Welcome to Willow Deer Education! This channel is here to help you learn how to make arts and ornaments of our ancient ancestors using only the tools and materials they had available to them from the Natural World.

This tutorial will teach you the techniques of how to cut and drill bone using only stone tools and can be used to make bone whistles, flutes, tubes for blowing pigment and bone beads. On large bones these simple techniques can be used to make larger tools and ornaments.

How to make a Bone Whistle. This in-depth tutorial will take you through all of the steps needed to make a bone whistle. Starting with the selection of the bone and use of the stone tools found in the natural world you will successfully complete a bone whistle. This project is suitable for all ages.

I encourage everyone watching these videos to use only the tools and materials that were available to the original makers of these objects, but do not hesitate to use modern equivalents or even modern tools to complete your project. Learning the process if foremost, adapting to ancestral tools can always be added once you have achieved competence in making these objects.

Material resources.
Bones. Any straight hollow bone can make a whistle and prehistorically whistles have been made from everything from mountain lion and jaguar femurs to the 40,000 year old flute made from a vulture wing bone found in Hohle Fels cave in Germany.

Caution! In the U.S. only domestic or commercially raised birds and those classified as game birds are legal to use in any way. The feathers and bones of ALL OTHER BIRDS are illegal to have in your possession whether you hunted it, or it was a road kill or died of natural causes. Mammal bones are subject to local laws and restrictions but are generally not as emphatically policed as wild bird parts.

Wild turkey wing bones can be ordered from Custom Feathers: https://www.customfeathers.com/. Ask for un-bleached bones for a more natural looking whistle. Ulnas work best for whistles, but the large humerus bones can work and the radius bones make good beads. My first whistle was made from a turkey leg bone leftover from Thanksgiving dinner.

Hunters and hunt clubs can be a reliable source of large bird (turkey, goose) wing bones as the wings are in most cases just discarded as waste.

Stone tools.
The stone used far tools to make these whistles are little more than gravel, having a few sharp points and some straight rough edges that work to saw through the bone. Safely smashing one stone against another will produce all of the needed edges required to complete this project.

Small pieces of sandstone slabs can usually be acquired for free at many landscape supply yards as they are to small to sell for use in landscaping.

Later videos will specifically cover how to create many specialized stone tools for drilling, sawing and cutting without the need of any advanced lithic training that is required for making arrowheads, spearpoints and axes.

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About Chuck is a primitive skills specialist with 30 years experience teaching and experimenting with ancient tools and materials. He has replicated items for museums and museum exhibits and has taught students of all ages while being on staff at a regional Indian Museum in Northern California as well as gatherings along the U.S. West Coast and Canada.

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