hi everyone monia here with buckskin revolution and you know so much of the work that i do is
about being in deeper connection with the landscape around us and knowing how to make
the very best use of the resources that we have access to from wild places one of those resources
is of course from animals whether they be taken by hunters whether they be something that we came
upon in the woods that was left over from coyotes whether they be something that was hit by a car
and sitting on a roadside that is legal for us to harvest some states you can harvest roadkill
legally some you can't be sure to research your area but that said in my book part of honoring
the life of the animal is making the best use of the resources that it has to offer and also of
course this is a lot better for us because then we get a lot more wonderful resources
that are available to us from our own hands on our own skill rather than from a store so one of
the parts of deer that often go to waste with most hunters are the lower leg of the animal wonderful
resource all kinds of usable parts and pieces so we're going to start by separating out the
little knuckle bone that makes a good hand hold for friction fire and then skinning out the hock
and then peeling back the skin to reveal the tendons and then we're going to save those for
using for sinew the sinew from legs are a little bit shorter so they're often better for things
like making cordage send you back in a bow doing doing lashing of arrowheads and that kind of thing
to your arrows as opposed to making cordage or bow string or sewing thread i think i said cordage is
a good use of it but something that's spliced in rather than single ply like sewing thread that's
what you want to do with the shorter pieces of the legs in you so i want to start with taking off
one of the lovely bones that's super useful for us when we are making friction fire using the
bogel technique there is a particular bone that i believe would be the equivalent of
let's see that that that yeah it would be like a wrist bone for us i believe or no an ankle bone
because it's the back the leg of the deer so this little bone here just inside where the long tendon
from the from what would essentially be the lower leg of the deer comes in is a little bone that
has a nice little divot in it and has a little a little slot on the top for your fingers to fit in
it makes a great handhold for applying downward pressure when you're making bow drill fire
so i am going to start by taking out this bone i'm going to be feeling for where the natural
junction in the joint is where i can feel that there is cartilage rather than bone
and connective tissue and then i'm going to slide my knife in there now of course if i
stick my knife right into bone i'm likely to dull my blade at the best and potentially break it so
knowing where bone and where space between bone is is pretty key here
so you see i've gone in there and separated that out and now i can just shimmy my knife around and
this again i say it all the time but a wonderful example of why a small knife is often so much
more usable than a great big knife because you couldn't get a big knife in there and also why
i like a narrow tip on my knives particularly for my butchering i can slide that knife tip in
between joints and then i can take apart a whole animal at the joint without needing a bone saw or
hatchet without getting bone fragments in my meat potentially damaging meat and bone totally awesome
you do want to be careful when you're using the tip of your knife in a joint
that you're not putting sideways torque because that even with strong steel that can end up
breaking the tip of your knife off so being conscientious always key
and then just wiggling that tip in there until i can cut the tendons and the connective tissue
holding it all in place and wiggling the joint often helps me discover where those places are
good knife safety of course always being aware of where my fingers are in relation
to the tip of my knife there we go and then as soon as i get more wiggle room then i can
start to actually physically work it out not just using my knife in there
there we go all right beautiful little hand hold
for friction fire so wonderful thing to know about two of them and every deer
harvest them share them with your friends pass it around so everyone has good hand holds for
friction fire i will say these are pretty small and they're hard for bigger hands to use elk
have a much bigger version of this which is really nice for larger hands even for my smaller hands
that's easier but in a pinch boy way better to have a deer bone than nothing or than a rock or
a piece of hardwood or some of the other typical handholds for friction fire bow drill technique
all right so then we've got the skin of course and the four leg skin tends to be quite
tight and doesn't give very much and it's really hard to tan it because the fibers are so packed
and together and they're so used to not moving because the foreleg of a deer the skin isn't
isn't moving this way and that it's mostly just wrapped solidly around the deer so it's not going
to become a flexible leather it's much better as rawhide and a really nice thing to do with it is
take the whole skin off we call them hot skins because the lower leg is called the hock of the
deer you can slice rather than down the back of the leg which is how you would do a lot of other
skinning down the front and down towards the hooves and then i can peel off this whole skin
with the lovely dew claws intact which makes a beautiful piece of rawhide
you can put a lot of these together and make a hawk bag which will have the fur
and the lovely little dew claws on it super beautiful kind of classic style of rawhide bag
so i take the cut all the way down to where the hooves separate out and then cut
along there to the base
again right to where those two separate toes separate so i'm getting the full length of skin
right up to where the toes go and then it's good to get it started with your knife often
but once you've got it started pretty easy just to peel that skin off and then you'll
have to do a little bit more knife work as you get towards the dew claws
and now you can also see this lovely piece of sinew so wonderful sewing thread now
so i'm going to peel that all the way back to the base of those dew claws
and then i'm just gonna cut right at the base of them leaving what are essentially like the
finger bones on us in those dew claws but separating right right at the joint
and i'm gonna go actually behind the little bone there we go
so there's that beautiful hawk skin
and now i've got this lovely bone that i can use to make tools or i can cook down into bone broth
this would make a decent height scraper i would abrade it so that i get a sharp edge on one side
so basically like cut through one side so that i get an edge of bone and then sharpening that with
a rock that would make a serviceable stone age hide scraper way harder to scrape a hide with bone
than with metal tools i've done it it's possible it's uh it's a lot more challenging but still
this would be a good bone for that and then also i have this wonderful sinew here so
there's one thinner piece of sinew along the front and a little kind of cavity in the bone
and then this piece back here is a nice big thick long piece of sinew super super useful
i'm going to just cut it right where it connects in with the bone
there we go i can just peel that off and then this one has a thick sheath that the sinew runs
through that the tendon runs through so i want to separate that out so that it can dry well and dry
each of those bundles of tendon fibers separate from from their sheath and from one another
all right
so there we go this is the outer sheath and this
is the tendon two tendons and i'm going to peel them apart to dry them separately so you can see
how different the leg sinews are from the back straps in you
leg back strap leg back strap
and then some folks use the hooves of the deer for rattles also if you have a dog and you're wanting
to get it to learn to track deer using the hooves to make a trail a scent trail for your dog to
follow is a great way it can be used decoratively and then cooking down all of these small bones in
the feet with all of that connective tissue and cartilage makes for a wonderful bone stock so
so many ways to use this under utilized resource thanks everyone please subscribe to my channel and
tap the little bell there if you want to get notifications when new videos come out and please
check out my website buckskinrevolution.com and sign up for my mailing list to hear more of what i
have to offer and consider joining my patreon team which is where the vast majority of my funding to
keep putting out these lovely videos for you comes from so thanks so much everyone and viva love
evolution
you