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le Voyageur's list for canoe camping can also be applied to car camping where you are virtually unlimited in what you may wish to carry. Backpacking is a different matter. It has been my observation that most people carry far more first aid gear than they will ever need. Field first aid should be oriented at keeping people alive, not setting broken bones or performing surgery. You need to consider what is most lethal, and what is most likely to happen. I remember one highly experienced first aid trainer observing that the most common serious injuries that she routinely encountered were burns. I would not have thought of that.

KoreaScouter, Your circumstances are quite different from troops stateside. In your situation equity and motivation suggests a different policy about reversion of funds. You are right. In most communities in the states, troop membership is fairly stable and when a boy leaves a troop, it is usually because he is leaving scouting altogether or going off to college.

As a somewhat technologically challenged senior member, I could not locate that chat room. I now have an ID with yahoo.

My observation about the level of involvement of most chartered organizations is consistent with the other posts. That is, little to no involvment. Those who have an involved supportive chartered partner are fortunate indeed. Our troop is chartered to a men's club with a local church, and we cannot even get access to the facilities most of the time. Our new COR does take an interest and shows up for most committee meetings.

Chippewa29 makes another good point about pets possibly really bothering others. In general, I would not want pets at most scouting events unless they were really well trained. While on this tangent, pets generally don't have much of a place at organized youth activities. Mascots that are trained and under control are different. Our local soccer league in southern california played most of its games on Saturdays at a venue with eight fields. Literally thousands of people passed through the area on game days. Horse trails also came through the area. People would bring their horses right up to the touchline to watch the games and lots of kids would gather around. I always feared what would happen if one of those horses had been hit by a hard kicked ball. We were able to prohibit and control dogs. Dogs of course are not potty trained. Can you imagine playing soccer in a field frequented by dogs? Nuf said.

Speaking off the cuff, and probably in ignorance, wicca strikes me as a modern day form of animism, the most primitive of religious belief systems. It is presumably harmless. Some people fear wicca as devil worship, but I understand that devil worship is not part of the scheme of things.

An interesting story. There are many pieces of information left out, and that you probably don't know. The federal government has for decades had a policy prohibiting state and local government grant recipients from selling property acquired or built wholly or partially with federal funds. As far as I know this is still federal policy. That may have been the legal leg on which the government acted. The purpose of the policy was to prevent local governments from acting in bad faith and reaping profits off of sales of real property that were paid for with federal money. I encountered this several years ago when the idea of privatization of sewage treatment plants, built partially with EPA grant money, was under discussion. A logical policy would not prohibit such sales, but would rebate a proportionate share of the proceeds back to the feds.

This is one of those times when I wish I knew how to edit a post. My grammer was terrible in the previous post. Oh well.

Marcy, Bob Russell is right. I notice that you referred to a 1969 publication in another thread. Much of that information is obsolete. Camping techniques and camping equipment have evolved greatly since 1969. The idea of staking out an area for a patrol is relevant at large events such as a camporee where scouts from many troops come together. For routine camping, it is more important that the camp be sited properly with respect to pollutable bodies of water, and that each tent be sited so that the occupants are not on low ground. A few inches can make all the difference when it rains. A lot of the early scouting skills were based on military practice of 100 years ago. Even in the 60s I remember one training exercise in the army where we dressed our pup tents in rows. Looks great, but this is not typical camping. You are correct about separating food preparation, cleanup, and sleeping areas. If I recall correctly you said you do not have bears where you live, but there are plenty of critters who can still raise havoc in your camp site if food is not properly secured. Be sure to leave all food out of tents. I am told that skunks are particulary attracted to chocolate. Now here is a suggestion. The very first time I went on an outing as a boy scout we cooked over an open fire on a sand bar by the Missouri River. We cut sticks to do shish ke babs and stick bread made with bisquick. Another great way to introduce boys to outdoor cooking is foil cooking over a bed of coals. You can also take two pans and make them into a dutch oven to shove into your coals and bake things that way. Now these are things you will not do in back packing, but it is a great way to start out with new kids. They get to fix their own food and enjoy the results. If you cut sticks on your own ranch to use in cooking make sure that the plants selected are not toxic. Oleander is an example of a poisonous plant. No itching like poison ivy, just death when eaten. You should lick the point you make on any stick so selected to see if it has an unpleasant taste that the food might pick up.

Finding directions without a compass is a survival skill, not a practical skill that one will use in actually navigating under normal circumstances. The skills are taught under the First Class requirements. The only method I know of that works with the moon is the "shadow stick" method on p. 116 of the current handbook. This does not require a full moon. The method is taught for use with the sun, but shadows cast by the moon can be used as well. All scouts should know how to locate the big dipper and polaris. Teaching these night navigation skills are a good night time activity, but they will not fill an entire evening.

"Leave no trace" camping also means no digging other than possibly shallow cat holes for latrines. To bury scraps effectively would require a very deep hole. There is of course a big difference between car camping and back packing. If you are car camping in established developed camp grounds you usually have immediate access to trash cans and dumpsters. Food scraps is usually not a problem in backpacking because you usually eat everything you prepare, if the menus and portions are well planned, the kind of food you are preparing usually has no scraps in the form of bones, peels, or other inedible components. Digging a deep hole for burial might make sense if you were occupying the same site for several days, which in itself is a violation of LNT camping. Varmits will dig up shallow holes. This really is a non problem if you are following LNT principles.

A interesting solution to a unique set of circumstances. What about ordinary backpacking in bear country? I assume that you are using bear bags or cannisters in those situations.

All of the above is excellent advice. I agree strongly that you and the mom need to be upfront with the troop leaders you visit. You don't want to surprise them.

This is a new one. I am not aware of any national BSA policy on this issue. I have never seen a policy for or against pets at scouting events and activities. Common sense tells me that pets would likely be prohibited by local policy from summer camps and the like. In this instance, as long as the local rules governing the facility are followed, and the other members of the ship don't mind, I don't think it is anybody else's business.

I am not aware of any written guidelines. Our middle son was involved with a youth group at a church we didn't even belong to, and the leader of that youth group wrote a nice letter for him. It has to be a bona fide "religious leader" but probably doesn't have to be from the highest authority in your local church, synagogue, parish, mosque, etc.

In light of the discussion under the subject of "trustworthy", it is worth bringing this prior thread to the attention of forum regulars.

What was the question?

And we're supposed to trust this guy on belay? Sorry for the dig -- just couldn't resist.

Along the line of the previous post, one of my favorite scout stories involves cooking with my patrol at the 1957 jamboree at Valley Forge. The evening meal included peas as a vegetable and butterscotch pudding as a dessert. Along with the ingredients came printed step by step instructions. Somewhere around step 4 the instructions said, "Pour peas into pot." Somewhere around step 8 the instructions said, "Pour pudding into pot." You got it. The pudding went into the peas. The boy (not me) who was cook that evening took a lot of razzing. The biggest kid in the patrol was still hungry after all the other items on the menu were consumed, and dug into the pea pudding, commenting, "This ain't too bad."

Uniforms should be worn properly, and that would seem to exclude necklaces worn outside the shirt. Having said that, some elements of personal appearance are not worth worrying about. There are higher priorities. My oldest son wore his hair down to the small of his back and tie dyed t-shirts for years. He was a real throwback to an earlier era. We only insisted that he keep it all clean, which he did. Imagine my shock when he got a short hair cut and went to work in a stock brokerage! One of the best scouts in our troop changes his hair color often. This may not be the healthiest practice for one's scalp, but that is between him and his parents.

I agree that I would not count the birds observed in a cage as meeting the requirement. Surely nobody would object to visiting such a place as a first step to simply learn more about the birds, their characteristics, and what they look like. It is my impression that many, if not most, troops do not do a good job of integrating rank advancement into their outings. Working on rank or merit badges in a camping context is also a good way to keep boys busy during dead time.

If anyone noticed, the troops in Afghanistan have flag patches on their uniforms, and probably for very good reason. It seems to me that the photographs I have seen of the World War II invasion of North Africa by the allies in 1942 show American troops with flag patches on their uniforms. The hope was that the local French forces would come over the allied side when they saw the American flag.

Embezzlement is a crime that can and does occur when money is being handled, goods and services purchased, etc. The only reason we don't hear more about it happening in the for-profit sector of society is that most companies prefer to hush it up and don't press criminal charges. No non-profit is immune, although I have never heard of any boy scout council being ripped off. In volunteeer organizations in particular, everybody is there because they want to be there and the level of trust is very high. Simple safeguards and internal controls should still be enforced, if only to remove temptation. Human beings are capable of great good, but also capable of sin.

This subject was dealt with to a certain extent in another thread. Painting the bottoms of your cooking pots and pans before you go out helps with heat transmission to the food or water. I have tried this and it works. Different manufacturers make heat resistant paints designed for spot painting barbecues. The stuff wears off with use and washing, but the paint does not burn. Soaping the outside of pots is a good idea if you are cooking over a wood fire. If you are using only stoves for cooking, which is mandatory in many areas, then this is an unnecessary addition to your cleaning problem.

The two pot method I described is what you will usually do in backpacking. If you are car camping you may be doing more involved meals, have more time, etc. One thing I forgot to mention is that used dishwater may be used to put out campfires. It depends partly on timing. This is most useful in the morning in cold weather. Often the scouts will restart the fire from the night before to warm up and this new fire needs to be extinguished before you leave the camp site.