Deer Leg Tool Kit

This is my DEER LEG TOOL KIT I use to show possible resources and tools from a white tail deer lower leg, something a hunter today would discard, but earlier peoples would harvest.  Left to right:  the white tail deer leg.  The thin hide is skinned from the leg and scraped, and a possible knife sheath is made from the rawhide (not pictured). The harvested leg bone is shaped into a hide scraper, or shards are abraded into awls or needles, the inner marrow eaten.  The dried leg tendon is gently beaten with a wooden baton, or rock, to break and separate the sinew from the tendon sheath.  Sinew is used as sewing thread or used to wrap stone points to shafts.  The four phalange bones (lower right) can be used as beads, or scored with a stone burin and split.  These halves are hollowed with a stone drill and scraped with flakes in the process of making fish hooks.  Pointed bones inside the hooves are ground down into arrowheads.  Any hide scraps or hooves are slowly boiled, in a clay pot, leaching out the collagen.  This brownish liquid is reduced down - making hide glue.  The remaining item is a deer toe rattle made out of the deer leg bone, deer hide, hooves, some fur, and hide glue.  These tools demonstrate the resourcefulness of early man and just some of the possible uses of just the lower leg of an animal.