Did a few firsts today.

Wife and I went to visit friends on the farm for the weekend.
Today their son wanted to go and find a small tree to make a bow.

Most of the area is softwood, but there was an area on their property that
has some birch, so the young fellow and I went looking. Don't know if the
birch will work, but he's going to try. If anything it will give him
experience in carving out a bow.

This was my first time on snowshoes and I'm not exactly in the best shape,
so it was interesting.

A bit of snow outside their house.



Behind this snow hill is a backhoe with a plow blade on the front of it.
They use it for plowing the main yard. The snow bank is about 20 ft high.



Their farm is 80 acres on two levels. The houses, barns etc are on the higher
levels, and then the lower level is where the birch were. This pic is about
half way down, and the birch are in a stand off to the left and down in a
gully. The gully was another 50 feet down on the same level with the trailer.



A picture of our friends son the survival shelter that he's constructing for a survival course that he's taking through school.



His faithful companion



Taking down the tree was an opportunity to try out some of the steel that
I got over the holidays. We found the tree that we were looking for about
half way down the 45 - 50 degree slope that we were going down.

First up was the NWA Camp Knife.



Next was the SOD. First time using it.





Finally came the Khukri.





[img]http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm35/d_filgate/Sorrento/IMG_1761.jpg[/img]

All 3 knives are wicked choppers. I have to give the Khukri an edge
because of it's 10" convex edge blade.
Even though the NWA is 9" compared to the 7.5 SOD, it is a lighter knife
than the SOD. Off hand, I would have to say that they were close in
chopping ability although I only bit the NWA into the tree once in order
to take the picture as I just wanted to get the tree down and get off the slope.

About 30 yards up the gully, we found bear tracks that looked to be only a day
or two old, so we hightailed it out of there....well, as fast as my out of
shape body could climb up about 100 or so feet of 45 - 50 degree tree covered slope.

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that I really need to get
back into shape in the worst possible way. The good news is that I lived
through it.


Cheers.

Great pics D-Thanks for sharing <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />. Us old guys need to stay in shape to keep up or get left behind <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />!! All the steel and scenery looked great <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Cold or not, in shape or not, it looks like you had a great time.

Cool pics, thanks for posting.

great pics dotd!!! makes me happy to be in hawaii!

That Khukri looks wicked! I enjoyed the pics of the steel in actual use, they all appear to be great choppers, nice scores.

Nice story Dotd! I've heard a lot of great things about the NWA's and yours looks like a beaut. I just hacked my SOD through a downed cedar this weekend and it did well. The SOD really wants to chop and I think that is the task that it does best given the way it is balanced. Maybe I'm funny, but that doesn't look like a birch tree that you are taking down....As long as it is hardwood! Cool shelter that your friends son is making.

You could be right my friend. I'm not a tree person, and have a hard time
telling the different types of trees apart. I even have a hard time telling
an immature cedar from a fir. My wife did plant biology in university, and
she just groans at me <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The young fellow picked out the tree and that was good enough for me.

I thought that the knives went through it pretty easily, although I
just attributed that to the "excellent" steel <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Cheers