Simsbury Troop 175

BSA National Medal for Outdoor Achievement

If the new BSA National Outdoor Badges were not enough, The Boy Scouts of America is now offering the highest honor for outdoor lovers is the National Medal for Outdoor Achievement.

The list of requirements is still daunting, though, meaning this medal isn't for everyone.

Boys must earn the Camping badge with a silver device and two other badges, each with gold devices. They must also earn four outdoor-specific merit badges, plan a unit outing, and take a Wilderness First Aid course and a Leave No Trace course, each 16 hours long.

Here are the complete requirements for the National Medal for Outdoor Achievement

The National Medal for Outdoor Achievement is the highest recognition that a Boy Scout or Varsity Scout can earn for exemplary achievement, experience, and skill in multiple areas of outdoor endeavor.

In order for a Scout to earn the National Medal for Outdoor Achievement, the Scout must complete the following requirements:

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Earn the National Outdoor Badge for Camping with a silver device.
3. Earn any two additional National Outdoor Badges, each with two gold devices.
4. Earn the following merit badges: Backpacking, Emergency Preparedness, Nature, and Wilderness Survival.
5. Complete a 16-hour course in Wilderness First Aid from the American Red Cross, Wilderness Medical Institute, or other recognized provider.
6. Become a Leave No Trace Trainer by completing the 16-hour training course from a recognized Leave No Trace Master Educator.
7. Plan and lead, with the approval of your unit leader, an outing for your troop, team, patrol, or squad in two of the following activity areas: hiking and backpacking, aquatic activities, or riding. Include in each outing a service element addressing recreational impacts resulting from that type of activity. With the approval of your unit leader, you may plan and lead the outings for another Cub Scout pack, Boy Scout troop, Varsity Scout team, Sea Scout ship, or Venturing crew.
8. Complete at least one of the following:

a. Plan and lead, with the approval of your unit leader, an adventure activity identified in the National Outdoor Badge for Adventure for your troop, team, patrol, or squad.

b. Successfully complete a season on a council summer camp staff in an outdoor area, such as aquatics, Scoutcraft, nature/environment, climbing, or COPE.

 

 

BSA offers new National Outdoors Award for Boy Scouts

To recognize that passion for adventure, the BSA announces its new National Outdoor Awards. The awards are available to Boy Scouts who meet specific requirements in one of five subject areas: camping, hiking, aquatics, riding, and adventure.

 Here is the National Outdoors Award Application.

 

Here  are the requirements for the new BSA National Outdoor Badges for Camping, Hiking, Aquatics, Riding, and Adventure

Camping

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Earn the Camping merit badge.
3. Earn two of the following three merit badges: Cooking, First Aid, Pioneering.
4. Complete 25 days and nights of camping—including six consecutive days (five nights) of resident camping, approved and under the auspices and standards of the Boy Scouts of America—including nights camped as part of requirements 1 through 3 above.

A gold device may be earned for each additional 25 nights of camping. A silver device is earned for each additional 100 nights of camping. The Scout may wear any combination of devices totaling his current number of nights camping.

Hiking

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Earn the Hiking and Orienteering merit badges.
3. Complete 100 miles of hiking or backpacking under the auspices of the Boy Scouts of America, including miles hiked as part of requirement 2.

A gold device may be earned for each additional 50 miles hiked. A silver device is earned for each additional 200 miles of hiking. The Scout may wear any combination of devices totaling his current number of miles hiking.

Aquatics

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Earn the Swimming and Lifesaving merit badges.
3. Earn the Mile Swim BSA Award.
4. Earn at least one of the following merit badges: Canoeing, Rowing, Small Boat Sailing, Whitewater. Complete at least 25 hours of on-the-water time, applying the skills that you learned in the merit badges.
5. Complete at least 50 hours of any combination of swimming, canoeing, rowing, small-boat sailing, or whitewater activity under the auspices of the Boy Scouts of America, including time spent in requirements 2 through 4.

A gold device may be earned for each additional 25 hours of aquatic activity. A silver device is earned for each additional 100 hours of aquatic activity. The Scout may wear any combination of devices totaling his current number of hours of aquatic activity.

Riding

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Complete at least one of the following: Cycling merit badge and 100 miles of cycling; or Horsemanship merit badge and 50 miles of horseback riding.
3. Complete 200 miles of riding activities, either on a non-motorized bike or a stock animal, under the auspices of the Boy Scouts of America, including the miles in requirement 2.

A gold device may be earned for each additional 100 miles of riding. A silver device is earned for each additional 400 miles of riding. The Scout may wear any combination of devices totaling his current number of miles of riding.

Adventure

1. Earn the First Class rank.
2. Complete either the Wilderness Survival or the Emergency Preparedness merit badge.
3. Complete 10 of any combination or repetition of the following adventure activities under the auspices of the Boy Scouts of America:

a. A backpacking trip lasting three or more days and covering more than 20 miles without food resupply
b. A canoeing, rowing, or sailing trip lasting three or more days and covering more than 50 miles without food resupply
c. A whitewater trip lasting two or more days and covering more than 20 miles without food resupply
d. A climbing activity on open rock, following Climb On Safely principles, that includes camping overnight
e. Earn the National Historic Trails Award
f. Earn the 50-Miler Award
g. Attend any national high-adventure base or any nationally recognized local high-adventure or specialty-adventure program

Items 3a-g may be repeated as desired. A single activity that satisfies multiple items in 3a-g may be counted as separate activities at the discretion of the unit leader. Similarly, a single activity that doubles an item in 3a-d may be counted as two activities at the discretion of the unit leader.

A gold device may be earned for each additional five activities. A silver device is earned for each additional 20 activities. The Scout may wear any combination of devices totaling his current number of activities.

When Lightning Strikes

You’re camping in the woods, and you hear ominous rumbles of thunder in the distance. Then you see flashes of lightning. What should you do?

Scouting Magazine says follow these simple steps to keep your guys safe during a thunderstorm.

Here’s what to do:

1. Survey your surroundings. The safest location is a nearby building or vehicle. Remember: “When thunder roars, go indoors.” If you can get to shelter, do so quickly. The building must have four sides and a roof. Don’t consider a carport, lean-to, or dugout a safe shelter. The car should not be a convertible or golf cart.

2. Act fast if no shelter is nearby. Because campsites are typically in the woods, get out of your tent immediately. It offers zero protection, and you never want to be near tall trees in a thunderstorm. If your tent is pitched in a depression, gully, wash, dry creek, or riverbed, you risk being swept away by floodwaters. Further, strong winds may bring down tree limbs.

3. Move away from others. Separation should be at least 15 feet. This decreases the chance that a charge will jump between people.

4. Run to a safer area. If you are in a forest and getting out isn’t possible, move to a stand of lower trees. If you can make it to open ground, seek a hilly area, but avoid the uppermost elevations. Instead, choose the base of a lower hill, while still avoiding a wash or riverbed.

5. Avoid standing up. Should you crouch down, hands and balls of feet on the ground—the so-called “safe” position during a lightning storm? Recent research indicates that a “safe” position during a thunderstorm doesn’t exist. Also, it’s best to avoid holding up an umbrella, golf club, or lightning rod. Wait 30 minutes after you hear the last rumble of thunder before heading back to camp.

Read the entire article When Lightning Strikes by Josh Piven on Scouting Magazine's website.

Tracking and Stalking While Camping

A field guide and magnifying glass can help you identify animal tracks in the wild or the critters running through your campsite.

Observing wildlife is a memorable part of any outdoors excursion, and spring is a good time to do it. As winter melts away, animals become more active, looking for mates and food. The ground, still covered with snow in northern areas, or wet from snowmelt and spring rains in warmer climes, is perfect for discovering animal tracks.

Tracking 101

Animal tracks reveal more information than meets the eye. They not only identify an animal, they also show the direction it was traveling, how fast it was moving, and maybe even what it was doing or how it was feeling. The clearer the tracks, the more information you can glean. The best tracks are found in the soft, wet soil near the edges of ponds or waterways, in silted riverbeds, or in areas still covered with light snow.

To identify these tracks, you should recognize both fore prints and hind prints. Tracks that look similar on first glance might be differentiated by their size. Other identity clues are claw length and shape, track width, and the straddle (the distance at the shoulder, indicated on the ground as the distance between the right and left tracks).

Expert trackers categorize animals by how they move. In her guide, Mammal Tracks and Scat: Life-size Tracking Guide (www.heartwoodpress.com), forester Lynn Levine explains that a rabbit is a hopper, a cat or a dog is a walker or trotter, a bear is a waddler, and a weasel is a bounder. Each leaves different types of tracks. For example, as a rabbit hops, its long back legs pass its front legs, so the hind-foot tracks are actually in front of the forefoot tracks. Understanding gaits helps identify tracks when the track itself is incomplete or hard to see.

“The gait also tells the story of what the animal was doing,” Levine explains. She describes watching two sets of fox tracks come together. “The distance between the tracks was small, indicating that they were moving slowly, and then the tracks intertwined in a circle, finally showing where the foxes mated.”

On another occasion, she followed bobcat tracks that were 10 feet apart, indicating that the animal was moving fast and hunting. “I followed the tracks from deer bed to deer bed,” she recalls.

Similarly, the gait can help you decide if the tracks belong to a pet dog or a wild coyote.

“The tracks are similar,” Levine says, “But well-fed pets meander, so their tracks are close together and circular. Wild animals are more often hunting. Their tracks are in a straight line, and farther apart; you can see the intent.”

Beyond footprints

In addition to footprints, look for these telltale signs:

•  Bent grass, broken twigs, and damaged vegetation suggest a big animal -- or a group of animals—crashing through vegetation. Bent vegetation shows the direction of travel.
  
  
•  Smashed grass can indicate an animal’s resting place.

Scat, or droppings, identifies herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. Take a stick and poke at the contents to see what they’ve been eating: husks of seeds, berry skins, or grasses (herbivore); bones, fur, and feathers (carnivore); or a mixture (omnivore).

Big cats and bears rub bark and scratch trees to mark territory. These marks might be six feet up a tree.

Stalking

Getting close enough to watch animals in their natural habitat is a real thrill. But your first priority should be safety:

•  Don’t stalk alone. Always follow Scouting’s buddy system and have at least one other person accompany you when you are involved in any outdoor activity. Solo stalkers make less noise, but be sure you have at least one partner a few steps behind.
  
  
•  Don’t get too close. Animals can be dangerous when they feel cornered. Don’t be fooled by the docile appearance of moose, buffalo, or even deer. They can become aggressive if threatened. Many animals in national parks lose their fear of humans -- making them potentially dangerous.
  
  
•  Be sensible. Don’t stalk something that might be interested in stalking you—such as a mountain lion or a bear.
  
  
•  Never get between a mother and her cub. Mother bears are especially volatile.
  
  
•  Never feed wild animals or lure them with food.
  
  
•  Don’t become so obsessed with the chase that you forget where you are. Notice landmarks or use a GPS that can lead you back from where you came.

In North America, large grazers -- white-tailed and mule deer, antelope, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and elk -- reward tracking efforts with great photos. To find them:

•  Ask park and wildlife rangers. Animals often follow established routes. Water sources, game trails, and pasture areas are good places to sit quietly with your eyes open and your camera at hand.
  
  
•  Animals easily disappear into the background. Sweep your eyes over a large area looking for movement.
  
  
•  Track in morning or evening, when the slanted light makes tracks easier to see. Many animals are more active at these times.
  
  
•  Become invisible. Hide behind hedges, trees, or rocks, and stay in the shadows. If a grazing animal looks up suddenly, freeze. Don’t resume moving until the animal relaxes.
  
  
•  The condition of the tracks will tell you how fresh the trail is. Are they in dried mud or damp earth? How precise and sharp are the edges?
  
  
•  Practice stalking techniques. Avoid stepping on leaves or twigs. Expert trackers walk in slow motion, placing their feet down one part at a time, and transferring the weight slowly so as not to make a sound.
  
  
•  Stay downwind. If you are upwind when you find the animal, circle around in a wide arc. Don’t approach the animal until you feel the wind in your face.

Tools for learning

Binoculars are rated by two numbers, magnification and lens size. For wildlife viewing, 7 x 35 to 8 x 42 is a good choice. Bigger lenses are more difficult to keep steady. For outdoor use, compact binoculars are easier to carry; waterproof ones are a must.

A magnifying glass (there may be one on your compass) can enlarge the track’s details.

Cameras: A zoom lens can turn a so-so picture into a great one. You can also use a macro lens to photograph tracks up close.

“Make sure that you have something to indicate the track’s exact size, including a ruler, a coin, or even a finger in the picture to add scale,” says Levine. “Track size is an important part of identification.”

Using plaster molds of tracks is a good way to study and learn to recognize tracks. But Levine cautions that “making casts in the wild is difficult because conditions are rarely perfect.” She recommends using molds available from Acorn Naturalists (www.acornnaturalists.com) to create casts of animal feet, which can then be used to make sample tracks.

Journaling and drawing: We remember what we concentrate on. Writing up your experiences and sketching them will help lock them in your memory.

That’s the way Sir Robert Baden-Powell did it. The founder of Scouting was a premier tracker who spent countless hours sketching his wilderness impressions.

Source: Tracking and Stalking by Karen Berger in Scouting Magazine

Nicholas off to National Jamboree

Congratulations to Nicholas C. who is participating in the 100th Anniversary BSA National Jamboree in Fort AP, Virginia as part of CT Troop 536. Don't worry, Nicholas is not changing troops permanently, he will be back in troop 175 when he returned to Simsbury with lots of great memories and stories to share.

Learn more at http://www.bsajamboree.org/

Nine tips to disaster-proof your campsite when bad weather moves in.

When a storm hits when you are camping you need to be ready for the worst. Here are nine tips from Scouting Magazine to storm proof your camp site.

1. Read every camping book you can find; even the old ones have some good stuff.

2. Always use a waterproof plastic ground cloth inside your tent—except in winter when the tent’s bottom would freeze to the ground. (Click here to see “Bedding Down Without the ‘Ow’” in our September-October 2009 issue.)

3. Sew additional stake loops to the body of your tent. The common three or four loops per side provided by the manufacturer usually aren’t enough to secure a tent in a bad storm. It’s easy to sew these additional storm loops. You need a few feet of inch-wide, lightweight nylon webbing—available at most hardware stores and camping shops. You can sew the loops by hand or with a sewing machine.

Ordinarily, you won’t have to stake the extra loops, but if a high wind comes up, those “storm loops” can make the difference between a tent that survives the storm and one that doesn’t. Where possible, secure storm lines to the framework of the tent, not the fly. Try to locate storm loops so they attach with Velcro to nearby poles, transferring stress to the frame.

4. Bring twice as many stakes as your tent needs for a normal setup. Two stakes per loop—each set at a different angle—will double the surface area and holding power.

5. Bring a variety of tent stakes so that you’ll have what holds best in different types of ground.

6. Attach loops of shock cord to high-stress storm lines. Nylon tents and lines expand when wet; shock cord keeps them tight.

7. Bring tools to make a rainy-day fire (if local restrictions allow fires): candle, fire-starters, sturdy knife, folding saw. Use a splitting wedge or hand-axe for splitting small logs to get at the dry heartwood inside.

8. Everyone needs a sitting pad. The ground gets wet during a rain, so bring a piece of closed-cell foam.

9. Don’t leave home without a nylon tarp. A 10-by-12-foot tarp, with enough cord and stakes to rig it, provides a dry place to cook and make repairs. The alternative? Dog-house it inside your tent until the storm lifts. I suggest one rain fly for every five campers.

If you bring two tarps, you can rig one lean-to style (open front, back staked down) and “float” the other overhead to provide a horizontal awning. If you leave an air space between the overlapped tarps, smoke from a backlogged fire will be drawn out through the “ceiling hole” rather than drawn into the shelter.

Read the entire article Storm Hero by Cliff Jacobson on Scouting Magazine's website.