Hey Lisa Yates, you do realize that you left your name up there at the top, right? Excellent tradecraft…😉

Fieldcraft Friday - Learn the woods.

People know their back yard. They know the birds, the squirrels, the plants, the bugs, etc. How did they learn their back yard? By being in it of course. Even when you're not paying attention, your brain is earmarking bits of information. What happens when you're dropped into an area that you're unfamiliar with? How do you learn years' worth of local knowledge quickly? I'm going to teach you how to tune to the bush.

First, let's talk about the 24-hour cycle in the wild. I'm not going to dive too deep here - not discussing phases of the moon and weather effects. There are two basic variables at play, light and temperature. Critters, plants, and people all have their preferred range. For example, anyone who has by taught to patrol in the military knows that everyone on the team is silent and on watch 30-60 before sunrise/sunset to 30-60 minutes after sunrise/sunset. Why? Because people like to get where they need to be at dusk and daybreak.

Animals are the same, there's a day shift and a night shift. There's also a twilight shift where the two groups cross paths. We're basically talking about four shifts, two long shifts (day and night) and two short shifts (dusk and dawn). All have their unique mix of movement, sounds, and smells - a rhythm. You need to learn each one.

Fieldcraft Friday - Show me your boots.

Fact: most of you don't know how to walk.

When I checked into my first team in 1997, I didn't know how to walk either - I was eventually fixed by my brothers. First, go find your oldest pair of boots and look at the soles. I have several old pairs around (wife calls me a hoarder), but let's look at these old GSG9 boots - the first combat boots with a sneaker sole, revolutionary when they first came out ~35 years ago. These are about 20 years old. I semi-retired them after Soloman entered the market. Let's look at the tread - no bald spots. The old, untrained me would have left damaged heels and bald areas under the ball of the foot - two separate problems:

1. My step landed while my foot was still moving forward (heel abuse), resulting in lots of noise and my center of gravity being in front of my body (resulting in slips).

2. My foot dragged as it moved forward (bald spots under ball of foot), resulting in even more noise as my foot scuffed forward and trips.

*People who trip a lot don't walk correctly. People who walk correctly get a lot of mileage out of their boots.

Expanding on the realities of a gunfight, point by point. 🧵

https://twitter.com/TimOnPoint/status/1674171486540648449

1) EXPECT no information, just a direction (maybe) – who, what, how, where… these are the questions that we’re trying to answer, but you may not get anything answered except that there’s a threat.

A combat engagement, especially your first combat engagement, will often begin… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

I’ve been somewhat combative today, so I’d like to leave you with some beautiful words from Chesterton tonight. I love this passage for the fullness it leaves in my heart and the strange fit that it has to our current national dilemmas.

The Riddle: Love and Hate for the World “It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective.