to spend that much! I just found the perfect thing to base a BSA 5 button coat off of. I just dug up my old marching band coat from highschool and lo and behold it appears to be based on the 1912 army coat. It has all of the seams in the same places and the same basic style. So, now I have a rough pattern to try to make a coat from! I'll get back to you in about a year and tell you how it turns out. Ha ha!(This message has been edited by willysjeep)