Opinion: Thoughts on Initiation and the Void, and their roles in Training and Masculinity

I’ve spent my life living, working, and growing with other men. I’m the oldest of five boys and was raised by a career Paratrooper. Push-ups, rope climbs and sit ups were how we were punished, and boxing was how us boys grew up settling our differences. (Sometimes with gloves, sometimes without…) Later I went into

Opinion: SMEAC the Gear Queer

There’s a heck of a lot more to low level armed conflict than tearing off into the bush with a $1500 weapon and cool-guy kit when your only training is shooting fast at stationary targets; the people that do that are speed bumps for the well trained, unassuming guy with a 30-30 and a solid

Seek Outside: How to Cut your Backpack Hunting Weight

I came across this article recently and I thought the author presented some interesting metrics to analyze gear weight with. Big game hunting while living out of a backpack is an elite (crazy) sport, and the weight you carry is critical. In this first sentence of the article the author makes an extremely important point,

Von Steuben Training: TDG 8: Retrans Raid

I thought I would take a little time and write a response to the scenario described here. Mike at Von Steuben training is nice enough to put these scenarios together and I think they are a lot of fun. My plan is below: Careful study of the topo map reveals a few important facts to

Opinion: Why Train? And “The way of the warrior”

This is a repost of an article I wrote in April of 2021. I’m going through and doing some “weeding out” of outdated articles, but I thought this was a good one to repost in case some had missed it. – B.R. , January 2023 There’s been a lot of good discussion over at American

Opinion: What are prototactics?

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple years (to be honest tactics and strategy have always been a big interest of mine) studying small unit tactics from different perspectives in an attempt to discern those that might be practical for today’s concerned citizens, including myself. I wanted to go beyond the typical self

Junk on the Bunk: Defensive Hunter Gear

I’d like to do a layout for the equipment I used deer hunting this year. I’ve been working on a concept I’ve come to think of as the “defensive hunter”, and I wanted to use equipment that I felt was appropriate to the concept. While I plan on writing a more thorough article to detail

Opinion: How I setup my equipment using the line system

When it comes to gear, I like systems versus just a list of items. If we can answer the questions to understand the “why?” of something, the “How?” is made a lot easier by using a system. I’ve promised a few people lately that I would do a Junk On The Bunk article for my

Initial impressions of the ESEE PR-4 as a field knife

A customer sent me this knife to build a sheath for and I thought I’d put some thoughts down. This isn’t exactly a review, just some of my thoughts on the design and construction of the knife. The particular knife I received looked like it was nearly brand new and came with a nice looking

Less is More, part 5: Scalability

For the next part in this series I want to discuss a concept that is something I’m trying to incorporate into everything I’m currently working on – scalability. Scalability can be defined as a system’s ability to adapt to the working conditions, in other words it’s ability to fit the scale of the situation. While