By Tim MacWelch

Ever wonder how you’d sharpen your knife in the field, without a store-bought sharpening stone? It’s easier than you think, when you use the same type of stone that the frontiersmen once used to sharpen their knives.

Are we as tough as our outdoor-loving predecessors? When I read about the exploits of famous frontiersmen like Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, Simson Girty and their contemporaries, I wonder if I could have kept pace beside them.

Monty Embrey is the Manager of NRA’s Youth Hunter Education Challenge. Monty says that each year kids go through hunter education courses across the country, but there is a void in the safety skills they’ve learned and the field exercises like marksmanship that still need to be mastered. Kids who come out of hunter education courses understand the safety precautions that need to be taken when handling a firearm but they have so much more to learn.

By Tim MacWelch

In the last post, we talked about your need for a “Go Bag” (aka survival kit) in the wilderness. Now, we’ll talk about the kissing cousin of that kit – Every Day Carry gear (or EDC, for short). And perhaps in a future post, we’ll discuss the phrase origin of “kissing cousin”. But for now, your EDC is your back-up and safety net, in the woods and wild places, and around town or during travel.