#129 Donny Dust - Primitive Bison Experiment Ep. I
Donny Dust - Primitive Serval Expert, Author, Reality TV Star & Marine Corps Veteran of 12 years of service with an honorable discharge in 2011. He is now a worldwide expert in remote primitive survival, emergency preparedness and ancient/historical technologies. He has taken his time in service and days living among the wild landscapes of the world to offer one-of-a-kind presentations on resiliency, leadership, and communication. No other person has such a diverse background to leverage when providing his one-of-a kind presentations. He has authored books, worked on feature films as a technical consultant, took part in different network television programs, conducted numerous podcasts and radio appearances as well has spoken in front of crowds who traveled far and near to hear him speak. Known as the "Professional Caveman" Donny is nothing but professional, adventurous and creative. Donny runs a successful wilderness self-reliance and survival school called Paleo Tracks Survival, a premier survival and wilderness self-reliance school. Tune in as Donny Dust joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss, primitive living, primitive tools, archery, bison hunting, stone tool butchering, survival, wildlife behavior, bushcraft, Colorado, outdoor life & much more.Please subscribe or like us on social media platforms for updates on shows, events, and episode drops.
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Donny Dust - Primitive Bison Experiment Ep. I
Our returning guest for a fourth time is Donny Dust. He's one of my favorite people to have in the studio. He's an incredible human. We've spent plenty of time in and outside of the studio, like on a bison experiment through CU Boulder where we got to field dress and bone out an entire bison using nothing but stone tools. Donny is a true craftsman of his trade in flint knapping and primitive survival and has been dubbed The Modern-Day Caveman. This was a great conversation. We did a deep dive into that experiment, native culture, stone tools and so much more. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Welcome in, Donny. What a crazy experience that we had.
We got down on another bison experiment.
This episode might solely be about that. We'll see how long we go. We spent a day and a night almost, a good 24 hours at least. I had such an amazing experience. Number one, I’m infatuated with Native American culture. I love the history of it. I love reading about some of their tactics and that whole thing. Growing up, finding arrowheads was a family tradition. We would go out on these trips, which I know is not acceptable now to go out, to start hunting, collecting of points and all that stuff. That's what I did as a kid growing up. It wasn't frowned upon. It was like, “Look at what I found.”
When I was out there and what my grandfather taught me is like, “Think about how these guys would hunt. Where would you find cover? Where is their water? Would you be at a high point? That's where we would find these arrowheads.” Some tools we'd find and all kinds of stuff. Sometimes we'd find spots where they've camped. Was it mano metate? We found a couple of those and all kinds of awesome tools. I was doing that from a very young age and that was ingrained in me. I started appreciating the quality of the stonework and that whole thing. You were gracious enough to invite me on. This was an experiment for CU Boulder.
This is part of Dr. Devin Pettigrew, whom you're going to have on at a later date. He's done quite a bit of research and analysis into specifically the atlatl, primitive weaponry and how ancient cultures of Paleo-Indians throughout America could have hunted large megafauna with an atlatl. We've done several experiments in the past. We've done it against hogs and sheep and then it's grown into bison. When you think of megafaunas, we still have them exist. You think of elephants, giraffes and things to that extent. Bison antiqua is the larger species of bison that once existed in North America. We have a smaller little brother.
They're bred with cows primarily or some genus of beef cows or cattle.
There’s the beefalo, which is a cross between a bison and a cow. All the bison are still bison. They’ve only evolved in certain ways and gotten smaller in size as they’ve migrated here and there.
All the bison today are still bison. They've just evolved in certain ways and gotten smaller in size.
They don’t have the range that they once had.
It’s different compared to 10,000, 12,000 or 15,000 years ago but you can still test stone points with an atlatl on something pretty large.
I’m an elk hunter and grew up hunting elk because of my love for that culture and how much they utilized it. In the Wild West era, the bison is an iconic animal for me. I’m as infatuated with them because I’m an animal lover. As much as I love to hunt, eat meat and everything, there’s something special about animals and my connection, which is I’m grateful for what it provides for my family, my diet, my views or a connection with nature. I don’t think that there’s any better connection. I thought that what was truly amazing too about this experiment was we did it at the Eagles Wing Ranch. Shout out to those guys. Incredible people out there. What was the owner’s name?
Jim.
Shout-out to Jim.
Jim is phenomenal. He’s a great guy.
I thought it was so cool. First thing in the morning, it was almost a little moment of silence for the bison and we were all appreciative of what was going on. When he was expired, Jim came up and took a minute. I think he was on his knee and maybe I’m getting this wrong but he was like, “Thank you, buddy. You were a warrior.”
He knew that animal from the time it was born. He knew its life and everything. That was pretty awesome for him to say, “These guys are going to do right by you. I’m going to dispatch you with a quick shot to the back of the head and then we’re going to use you with my buddy here. We’re going to get some science and understanding as to who we are as a people as well as the important role that bison played throughout history.” It was pretty awesome.
It's a unique experience for some folks because they see bison flipping people over in Yellowstone. They see them on the side of the road and in these small herds. When you’re up close, you can feel its fur, see the muscle structure, how it walks and how it lays down and then you have one on the ground in front of you.
How about when we had to roll it over?
They’re heavy. It’s no joke. Everyone at the end of the day was sore in different muscles they didn’t even know that they had because it was 950,000 pounds or something to that extent, maybe a little more. It was a big bull. It was a healthy one. It was pretty epic.
It was a bucket list for me. I learned so much from that. I can’t wait because I have so many more questions. I have so much more to learn about it because I’m not a smart dude. Being around these archeologists and your construction, you’ve done this several times before, I was like, “Fuck, I’m not fitting in here.”
I thought it was super cool and intimate that it was five of us out there. Six with Jim but Jim wasn’t around. He was at the beginning. What a crazy experience for five people to go through. When you invited me, I had all these different things in my head. I was like, “This is going to get crazy. We’re going to atlatl all this thing.” I wasn’t sure how it was going to go down. It wasn’t what I had in my head. It was so cool and such a cool experience. I envisioned being 30 people there taking notes all this crazy.
There are a couple of rules and regulations you have to do. A lot of people, when they go out and “hunt’ an North American bison, it’s very likely with a rifle. They’re sitting in a vehicle or some proposition on a hill. They’ve got some standoff but it’s not the same thing. For us to do justice by that bison, we could have stocked up in a small group and all through an atlatl dart aiming at that same bison but in the efforts of science and the importance of that animal and us being able to conduct this experiment as well as spread a great message, it’s more important to have the farmer put the animal down and then allow us to science out.
There are a lot of videos out there of people hunting bison. I talked with Jim extensively about this and he said, “Majority of the time, most of those bison, if they're standing there, they're very accustomed to humans. More importantly, if someone is trying to creep up on one with a bone, sometimes a farmer will tranquilize and put a sedative into that animal so it's not as aggressive.” If someone is walking up with a boat or an atlatl, those bison are not afraid to turn and run directly at them. A bison coming at you at full speed don't care how good you are.
They run 30 or 35 at a clip. If they're full speed, they're insanely fast.
It's one of those things to factor in. The original experiment that we planned, which was up near Lolo, Montana, was for us to take it with an atlatl dart. After a couple of discussions and it was in line with the university and us, we want to make sure that the animal wasn't going to suffer because you take a shot, you throw it and you don't hit that behind the shoulder thoracic cavity.
Pretty much, you got to heart shot for it to be.
You saw firsthand. Those darts can bounce off. They can go 1.5 inches in and not even make it to meat. It could be fur, hide and a little bit of membrane. I know we've talked about, “Is there something called an ethical kill?” I don't believe so. It's a quick kill. For Devin and I in the past experiments, it's like, “What is the quickest way we can dispatch this animal where it's not going to suffer?”
Especially being in line with the university, I get that. Also, no matter where you hunt bison, it's a canned hunt. It is what I call it because they're in a high-fenced area or a fenced area. This sounds messed up but it brings me back to that Napoleon dynamite scene where they're rolling up in the school bus. The ranchers out there are at point-blank range and put down this cow. To me, that's not hunting.
This wasn't about the thrill of taking a bison with the atlatl. It was about the thrill of us being able to test stone projectiles, more importantly, butcher this animal out in a very traditional way and get to know this process. You were there and went through it. You know it takes time. You know the intricacies of grabbing a stone blade, starting to cut the hide off, getting inside where all the intestines in the stomach, heart, liver and lungs are and removing the meat. It is a whole different level of understanding the second and third-order effects once the animal is down. What we're trying to focus on is all of those steps after.
To me, it's how far you take it. Instantly, as soon as I shared this on Instagram, I had some friends reach out that are avid hunters and they're like, “Can we do one of these in July?” We got to talk about that off-camera but it's one of those things. How far do you take it if you're going back to that? If you’re going to take one with an atlatl, at what point are we riding out on horses on some psychedelics? How far do you go down the rabbit hole? Those animals are pretty fascinating.
It’s one thing I picked up from Devin or maybe I might have read this from somewhere else. That day was all a big blur of awesomeness. The bison that we have, that one was probably 3 feet from horn to horn or something like that. The Ice Age bison is 7-foot horn to horn. We're talking about an animal twice the size.
People find these ancient bison skulls. The boneyard up in Alaska might have a couple. There's such a different size comparison but it is similar in anatomy. If you look at the bison that was there, the horns that are spread on that are crazy. It's still a good medium and a good representation.
Look at the hump on those things too.
It's hump meat. It's good stuff.
I was shocked at how big the backstraps were. Could you imagine the backstrap on that thing? Jeremy, I brought you some backstraps. It’s in the refrigerator over there so don't forget to take it. It's sacred meat.
That's what I’m having. I’m so stoked.
When you think of a bison, a lot of people think of it as a big clumsy animal spending time with Jim over a couple of experiments. A bison’s horns are essentially its fingers. It has the ability to loop the loop on your tennis shoe and flip you up where you want to go. They're very specific in their ability to manipulate their head in conjunction with their horns to do what they need to do. If they're looking at you and they want to key in a specific spot on that body and use it as a point to leverage you up into the air, they can.
Many people think of bison as big, clumsy animals, but they're very specific in their ability to manipulate their heads in conjunction with their horns to do what they need to do.
Go check out the @TouronsOfYellowstone to see what Donny is talking about.
For us to do this experiment, it was a pretty amazing experience. For someone who's used the atlatl for quite some time and stone tools in various ways, the opportunity to butcher an animal on the ground with raw flakes, blades, knives and things of that extent that are all stone, you get to feel some of the efforts and the trials. Also, the things you will come across if you could put yourself 15,000 years ago as a hunter-gatherer society taken down a few years back.
I have a whole new respect for that. I was thinking about one of the biggest things I took away from it. We started at 1:00 and rolled out there around 6:00 or 7:00. We're talking 5 or 6 hours to field dress and bone the thing completely out down to bones like rib meat, neck meat, pretty much everything. We took tongue, heart and everything. My goal, even though I brought a nice blade with me, was to not pick that up at all. Shout out to Half Face Blades. You guys make amazing stuff. I brought one on this experiment but the goal was to use these stone tools that we got sitting in front of us that you'd given me in the past.
It was a whole new level of respect and confidence for me. I was surprised at how well they worked and what I thought. We're going to do a deep dive on that here in a minute but to catch our audience up a little bit that are diving into this and maybe don't know what we're talking about, what was this experiment on specifically? I still don't know exactly. I know it involved the construction of stone tools, the construction of points, different methods, different rocks or stones from different regions of the world and different types of wood. There's so much.
There’s a lot of stuff going on. When Devin comes on, he will be able to give you the scientific version, I will give you the Donny Dust version. Essentially, there are lots of discussions in the archeological world that ancient humans were not capable of killing large megafauna with stone tools. There have been previous tests done where some of those tests have taken place.
Can't we debunk that on this?
We've debunked it I don't know how many times but some of these archeologists create these testing. I’ll leave some of this for Devin but some archeologists will replicate stone tools, put them in an atlatl or foreshaft and then throw it at something like an unfired clay pot, maybe a fired clay pot. They will use that clay pot as the medium for the bison. They're using things that don't make sense. I’ve been thinking pretty much in anyone's world. If I’m going to test the stone tool and its capabilities to hunt and kill an animal, why would I be using a clay pot? They're night and day.
This has stemmed from Devin having access to those articles and reading those articles being like, “This is false.” This is his world. This is his PhD. That's him saying, “We can do this, get some animals, whether they are purchased outright from a sheep farmer, a piece of roadkill or whatever the case may be, a bison in this case and test those theories. We can test those theories using atlatls, various atlatls, atlatl darts, foreshafts and stone points hitting different areas on that bison and see the damage that atlatl dart with a properly crafted stone point could do to the flesh.”
The downside of it is the bison aren't hunted in that capacity because I’ve seen what a stone point will do to something like a hog. If you hit a hog, it's going to run, lacerate in size and keep going. There’s a little bit more static but it was controlled in a way where we were able to throw a dart, see the impact of the dart, see the damage the stone points took and then do some of the analysis. Some of the interesting things that you'll find out in this report once Devin spends quite a bit of time putting all the numbers together is a lot of archeologists find broken points at the haft. They find as I call them Swayze’s, The Point Breaks.
That's my terminology. You find a Swayze out there. Shout out to Patrick Swayze. We miss you. You get all these different breaks and the question is, where do those breaks come from? How did this break like that? When you take an atlatl with a foreshaft and throw it into something like a bison and you create a break that's similar to a lot of the archeological finds that they find in these different sites, you can say, “We can see this exact break here at this site. We've replicated this break here on this bison experiment. This is why this break takes place.” There are tons, hundreds and thousands of different breaks that can happen when you're throwing an atlatl.
It’s because they have all those fines or pieces. It’s called artifacts.
That's the archeological record of that specific site.
A site could have 100 Folsom sites. I forget what the other is. There's a bunch of them.
There's Clovis and Folsom. There's the blackwater draw. There are so many different sites out there. Those sites have complete points. They have some broken points and retouch points. You also have kill sites, which are an area where something was likely harvested. They're finding broken points and stone tools. They're trying to dive deeper into what was the means of the kill as well as what was the means of the processing of the animal. What is the story behind that site?
The best thing to use is multiple points of data from stone tools to the bone, the mid-end, the debitage, fire pits and anything that could be recovered. A lot of things will degrade over time but the stone doesn't so they find these brakes. When we can replicate those brakes, we can understand a little bit more certainty that this particular projectile was likely hafted on an atlatl because we were able to replicate that exact brake like the one that they found at this site over here or over there. There's a lot of analysis.
Can you break it down for people that are reading that maybe not basic?
I brought some examples. These are the ones that we use for hogs. There are various sizes and styles but when a stone point is hafted into something, this essentially is the foreshaft for an atlatl dart. This slides into a longer piece of cane or willow. Think of a giant arrow with fletching but it's 6 or 7 feet long. This slides into the front and a little pocket. When this makes entry into the animal, this goes into the animal, dark comes out, foreshaft stays in.
When we have to projectile into it, we are connecting the stone to the actual wooden foreshaft through a means of sinew through different glues, adhesives and all-natural forming. That stone becomes fixed in there where it's not going to come out if you throw that. That is hafting. There are a lot of ways people can haft a projectile or stone into a foreshaft.
Even this blade that we used would be hafted, correct?
Yes. This is a hafted stone blade with a handle that allows the user to wrap this around their wrist, hold onto the handle and then cut away flesh and hide.
You hook Jeremy up with one of these for the show.
Jeremy won. It's been blooded. It's got some wear and tear and use on it.
This is so cool. I was trying to figure out where I was going to put this in my house. This is going somewhere prominent.
You can use it if you want.
I need to keep within reach of my dining or table.
It's surprising how well they work.
You saw firsthand. Jeremy will experience it. They cut amazingly. That's the other part of this. The experiment is so ancient. People take a bison. They've killed it and it's on the ground. How do they go through that process of butchering out?
That was so cool that we did it on the ground too I thought because it's a lot of work. I wanted to do it as much as I could to replicate what these people experienced for my personal stuff. I had nothing to do with the experience. They weren't collecting any data on me except for IQ.
As a hunter, there are steps involved. The important thing is there are a lot of archeologists and people that don't hunt. They can have a lot of good ideas but it's getting those practitioners.
Right away, I was leaning on you because I was like, “Are we going to field dress this thing right away or are we going to leave it in and start on that?” There are a bunch of different ways you can go about it.
There are countless ways.
We'll dive into some of the details on that but I want to go back to the foreshaft because this was something that's interesting to me. I always envisioned arrows. My broadheads if it's a perfect machine arrow, it screws in but there's no foreshaft. Once that arrow is broken, used or something like that, there's no foreshaft. You could call the insert almost a foreshaft. I thought this was something that I never picked up in construction or even when I was picking up points or even thought of.
Maybe I didn't read into it as much but that was something that I learned. It’s like the construction lengths that you guys went to when creating these stones attaching them to the foreshaft and making them a hafted piece and how well they fit into the shaft with the same diameter. It was you or Devin that was explaining to me that the actual foreshaft, the hole into the shaft, needs to hit a dead point of wood. It's almost perfectly machined but by hand.
They need to be flat. Some can come to points but we have found through three bison that if they are tapered out, they can drive a wedge. 1) The foreshaft can get locked in there and it takes a great deal of force to get it out. 2) It can also split your main dart but if it's butted up, there's no real give or take of pressure. It's almost like a 50/50. This particular foreshaft here is different from this foreshaft here. They all go to the same dart but this one that I have that's made out of Osage, which is hardwood, is a bulb foreshaft. When I slide it in, it gives a little bit of pressure. You can feel the walls of the main shaft squeezing around the bulb.
It's like an arrow glass shape.
It's different compared to this one which tapers out to this base. The inside of my main shaft mirrors this exact foreshaft. They're like two puzzle pieces fitting together so there's no give or take. When it receives any force from a bone or a deep dive into the flesh, it's not going to force it to split it up.
There's so much energy behind these things.
The kinetic energy is unreal. Devin and I have done some external experiments on this where we have tested the down-range velocity and the kinetic energy based on the velocity and the distance. That's science. All I know is that when I throw an atlatl dart, he gets super excited because it's enough kinetic energy that could replicate a kill to kill something like an elephant, some mammoth or mastodon based on some previous experience that was done in the ‘70s with a couple of the researchers down in Africa. It's exciting to be part of that research. More importantly, I learned so much about the science behind it.
Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m still on a high about it. It was so weird. I went right back to a city experience. I had to fly to Chicago. I flew from Chicago, came packed my gear and charged some batteries real quick for some cameras and stuff. I got up at 4:00 in the morning to go meet you at the ranch. I met you at 8:00 or something. This was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. We started as soon as we pulled into the ranch and went until about 7:00 or 8:00 at night and then had an amazing campfire to hang out with some fresh bison meat.
It’s unbelievable. A little bit of tequila mixed in there for me. I slept like a baby. I had to get up and come right back here. My wife was about to kill me because I turned our kitchen island into a butcher station but they were all happy when they were eating it. We had tenderloin that first night. It's so cool to share that with your family. I love sharing. I get as much gratitude or appreciation for the process and everything like eating it myself, preparing it myself or giving it away. I’m giving some to Jeremy and letting him experience it or somebody else that's helped me out along the way.
I appreciate you coming out. I was like, “We’re going to send him this text. He's going to be on board. I have no doubt.” The only thing is I wasn't sure if you were traveling or if you were out and about.
I made it work.
That was the best part. You're like, “I got to do this show.”
We're going to have to bleep that out. I can't say her name. It’s NDA stuff.
He was doing some stuff with some megastar and he was like, “I can make it work.” I was like, “Of course, he can. He wants to go play in the blood and butcher something out.”
It was awesome explaining that to the people that I work with because some of these people live in the inter-city. Some people get it because they live in Northern Montana and stuff like that. Shout out to all my crew and them stepping up to the plate so I could step away and come hang with you. They're like, “You're going to go do what? Are you psycho?” I got a new nickname out there, which is funny coming back from that. Over the radio, I had to go straight into a load out to get a bunch of gear like loading semis and all that stuff. I’m the glue that's holding a lot of that together so these guys are leaning on me for like, “We're going to take this down first and then that'll go in the truck next.”
That's my role out there in these large productions. I get a lot of radio calls during the day. It's pretty constant. I’m on a mic. We got a few different Bobby's out there, BM or something like that. Normally, the call is assigned to me but it was primal. It was funny but did I feel fucking primal coming off of that too. That was such a connection. It was so awesome to go through that whole process. I have a whole new appreciation. I tell you what, if I get an elk down cutting it up with my Half Face Blade, is going to be no problem. Those 2 hours where I’m slaving away, there is nothing to compare to the 7 hours that we did with Stone with something as large as a bison.
There are 4 or 5 people working on it in and out dragging meat, removing this and that.
Also, boning it out. That's a whole other thing. One thing is if you're going to quarter it and go put it in coolers or something like that but bone it out. It's incredible. I lost my train of thought. I was talking about the process. I turned around and went right back to Chicago for this load out where I got the nickname. I’d cooked some backstrap the night before. I put it in a little glass dish, wrapped it all up and smuggled it through TSA. They were like, “What is this?” When they found out what it was, they were like, “Can I have some?” I was like, “No.”
I took it and we heated it at the gig so everybody had a little taste. It’s blowing away. I felt like in a modern era like a hunter-gatherer, bringing and sharing that with people and stuff. With the amount of gratitude that I get from sharing it, I’m not only enjoying it myself but for my family. It's so valuable. Thanks to you.
It’s my pleasure.
It’s your generosity and friendship. None of that would've been possible without you. That's why I have at least 100 pounds plus of meat in my freezer. I’m probably 88 or 89 pounds already.
My boys are back from Japan and we are slowly decreasing our bison. They're like, “What do we eat now?” They eat a lot. For this experience to do right by the animal is to process it out. I took the hide back and spent a good day flushing the hide. It's soaking in some water.
What is the process? Are you guys doing that back to how a native culture, Folsom culture or Ice Age culture is? They would tan it with the brains or something. They had a bunch of different methods.
There are a lot of different methods out there whether they kept it in a rawhide form, brain-tanned it or bark-tanned it. The overall thing is to be able to use that large surface area or the bison hide as clothing, shoes, bags or whatever the case may be. That was the essential process haul. All ancient peoples obtained their fur. There's a large number of steps involved but it is something that an individual person can be done. The hardest part about fleshing a bison hide is its weight. You felt the weight once the hide came off or once the guts came out. That weight of being able to have to pick it up and put it on a fleshing beam and flush it out is super heavy.
Whether they kept it in rawhide form or brain-tanned or bark-tanned it, the overall thing is to use that large surface area of the bison hide as clothing, shoes, bags, or whatever the case may be.
It's unbelievably thick. To get into some details, when you're skinning an animal like you pull the skin of a deer or something, you can pull the sinew. There's a layer of membrane between the skin and the actual muscle.
There are different types but there is something else.
It's like a membrane. It's almost like glue or something that holds the skin to muscle.
I can't remember off the top of my head.
That's all right. We'll leave it to Devin when he comes on.
It's like a fascia. I should know this.
Anyways, that's the method. You don't ruin the hide or the meat. You don't want to cut into either. You pull and cut along that to remove the skin from the actual animal or whatever you've shot and killed. On a deer, it's thin enough that you can pull that off. With this bison, I had a stick rolling up in there at one point. I was pulling with all my force getting handcraft. I’m learning something new. Thank you, Jeremy.
Even with doing deer, you can hold a deer hide and roll your knuckles into it and it comes off. This is like separating duct tape.
From the sticky side of it, it was stuck together.
That's exactly what it's like. You have to get a little window open. You grab any one of these blades and start working it the whole way down. That is a process. As soon as we started to get a little lip on the hide, I was like, “Bobby, take a stick and roll it up in the hide.” It gives you something else to hold onto. Next thing you know, you're adapting these different ways. At one point, I had a bison leg up on my shoulder. I’m pulling and cutting. That's the name of the game when you're dealing with something that big and you're looking to salvage the parts. You're not looking to go down the spine and take the back straps. You're looking to utilize it all.
You got the experience. I got the experience of doing it. It's one of those things where you're like, “Holy cow.” You sit and look at everything. You've pulled off the hide, intestines, head and tongue. Seven coolers are full. You can see why these cultures relied so heavily on one large kill because it could supply them with several hundred pounds of meat as well as the hide and the bones. I’m always interested in the bones because I like to build things out of them. One of the great things that will happen with these bones is after we de-boned everything, the flesh and everything will be removed from it.
You can see why some cultures relied heavily on one large kill because it could supply them with several hundred pounds of meat, hide, and bones.
They remove it with beetles. It's something Devin was telling me. They remove it with a beetle or something and the beetles will chew it off. It's crazy they polish it off.
There's nothing left but bone. It's cool. What's left behind are all of the stone points that impact the ribs and broken ribs.
I’m sure you caught this or maybe you even sent me some photos of it. There was an arrowhead that was still stuck in one of the ribs.
There are projectiles. When you think about that, you're like, “This projectile made it through the hair, hide, membrane, muscle and then into that rib and then broke right there.” Imagine what it would've done if it was an inch to the right and went between the ribs. You see the broken ribs and the projectiles that are lodged in the various bones.
More importantly in the butchering process, you can observe all of the cut marks and the scrapes that came from the stone tools. When you're cutting down and cleaning out the rib meat or removing the quarters, you are getting cut marks on those bones. When archeologists recover bones, let's say from an ancient bison or some megafauna, they see those same marks.
You see those little scars. It's almost scarring a piece of wood because the bone is soft at that point.
It's soft at that point so they can see those marks. If we're able to replicate those same marks with the same tools, you see the full picture of the process of hunting, taking the animal down, removing everything, quartering it out or whatever the case may be and then getting into the fine-tunes of butchering all that meat with stone tools. You can replicate the past and then get a better understanding of it. Plus, all of the throws that we did into the animal to see certain projectiles, hafting methods, throwers and atlatls on what they can do.
Even to go a little bit deeper into that and one thing I want to spend a little bit of time on is not only having people envision it like, “It's a rock attached to a stick that's shaped.” There's way more science that went even deeper on this. Some of it was the material or some choke cherry willows that they used. Go back to different stones from different regions. You had Georgetown and some Obsidian.
Before we go into that, there were so many knappers that made a lot of points. Having done a couple of these in the past, I guess swamped with making a lot of points. One of the great things for a lot of flint knappers out there is to make their points and then see them use, whether it's in hunting. It's great to make them but it's horrible. Sometimes you stick them up on a shelf and never see them. Knowing that you guys are going to use yours and you've used yours already, Bobby, it's awesome.
Not much more special. People come in here, the first thing that they do is pick these things up and they're like, “This is awesome. Where did this come from?” It then gives me an opportunity to tell them about you and some people already know. They're like, “That's awesome. I follow that guy on TikTok,” or whatever it is.
Beyond that, for me, it was like, “I have all these tools here and talking to you.” This is your fourth or fifth time on the show. One episode was lost on me. You'll never know. When you invited me on this one, I was like, “I can't pass up this opportunity. That's why I went to all those great lengths to leave the show.” I appreciate the invitation.
When he called me, I’m so stoked. You were at the airport and you're like, “Guess what I’m fucking doing.” It was insane.
I called you on my way out and I was like, “What do you want me to bring? Can I bring the stone tools from the studio?” It's one thing to have them to put them on a shelf but to put them to work. As much as I didn't want to break one, how cool of a story would it be if I broke one or dulled it? You can tell. Some of this obsidian one isn't as sharp or as clean as it once was.
We were looking at it. You can see in the light it's dull because it's got blood residue. Imagine having this little blade here and an archeologist finds something. They can still test the edges and look for the residue and see if it's been used or not. In the Boulder Cache, they had a giant land camel that is on some of the blades that have been recovered.
They found DNA on the blade.
It’s something that was used 10,000 years ago. Talk about some CSI stuff. This has bison residue all over it. We killed the bison and butcher it out. In the process, we drop one blade and that blade stays there.
I was worried. I almost thought I lost that one and it ended up being underneath of the bison at one point because you're so busy. You're also working against time. We had perfect weather. It was the perfect day. We weren't super rushed but if it would've been 80-degree weather, it would've been a different story. We would've been totally rushed but even then, we were rushing to get it done before dark.
We were all getting hungry because we were talking about bison stew. Imagine, if they find this, they have a story. They can say, “This is a form of blade. We tested the edge because we're at a kill site. We know this blade was used on some ancient megafauna, bison, land camel or sloth.” That in itself is so revealing based on this one tool right here. What it holds and what it provides. If it's dull, you can find razor-sharp points. They can be 10,000 years old, 5,000 years old or 1,200 years old but they will still hold that edge. All of these tools, I always call them blooded. They've been blooded.
It’s like these guys. These are those back flakes. It’s a couple that you needed to add to your collection. John Whittaker, the other archeologist who was there, came up. We were chatting prior to your arrival and even Devin's arrival. He's a knapper and has been knapping for many years. He’s a great guy. We were talking and I was like, “What did you bring?”
He was like, “What did you bring?” I was like, “I brought some back flakes, raw flakes, hafted blades and then my Acheulean hand axe.” He's like, “I brought the same thing.” Without even coordinating, knowing the task you're going to be doing, we were like, “This is what I’m going to make.” The reason why this blade is great is this is 360 degrees of cutting. As you can cut flesh, you can also cut your fingers. It bites in the hand. My hands were chewed up.
This blade is backed by the cortex, which means I got a little bit of protection. It's an evolution of the process. Imagine finding these and that stone blade at a kill site where there are some remnants of bones. You can see the toolset that they would need to fully process anything. For me, that's what I find fascinating. Devin is trying to convince me to get an Archeology degree in Ancient Stone Tool Butchering Techniques. I’m like, “Why? I can do it with you and I don't have to write any papers.” It's that thing that you could find come across where it's so telling of our real capabilities as a human species.
Imagine finding a stone blade at a kill site with remnants of bones. You can see the tool set they needed to fully process anything.
One of the things I took away from this was what I envisioned I would use. When I came in here, I grabbed all the pieces that you had knapped for me. I didn't take any of these flakes. Hunting arrowheads as a kid, we would find flakes like this all the time. My grandfather would tell me, “If it has a flat surface on one end, it's been hit by somebody to make something.” Somebody, thousands of years ago, did touch this piece of stone, although it might not be an arrowhead. It still could have been used as a tool or a knife.
That's called the bulb of percussion. That means it has taken a force that can only be produced by human hands through a hard hammer percussion, a hammer stone or a soft billet. Something like a moose antler where it's a small portion of the moose and it hits. Any time it hits, it creates this bulb and that's called the bulb of percussion. When you look at the flake itself, there's the dorsal side of the flake. That's the side that has preexisting flake scars, cortex and all sorts of stuff. It has a ventral side. The ventral side is the smooth side.
From those two sides, from the bulb of percussion, you have a proximal end, which is the end closest to you. The distal end is the end that tapers out. If you find a flake and it has a bulb, a dorsal-ventral, proximal and distal end, you know that it’s a flake that at some point in time, another human being has held a rock and popped this flake off. They either left it on the side because they're like, “I’m going somewhere else with this ball or put that in my toolkit because I’m going on a bison hunt later. I’m going to use this to butcher it out.” It’s the simplest tool.
I found myself early on too, not even an hour into us getting into the field dressing part. I instantly grabbed my shiniest things. The tools that I thought would work the best did not. I grabbed one of these knives or spear points. I might have started with this one.
I got you on video cutting into the rear leg.
I instantly found out because this has got a sharp serration on both points. I asked you about maybe 5 or 6 cuts in. I said, “Do you have a little piece of buckskin that I can wrap?” This is here around this because not only all the force that you're using but also that force is going into your hand. The bison hide is much thicker than the skin on your palm. I have some calluses but not in the right spots. I would imagine that eventually, you would have different but I still have little nicks and stuff that day.
There was some peroxide in my hands when I got back. Instantly, I grabbed this and this worked great for a while. I was going through a tougher part of the hide or something at some point. I was like, “I need something different.” I don't think I have it here. It became part of the research. It went with Devin but you handed me a flake that was similar to this. It had some backing on it. I ended up using that thing almost all day. I hardly lost its edge.
It’s the long one. It was almost shaped like a skinning knife. Skinning knives have a belly to the blade a little bit. If you pull up the Half Face Hunter Skinner, you can see but it had that natural belly. It's good for getting in there and holding an edge longer. I use that thing all day. I adopt it because you started with it.
The coolest thing about is I didn't use it and it did not feel right in my hands. It's a nice elongated blade. I pulled it off a blade core and a couple of these other ones but I’m not feeling this one. I set it off to the side, it went into your hands and it turned into your tool of the day. This little guy right here turned into my tool of the day because I was able to wrap it around my wrist, get in there and do a lot.
I used that for a little bit too. You handed that off to me too.
It's that transfer of the tools. I always call you getting the real ground truth. As you're holding a blade in your hand, I’ve heard many knappers and people say, “You could skin out.”
There's the Hunter Skinner. That belly. That's perfect. That is the field dressing an animal.
It’s the perfect shape because as you're grabbing back by the handle, that blade is sticking lower than your hand and it gives you a little bit more force to contact into the blade and the flesh.
Plus, you don't have a tip getting into the flesh or the skin. You're using the belly. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go back to ground truth because this is super important.
That's what you have. A lot of collectors out there will be like, “This was used in the butchering process.” It can be but the truth behind it is it's very likely that it's not. If you look at those blades that we use, they're all dull. There are probably very few retouches, especially on little simple flakes like this. Having held one of these in your hands for 1 hour, 2, 3 or 4 hours and you're taking apart an animal, this is not the most optimal. This is great for getting the hide opening up like a razor blade on those first cuts. I have footage of you in there holding this guy, even the obsidian one with that.
That was the heart extraction tool right there. I love this point. I have a fascination with obsidian. Also, I found this thing is so sharp, you could cut the shit out of yourself with one of these.
This was your adaptation. This one piece of leather. Before you know it, you had your system down. What worked, how it fell right in your hand and how you wrap this around the base of that blade. You figured that out. You were obtaining the purest form of ground truth while you were taking apart that bison because you were using back blades. The next thing you know, you're like, “I found my tool. I can get everything I need to get done with this. I’m still going to change here and there.”
To the point where this is more of like a scalpel-sharp. If you want to get into a blade sharp than a scalpel, it's more of a surgical tool. When you're going into something that's a soft tissue like a long membrane, this was awesome. Different materials too. That's what I was getting at. There's one photo that you took or somebody took of me there and I posted it on Instagram. It's @BobbyFMarshall if you go to it. There's one point of me pulling the hide back and going through the fascia. It looks like I’m holding a blade. When I looked at that photo, I was like, “That is such an awesome photo. Here are some photos of some of the tools.”
That's the belied one up right next to that big.
That's the one I used all day. The next one looks like you're holding a knot. If you didn't zoom in on that, you wouldn't know that was a piece of stone. I never realized it until I looked at that photo because I was so engulfed in the process that I’m using this stone but that looks like a blade.
It's pretty amazing. I love it. I’ve been a long-time user of stone blades for this purpose. It might take a little bit more time but there's enjoyment, a connection and respect. It's different.
I've been a long-time user of stone blades. It might take a little bit more time, but there's enjoyment, connection, and respect that are totally different.
It's a different connection. The cutting board that I have is awesome too. It is the first time I used it. It's made from a fallen firefighter from 9/11. It was his design prior to the tragedy of that. His family has carried it on. It's got these little drain pockets and then there's a little tray at the bottom of it. That's a badass cutting board. The Tenderloin was fucking amazing. Cut board pro. It’s an awesome piece.
I saw that on Shark Tank.
Yes, it was on Shark Tank or one of those. I love that show.
I’m going to grab one of those.
I’m super connected to Half Face Blades because I know the maker and where it originated. I’ve seen it from this infancy of its start and what it's turned into. I love those tools and the way that they work. I feel dressed with so many animals with them. It's my go-to. That's what's in my pack. Part of it is because of the connection that I have. I love being an end user of those because a lot of people buy his blades and it's the same thing as these. They end up going on the shelf because they're so beautiful. When you get into some of the handles that I have made of Burwood, Rozo Mix and all this stuff, my biggest fear is losing one.
His construction is so cool but that's the same thing with this. I hold these at such a high value because you personally made them for me. You’re growing up around these and having found period pieces or artifacts. Knowing that you made these, your work is incredible. I’ve picked up a lot of arrowheads in my day as a young kid but your construction methods are almost cleaner than what they have. To find a point like this is near impossible because it's so big.
Big ones are typically broken but there are recoveries in different areas. Most of them are smaller arrow points.
Is this the penetration that you got?
That was completely in the bison.
We had several shots that were 400 to 800 centimeters. If I was good at math, it could be probably 1.5 feet to 2 feet. They go deep. I would say some of that is a little bit of condensed coagulated blood as the animals sit. If you drop one behind the shoulder, you're pretty much in the vital. When you get a little bit lower shot, a lot of that blood pulls up. In that case, that was a kill.
With the stone from the different regions, you guys had Georgetown and all these different construction methods. We're going to need Devin for this and you can elaborate on it much better than I can but some of the construction methods were whether an arrowhead, a spearpoint or an atlatl point was fluted and whether that flute was filled. It was splitting the foreshaft sometimes like Devin brought out. I had a short video of Devin explaining where a foreshaft had split, the sinew still kept the arrowhead or the spearpoint intact. It split down the wood but it still had cutting edges the whole way through. It was still doing its job.
Essentially, the foreshaft failed because it had cracked. It runs a split but it was still held in the actual front of the blade where it was being pinched in that haft. There's a flute and if you pull up Clovis points, it's easy to see what a flute is. A flute is essentially a channel. The flute is that little segment that's removed at the base. What that does is it allows the user to easily connect the foreshaft or a spear in that case to that projectile.
It's not a tongue-and-groove method but along those lines. A tongue and groove would work, right?
It’s similar but what happens is when you decrease the amount of stone that's connecting into the haft, you create a thinner profile or a thinner transition. When we look at this, there's a profile to the stone. As the stone is making entry into the animal, anything that it hits that's abrupted is going to slow its velocity and decrease its kinetic energy.
Primitive Bison Experiment: When you decrease the amount of stone that's connecting to the haft, you create a thinner profile or a thinner transition.
If this is smooth and that transition is smooth, it's almost like one flawless and seamless piece going into the animal. You got stone and binding agents. You're hafting. The flute allows you to drop your profile down in the haft and create a flute. I’ve seen a lot of other podcasts people talk about it. Some folks with a little bit more time would understand that they don't fill their flutes with the haft.
The whole point of filling your flute is when you fill your flute with the haft, you are eliminating any weak points from the end of your haft through the flute into the tip. Meaning that if I only fill this projectile halfway up, the remaining portion is a weak point because it's not seamless in the rest of that actual foreshaft.
When I fill the flute, I have one universal piece from the tip, the transition, all the way back to the atlatl dart. When that projectile makes an entry, it's like putting a straw into a soda. It's seamless. The cutting edge is the tip around the sides. This cutting edge is the tip to the sides but since I have a basal half with sinew here, I lose a little cutting edge. It could slow it down a little bit. There are all different styles.
I noticed you guys used a glue method on a lot of them. Can you explain this glue that you make?
This is pine pitch glue. It's pine resin and a little bit of charcoal.
This is something that they would've used.
There are a lot of natural glues and adhesives out there like resin-based glue and gums. There are different styles of glues. You can hear how hard it is but when I apply heat to it, it will soften up and will allow me to connect a projectile to a foreshaft.
It's so strong. That's how this blade is hafted to this. It's glued in there with the pine pitch glue.
I dig out a little recess in the handle. I pour a bunch of pine pitch in there and stick that projectile in there. I tamp it around and make sure it's all filled.
How deep is that recess?
For that little guy, it's probably a quarter of an inch. It's not that deep. On that bigger one, it's probably about 0.5 inches. You go based on the size of the blade.
It's so strong. We use this to rip meat. This will last half of the day for sure. I’m seeing this wearing on it right there. It’s pretty badass. To attest to how tough that pine pitch glue is, it's amazing. It's a mixture of pine sap, moose poop and some ash or something.
It's the wood char, the black stuff that comes off. A lot of my mixtures are based on what I’m doing. When I’m seeding anything in a handle, I’ll add a little bit of beeswax. I always have bone dust. I grind a lot of bones and sprinkle a little in there. There are different mixtures but I know that combination right there is super great for knives.
We didn't have any of those breaks that day. With stone broken, that was strong enough to hold up too. I didn't see any. I wasn't there for every extraction of points but it seemed like those held up pretty well, even to the point where Devin was grabbing some of your hafted foreshafts to use for butchering.
I will not give that idea or concept any recognition. What do you think about it? If you've had cultures that have existed and their ability to understand the landscape, the floor, the fun and how they all work together, they're going to create a resource a pine glue, a gum glue or something to that accent that's going to be super strong. When they want them to break, they'll craft them in a way where they're going to be of lower quality so they can break.
You've had cultures that have existed with an ability to understand the landscape and how they all work together that created a resource like pine glue, gum glue, or something to that accent that's super strong.
Meaning that they want the projectile to stay in there or they need a breakaway system for a harpoon if they're doing some form of hunting. In a blade or something like this, I want it to stay in there for super long as possible. The coolest part is once this blade wears down, all I have to do is hold it up over some heat and I can probably get this blade out, make another one and put it right back in.
The biggest thing that I took away from this is the actual use and what I would pick up. I would do this every day if I could. When I was back in Chicago and going back into a little bit of reality because it's two opposite worlds, it made me appreciate it even that much more. It was weird for me. It's surreal when you're passing people on the sidewalk. It’s not that I’m any badass or anything like that. It wasn't any ego thing but these people have no fucking clue what I was doing. I had blood up to my elbows and fucking bile on my feet. The only thing I might have done differently that day is done barefoot.
I’ve been there. It gets slow.
This is an incredible experience and people are missing that connection. It was such an experience beyond even hunting for me, to be able to use primitive tools and appreciation for that culture and those people even more, use the craftsman, all the other knappers that made those points and the appreciation for Devin putting the science behind it because I learned so much that day. Believe it or not, I retained a lot of information and learned a ton about how these worked.
I thought it was super impressive, all the different construction methods from different periods and then seeing some of those slate points. Another thing that I took away from it was how effective your longbow was and how much penetration was in it. You could ethically make an animal expire very quickly with some of those methods. It’s the energy behind that arrow. Have you tested your longbow for poundage or anything like that?
On that day, there was a little let-off because of the moisture in the air. It felt a little looser. It's 65 pounds and 72 inches. Devin came over to my place and we test-fired some arrows. They were very short. I like to shoot a longer arrow where I can draw back to here but I had to quickly adapt an anchor. I’m not the biggest anchor guy. It's like a brush-release thing but I was able to get an anchor.
Those arrows were crafted specifically for that because those arrows had foreshafts. How we could test those specific arrows? To get good results in the science and Devin would go into this, imagine if we shot nine arrows all with a few different specks to them. Let's say 1 arrow is 3 centimeters longer. The fletching is Turkey and not a Sandhill crane.
How far do you want to take it? Do you want to do it in loincloths and barefoot?
Yes.
There are so many rabbit holes you can go down.
For him, it was to create three arrows. One arrow was based on one style, another style and another style. It was introducing new points. It was shooting the same arrow, getting the same bow, the same shooter and getting different depths. When we pulled out the heart, there were a couple of holes in the heart from projectiles.
I have the stakes at home.
You got the heart. I was like, “Bobby, you got the heart.” You said, “I can't take the heart. You have to. I still have a heart at my house.”
It’s so delicious. It's a tradition I have.
It’s a size of a football.
Mine was bigger than a football. It's so awesome. Next to that obsidian blade too. For clarity, I wanted to use a Half Face Blade to honor my buddy that makes them. Shout out to Bito. We got in there a little bit with a Half Face too.
I was like, “I don't think these Half Face Blades are going to work.” He's like, “No. Do it.” I was like, “We're going to do a comparison.” They worked. It’s great blades.
Bringing that up, this is for you. This is the blade that we used that day. I wanted to give that to you. Thank you for taking me.
You don't have to do that.
You deserve it.
This is so cool.
You're somebody that will use it. I don't like giving them to people that don't use it. To me, it's one of the best gifts that you can give. I’ve given Jeremy one and a few others away.
I appreciate it. This is amazing. More importantly, it's been blooded.
You'll have to make your sheath for it though. I know you're not into the Kydex but I’m sure you're capable of some leather crafting.
That's a sticker for sure.
Make it out of that bison hide.
The thing is the connection that I have with that blade, that's field dressed with 2 or 3 deer, 1 elk and a few other animals. There's some history behind it too. That's the one that we used the day on the bison. I did clean it up a little bit for you.
I can see it. You don't have to do that. You've got a history with it.
It's yours. We already did it publicly. Shout out to Bito too and Half Face Blades.
That was a good blade. Gracias, amigo. That's badass.
When you don't feel like getting too primitive or you're in a bind, use that.
I use steel blades all the time. The beauty of it is a lot of people are like, “Don't you only use stone?” I’m like, “No. I use quite a few steel blades.” Having used stone, I know its capabilities, offerings and limitations. If I’m doing something and I’m not looking to dive deep down this hole, I’m going to grab a steel blade and do what I need to do. That's the beauty of it. You can choose. You're like, “I know what to expect when I use this or this. Where do I want to go? How hard do I want to go? What is that?”
I love carrying a steel blade because if I’m out with my boys or my students, depending on what the class is, I’m going to use a steel blade. It’s because that's what they're going to have and I want them to understand the importance of a good blade, how to use it, why you use it and so on. If we're going down a different rabbit hole, let's craft and use some of these so you understand the importance of this.
Not only that but you got to think about it from the skillset level too. “How do I want to sharpen my skills? How do I want to test myself?” That was why that day, I didn't pick up the Half Face until we were at the very bit end. That was to put it to use because it's a tradition for me. I have such a connection with those blades as I explained. For me, what if you lost that? What if that ended up in a river or something? You have something to fall back on with. You don't even have to be a knapper. You can make some pretty sharp tools in a matter of minutes easily that work well. I ended up using 90% of what I cut through on a bison.
It's beautiful. That's poetic. I have so many videos out there on what should be the first thing you should learn how to make and it's this. Pop a flake off of a piece of stone because you can cut fibers and game. It's going to require a whole different level of movements in your hands and understanding of it but it's an effective tool. We've used this longer than we've used steel. This is an advantage. Don't get me wrong. We would've been with that bison for probably an hour and a half with a bunch of steel blades.
It would've been at 1/3 of the time probably.
If I posed this with a steel blade, I would've been a lot more reluctant to stick my hands in there if there were four guys with steel blades going and doing.
I have Nick John in the middle of it. He was holding hide for me. I was in hunter mode because I’m always in a hurry. Being a bow hunter in September, it's always hot. It's like, “I am going.” I had that sense of urgency so I hope I wasn't too outgrown out there.
No. It was perfect. It is one of those experiences. What you've gained are two ground truths. You've used blades plenty of times. Now you've used the stone and you can say, “I’m capable in both of these venues. How do I want to connect? What do I want to experience? What do I want my kids, my wife and the people I’m around to experience?”
When you've used blades plenty of times and now have used the stone, you can then say, “I'm capable in both of these venues. How do I want to connect? What do I want to experience?”
“Maybe is it a full butchering with this or maybe it's doing a couple of cuts and understanding how sharp that is and then getting into it with that.” I’ve done that quite a few times where I’ll open something up with some stone and then I’ll use a blade for going to that next couple of little different phases. It's a tool in your tool bag. I wanted to point this out. Look at that heart, that bottom right side and that big wound cavity.
The heart doesn't do it. Look at my hands though. There's a good 8 to 10 inches between my hands to put it in perspective. That's that point. It looks small in that photo but what a badass photo.
It's perfect, especially because you've got one atlatl dart projectile or a wound cavity there. Up by your left thumb, there are a couple of wound cavities on the top. We were getting deep into that bison.
To get to the heart, that was shoulder-deep.
Was that one of your throws?
Yes.
From what distance?
We were at 12 or 13 yards. Devin does the pace. You have to ask him why. He paces it out. Every throw has to be behind this.
He was very particular about that.
It’s because that's part of that. In every experiment we've done, we've been at that exact pace and number of paces.
People can understand the science of it too. I do have a couple of videos but I don't think I’m going to overlay them. Maybe when Devin comes on. The process was there was a lot to it. I’m only throwing one point. First of all, it was having the bison in the right position like a flank shot and broadside. There was a backdrop set up where the arrow would enter the bison. A high-speed camera is set up directly across from that. At the backdrop, you could see all the movement, point breaks, point disintegration and penetration of the bison. I’m sure that some of that footage is going to be available online eventually.
I have some if you want to see a couple of them.
A high-speed camera and from there were multiple cameras set up. Yours included, me taking some stills, there were iPhones out and Devin had another camera from a 45-degree angle that was behind where you were throwing so there was a throwing camera. Not only that. Once you guys threw a point whether it was you, Devin or John, you would walk up to the bison.
They would put a marker in there with a number. That number corresponded to the actual point that was on the foreshaft. You guys measured the incision, the penetration and then there was somebody taking down data with that same point in a notebook. In my Instagram, there's a closeup of a notebook. There was a little bison diagram where they were marking all kinds of stuff.
I was impressed by the actual science that was behind it. It was not what I expected. It was super cool to see Devin go through his process. He knew exactly what data he wanted and what was going to be. To take it even a step further, when you get into the points, they were dyed. We were calling them zombie hunters because they were dyed with this green dye. It was two different dyes. It was blue and then it looked like there was a green over it.
Originally, we dyed them purple and then green. What that does is if you take a white blade and you dye a color, you throw it into that animal. If that projectile takes any damage and pops a little flake-off or breaks, that dye and its color will be removed. It's removing that material so you can see the damage and anything that's happened to that projectile.
It's like the aircraft paint that they put over the screws. If that cracks, they know that the screws are there.
I should have sent a bunch of these photos.
That’s filling the flute there because it's a smooth point.
That's not a flute. That's a good half where you can almost see where that little piece of wood sticking out, it tapers down. As it makes entry into the animal, the flesh membrane or whatever the case may be, it rides over the top of that stone and then carries right over the foreshaft. We were throwing some big stone points. Some are a little bit more around it. Some don’t have necessarily a blunt-tipped but a super sharp tip on them. You're thrown against a three-year-old bull and a big beefy guy. That bounced right off. Some of them are you're hitting hide and making a cut but it's hitting some hard bone and it's losing that kinetic energy into it.
Part of this too was the different types of seasons because, during the winter, animals naturally have a thicker and larger coat. Coming into summer and where we were at, we were probably at 8,000 feet in elevation. This bison still had a lot of its winter coat on. One of the things that you guys were explaining to me is when you've done these other experiments, they were in the summer so their height is a lot. There's not as much hair and stuff to go through. You guys proved some science behind that. Is this the arrow?
That's one of the arrows.
That is so badass. Look at the penetration on that. I would think with a good machine, like a 400-grain or 500-grain total weight arrow, you would get the same amount of penetration out of a compound.
No doubt.
Can I share these? Can we overlay some of this footage or is it going to take away from Devin's?
No.
This is one thing that was amazing. Look at the movement in the atlatl. In a flight, that thing looks like a water weenie or water balloon or something flying through there.
That's one of the Folsom. It’s sliding right in there.
I was surprised at how accurate you guys were with those. It was unbelievably accurate because Devin would be like, “I want to hit it here. I want to hit it in the backstrap or the tenderloin.”
There's one of these for every throw. This is a compilation of some.
Devin knows the other thing. He set me up to run the high-speed camera and he's like, “Here it is.” I was like, “Do you know who you're asking to run this thing? I’m going to fuck this thing up.”
I built you up and I’m like, “He does stuff with concerts and bands. He's got to be tech-savvy,” but I’m like, “He also wants elk. I don't know what that balance is.” When you look at these, you can see that these guys can do some serious damage.
It's unbelievable. To your point, you think about this. I don't know if you tuned into an episode with Luke Caudillo. He's a bow hunter and UFC coach. We were talking about some of your stone points and it was prior to me going on this with you a week prior. We had brought up, “I had been invited but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it.” Maybe I didn't even bring that up but we were going behind some of the science and chucking this into an animal. The point that you brought up is that thing is running and this thing is sitting there.
Even if we go to any one of these slow motions, watch the back of the atlatl. It slides in and then the movement. It's wrenching left and right. There's still kinetic energy. With the dart, even though it's wobbly, watch some of the projectiles as they fly. Look at it spinning. That's one of the breaks. That was the first throw we did.
That high-speed camera is so cool. There are two points where I know for a fact we lost but it was the camera's fault. That's the thickest part of the hide probably.
It's right around that neck.
Some of it comes down to the construction of the point.
If you looked at that point, if the point is still intact and the foreshaft is split, that's a half failure. You're going to find that. Not every single one of them is going to be 100% because you are working with wood, sinew, pine pitch and stone. It's not riveted.
If the point is still intact and the foreshaft is split, that's just a half failure. You will find that not every single one of them will be 100% because you’re working with wood, sinew, pine pitch, and stone.
People that are reading this thing and not watching, I highly urge you to go check out YouTube or go to Donny Dust’s Instagram. It's @DonnyDust. Check it out. Some of this highest footage will be on there or Devin is going to do a full report on it so check out Dr. Devin Pettigrew.
He goes by @Ar.Atlatl.
Give them a follow. We're watching high-speed footage of these atlatls flying in and it's to the point where you can see the point break. It's shot. I don't know how many frames per second but it's got to be a lot. This was the real deal high-speed camera. It's incredible the footage and how much it slows it down. It's turning something that happens in a split second into a 3 or 4-second clip. You can see points explode and dust come off of it.
It's the fourteen-second one maybe or is this the arrow?
That's wild.
It honks way down. If that thing is up, the balance of that dart is wanting to fight up and down. Now, it rises to its level of playing. Think about that thing moving.
You could see it when we cut into it. There was one incision in the heart that was probably 6 inches. I didn't even think about that. Watching that come in at high speed, it looks like one of those long balloons that they use to tie up little dogs that clown does. It looks like one of those flying in full of water or something. It's crazy how much movement is in but also down to your guys' accuracy. We've brought this up before on the show so go and read some of our prior episodes. It's weird.
You always end up being an even episode. You were at episodes 120, 90, 40, 20 or something like that. This one won't be because I was like, “We got to get Donny in here right now.” You've shown some atlatls but to explain an atlatl to somebody, it was a primitive way of hunting or an apparatus to throw a spear. This is before the construction of a bow.
This is the atlatl I used in the experiment. I was thinking about an easy way to discuss this with some of the audience. I did a little prep in my brain. Essentially, the atlatl is an extension of your arm and it gives you more mechanical advantage. Take something like a dart. They're not necessarily arrows. They look an arrow but they're huge. 6 or 7 feet and there are various sizes based on culture and time. The atlatl allows a user to throw a dart over great time and distance. In some of those videos, it was used for hunting.
The atlatl allows a user to throw a dart over a great time and distance.
The atlatl, in the simplest way, if you think of a shotgun, we have a lot of different shotguns. Let's take a 12-gauge shotgun. The shotgun itself can have a certain length barrel, color and hollowed-out butt stock. It can have a lot of different modifications to it but it still shoots a 12-gauge. That is an atlatl. The atlatl is the actual thrower itself. It can be hammer-style or fork styled. You can have loops or where it's backed by sinew and various things. You can have a lot of variations.
It's like the operator's choice like building your kit. It’s shooter preference.
There are a lot of atlatls. The oldest one I believe they found was in a cave in France. It's 17,500 years old. I have a couple of photos of one they recovered from Texas not too long ago. It's slick. It's hammer style. Atlatl is similar to a shotgun. In a shotgun, you shoot a bird shot, buckshot or slug. Those are the actual atlatl darts. With those, you can exchange the foreshafts, your buckshot, bird shots or slug and it gives you the adaptability. If you think of that shotgun analogy, it is the shotgun with the different projectiles and then being able to change up exactly what the tips are on the atlatl through a foreshaft and so on.
I don't know about this one but I’ve thrown an atlatl for a number of years. One of the important things is there is no right way to say this is the only atlatl used. Throughout history, there have been variations of the atlatl. Once you find that one that works for you, that style and preference, you go with it and stick with it ultimately. You get more proficient.
Even in the world of machine bows, I have my preferences for makers and manufacturers or whatever you want to call them.
I throw hammer style. In high school, I threw the javelin. If you throw a javelin, it’s 180 or 200-plus feet. There are two ways you could throw a javelin. You can throw it forked like an atlatl or hammer. For me, I always threw it hammer and that transition.
Is the hammer your grip so you would grip it like a hammer?
I would grip it like a hammer. There's also the fork. I find when I throw an atlatl forked, I lose a lot of power. When I throw it hammer, it makes sense because two fingers are not as strong as a fist and the motions that I can carry for it.
Some of the atlas that I saw during this experiment had two little finger holes. Does Devin throw forked?
Devin throws forked. That's one style of atlatl. There are a lot of styles of atlatls. The components of it being an extension of your arm with a spur at the end to connect the dart to and you throw is universal across them all. A handle, a main shaft and a spur, whether you need to have a finger groove on there, recess grooves, a flat handle, a butted handle or a tapered-out handle, it's all shooter preference at that point. There are a lot of different styles but the concept behind it is being able to throw a dart is universal.
What is the amount of energy that you get out of that? A perfect example of this that I always bring up when I’m trying to explain it to somebody is they're like, “What the fuck is atlatl?” I was like, “It was back before they built bows. It's what you would envision as a spear. Do you know those sticks that you use to throw your dog like a ball that has a little tennis ball cup on it? It’s the same thing.” How much further can you throw a tennis ball? How much more speed? How much more height?
It's an extension of your arm and another hand.
They're not a range that they must have gained from that.
When you think of the atlatl alone and what it serves as you, it's also important for the audience to understand that. When the bow came around, there wasn't a natural like, “We're dropping an atlatl. I’m picking up the bow.” It's a progression. If you still had an effective hunting tool and you had been using it for thousands of years and you were proficient with it, there is slow adoption of new technologies. It's a learning curve.
If you still had an effective hunting tool you had been using for thousands of years and you were proficient with it, there is slow adoption of new technologies.
Why do people still choose to bow hunt over rifle hunt? A rifle is ten times more effective weapon than a bow.
You look like a flintlock rifle. For weapons, there's still adaptation over time but people still hunt with a flintlock black powder. When the atlatl was around and then the bow slowly came into play, it wasn't like, “Drop the atlatl, we're picking up the bow.” There were still hundreds and thousands of years when people were still using the atlatl. I believe once a lot of the game, you require an atlatl to take some of that larger game. Once that larger game started to decrease in size, there was not necessarily a larger need for an atlatl to take that stuff because it didn't exist anymore. It transitioned into a bow and it's compact, lightweight and so on. It is a great hunting tool.
It's effective. Devin has all the data to prove that. It's pretty amazing the different construction methods, the different periods and the advancement too because you think about the advancement to the bow arrow and then using a material like slate. That was fascinating to me because that slate point looked like it was machined out of a machine. It is precision.
A lot of people discredit it. I would love to be able to speak to some people about hunting with stone points here in the great state of Colorado. There should be a voice but also an opportunity to prove your efficiency with that weapon system. If you want to hunt with stone, cool. I’m all for it. I want to be able to gauge because I don't want a bunch of random people out there shooting stuff with stone points.
It's all about the time that you put in because it's the same concept that I use to shoot my compound bow. I’m not going to stop hunting with that. That's my preferred weapon. I shoot. If you shoot traditionally, you have to put in more time. It’s comfortability with the weapon and accuracy. What impressed me about the atlatl is your accuracy because Devin would call out a spot where he would like to hit it.
You guys were within 15 yards, the size of a small teacup saucer. That's how accurate you were. You turn around and look at the size of the heart or the vitals and lungs. The liver was as big as this table. A liver shot will take something down in a hurry. If you laid them out, they'd be the width of this table for sure. The vital cavity of a bison is huge. If you have a hunting background, you’ll know.
When we did the first bison experiment against an older cow, we would send darts through the animal's full pass-throughs.
We had some pass-throughs through the spine.
We had a couple of shots that pass through and stuck out the other side. Our first one was an old cow. The second one was a super young bull. This is a little bit older bull. We're going to do it a fourth time and get a younger cow so we get the full dynamic of old bull, young bull, old cow and young cow. That old cow, the very first one, I was taking darts that are 7 feet or 6.5 feet long at 15 yards, throwing it right through the thoracic and it was traveling all the way through. With the older cow, she was 21 or 22 years old, there's some meat on there but she's weathered. It's not as bulky as the others.
If you think about it, they were hunters of opportunity. This is the fucked up shit that I think about when I’m laying in bed at night because I start thinking, “I went and did this. I only experienced it because you're so head down and engulfed in it. I wish I would've taken my time and taken a little bit more in. If I do this a second time, I will.” From a hunting perspective, animal behavior is huge. Anticipate what an animal is going to do. Bison's defense is to gather in a herd and use the herd as part of their protection. They're not designed to run away. That's why they have these massive heads and super sharp horns and are ready to fight.
If I was riding out on horseback and if you even want to take it further back if I was walking out, sneaking into the herd or crawling into the herd, those satellite animals that are on the outside are going to be exactly what we did the experiment on. They're going to be those 3 or 4-year-old bulls. They're not going to be the herd bull. They're going to be the calves that are not smart enough to get inside the actual herd. They're going to be those females that are trying to protect their calves and be in front of the calves. You can go down in deep rabbit hole on that too. If you think about it, those are probably the majority of the animals. It’s the easier ones to hunt. It's survival of the fittest.
There's probably a lot of truth to that. If I wanted to hunt bison in an open terrain, I would look for a lot of terrain that's going to give me an advantage. One advantage of it is some screening, whether it's from the wind observation. I want to get an advantage where I can get above the bison. The reason being at a lateral view, if I’m flat, all I’m going to see is a wall. Let's say they're circled up or in mass. When I see that mass, I’m probably going to get a lot of blended profiles. I’m going to get 8 or 9 bison that look like one. It’s not a bad opportunity to throw. If I can gain a little elevation, I can still see that blended profile or that wall but then I can also see down on them.
If I’m throwing an atlatl and I understand the dynamics of an atlatl, I’m not throwing directly but I’m going to drop that atlatl onto them. I’m going to give it a trajectory. Think of projectiles. If you shoot a gun at a certain point, it’s 2/3 of the way to its target. It reaches something called a max orate. That's the highest point it's going to go and then it starts to drop. Also, think and apply with an atlatl. If I can gauge my throw and throw it properly, I can hit that same arc and get that dart to come down on an animal. I can get more of an angled shot into a larger group.
Primitive Bison Experiment: If you can gauge your throw and throw it properly, you can hit that same arc and get that dart to come down on an animal or get more of an angled shot into a larger group.
I’m not necessarily going to throw at one. I’m going to throw at a tight group of 1 or 2. The rest of the people in that group, the hunting party, are going to target that same thing. It's opportunistic and evolving. There are opportunities on the outskirts. Those are satellite animals. It's also what's going to give us the biggest target possible. An ancient hunter wants to quick kill in the aspect. They don't have to chase it down or fight it.
Another thing I thought of is trophy hunting is such a big part of hunting. Think about the quality of the meat. You taste the backstrap, Jeremy. If you cook it right, I suggest a cast iron skillet. You're going to go to Natural Grocers and pick up some beef tallow in a jar. It’s $12.99. Take a scoop of that, get your cast iron pan super hot like 400 degrees whether on your stovetop or you can put your cast iron right on the grill, even over a campfire is even better.
The old Dutch oven was pretty good but you get that oil hot or the fat because the beef towel is pure beef fat. Get that to a super high temperature and then be careful when you drop it in but drop it in. What it does is it sears the meat. You're cooking it from the outside in but it keeps a lot of the moisture in it. Sear it on each side, depending on how thick. I cut those steaks pretty thick. For a bison steak, it's pretty thick. It's probably 1 inch or something like that. Those are butterfly tenderloins. I would say three minutes on each side if you like meat medium rare. I would suggest eating it medium rare and you could almost cut it with a fork. It's so good.
If I’m hunting an animal solely for the meat and the hide, I would imagine the hide is even a little bit better if it's on a younger animal. It's not as weathered. It's probably stronger. I don't know the science behind that but I would think it would be mainly about the meat and the delicacies of the tongue, young liver and young heart. The reason why they did that and why they've proved some of that is the nutritional value in those organs and even the bile juice. On the next one, I might have to try a little piece of raw liver but I didn't want to offend anybody there.
We've eaten it before. I always painted people like this. What's the easiest way to get into an animal? If you're going through that processing straight through the gut, there are no bones and it's a real thin layer of skin. You're almost going down the entry pathway into some of the most nutritious forms of that animal like the heart and liver. There are different components in there that are going to yield the highest calories and amounts of fat. You can quickly slice, pull that stuff out and get a pretty good result. The idea that ancient cultures 100% of the time used everything is inaccurate.
It's such a big animal. They would take a tribe to eat it in the time that it spoils.
Imagine if there are ten people in a small tribe or a small clan. They're hunting around and getting something significant. They're going to take what they can. They don't have 360 degrees of security. They don't have ATVs or all these resources. They got to pack it up. It's very likely they would take those prime cuts or easy cuts. I always think of easy cuts. It’s easy to get inside of the mouth, start cutting that tongue out and easy to get inside of the gut to get that liver and heart. Get some of those prime cuts. It’s easy to take off a back leg. You got that joining skin that's on the front side. You scoop it around, pop a joint and then, more importantly, it's easy to carry.
I’m not saying that when it came to something like a deer, everything wasn't used. It's a lot easier to carry and process. When you think of a large game unless there are 30 or 40 people that are going to wind up consuming all this, a lot of it is going to go to waste. They didn't have the time. There are other predators out there that were likely smelling the blood in the air and seeing the raven circle. It's getting prime cut.
When you think of large game, unless there are 30 or 40 people that are going to wind up consuming all of it, a lot of it just goes to waste.
If you're in bear country or something like that, the first thing that you want to do is get away from the gut pile and the animal away from the gut pile because that's what they come into. That's what a bear eats first. He eats the liver and straight to the bowels. There's so much nutrition in that. To dive back into a little bit of history and some of the reading that I’ve done, I’m sure that this is somewhat accurate.
Back when market hunting was a big deal and bison were put to market, it was shipped all over the world and used, that's when the animals were truly used for everything. Even to the point where they went back later in the years and recovered. There were bison bone hunters making all kinds of different stuff out of bison bone. All the belts and stuff for machinery back in the day were made from bison hides and that was a big market. The meat at some point feed settlers.
What's the variable in all that though? You already said it. Market and money. How can we take this large thing to get the most amount of money? 10,000 or 15,000 years ago, it wasn't about the money. It was about, “What can we get from this? It's going to feed us and clothe us. How can we do it the quickest without getting taken down by wolves, short-faced bears or different things like that?” There are only 10 to 15 people who may be in our clan, tribe or roving band of Paleo-Indians. We're doing ourselves an injustice to believe that they sat there and removed everything.
It's a narrative. It's something we all want to believe in. I do believe there were opportunities and they could set up a camper. They were in an area that gave them different resources from water to firewood. To start smoking meat, tanning a hide and doing all these things takes manpower. If it's a small 4, 5 or 6-man hunting group, it's probably a lot easier to shoot something smaller and be able to pack it than it is to shoot something extremely large like a bison and tick. We've seen the size comparison and said, “We're going to use everything on this.” Maybe they did or went back, which I believe. After the ravens and the crows and various things went too, they were able to use some of the bones and use something else off of it.
If you have a small 4-, 5-, or 6-man hunting group, it's probably a lot easier to shoot something smaller and be able to pack it all the way than it is to shoot something extremely large like a bison antiquus.
Many people think of the iconic photo of a Native American on horseback with his spear type of thing and the full headdress and stuff. That was way later on. That's back when we had photographs. That was only a few hundred years ago.
It was 150 or 200 years ago.
We're talking thousands of years before Ice Age.
The first people to come across, whether it was the Icelandic bridge. There are a lot of theories about the Atlantic crossing and boats coming from South America coming up to the North. There are so many different theories and there's a lot of evidence pointing to the ice bridge crossing. That's the timeline we're talking about. Native Americans that we refer to and that we've seen in popular movies and even photos 100 or 200 years ago weren't employing an atlatl system. They were using a bow and arrow, a lot of rifles and steel points. Times have evolved from those Paleo-Indians.
Devin was explaining to me too. You got to think about the vastness of the animal and the size of the herds back then. They were using more prime cuts than later on. Bison hunting became so rare in such a high commodity that that's when they were using everything at that point on 1 or 2 bison. You also didn't have the threat of dire wolves or short-face bears as you said. We're talking about a predator that's 3 or 4 times the size of a regular grizzly bear or brown bear that we have. We know how deadly those can be and stuff, especially if you've been around them like you have.
That stuff is out there. If you open up a gut pile or blood in the air, it scents in the air and those things are coming in.
Even black bears are around here. Going back to the history and what I was reading. When these animals were brought to market and they were doing these crazy bison hunts where they were killing hundreds at a time or maybe even thousands at a time across the US, there were guys that were Skinners. They lived off the bison meat and those prime cuts. What they found is if they didn't eat some of the bile and organs, they'd start getting scurvy and some of these other diseases from eating the prime cuts. They had to have some of that to have nutritional value. You're not running down to the drug store and getting supplements like we do now.
It goes in line with that rabbit starvation. You can't live off of rabbits. There's not a lot of fat on them. Organ meats are going to have a lot more fat. Look at the heart. There was some good fat on it but there's not a lot of fat on the bison. One of the things that people should understand is that this was a food source but there are other means of food that they were very likely taken. This was likely the biggest yield of meat but like people, they have preferences, ideas and cons. Is it easier to scavenge up some roots and then complement it with some bison meat? I would think so but it's also easy to take a rabbit, some quail or game birds. To think that this was the only thing, I don't necessarily agree.
I agree 100%. You're spot on. It's an opportunity.
I also believe that there was more opportunity to hunt larger animals. As people moved in, it decreased over time. You got to think once human beings made it to the Americas, every animal that existed in this region doesn't know what we are. They didn't grow up learning that these hairless monkeys running around here with sticks are going to kill us. There was probably very easy at a certain point to get very close and start to take some of those animals.
Over time, they probably figured out that those monkeys were here to kill us. We have a variety of things to eat. Why would we assume that they kill a bison? They sit there and take everything off of it. They're a 5, 6 or 10-man little roving band of Paleo-Indians that are very nomadic. They're hunting and gathering. We're going to sit here and carry 500 pounds of meat on our back.
Paleo-Indians that are very nomadic. They hunt and gather. They’re not going to carry 500 pounds of meat on their backs.
They also understood the circle of life so it's also providing for those other animals. I don’t know for sure if it ever goes to waste. Even some of the intestines and stuff that we left behind, there were birds on it by the time we were leaving. It goes all in a circle. If you have an appreciation and have been there and cut one up with stone tools, you'll find out real quick that you're not going to have seven hours on a ranch to sit there, take your time and do science on the thing. It's going to be grab-and-go before those large predators show up.
What I’m thinking of doing here is I’m looking to reach back out to Jim, doing a stone tool and butchering class on another bison. No atlatl throws. Nothing to that extent but butchering out of bison and getting eight students and their coolers.
Sign me up. You're only looking for seven.
Is it six, Jeremy? We would go up. It takes about 4 or 5 hours to do it. On a Friday, we'd camp out and then on a Saturday morning, we'd spend about 3 or 4 hours popping flakes and working some blades. I would bring some other tools that people could use. We'd have a bison on the ground. We would lay into it, start butchering it out and talk about some of the specific cuts that you want to go for like how to pull different chunks of meat, remove the hide, separate that head and get the tongue. It'd be a great experience for people to have and I’d like to do it for non-hunters.
I want everyone and anyone to go. I would love for some folks to see and understand where their food can come from a hunting practice, a natural farm that raises clean, healthy great animals that they could team up with a couple of buddies, buy a bison and then have it butchered out. To see where some of that food comes from and touch the meat and feel the meat. Understand the blood, the heart and the dynamics of everything that's going on inside that animal. It'd be a great course, 1) For people to experience the butchering aspect and, 2) To bring home fresh meat and maybe that little bit of like, “This taste so good.” That's how all your food should taste.
That's what I was wondering. When I brought that package of bison back to Chicago or smuggled it into Chicago and shared it with my coworkers there, friends and stuff like that, I was like, “I wonder if it tastes as good to them as it does to me. I wonder if I’m tasting it differently.”
I think you are. It was funny when we had it. My kids love bison steak and rice. As I was looking at these steaks and opening them up out of their packs, I was like, “I remember cutting this piece of meat. There was a little bit of pine pitch that found its way on one of them.” When you eat it, my kids instantly know. They're like, “We've been missing this, Dad.” I’m like, “Give me some time.” They can taste it, feel it and understand because the last time I did this, they butchered all that bison out with me. They went to the whole nine yards. It's good taste. When people taste it, they're like, “This doesn't taste like beef.” It's not a cow or a beef in that respect. It's like when somebody eats elk, they're like, “It tastes funny.” You're not used to that flavor or taste palette.
It’s to the point that I call it a cutting board. The reason why I’m so adamant about cutting boards is when we have a game at my house, it does not get plated. The kids come to the cutting board and I’m cutting slices off. They're not cutting their own steaks. I’m like, “Watch out. There's a sharp knife here,” because they are going in for it and we all gather around the cutting board. It's not like a primal way to eat it.
All the focus is on that. That doesn't matter what's on the TV or what music is playing in the background. You're enjoying something together. They're in there with their hands. There are no forks. There's a lot of finger-licking going on. To me, that's cool as a family community and a bonding. They all love it so much. To the point, it's like, “What do you guys want for dinner?” You have Annie's mac and cheese, which is a household favorite for the kids and all that stuff.
They don't want any of that. They’re like, “Is that grill going? Are you grilling tonight? Dad is home. He's going to grill.” It's so cool. To the point too, even my dogs know. I have a bunch of packages that I’ve made for them and it says dog on it. Our dog’s name is Tala and she knows too. That's why she will follow me off of a cliff. All those little pieces of tendon around some of those leg muscles and stuff you get down to, I save all that. I put it into a separate container. I’ll package it and freeze it so she'll be eating bison too.
My neighbor Dan came over and we set up in the garage because it was raining and we finished out all the butchering. Usually, as you're going through that process, you're trimming this and that. After all that meat that came back with me, we had one trashcan. I say it was about a quarter way full of grass and various things like that. Hard is in you. There was a couple on the shanks. There were a couple of pieces but there wasn't a lot that didn't get ground up or it wasn't staked out or stewed out because I do ground beef, roast, steaks and then a stew. It's stew beef and that's the most random pieces I can soak for two and a half days.
I’m like, “This is so good. That's all neck. You'll enjoy it.” We sat there and as we were cutting, he was like, “I’m going to go light up my trigger.” He's got our trigger. That's why I don't want one but he goes and lights up his and I’m like, ‘Here, take some of this and this.” Marissa, my girlfriend, is on the inside. She's packaging everything. We're cutting meat. She's coming in and out with trays. It's an entire process but as you're doing it, you're like, “We've got food in the purest form. It's healthy and clean. You know this food from start to finish and it's perfect.”
It's so cool to have the family. The kids are out of school so they were at home. They're watching me bring in a full heart and cut it into steaks. I’m okay with them seeing that because then it puts a value on it too. They can appreciate it in its finest form but then, they'll still turn around and eat which is cool because a lot of people when they see that might be so disgusted that they wouldn't eat or something like that.
My kids, I’ve eased them into it. First, they know what a wild game is. They know what that taste and that flavor are and they can appreciate it. To the point where they were helping me butcher paper and drawing little hearts or smiley faces. They love the artwork from the Sharpie to the butcher paper and the whole process to the point where even some of them were helping me cut it up. It's so cool. It's a family way of experience. It makes them appreciate it that much more too.
You're onto the right thing and I urge anybody, even if you're vegan, to come out and experience that process. The way that you handle it and everybody handled it that day that we did is exactly the way that I like to handle the gratitude to the animal. Thankfulness. I still feel that way. I’m still thanking that animal every time I put it down on the cutting board.
That's an important thing to remember. We can say, “This has been blooded. It's knives and atlatls,” but every time I open it up, there's an appreciation. Being able to eat and feed my kids, my girlfriend, my neighbors and the people around me are providing life in a form that's pretty awesome.
Thanking an animal every time you put it down on the cutting board is an important thing to remember.
There's also a connection going back to your ancestry too. A lot of people have this connection with a lot of hunters too. That's where we came from.
Like it or not, that's why we got these. We are hunters in the purest form. We are the most adapted hunters from our early days walking out of Africa to what we've been able to come up with.
We've been at it for a couple of hours. Let's end it on this note. Is there anything else that you want to talk about? I have time but I want to be respectful of yours. It's gone by so quickly.
I got a million subscribers on YouTube.
Congratulations.
I appreciate it. I attribute it to a lot of the folks that have been watching the videos for a long time. I don't have a lot of videos that get millions of views but I’ll get 10,000, 20,000, maybe 30,000 views. I know the people that are showing up and watching. They're going there to learn. They're not jumping on to go watch something because that's what is trending. They want to learn, understand and get a deep dive into certain things. I want to give a big appreciation to all those folks. All the flint knappers contributed to this last experiment because, in previous ones, I did a lot of points. This one, I reached out to some friends of mine.
There were hundreds of points there on the table, the man-hours that went into that construction.
It's a lot. There are some guys like Jake Webster who made a lot of points. The JWs or the Jaws that you saw in all those bags are phenomenal points. I was talking with Jake and I was like, “I want you to know that our goal is to break your points. I know it sounds weird but we want to break these points and see the damage that happened.” We can do some of that so Devin can do some of that analysis.
There were some that got thrown multiple times or dozens of times because they would not break it. They're so lethal.
That's the cool part about it. Once you get through it, we've thrown it five times and it's not breaking. There's a lot of information that is around that point. Let's set off to the side and go to that next one. All those knappers.
Take the time to shout them all out if you want. Hopefully, they're reading this.
I know some of them do. What I’ll do is send you all of their names and maybe we can throw some links into their stuff. It takes time to knap some points, especially points that you're going to put in the hands of somebody else. A lot of knappers will knap points. They like to give them out and sell them to folks. It's their livelihood. I’ve made a living off of knapping points. Sometimes, they get a little stress and anxiety when they're going to hand their points over to another knapper who's going to haft them and throw them into a bison because they're going to get that ground truth. The one thing I wanted all these guys to realize and see is that their points are effective.
They are killers. They can get the jobs done. The hours, months and years that they've spent studying stone, knapping stone and understanding the dynamics from finding it and resourcing it to that end product, all of their points performed great. Some broke and some didn’t break but it was the ground truth that I was trying to obtain for them so they could see, “These projectiles, this atlatl and how it's hafted will ultimately kill whether it was a Folsom point, fluted Clovis or any style of point. All those guys did a phenomenal job.” When everything is set and done, we'll throw all their info. There's Ed, Jake, William and John. There are so many guys.
I can't wait to have Devin on the show.
You guys will science out. You're going to have to take notes. I’ve told Devin, “I got to bring it down sometimes for me.” He's like, “He'll go down these rabbit holes.” I’m like, “What?” He's like, “The pointy end goes in.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.”
He's so excited and passionate about his work. I want to bring that to light because he's incredible.
He's busted his ass. I’ll tell you that much. He's put a lot of hours in academically and in the field. That's why I like Devin. He knows the science and the analytics behind but he's also got the ground truth by throwing atlatls and doing it. He’s not sitting in an office coming up. He is in the weeds because there are so many guys that sit in an office, write up a paper and be like, “This is what I believe off of know these numbers.” That's not him. He's out there in the blood, in the heat and getting it done. I’ve enjoyed working with him on several experiments and I know we're going to do some more in the future.
I had a blast with you. Thank you again so much for that.
Thank you. There are not many people that I could be like, “Here's the deal. Bison, Saturday, it's going to be bloody. Are you in?” You're like, “Yes, I’m right there.”
I was trying to explain that to people that didn't understand. I’m like, “If your favorite thing is to go to Disneyland, Mickey is giving you a personal tour. He’s telling you why Walt was alive.” That's super rad.
When we got more, Jeremy, you're in line. You got to come out too.
That is the stuff that I’m very interested in. That'd be great.
We're going to keep doing them. For the next one, we need a legitimate film crew that could come out with all of the stuff that they have. We can do our part.
I got the guys too.
I don't want to have to bring a camera.
That was me too. I felt like you brought me out there for some of my photography skills and I didn't even get to tackle those because I was behind the high-speed camera.
Also, if there was one person who has no hesitation in doing it, trying it, experimenting with it or more importantly being like, “Do this. Now do this,” hearing your stories and how you deal with your crew, it's not only is he in a leadership role but he's also one to pick up and do these things when his guys are struggling here trying to do this. It's a well-versed offering that you provide. There are several people I could have called up but I’m like, “Bobby won. He's going to want some meat.”
We've talked so many times about it but he doesn't mind getting bloody and this is going to be something that's going to give him something into the future. Dealing with the tools and having that experience and something he could bring to his kids and say, “You've seen dad do this. Here's something else that Dad can do.” I could dive into it and promote it, share it and experience that. You're a good dude.
It's such an honor. I was thrilled to be invited. I moved mountains to get there and be part of it. I’m very honored and I learned so much. I learned a lot about myself. It's fucking incredible. It was a bucket list to do this with you and I’m truly honored you brought me in. Shout out to anybody that was out there with us that day. It was an incredible experience on all parts and awesome. It’s great to be around good people. I feel like a tribe a little bit almost. There’s a tribal experience for sure. Thank you. I appreciate it.
It is a highlight of my life. It is a special moment. I feel like those moments and connections with nature, whether it was in my adolescence or adulthood, they're memories that are ingrained that you do not forget. Maybe at some age, Alzheimer's or something but that's why I’m archiving it. It's awesome that I can share that experience with other people too through this platform. I feel super fortunate.
Thank you. I’ll give you a hug as soon as there are no microphones and stuff in the way. I highly urge you, if you're not following Donny, to go follow him already. You've been on multiple times. You're going to keep coming back. I’m so grateful for everything that we've been able to do in this studio and outside the studio. It's been rad.
I appreciate it.
Thank you. I appreciate your time.
It's @DonnyDust at TikTok and Instagram.
YouTube, more importantly. You're doing some crazy YouTube videos that are so beneficial. There's so much education, not only in knapping, hunting and survival. You do a lot.
I try to not pigeonhole myself in one thing because I like to do a lot of things. I hit record and keep it simple.
You've been on several seasons of Alone so go check those out. Mud, Sweat & Beards. Is the film out that you were working on?
That movie is called The Big Bend. It's done all the film circuits of shows. There are going to be a couple of releases in Texas because that's where it was filmed around Austin. They've done some South by Southwest but I know that is starting to come into play. The last TV show I did down in the Amazon, I believe that might be on Amazon. It's aired everywhere else but in the States. I’ve seen the episode but I can't seem to find it anywhere. If you google Donny Dust, there's a lot of weird shit on there.
Follow Donny because he is genuinely a fucking awesome human being. I love spending time with you. You got a bunch of stuff coming up in the future. As soon as those things come to fruition, come back in. You always have a seat here.
I appreciate you, Bobby. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody, for reading.
Thanks, Donny.
Take care, Jeremy.
Important Links
@TouronsOfYellowstone – Instagram
@BobbyFMarshall – Instagram
Luke Caudillo – Past Episode
@DonnyDust – Instagram
@Ar.Atlatl – Dr. Devin Pettigrew Instagram
Episode 120 – Past Episode
Episode 20 – Past Episode
@DonnyDust – TikTok
YouTube – Donny Dust’s Paleo Tracks