A lunch in my old woods.

Hey guys, I'm out in this bush today that I used to frequent a lot before I started going to the other places that you see in all my videos. This is the place that we used to call the hut woods. We built a hut and it's in the woods. It's between, what are you doing Scoop? There's a huge major road over there, sorry one sec, kicking up dirt onto my pack. There's a huge service main road there on that side, there's two factories on either side of here and there's train tracks on the back. What are you doing, Scoop? So it's not the nicest place, and it's about the size of a football field. It's really just something that they're going to tear down eventually anyways and build more stuff. I just want to show you what Scoop's doing here, being all crazy. What are you doing, bud? Anyways, I don't really know why he's doing that. Maybe he's bored. So yeah, I just came here today. I got some stuff to do, and this is closer to my house than the other places. So last time I came here, it was pretty overgrown and whatnot. and it seems like there's been people here now. I'm gonna take you around and show you all the massive damage that's happened because of these people. And I'm sorry if it's a little windy, you can't hear me, it's pretty windy today. So you see here, used to be a tree, and somebody broke it or chopped it, I don't know. It splintered, so they must have broke it off. So the sucker growth is all growing out towards the ground now instead of up. That's happened here, here, all here, where it's all green right on the ground there, like the carpet, that's because of that. Somebody attempted to make a little lean-to or something here, which is kind of cool. I don't think I would spend a night in it, personally, but it's cool that people are out here trying to do skills and whatnot. This tree's pretty cool. We always used to hide stuff in it. We actually built, you can go right inside it, and if I had a light, I'd show you better, but there's light coming up through the top there. We actually put steps inside it and climbed up to the top inside. This is predominantly hickory, ash and crabapple woods. The hickory and the ash are the big ones. The shagbark, very old, there's another one there. Now all of the ash have died off and I'll show you what happened there. So because of the ash borer, all of the ash trees have died and they're starting to fall down in the strong winds. There's one down there. And also we had an awesome platform built up in the tree. That's it there. So it was on an oak and an ash, and the ash has since died and it twisted. It didn't fall because of the platform that's holding it up still, but it twisted. And this used to be going across this way, and now it's changed direction. The only thing holding that dead ash tree up is that framework there. It's a pretty frickin' good framework if I do say so myself. We were young when we built that, and it was an awesome experience learning that. And that's always what you wanna see, know rubber tires in in the forest yep so my theory is um the emerald ash borer can't get to the trees until they have the bark that's more corky like this so this is a young ash sapling and it's healthy it's growing fine but it doesn't have the thick bark yet if you look on the the stock right there it's smooth so i imagine this guy's got a few years of good health and then uh if if the ash borer is still here which it probably will be then uh time's up for that guy a couple more dead ash and this is the crabapple tree i don't know if it is actually crabapple but it is like a fruit tree kind of thing that is the under undergrowth most likely that's about the the straightest one i've ever seen to be honest they're very gnarled and twisty normally it's got an orange fruit orange wood that burns really hot it's it's really nice i'll probably trying to use some for fire today. There's a nice big old oak, looks to be a red oak. The steps going up to it, I didn't do that, that was actually there for a long time, has to be over 10 years that those steps were on there. He's a big one. There's someone's fire pit, or it looks almost like a fireplace, a little sitting log and McDonald's McCafe cup, which is good. What else we got here? see deep energy adidas I imagine that's some kind of body spray don't know why that would be out here so the hut that me and my friend used to have was more like a log cabin and it stood right there that that the tree the three trees right there was one of the posts that we had it tied up to the other the other tie-up tree is completely gone it's fallen now and all of the wood and everything is gone but that was the spot right there I spent a lot of time I'm learning bushcraft skills when I didn't even know what bushcraft meant. Well, it's a random debris, and it's all half burned. This is the most destruction, and it's man-made, and it's not cool. A little 2x4 nailed onto that tree, but then something happened. I think there was a fire here. All this bark is burned off. You can see that there, hopefully. And then there's four trees. There's that one, that one, and then there's two across. So that one was nailed and burned and split up there because of it. Now that tree's done. this tree was burned all the barks burned off the tree behind it was burned and weakened and broke and this tree here has all the bark burned off it as well until a way up there so that's a lot of destruction for no reason you know I mean that must have been a huge fire they're still charred remnants on the ground and over there too it's just crazy like I frequented this place for probably two years every day and and nobody ever came and we took care of it and now it's kind of just trashed there's a somebody wrote something on this 2x4 here and I've actually seen it a lot in Essex County where I am it says Bushman and I hope Bushman didn't do this because everywhere I go I seem to see that Bushman writing so I'm hoping that hope not he didn't do this because I don't I wouldn't like for everywhere to be be like this anybody want a stereo? About three years back when I first joined up with Bushcraft USA, I got inspired to get into the woods more again, so I came back to this place, and I actually made a second little hut, and this was it. It got destroyed by a bum. I met him a few times, and he was on drugs and pretty crazy and whatnot, so I stopped coming here, but this was the outline to my shelter. I had a little fire pit in there, and then there's a bunch of my logs. Seems like this place, other than the fact that he tore down my tarp and all my other stuff. Seems like it's pretty untouched as far as destruction goes. There's my fire pit there. That's pretty cool. I guess that's still here. There's the scenery. Nice old factory. I know you're jealous. That's awesome. One of my old fire boards still just sitting there. You can tell it's been weathered and used quite a few times. Kind of cool. A little 60s red carpet. That's where it's at. All right. Well, that's That's enough depressing destruction stuff, I'm going to do some bushy stuff now. I'm going to do some fire prep and cook up some gluten free hot dogs for myself. This wood is super dense and it cuts through it pretty good. I've got my on loan from my buddy Skogknife, my Bushcraft USA adventure swan knife, it's nice enough to send me this for a little while, I like using it, it makes some nice curls. I just wanted to show my fire steel before I start this, it's about to break, I could break it right now if I bent it. I've used this for a good year and she's about done. All right, got the fire established and my grate on there. The flames are just gonna clean off the grill for me. It's got a little bit of bacon dank on it from previous uses. I'll get those gluten-free hot dogs and call it a day. All right, well, I'm sitting here just waiting for my fire to die down to coals so that I can cook my hot dogs. I just wanted to say a few things. I'm really, really grateful for the community that we have on Bushcraft USA. If you're watching this on YouTube, you haven't checked out Bushcraft USA, if you're into this kind of stuff, I highly recommend it. It's a really cool place. I've been on there for like three years or so now. I met a lot of good people. Made some really good friends, some that I haven't met yet. Guys that trust me enough, that I trust enough. I sent me a knife, you know what I mean? I sent him a knife. I never met the guy in my life. It's a pretty cool thing if you think about it. I have met some. I've met a lot. I was fortunate enough to stay at one of my really good buddies' place, his house, this spring. You know what I mean? Through the internet. I mean, it's really, really cool. Anyways, just thank you to everyone on there. Thank you to the mods and the creators, the owners and founders of Bushcraft USA. So I hope everybody has a great day, and I'm going to call it quits. My fire there is dying down. I'm going to throw my gluten-free hot dogs on there and pack up for the day. I'm going to go visit my brother for a while. So I hope you guys have a great day.