![]() He marks his wood during the year, then gathers it as the sap quits running in the fall. If you shoot an animal, you eat it and use all the parts of the animal you can.īuck makes knives from elk and buffalo bones, hide scrapers from buffalo ribs, spearheads, smaller knives and axes from stones, and many other traditional tools and weapons. Blankets and many other items come from bear and buffalo hides he also uses bear hide with the fur side out for a quiver.īut the principles are the same. Now he brain tans and smokes deer and elk hides and makes clothing and moccasins. After spending two days pushing snow out of the way, Eneas Vanderburg broke through the snow and drove into camp to get the snowed-in young man and give him a ride home.īuck has come a long way from gopher hides. After a big snowstorm, he heard a motor in the distance, and the next day heard it again. He also taught Salish in the Dixon schools.īuck added, "It takes the rough support of your family, the elders checking on you, and the Fish and Game when you're camping out in the woods."įor instance, he spent a lot of time at the Agnes Vanderburg Camp near Arlee, which was seven miles up a gravel road from his family. To stop "drinking and drugging" he would go out and camp by himself in the mountains and make art and tools, returning to town to play in a heavy metal band, War Cry. "Sometimes teenagers are pulled the wrong way," Buck explained. There were a few switchbacks on the road to becoming an artist, a Native traditionalist, and the adjunct professor at Salish Kootenai College that he is today. (because) my greasy little kid hands and my greasy little kid face were always on the little hides, I invented leather." "I must have scraped the hides," Buck said, "because I would put them over my face to gross my grandmother out. So he skinned the little critters, because people don't eat gophers. His granddad was amazed he'd been able to shoot them with his bow, and his grandmother admonished him to "get them out of here." Then young Buck continued his education by making a bow and arrows and shot four or five gophers. "That really got me interested in using what nature provides," Buck said. His grandfather hit it with another rock to chip it off and make an edge sharp enough to complete the job. Looking around, he spied some rocks in the field, and selected a sharp one. His granddad cautioned him to never hand him a dull knife again. When his grandad pushed it into the deer's neck, "it was like pushing on rubber with your thumb," Buck said. He went up to slit the deer's throat to bleed it out and asked Buck to turn over his Rambo knife. "I'd just gotten a huntin' knife I called it my 'Rambo' knife," he said.Īfter their travels on the backroads, Buck's granddad shot a deer. After the film, during a question-and-answer session, he recalled how going hunting with his granddad when he was a third grader kindled his interest in traditional ways.
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