Innholdsfortegnelse for #254 i American Frontiersman

Soon the woods will come alive with the sounds of wild turkeys gobbling their fool heads off looking for hens. With hunting seasons on the horizon, we thought it’d be perfect to feature a timeless piece of art by David Wright for our spring issue of American Frontiersman . Wright’s “The Turkey Hunter” was inspired by the taking of his very first gobbler in the early 1980s while fielding a French-style 24 gauge that he built. Wright dedicated the painting to AF contributor J. Wayne Fears, who Wright says was responsible for introducing him to the heart-pounding sport of turkey chasing. No question, hunting spring and fall birds is one of America’s most thrilling hunting adventures, which calls for excellent woodsmanship, marksmanship and the ability to talk the wild birds’…

If you spend any time going to a big rendezvous these days, you’ll inevitably come across participants wearing large, man-killing Bowie knives that they’ll call “fighting knives.” But I’m not so sure mountain men historically wore knives primarily for fighting in the early West, as period records indicate that tactical or fighting knives weren’t wanted or needed on the frontier. These records show that the knives most commonly used and traded in the early West were in fact factory-made knives from Sheffield, England. Let’s Get Real Sheffield had been a cutlery manufacturing hub since the Middle Ages. In fact, Chaucer, writing in the 1300s, mentions his characters carrying Sheffield knives. By the 1820s, Sheffield cutlers had become masters of mass production. Knives could be made so cheaply that, even after…

Snake skins are beautiful and can be made into a variety of items or mounted and displayed on a wall. Once the skin and body have parted ways, take the inside-out skin and cut down the center of the belly to the point where the skin and tail come together. Staying on the midline of the belly is easy since there’s a thin red line on the inside of the skin to serve as a guide. When the belly cut is finished, lay the skin out on a flat piece of cardboard that’s longer than the snakeskin. Using your hands to smooth out the wrinkles, stretch the skin out flat and pull it lengthwise until the entire inside surface of the skin is in contact with the cardboard. The…

Ingredients • 1½ pounds frog legs, cut into 1-inch chunks • ½ cup cornstarch • 2 eggs, beaten • ¼ cup flour • canola oil for frying • 1 cup pineapple chunks • 1 red and 1 green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch chunks • ½ cup yellow onion, chopped • ½ cup each of sugar and apple cider vinegar • ¼ cup brown sugar • 1/3 cup ketchup • 4 tsp. soy sauce • 2 cloves garlic, minced Directions Whisk together the sugar, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, ketchup, soy sauce and garlic to create the sauce. Pour canola oil 1½ inches deep into a Dutch oven or a frying pan. Heat the oil on medium-high heat. You want the frog legs to cook and brown in about…

Our ancestors lived a life of subsistence. They lived off the land and utilized everything—even body parts. They left nothing of an animal unused out of necessity and were quite ingenious with what they did with those components. In the 21st century, we no longer need to use these critter parts as a means of staying alive. But it is fun to recreate and learn our ancestors’ craft while utilizing more of what nature provides. Maybe it’s just me, but I get a warm feeling of satisfaction when I can put a meal on the table mostly from Mother Nature. A meal of garden vegetables with a mess of fried crappie is hard to beat. I also get that feeling of satisfaction when I can utilize more of a harvested…

Antler is probably one of the most underutilized materials in the natural world. Not only are some types of antlers ground up into aphrodisiacs, but they also make wonderful knife handles, chandeliers, dog chews and even buttons. To turn an antler into buttons, you will need a fine-blade hacksaw or band saw, a drill with a small bit and sand paper. Antler points off of smaller bucks make great rough-hewn fasteners with a couple of holes for thread. If you want something fancier, slab 1/8-inch even sections of the antler. Cutting bone stinks, so do this outside or in a well-ventilated area and wear a paper mask to keep the fine grit from going up your nose. Sand first with medium and then fine sandpaper—the slabs will become shiny with…

Companies in the blackpowder business are similar to those who make conventional firearms in that new products are the lifeblood of their business. In the blackpowder world, however, many are new “old” products. Here’s a first look at some notable blackpowder guns and gear introduced at the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas this past January. American Pioneer Video Relief Carving American flintlock rifles in the 18th and 19th centuries often had their wooden stocks carved with relief and incise designs. These were the obvious hallmarks of a skilled gun-maker and something you’ll never see on a commercially manufactured reproduction. Well now you can learn how it was done, and how to do it yourself, with this 85-minute DVD recorded in HD at the shop of master…

The Algonquins are generally credited with the invention of what we know today as the tomahawk. We’ll never know who first took the original wooden war club and lashed a chunk of stone onto the end of it, but there’s no doubt that his tribe enjoyed at least a brief period of close-quarter tactical superiority over the rest of the neighborhood. That is, until nearby tribes began their inevitable scramble to duplicate the fearsome new weapon technology. In modern times, today’s tomahawk has evolved considerably. That stone head survived largely unchanged for centuries, but metallurgy progressed in fits and spurts until heads with actual cutting edges began to replace the shaped rock on a stick as one of the original “multi-tools.” Interactions between early North American traders and the indigenous…

or years, I’ve carried a “possibles bag” in my vehicle for those times when things go sideways and I need something special to get myself out of a sticky situation. The bag doesn’t resemble those you might see slung over the shoulder of a mountain man in a David Wright painting. It’s more of a beat-up, canvas duffel bag that has seen better days. Space is limited in my vehicle. The items found inside include a folding shovel, gloves, a space blanket, a first-aid kit, a fixed-blade knife, a Leatherman multi-tool, a flashlight, a Bic lighter, waterproof matches, a fire starter, a Pocket Sierra Saw, a blanket and quite a few other items that could come in handy should the need arise. I never packed a bow saw or folding…

Turning on cable news these days for an extended period of time can land you in a God-awful state of depression. The question most parents and grandparents find themselves asking is, “Are we leaving our country a better place for our children than how we came to find it?” The glass-half-empty part of me says the internet, excessive video-game playing, absentee-parent homes, drug use and the general belief that kids are becoming more detached from the great outdoors than ever is making things look bleak indeed. But then, while on a mule deer and elk hunt this past fall in Montana, I had the great pleasure of meeting a special youngster named Earl Harrison. Earl’s dad, Ray, is a longtime employee of the Jumping Horse Ranch (jumping horseranch.com), which is…

Rattlesnake is a clean, fatless white meat that reminds me of frog legs, but most experts claim it tastes like fish or chicken depending on how it’s cooked. The meat is tender, but there are lots of little bones. The only way we have ever cooked snake is to pan fry it, but there are a number of Chinese soup recipes that use snake. Here’s a good one to try. Ingredients • 1 rattlesnake at least 4 feet long, cut into 4-inch pieces • 1 cup flour • 1 Tbsp. Cavender’s Greek Seasoning • ½ stick of butter Directions Mix the flour and seasonings in a quart-sized bag and dredge the snake pieces until they are coated. When the butter is bubbling in your frying pan, add a few snake…

Ingredients • 2 pounds frog-leg pieces • vegetable oil • 1½ cups flour • 1 Tbsp. salt • ½ Tbsp. black pepper • ½ Tbsp. garlic powder • ½ Tbsp. onion powder • ½ tsp. cayenne pepper • 1 cup buttermilk Directions Preheat oil in a frying pan or deep fryer to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine all of the dry ingredients in one bowl and pour the buttermilk into another bowl large enough to immerse the frog legs. Dust the frog legs with the flour mixture, dip them in the buttermilk until coated, and then very thoroughly coat them in the flour mixture. Cook the frog legs in hot oil, then remove them and let the excess oil drain off.…

Mike Kain from Coral, Michigan, knows a thing or two about skinning and processing beaver hides. Over the past 20 years, Mike estimates that he’s skinned and handled approximately 10,000 beavers. As a personal record, he’s skinned close to 30 beavers in a single day. Mike’s experience in skinning, fleshing and stretching beaver pelts is why he was selected to put on a demonstration covering these topics at the Upper Peninsula (UP) Trappers Convention in Escanaba, Michigan, during July of 2019. Any trapper can benefit from his advice. If you’re still using nails to fasten beaver hides to drying boards, for example, Mike has a better alternative. Skinning Before starting to skin a beaver, Mike removes all four of its feet with loppers. If you don’t have those, the feet…

Wing-bone calls are unique because they emit sounds relative to the bird they came from. A hen’s bones are smaller, resulting in actual hen-pitched vocals, while a gobbler’s bones are larger, emitting lower-pitched sounds more representative of gobbler vocals. Young juvenile hen bones emit even higher-pitched sounds due to the smaller diameter of the bones. Bones from a juvenile gobbler, or Jake, emit sounds like a young gobbler would emit. Nothing to me replicates the coarse yelps and clucks of an old mature gobbler than a call made from a gobbler’s wing bones. With that said, let’s break down the basic steps to produce a wing bone call. 1. Harvest the three main bones from the first two joints of a turkey wing. The larger humerus comes from the first…

Earlier this year, some friends and I decided to pool our high-tech resources and go on a series of night hunts for coyotes. In all fairness, none of us have much experience hunting coyotes. However, our experience working for Uncle Sam both domestically and overseas—along with access to a wide range of night-vision gear, thermal scopes, lights and lasers—would give us a huge advantage. This would be a test of what equipment works best. This stuff is expensive, and if you save up and can only buy one type of scope or night-vision goggle, what kind should it be? Not everyone embraces technology. I have friends who like to hunt wearing coonskin caps and carrying muzzle-loaders. I admire their skills, but that isn’t the point of this story. Coyotes are…

The Klondike gold rush brought nearly 100,000 men and women into some of the harshest country in the world. Alaska in the late 1890s was the greatest of the great frontiers, and those living in the rugged, vast wilderness were true mountain men, scraping out a livelihood hunting, fishing, trapping and trying to stay alive. The first reports of Klondike gold reaching Seattle and San Francisco in 1897 started a stampede of men and women on the long, hard trek to Skagway, Alaska, and other port towns that yielded access, albeit treacherous, to the profitable gold fields. Ironically, the promise of becoming rich drew many who had never even spent a night without a roof over their heads. Most were ill-suited to brave the wilds, and many perished without a…

“Snake! Dad, it’s a big rattlesnake, and it looks like it swallowed an elephant!” Leslie hollered, running into the house. “Hurry, come kill it before it gets away!” To say Leslie Moseley, my husband’s daughter, was excited would be a colossal understatement. Sure enough, the 4-foot reptile was coiled up waiting and had a big lump in its midsection—evidence of a recent meal. It was the serpent’s last. Normally, we don’t kill snakes, but having a poisonous one living around two excitable boys and three dogs can quickly become a recipe for disaster. Rattlesnakes are generally mild mannered and prefer not to waste hard-to-produce venom on something they can’t eat. Often, venomous snakes will “dry bite” larger threats to make an escape. But we couldn’t take that chance, and Jim…

All craftsmen have tools that help them do their jobs better. Painters use quality paintbrushes, rollers and air brushes to get clean and smooth coats. Mechanics and carpenters have shops full of tools for every job imaginable. Farmers and gardeners collect specialty implements to make planting, cultivating and harvesting crops easier. Of course, the tools we use today weren’t dreamt of overnight. They’re improvements upon countless designs from the past. Some of our modern tools have become almost unrecognizable from their ancient cousins, but others we use today are the spitting images of tools used by older generations. One of these implements that comes with an interesting story is the chief tool of trappers: the steel trap. Today’s steel traps are highly effective in achieving their purpose of holding animals.…

A dead buffalo probably inspired the first horn mug. Some passing mountain man cut the horn off, scraped out the stuff inside and thought, “I could drink from this.” During long, cold nights huddled close to a blazing fire, he cut some more and whittled, plugging one end with wood, and soon he had a fine drinking cup. Although drinking horns have over 2,000 years of proud history in the hands of such cultures as the ancient Vikings and Greeks, during the last two centuries, horn mugs have all but disappeared. Thankfully, a modern crafter discovered that a section of cow horn could be beautiful as well as useful. Todd Strupp of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, makes stunning, flowing creations that harness the natural curves of cow horn, the grain of…

Araham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” While this quote is meant to be taken more metaphorically than literally, it certainly does apply to axemanship. There is much more to axeman-ship than simply knowing how to cut wood. A true woodsman has an understanding of his tools, including how to use them, how to maintain them and how to repair them. This knowledge improves a person’s survivability. Axes can be used to build cabins, fell trees, cut poles for makeshift emergency shelters, process wood to heat a woodstove or simply stockpile cordwood for your fireplace or fire ring. But before you pick up an axe and hit the trail, you need to understand some…