A Buckskin Man's Pocket
A Buckskin's Pocket
When we speak of his pocket that includes all of his clothes, because on the inside of his coat, if he wears one, are stuck an array of safety pins ([Fig. 234]), but usually the pins are fastened onto his shirt. A safety pin is as useful to a man in camp as is a hairpin to a woman, and a woman can camp with no other outfit but a box of hairpins. One can use safety pins for clothespins when one's socks are drying at night, one can use them to pin up the blankets and thus make a sleeping-bag of them, or one can use them for the purpose of temporarily mending rips and tears in one's clothes. These are only a few of the uses of the safety pin on the trail. After one has traveled with safety pins one comes to believe that they are almost indispensable.
In one of the pockets there should be a lot of bachelor buttons, the sort that you do not have to sew on to your clothes, but which fasten with a snap, something like glove buttons. There should be a pocket made in your shirt or vest to fit your notebook ([Fig. 244]), and a part of it stitched up to hold a pencil and a toothbrush. Your mother can do this at home for you before you leave. Then you should have a good jack-knife; I always carry my jack-knife in my hip pocket. A pocket compass, one that you have tested before starting on your trip, should lodge comfortably in one of your pockets, and hitched in your belt should be your noggin carved from a burl from a tree ([Fig. 235]); it should be carried by slipping the toggle ([Fig. 236]) underneath the belt. Also in the belt you should carry some whang strings ([Fig. 237]); double the whang strings up so that the two ends come together, tuck the loop through your belt until it comes out at the other side, then put the two ends of the string through the loop and the whang strings are fast but easily pulled out when needed; whang strings are the same as belt lashings. A small whetstone ([Fig. 238]) can find a place somewhere about your clothes, probably in the other hip pocket, and it is most useful, not only with which to put an edge on your knife but also on your axe.
Inside the sweat band of your hat, or around the crown on the outside of your hat, carry a gut leader with medium-sized artificial flies attached, and around your neck knot a big gaudy bandanna handkerchief ([Fig. 239]); it is a most useful article; it can be used in which to carry your game, food or duffel, or for warmth, or worn over the head for protection from insects ([Fig. 240]). In the latter case put it on your head under your hat and allow it to hang over your shoulders like the havelock worn by the soldiers of '61.
Carry your belt axe thrust through your belt at your back ([Fig. 241]), where it will be out of the way, not at your side as you do on parade.
No camper, be he hunter, fisherman, scout, naturalist, explorer, prospector, soldier or lumberman, should go into the woods without a notebook and hard lead pencil ([Fig. 242]). Remember that notes made with a hard pencil will last longer than those made with ink, and be readable as long as the paper lasts.
Every scientist and every surveyor knows this and it is only tenderfeet, who use a soft pencil and fountain pen for making field notes, because an upset canoe will blur all ink marks and the constant rubbing of the pages of the book will smudge all soft pencil marks.