oldbuzzard

I've played that game as a kid and it was lots of fun but you can't use that name in the US. In the UK it is harmless, but here that name would be seen as referencing capital punishment and at least at our CO , pretty quickly get the COR and IH involved as violating our churches moral principles. Edit: I don't remember what we called it but it should be easy to rename... flaming tree, bottomless pit whatever....

Hindsight from my youth in the 80s.... My non-scouting sister went to GS sleep away camp a couple of years. It was more like Y camps than BSA camps. Maybe that allowed them to serve more girls and create a recruitment pipeline or maybe that was a distraction from the "core" mission... I really couldn't say.

Our troops is planning an independent BWCA trip this Summer with 3 crews: 11-13yos: prep day, 3 full canoeing days, and exit day so 5 days by NT counting. 14-15yos: 7-8days by NT method Older scouts: 8+days depending on how many 21+ scouters they can find... shooting for 10i-12 days probably will actually do 10.

Our troop runs its own camp with no power or running water. They run a generator 30-45 minutes a day to run the electric pump for cook shack water and water barrels for the showers. Any adults needing medical power would need to be self supporting. We have never had a scout needing power accommodations.

Camping is at the core of the Scouting program. Shooting and Fishing have *never* been core scouting skills. Camping, hiking, and cooking are Eagle badges. Orienteering and Pioneering are linked to 1st Class requirements. High Adventure usually requires Backpacking, Canoeing, Sailing etc. Besides the MBs and the Venturing Shooting Sports Medal there is not a real pathway for shooting within Scouts. I see a lot of value in kids getting comfortable with guns and gun safety at camp and Leopold very eloquently defends fishing and hunting as a key element in his land ethic. But, given a choice I'd

The boat at 1:33 has a nice "Swallows and Amazons" vibe.

Maybe thats why we still go with Grey Wolf Meh. I like local traditions. Our troop has been giving lanyards as a summer camp thing since the 30s. If you earn rank at camp you get a cool lanyard. Other lanyards are given for other reasons serious or not. The scouts all wear them at CoHs etc... The Eagle Scout lanyards take quite a while to make and the most impressive bit of decorative knotwork I've ever seen . Every summer when lanyards are being given out at the closing campfire, any troop Eagles with lanyards(usually alums who are counselors or camp director and any active scouts) ge

So, what merchandise is so exciting that seeing it will have any effect. I remember going to Belk department store in the 80s as a scout to buy books and uniforms. It was a dinky section way in the back. If BSA got REI or Cabelas or Dicks or whatever as distributors, it would be the same. There isn't enough money there to get them to put up high profile displays in the stores and most of the gear isn't in and of itself cool. If you want parents to see the uniforms and such as a recruitment tool then you need to be active in the community where they'll see it(which is part of the uniform m

Here in the Twin Cities, Mother Nature has been very gracious about allowing our troop campouts the illusion of Winter. Our early November campout at our troop camp had an inch of snow when we arrived. The kids got to pitch tents in a decent snow squall and wake up with 3+inches of snow. Just enough snow for snowball fights and good animal tracking. We got tracks of coyotes spooking a flock of turkeys and mice snow tunnels among other things. By Sunday, it was back in the 40s and 50s later in the month. This past weekend the boys got ~3inches in time for their multi-troop campout. So

I agree with Back Pack, stupid or not... thats not scouts. Restrict membership by gender, religion, whatever on the front end and then let the kids be... Chartering school says leaders must have at least 3.5 GPA... not cool. Church says leaders must have gone through confirmation... not cool. Church says only boys can be leaders in coed troop... not cool. The CO can direct the program but not change it. If they don't like the leaders they can of course expel them(for valid religious/other reasons) but I don't think that gives them carte blanche to meddle in the intern

My cynical side sees this as an arbitrary change to sell more merch since scouts will no longer be able to use older sibs necker, hat etc...

Our troop is going on an independent BWCA trip this summer... the adults and the PLC viewed the greater planning as a huge plus not a con. More control for the older kids, more growth opportunities for the younger and cheaper. We're using our own camping and cooking gear, planning and prepping our own food, and hopefully can rustle up enough dry bags and duluth packs(though we may end up renting some of those).

I think this perfectly encapsulates some aspects of the women/girls in scouting issue of the original unsplit parent post. I strongly agree with everything you are saying about challenge, but the yardstick should be much more internal than external. Setting it up as a matter of whether you are better than women or younger scouts or some "other" misses the whole point. It is rather am I better/strong/more competent than my younger self. No need to denigrate others. There are always higher peaks to climb. The whole better than a girl thing doesn't work if mom is waiting for the kids

I think there are 2 different issues here, a logistics issue and a culture issue. For logistics, you need to figure out how to run multiple crews. LNT crew limit is 10. Philmont, the Porkies etc have a backcountry limit of 12. If the moms want an easier trip then you need a crew with one experienced scouter and them and the younger kids. Then you have the older crew that goes more hardcore. So 2 scouters for hard core group. 1 scouter and moms for beginners. Moms drive and get whatever training you desire as part of making this happen. Now culture is a little harder. If

I agree with Stosh. Our older scouts did Seabase last Spring. We are doing an independent BWCA trip this summer so we can bring younger scouts than NT allows. We have 11 and 12 yos who did a two night canoe trip on the St Croix at camp last Summer. BWCA will be a BIG jump, but manageable with planning. Philmont would be beyond their abilities just based on the sustained exertion. That said, the bases have plenty of experience taking trained 14yos successfully through either Philmont or NT. So while NT has more manageable options, either it or Philmont should be a good choice for your s

NOTHING, except that in 2013 National BSA was still a discriminatory organization. Look, in 2012 both presidential candidates, Romney and Obama, opposed the ban on gay scouts. Shortly thereafter, Robert Gates, Bush's Defense Secretary, overturned it. Coming from a council that allowed gay scouts and leaders since ~2000 and a troop/pack that has had gay kids and leaders and IH clergy in that time... You can disagree with that, but you can't call it nothing.

I have a different objection than any I've seen here. The insta-palm thing bothers me not at all. I think the non-eagle required merit badges are sufficiently weak and inconsistent that they should be entirely interest not reward driven. Having a young Eagle going to a monthly MBU to get 5 MBs in 3 month to meet the palm schedule sounds misguided. My objection is getting rid of the BOR requirement. I don't think you need a strict 3mo BOR for each palm but I think requiring a periodic BOR is still worthwhile. Why not require a BOR within the last 6 months for any palm. BORs are clearl

Punts are basically slightly larger jon boats[1]. They just happen to be poled instead of having a outboard motor. Jon boats are evolved from shallow drafted bateau[2] which could be poled, rowed, or sailed and were common river freight haulers in North America from 1650-1850. Presumably there was a similar ancestral craft in England. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_boat [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateau

Interestingly, one of the vintage kid's historical fiction books from '62 has 3 characters who are scouts. John Tunis's "Silence Over Dunkerque" is about a sergeant trying to get his men back to England after losing the rest of his company. He's from Dover or Deal or Ramsgate and as a very minor plot point his 2 scout sons go over on one of the tiny ships with a neighbor, without their mothers knowledge, and bring back a load of soldiers before being scared witless in retrospect at the danger and going back home. The heroine of the novel is a girl scout/guide in France who manages to smuggle t

Son's troop didn't do anything so we marched with our church in a neighborhood parade. Our church's troop showed up in force, as always. They had 2 signal towers they mounted on platforms on casters and pushed through the parade. Afterward they had the 2 signal towers and a 3 tower suspension bridge set up in the park during the community picnic. The signal towers were not g2ss compliant but were really solid. Lots of community kids were climbing them. Even kids too young for the towers were having fun on the bridge. This troop has been doing this every 4th for the last 15-20yrs depending

"agencies across the nation brace for a particularly high-population tick season" Anecdotally this seems to be true around here. Our troop maintains its own camp on the St Croix in northern WI. In late April/early May, they planted ~1500 pines on a campout with another troop, so lots of walking around in the grass and brush. Kids got on average like 1-3 ticks. Last weekend we had a dozen or so kids and adults up for a work weekend to paint the cook shack and do other camp maintenance. Everyone there pulled off 15-20 ticks over the weekend and the mosquitoes were legendary. Both ticks and o

Maybe to political for BSA, but I think this is what B-P meant by "peace scouts", http://i.imgur.com/9UKDt6W.jpg I couldn't scale the image so you'll just have to click through... a female scout in a tan uniform and necker standing up to Czech Nazis trying to march through a Roma neighborhood. It brought a tear to my eye and I thought y'all might appreciate it too. I would be proud to have her as a patrol leader in out troop.