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THE SCOUTING GUIDE TO SURVIVAL

1 October 2018

J. Wayne Fears

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Categories: J. Wayne's Books, Survival, Uncategorized

A Licensed Product of the Boy Scouts of America

More than 200 Essential Skills for Staying Warm, Building a Shelter, and Signaling for Help
J. Wayne Fears

Prepared. For Life.®
In The Scouting Guide to Survival (November 6, 2018), current Scouts, Scout alumni, and readers interested in the outdoors are provided with time-tested advice on emergency preparedness. Some practical tips include:

How to build a fire
How to purify water
How to signal for help
How to build simple shelters
How to survive in different environments
How to practice survival first aid
And so much more!

Since 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has helped build the future leaders of this country by combining educational activities and lifelong values with fun. The BSA is committed to training youth in responsible citizenship, character development, and self-reliance through participation in a wide range of outdoor activities.

J. Wayne Fears grew up in the outdoors, as his father was a trapper. He earned the BSA rank of Eagle Scout at the age fourteen. As an adult scouter, he served for two years as the advisor to an Explorer Post that specialized in wilderness survival. He has taught wilderness survival to Boy Scout troops and BSA leaders and has served many years as a wilderness survival merit badge counselor. He received survival training both from the Army and Air Force. This is his third book on survival. He is one of America’s most prolific outdoor writers with thirty-four books and over 6200 magazine articles published. In 2012 he was inducted into the Legends of the Outdoors National Hall of Fame. He resides in Tater Knob, Alabama.

To request an excerpt or to arrange an interview with the author, please contact:
Ronnie Alvarado / (212) 643-6816 x 274 / [email protected]

The Scouting Guide to Survival: More than 200 Essential Skills for
Staying Warm, Building a Shelter, and Signaling for Help by J. Wayne Fears
Skyhorse Publishing paperback, also available as an e-book | On Sale: November 6, 2018
ISBN 978-1-5107-3774-7| $16.99

THE TRAPPER TURNED WISE MAN

13 December 2016

J. Wayne Fears

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Categories: Tater Knob Tales, Uncategorized

Christmas in the mountains of north Alabama was a special time for me and my buddies, Punky Kelly and Chipmunk Green. School was out, there was plenty of time to put out rabbit box traps, and there was the Christmas pageant at our little rural church, which meant food and presents.

Setting rabbit box traps was a high priority for us as we thought of ourselves as being mountain men. The excitement was that we never knew what our trap line would produce, one year it was mostly opossums the next a rabbit or two.

This particular Christmas season we each had built one new rabbit box trap. Our trap line started on the creek behind my house where we set one box on an animal trail next to the creek. Then we crossed the pasture to a fencerow near Punkys house where a second box was carefully set. The third box was set a short distance away, next to a brush pile behind Chipmunk’s dad’s barn.

THAT MAGIC VEST

7 October 2016

J. Wayne Fears

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Categories: Uncategorized

Editor’s note: At the 2016 SEOPA (Southeastern Outdoor Press Association) Annual Conference in Lakeland, Florida, this story, entitled THE VEST by J. Wayne Fears, was awarded first place in the SEOPA Excellent in Craft – Magazine Short Story category. The story was originally published in GunHunter magazine

Many times on bitter-cold morning rabbit hunts, my dad would reach into the vest and pull out biscuits with chunks of country ham in them. I never saw him put them in the vest.

It hung on a nail on the back porch always ready. As far back as I can remember it was old looking, a little thread bare in places, faded from years of being used in all kinds of weather. I’m sure it started out a brown color, but since my dad used the old Montgomery Ward hunting vest for all his hunts it now looks more a dirty tan than brown.

The old vest had a smell about it that, to me, had a smell of adventure. It was a blend of odors – a mixture of sweat, dried possum blood, squirrel hair, sassafras root, fresh cedar, shot shell powder and Red Cap pipe tobacco as my dad smoked a crooked stem pipe loaded with the Brazilian tobacco most of every day. Many said that smoking that strong tobacco would kill him and I guess it did as he died one winter morning when he was 97, after knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

JENNY

2 August 2016

J. Wayne Fears

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Categories: Uncategorized

Jenny was a pretty little girl. Her long blond hair hung down over shoulders and her eyes sparkled with life. They were as blue as the sky. She was a skinny little ball of energy, doing everything with enthusiasm.

At school the girls picked on her because she was poor and they called her a Tom boy as she chose to hang out with Chipmunk, Punky and me to talk about huntin’ and fishin’ rather than playing with the girls. The days she was in school, she was one of the brightest students in our class. But many days, especially during the rainy days of winter, she missed school because the old rundown house she lived in was down a long rough lane that would flood if there was much rain. She couldn’t get out to catch the school bus.

Jenny’s dad was a sharecropper who would become a full time trapper and woods roamer as soon as the crops were harvested in the fall. The old sharecropper house they called home was papered in old newspaper and heated with a large wood-burning cook stove. They were poor but Jenny never let that hold her back. She was a woods girl and proud of it.

One cold, windy, December day, Chipmunk, Punky and I were sitting on the sunny side of the school, out of the wind, during recess, planning a squirrel hunt for the following Saturday. It was to be a contest to see who could get the most squirrels.