Skirmishing in the woods

Here's a picture from a woodland weekend organised this June by the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment - Russian and Estonian reenactors of the era of Peter the Great. Weekends like this are a complete contrast to public shows where everything is geared to the public's education and safety - this is an opportunity to get rid of the 21st century entirely and do it for real, minus the lead shot of course.
I hope other groups that reenact the Great Northern War or similar periods take up the challenge and get involved as it can be a lot of fun and an excellent learning opportunity for the participants.
Check out the gallery as there's some great photos and the lads all show real enthusiasm for the subject - makes me wish I lived in Russia.
If you don't know the Great Northern War was mainly fought between the Swedes, who had a crazed military monarch Charles XII (at the time wanting to turn the Baltic sea into a Swedish lake) and the Russians under the tyrannical but forward-thinking Peter the Great. Many other Baltic states were involved - Denmark, Prussia, Saxony to name a few.
The GNW is famous for being the last use of the pike in battle - pikes are long spears about 16 foot long mainly used for keeping cavalry at bay but the aggressive Swedes and the Russians used them in infantry charges. The bayonet was to make it obsolete.
Dan Schorr's Great Northern War site