Home OF Heritage Craft Courses And Rural skills

General information

The first part of the business - Wildmansticks is stickmaking which is founded on the traditional art of stick dressing, ie creating a traditional peg joint using time honoured methods with hand tools. The sticks produced are from wooden V thumbs to V antlers to crooks in buffalo and ramshorn to carved animal heads eg otters, badgers, horses to bird heads, cock pheasant, eagles, hen pheasants (broken neck or whole neck - ie broken neck with partial white circle around the neck to whole neck with a complete white circle around the neck). The philosophy of the business is to enlighten people that a stick is not only for the older generation or people with mobility problems but a stick can be admired for the creativity engendered therein. Some of the services we offer on the stickmaking side are as follows: stickmaking courses for the novice to an introduction to horn handles where the stickmaking enthusiast can learn how to polish horn handles, shape buffalo crooks and to work ramshorn which is a lot harder than most people think it is. As part of the business we offer all the stickmaking materials that would be required to assemble a finished stick, ie wooden blank handles, carved blank heads, pre-shaped buffalo horn and ramshorn handles, shanks - ie the main body of the stick and all the required accessories, ie collars, separators, ferrules (both rubber and metal).

The Bushcraft side came about after I had spent 3 years being taught by an ex-special forces instructor learning camcraft and general survival techniques which you would be able to use on a basic level and I have expanded on this knowledge as well as being instructed by other mentors, reading books, researching plants and trees, to survival hunting, navigation by stars, reading the lie of the land, water purification, hunting techniques and general self-preservation management.

The mountaineering side I have yet to undertake but I have done the basics of map reading, grid references and basic navigation, reference points, leadership skills and basic mountaineering survival. This is about surviving and travelling in mountaineous terrain NOT rock climbing.