Hunting For a Walking Stick & Mocotaugan Important Native American Tool

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Video Transcription

[Music]

all right folks so before we continue this video into what the title says first of all welcome happy to have you this this is the first time my name is Mike and remember my latest or my most recent video haven't seen it just go back I made the beginning of a walking stick for my wife Josie and I just wanted to show you the finishing of it now I understand this is absolutely not the best walking stick there are guys out there that have a lot of talent when it comes to carving which I do not have they'll carve wolf heads and Eagle legs and you name it and there's beautiful stuff out there and some people are just ingenious when it comes to you know they add stuff here where you don't even probably have to carry your backpack cause you have everything on your walking stick fire kids and all that good stuff now this is not that okay this is just the finishing touches or the finished product of Josie's walking stick and it's just to show you that you don't need to be talented really to create your own little things so I'll just give you a quick look now these are just little trinkets that I add is real quick for Josie she'll probably add her own a little bit of leather left and they have this little turtle here that someone made me in one of my trips to Haiti is actually a necklace I just added there just to decorate the top there's your well I tried to make a snakehead but didn't turn out that great anyway let's give you a little closer look at the rest now don't mind e or forgive me for the black flies they are out obviously you'll probably see them and hear them it's not much I can do about that

okay give you a quick look how this thing and I'll just tell you what I did with this it looks like what how do they do all that that took me about ten minutes well maybe a longer cuz about you know the standing is a bit longer and there's my end okay okay so there you have it folks a finished walking stick of Josie and she's very pleased with it now very simple obviously you saw me taking the bark off and then I just made a few you know there's two places I wanted some as a noughts off so it's nice and comfortable but I made knife mark you know took just took pieces off here and there there's an example these are all knife marks that I took off and when you take these off but it leaves some ridges okay all these lines here are actually ridges a ridge which is a little higher than the dark part and I left those and all I did is took a sandpaper and sanded it down not too much just send the ridges okay you don't want to get rid of the ridge of your of whatever mark your knife made so I took that I think I used an eighty after that now of course this I took about two weeks maybe before this is a nice and cured up or dry enough anyway to do what I want to do so after taking the bark off and letting it dry making it like I wanted to all the knife marks I lift usually when I send something like for the spoons you need to sand it right down so it's nice and even in flush usual but for this I didn't I leave here's a better example see that those are all knife marks chunks I took off so after that you can use whatever color you like I had some black anyways left at home some black stain for wood and I stained the whole thing all black now it looked really good just like that but then I decided to make a little few modifications I took it to 20 and I just gently sanded the area as I want to sand now I send a little bit more here just to make it a little bit more cool and the center I left it a little bit more black but I just standed the ridgelines that's it see just to expose the white of the wood now once I was done the wider area here is just to show Josie where the handle is or that you know or you grip after all of that done man these have to make a fire okay after all of this is done all you need to do or what I did I just took some linseed oil and give it a nice big coat now I understand that where it's staying the linseed oil will not go in as well but you know what it still does just to give it a kind of water resistance protection so Rosie's very pleased with this and I'm happy that she is what I'm going to do now I would like to find myself a stick so we're going to go for a little trick we're not in the right woods I'd like to find a this is a paper birch which is perfectly strong but I want to find more of a maple because maple is my absolute favorite wood but we're in the wrong area at first I need to make myself a fire get rid of some of these bugs and obviously have a little coffee then we'll go for a hike try and find a nice piece and we'll talk about that tool that's in the title there should be enough [Music]

time for some relief here rare occasions why where I I'm happy to have some smoke the fire is going to be bigger and what I need to just talk English I want to spend a little bit of time here before we go into the other four so I need to keep some of those flies away

I should say black flag well looks when he closed out actually not one o'clock thirty seconds back what we'll do is we'll wait for this coffee to cool down a bit wait for that part burn away to ashes and I'll clean that up and then we'll go and go into the part with forests mostly maple hopefully maybe I won't have to go that far I don't know I like to fly myself to walking stick pull out little ways back maybe 25 30 minute of bushwhacking probably end up gosh probably end up in a trigger force but maybe down there - I don't know anyway that's my goal and usually in sugar wood forest the leaf tree there's less bugs so hopefully we'll be be a little bit more enjoyable then we'll talk about that tool and use it okay

and instead of saying taste test I'm going to say burn test hallelujah

perfect heat perfect day perfect time perfect okay catch you guys later on the trail all right I love this just found a game trail so make it much easier and obviously this is moose so let's see where this takes us okay so a little forestry 101 I know there's a lot of people out there that don't understand when you cut some green green trees they just go crazy and they don't understand but actually when you do it properly you're doing the for some good now what you see in front of me is a maple sapling now that's not the one I'm going to harvest because it's not exactly what I'm looking for but it's surrounded by all kinds of trees and I give it 50% chance of survival but that's why I'm not cutting it but if you go into that deeper bunch there those are alders but sometimes you'll have maple trees that are the same way it's actually good for the forest to cut a few so that the other trees around have a chance to survive because when you have big trees that need to grow and they're too bunched up they lack shade or nutriments or whatever it is the trees will choke each other up and most of the time none of them none of them will grow into a big tree so when you do it right and you cut the right ones you give the other chant the other tree a big chance of being able to survive out here so there's nothing wrong with cutting graters the other nice prime example you see this birch tree right there doesn't have too many trees around it and it's growing nice it's healthy no shade the big trees it's just perfect this one here will do the same but in front of us here we have six birch trees really really close to these three I know if you can see them the sun's in the way but there's three one two three you can't see it hold on three three mature spruce trees now they're really close now these spruce trees are taking a lot of energy and these five even though they look not so bad now they won't all grow and become nice big birch trees actually I think the rule is a three feet so what I would do is I would eliminate the three closest to the spruce trees and probably this one here that's really close despite about a foot if you can see that a foot from this one here so you would have one he was at three healthy spruce trees or I mean birch trees instead of maybe one or two or maybe none depending you know on all kinds of stuff so I hope you know this just clears up a few things for you guys flies are a little horrible still I can't seem to find any maple forest I decided to go west and I'm not seeing any maples all I'm seeing is birch older few Elms and a bunch of spruce trees a little bit of balsam fir cedar there's a few Cedars over there so it looks more promising if I go back north so let's keep on trekking here and hopefully we will find something hopefully we're getting into more of a I got some big maple trees here got some birch got some I got a perfect piece there but the tree is nicely exposed I don't want to take it so you know it's just being logic about what you should take I'm not against taking stuff I mean that's what it's here for but abusing it obviously like anything else is not so good and of course we can't take care of the whole forest you know start cutting up trees so make sure that one grows you can't do that we need dead wood right so we can have our fires while we're traveling here okay so a few tips on walking sticks what I like about walking sticks and what I look for what I like to do now normally these sticks should be your arm should be at a 90-degree angle like this okay but this is not a normal walking stick it's not those you're not skiing during the winter okay so I like to have it a little higher a little angle okay because this is more of a keep your balance and push you up I mean you could use it to push you up but I feel more comfortable this way and I like to leave about a foot okay from where I grab it just because sometimes when you want to relax it's nice to have two hands you put the other one on top here and you just relax you know it's really comfortable your back relaxes of course your arms are the ones holding it but everything else is relaxing and I like to do that so that's the main reason why I choose this length now if you'd be using this as a spear or a weapon obviously you'd have a spear so you want this to be at least a foot higher than your head so that you don't injure yourself while walking and also you'll have a better reach and a better throw because it's longer so that's the end of this lesson now I have to stop fighting these bugs pretend they're not there Yeah right and try to find me that perfect stick I think I see a few there and then when I take a break as I'm getting thirsty okay so one last thing I forgot to tell you because I don't want to forget anything what a dick 3/4 of the way from the top needs to be as straight as possible okay as straight as possible for one reason your aim as you walk it's important know where you put your stick your stick scuse me and the more it's crooked

the harder it is to aim or make a mistake and put your stick where it's not supposed to that involve you want to find you know this one in a little crooked then I'd like to its Josie's anyway she likes it like like that but at least three-quarters of the way you want it to be nice and straight as much as they can okay one last example again this is when you walk in the woods you see this often another example when trees grow too close to each other they look like this now there's only two that are a little bit healthy at the top that's it most of them look even a couple of heads that are dry so it's really not good so I hope you understand when we cut something green the right way it's for the good of the forest well that sounds good okay I know that you don't see it from there but we are getting into some prime maple forest right there now the trees are big so normally there's not much saplings because you know there's too much shade and they lack the Sun but sometimes it does so we're just going to instead of going into it I'm going to walk around it where there's could be saw a bunch of saplings and I can harvest one so at first I need to take a drink before we go into the edge of that forest

we're going to you guys thirsty I'm thirsty so if you don't mind I'm going to have myself a drink oh yes he is good all right so it wasn't for the bugs I would definitely definitely go for a snooze right now I'm not even supposed to be in the wood the honor then I won't tell you why a little personal but let's say I should be resting but just going to be careful so anyway ah see perfect for me to test the ground first make sure it's not a hole or something that can hurt you as you put your weight thank you and I wasn't faking that one isn't this a nice sign

beautiful forest as you can see it's hard to find saplings in a mature forest got a big yellow birch there yellow birch and white birch tend to grow with maple trees now the yellow birch is almost as dense as the maple it's a very good tree and good work good wood to burn the paper birch burns quickly and not as dense but anyway this here I'm happy to know that it's there I could follow up right up to the top see if it's a spring but I don't feel like it because I'm not doing it right now I'm going straight north and see if I can find myself a walking stick I found a perfect specimen of what I would love to harvest but I will not harvest this one because as you can see there's no trees around and it's pretty high up it's going to find its way through the trees there right there you won't you can't see it but alright that's the tree here and it's going to become a nice big maple so onward soldier OH mm-hmm

oh there's a nice maple burl right here not a huge huge one it's a nice one okay some people are wondering how you can take this off because a lot of people harvest this to make beautiful bowls and stuff without damaging a tree well it's actually pretty simple like anything else you want to cut and leave just a little bit out okay and cut the rest or whatever use you want to do it's just like cutting a branch off a tree okay you want to leave a little bit out just so the bacteria won't attack the trunk the main trunk it will attack where you cut but this tree is healthy enough and strong enough that it's going to heal itself like nothing so don't cut it too close okay so the bacteria doesn't go in but leave at least an inch off and the tree will be fine right now I'm a little bit disoriented so that's why I mean there's not a thousand kilometres of woods here I can't get lost like and have to sleep a couple of days but I can still get lost nothing dangerous or to be in danger of so I don't feel like getting out tonight and finding my way so I always use this little well always especially when I go in deeper always use this little Sun to Sun toe I can't remember how they pronounce it just to give me a bearing of the road I came in I know the road goes a long way west so I mean the road is like this that's whist so it's not a precise bearing but it's something that when I get closer I can see some landmarks and bringing me back to our supposed to alright so take my bearing with that sorry that little needle there you see here that one so what I need to do okay that's in the Sun I need to do is bring the north needle with the little end you see there okay so I'm turning I'm turning I'm turning so that's how I took my bearing so that needle is pointing on my end on my watch so now I know which way to go see that there I go that way the roads that way but I must be pretty far away because usually I hear stuff but right now trying to find this stick oh I think I see something

okay was that sometimes when you see a small tree growing too close to a big tree it won't last and I think I know anyone right near this properly or not but there's a whole bunch of trees that are stuck together and it's all maple all around me these are way too close and there's more there that one's way too close to that one there's a whole bunch so all I need to do is take my time and choose oh my gosh look at that there's at least six little saplings around that big maple actually all of it should be cut down to give the big maple some strength and you know energy to stay alive as long as possible but they're it's like they're growing out of the root you get you closer here okay that that's no good there's no use keeping those saplings here the whole bunch okay this one is growing right from the root so I've got a whole bunch here I'm going to take my time and choose the right one all right talk about a perfect day I found myself a perfect rock so I can rest the wind is blowing you can hear that means no mosquitoes or no black flies and I am surrounded with a sapling do this right here you get my shade out of there one of these has to go so the other one can survive see what I mean even though there are two cloaks so I've got like tons of them okay time to make my choice okay so I found the sapling it was warning by the way those I don't know what we when we say sapling is just a young tree not the ideal I was wanting but when they grow close together they tend to roll more branches and so this one is like full not it'll make its pretty once I'm done with it but it's more work it's still what do you want to cut these you want to cut these as low to the ground as you can so this tree was like this so I cut it right flush to the ground so somebody comes now nobody comes here but if you're an area where people do and you leave it too long I mean you know what happens you trip or you keep them as much as you can at the same time it made me a little arc I'm going to keep this stuff like this my handle is going to be here so I still need to cut it it means to be the top so a good eight inches try it about here also another little tip if possible if there's a knot at the top at the bottom where you want to cut you want to compromise make it a little longer a little shorter and cut under the not just a little bit leave half an inch that's not going to keep your stick strong at the end sadly I have a knot here but it's going to make it way too short so let me just take this piece off okay that's perfect now if I'd have my axe I didn't want to have that kind of weight with me today I just take all those knots off but I have myself so if you want to save some work with your knife this take your time it's not a rate and salt any little knots that you don't want some are easier to take off with others of course this job is a lot quicker with an axe

hey I got the time today oh man there's a lot of beggars can be true right and watch this time of year there's a lot of moose in this area okay so

I'm going to continue doing that and then we'll just take the bark off and we'll call it a date well you got a love black slide so I'm going to have my lunch first if you guys don't mind I'll put my hat back in these flies just low-key

that's my lunch I wasn't planning on making a long video it seems like it's going to be a long one and doing all that explanation or just coming here find myself another walking stick man maybe I talk too much so let me enjoy this lunch and then we'll talk about that tool a little bit Oh will you show us that tool finally I mean the title says it and I haven't seen it yet hmm maybe you're right so anyway this is it out okay so this is what we call the macaw tagging or Mara I'm trying to pronounce the two ways that people macaws again or market ogen okay the market organ or macaques again anyway m OC o tau GaN which is native from here Canada the name anyway Micajah ghen means crooked knife and it's from the Cree the word I'm not sure if they invented this or not okay I'm not a history kind of guy but probably when they were able to trade they decided to do this or maybe it's from Europe who knows but I'm telling you what I know from Canada and macaw again means crooked knife or draw knife and in French

Kotoko gosh as you can see it's nice and straight then goes up and the curl the handle is made out of maple and it's been stained burned and all that good stuff proper way to use it is like this you've seen that before now this type of tool is not seeing too much and maybe not used enough maybe because one is expensive to buy for some reason and second well it takes a lot more skill to use this then your typical spoon knife that you get from Mora okay now I am not at that skill level yet where I feel very comfortable with this yet but I want to become just because it's a lot more of a useful tool than this now I'm not putting this aside or spitting on this I mean I love the spoon knives from Mora I made a lot of spoons out of this this one here can be a lot more useful you can do more with it but again I have to tell you right away

it takes more practice to use this properly now this one here in particular I got this from Randall I think we trade it for this or I can't remember anyway last year from The Gathering I could be wrong but anyway it's from him now Randall is an experienced knife maker into doing all kinds of knives and swords for the better of 30 years anyway he's got a youtube not yeah he has YouTube channel and Facebook and I'll put the links below in the description there I think it's villain bushcraft Facebook if you have any questions or anything like that that I can't answer well he will so why is this better than this well I'll tell you my logic to it it's not because I have 30 years experience using it because I don't I just played around with it to get a little bit comfortable but the crooked part obviously you can still create your bowls from your spoons from your cook saws big bowls I mean you can do spoons with this no problems and even some cook saws but after a while you can't reach like this one can because it's way longer so you can get in you know to the area's much easier and you know carving all of you that do some carving it takes patience you don't want to be in a rush because the biggest problem with carving is there's only one it's taken too much wood off and put it back on right so with this you can you know a deeper reach for deeper bowls and obviously there's a method of using it also this straight edge here will allow you to take material off evenly either you're making I don't know an axe handle or tomahawk like the natives would do or on their canoes maybe the rib rib cage on the canoes paddles there's certain types of of tools that when you make them need to be kind of even and this long flat side here will do that for you okay now this is what they call I think a chisel grind where it's really flat here and then you have a small angle there so you can't really scoop with this straight edge this is for taking stuff evenly off okay now my job this year my personal goal is to get used to this now I know I'm going to have a little bit of a problem and you know there's all kinds of ways of using it I mean the main way is like this with your thumb okay you're pulling but if you got finer jobs you're holding your piece of wood and you put your thumb behind and you just you know anyway there's all kinds of ways I'm going to put this guy away I'm not going to throw it away because I love this knife here but I'm going to try and get used to this one so let's uh let me give you an example just by taking the bark off of my walking stick because that's all I want to do on this stick is take the bark off I don't want to take any wood off when you use a normal knife now you can't do that with this because it's round okay but when you use a normal knife to take the bark off you're going to take some wood off and if you don't want to do that well it's impossible to do with tonight but with this one it's possible to go nice and even so let's do this okay so for this particular job now I didn't take time to take all the knots off because I want this video to be done but I want to put a stick on your shoulder okay so it gives you a nice view and it's it's safe there's no problems there then you want to take your knife some of the top here and you can see when you do bring it

I'm not going to go too high but how nice this goes and of course you want this to be sharp just take your time actually this one is uh thought it was completely green but it's not we're not here why doing it this way just taking the bark off I mean standing this is going to be really not too many marks taking my time

in this case I don't need to the end just a walking stick now I don't need to dig in I just need the flat sir here course you could you know go a lot faster I'm just getting that the feel of it or [Music]

bring it this way making sure II don't want to come all the way to your hand okay

lock it like right now my shoulder and I'm I told my elbow bangs in to my stomach

so I can't really go any further just gives it a nice even obviously there's a knot here gives it a nice surface or they'll be hardly any sanding to do just a little bit

so anyway gives you an idea right and I know there's some of you out there that are experienced with this but this is mostly for the ones that are not so look at that if you can see that that it gives a nice surface ouch nice surface you know you can just suck in the wood you won't even need to sand it if you take your time it's a really cool tool but you got to get used to it see my hand just by doing that is a little bit tired because it's not used to holding it that way but after a while because I love using it that's the problem not a problem [Music]

not here now I will force them off just

just take your time and take this stuff material you missed it's actually really relaxing and now I change sticks just to give you a little example for finer carving this is a dry piece and using my other hand right here

the wood is under so no dangers of cutting myself and gently I just use my thumb whichever piece I I need from the you know if I need this piece here if I need the curling one just the tip I can do like this or I can use just the side see right away this is how I goodness I'm getting chewed this is exactly how I'm going to do my bowls for my spoon it's not the best piece get the idea as you get used to it and what I love about what Randall did is that the spine I guess is round yes mr. Randall you know I'm really I know it's become a big thing to have a sharp spy on knives to strike with your Pharisee emraan but I really dislike it just because when I used my knife a lot for a little small task and my goodness I can't use it because my thumb becomes almost bloody so a nice round is very comfortable to use so anyway gives you an idea making feather sticks

I'm just practicing here this is a chisel ground so remember you got to go straight but the same time you get a bended not too much because it's going to go in too deep very doable so anyway there you go just on the way how to make feather sticks with this and it curls very tight curls of course the longer your stick the better but look at these curls when you go into a slicing motion to create the curls

so everything is pretty much doable with this knife just need to get used to it and I can't cut myself again because I can't go any further here I'm banging myself in the stomach on the side here just got to keep your fingers away where you're cutting make a little spatter curls

anyway

was I just out of frame there you go even feather stakes so pretty cool my cardigan or oh god have a hard time market Argan it sounds more native wok talking market all good knife anyway the name doesn't really I don't really care it's the tool so I'll be working a lot more with this and hopefully I'm going to get good at it now I can walk out with two walking sticks but I still have that camera anyway by the way walking sticks never on the ground unless you got four isn't tape all over it bound to lose it one last little thing if I don't fall down here diameter or diameter that I prefer bottom the tip an inch okay and about an inch and a half of the top I understand there's people that like it less maybe some like it bigger but I find it's the perfect comfortable grip for me and at the same time I have some kind of a weapon in case I need to bang a bear on the head ok time to get out of here I'm getting toodle eyes okay let's check this one more time so we bring that in to the end that so see that black needle that's the way I'm supposed to go and look what I found the field now this is the field I usually take to go in the woods and the car is I mean the road is going from north to south but I took what do you call that anyway I aimed my little black thing towards the road and of course coming back I told you that I could find some some landmarks and this is a road that I caught on I go just a little ways there but I caught on to it and I found it so me a second there here all right so one of the biggest problems with a compass when you think you're not going the right direction is trusting the compass

I trust the compass now doesn't matter if you go out with a map or you're in the deep woods or just like I did and I just went further when I know I'm gonna have to go a little further I'll just take why can't I find that word point about Piatt in French for those don't know English is not my first language but anyway my bearing there you go I take a bearing a quick bearing not a precise one from where I came from which was the road the road is so wide that I can't really go wrong okay sorry I'm out of frame so I take a bearing and this brings me to another problem that we have I have anyway I'm on a mountain so if I don't take a bearing I know I'm going deeper in my mind that's why I you know I I doubted the compass a little bit but I said it's me for sure I'm going down so automatically I know I have to come back up to get here but the thing is when your mind is wandering and you're looking and then you're climbing you don't know it but you've climbed another little hill and you went down another one and then you turn and climbed a little hill and he didn't realize it and that's what happened to me so I thought for sure I have to climb that way because I came back down so I started climbing and right away it didn't feel right so I took a look at my compass and whoa I was going north instead of West so I was happy I took that bearing now there's no problems I mean we don't have a thousand acres here where I can get lost as I said before where I have to spend the night but lost enough where I'll be uh or end up at the other other Road and I have to walk like 10 miles back I didn't want that to happen so anyway man am i rambling or what so this is it for this video and by the way Randall is from Canada for you Canadians he's in Nova Scotia take a look at this stuff he makes I mean he used to make swords used I don't know if you still make some large knives bushcraft knives Scandinavian type knives I mean you name it I'll just leave some links below alright so for now this is Mike from bushcraft barns saying see you later don't forget to enjoy the wilderness which is the main thing when we come out here I have to remind remind myself of that I did enjoy myself except for these black flies that you probably don't see but they're all around me so you know what why don't you go out and make yourself a walking stick I challenge you even if you've made one before in the past take your family and each make a walking stick make it differently ah go out bring a lunch just enjoy yourself alright see you later [Music]