By any chance were you a Boy Scout?
Wow! Dee knows how to leverage a web search!
Yes I was for a while. All the way through cub scouts and I don’t remember exactly how high in Boy Scouts, but it wasn’t Eagle… I do remember how frustrating it was to have carried a pocket knife and cut a lot of firewood with a double bitted ax since I was eight years old and then have the Boy Scouts say I couldn’t do either until I got some card (tote 'n chip if I remember right) from taking some class that they never offered…
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LOL!. Yes, the BSA require the boys to complete the Totem Chip to carry a knife and Firem chit to cut firewood and start fires. Shows the boys how to handle knives and axes safely and also how to care for them. Most Troops do the training when the boys crossover from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. This fixes the problem that you had. I agree with you as a young man that grew up in a somewhat rural area and cut/split plenty of firewood for the fireplace that heated our home in the winter. Did you complete the beekeeping merit badge as a youth? They discontinued the merit badge in 1995 and it got inserted into the insect study merit badge. One of the boys father in our troop has been a beekeeper for years and he is the one that got me and my son interested in taking it up.
Thanks Dee for the websearch on beesource.com . I have been on the forum but never came across that thread.
I could never get the leaders to actually help me figure out how to earn merit badges. I did get the book for the beekeeping merit badge and was interested, but didn’t know any beekeepers at the time. My experience with bees were the ones I stepped on barefoot and a colony that was in the siding of a shed that would beard in the summer. The bees would be covering about 2’ by 8’ of the side of the building on the outside when it was hot. It was one of those creosote wood sheds with board and batten siding. I was with some kids who decided it would be a good idea to throw rocks at them. I didn’t stick around to see the results…
I’m not just a hapless beekeeper, you know!
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Did full Cub Scouts n Webalos before Boy Scouts. I got my 1st class badge … But the seconds season after returning from a vacation dad took me down to the school where we met … Wow ! Nobody around. That was weird ! We found the Troop has FOLDED/Shut-down ( no reason given )… We could continue if we drive 8 more miles to a neighboring of Issaquah. That wasn’t happen per my dad … So I did finish my old scout book … Dad worked me thru it by ourselves. So no more badges or merit books n badges but I still finished my scout book n have to this very day ! Hmmm, I did do the Beekeeping part ( guess that was a “merit badge” 
… But raising bees was also my F.F.A. n Agriculture project as well into college.
That’s my Scouting Story,
Gerald
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I have worked from the old “Scout Field Book” for years. I have two original copies of it. It’s one of my favorite books. I don’t think it’s been in print for half a century or more…
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Thank you for sharing this Michael. Since I have gotten involved in Scouting again with my son I have been collecting all of the scout manuals (new and old). This is one I don’t have but I will shortly. Ordered one off of Ebay. Good skills in each of these books that every young man/woman should know.
Definitely. One of the trade goods that was tried on the American Indians was a compass. The Indians would just laugh and ask what kind of idiot would need something to tell them what direction was what? I stopped carrying a compass when I realized that the official Boy Scout compass I had pointed South… besides it seems like a crutch other than on a REALLY cloudy day…
But these are the best survival guides I ever bought:
This one is imminently practical but is very formulaic:
https://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Survival-Skills-Larry-Olsen/dp/1556523238/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470767735&sr=1-1&keywords=Larry+Dean+Olsen’s+“Outdoor+Survival+Skills”
i.e. it will tell you a step by step process to do something. (The description this shows on here is not a correct description of the book for some reason… it’s by Larry Dean Olsen with a forward by Robert Redford)
Here’s another by the same author, which you may already have:
This one is more philosophical, but the wonderful thing is it shows you how to figure out how to do things:
e.g. instead of telling you step by step how to build a shelter he tells you how to figure out how to build a shelter with what you have, by telling you how he was taught to build a shelter. That is very different, but I think it’s important to learn.