The Legend of The Osage Outlaw will live on.
Last fall I bought my very first osage orange stave. It was a craigslist ad in Twin Lake, MI. Still the only ad I've ever seen selling staves. I can't remember the fella's name, but he showed me some really nice bows he'd made over the years. They were beautiful, delicate things. All of the grips were nice leather and all of the nocks came to a slender point that I still am not able to replicate. He sold me five osage staves for a good price. I asked him where he got the staves and he told me they came from a guy who calls himself "The Osage Outlaw." The mystic bow sage from the foggy mountains of Indiana. As the legend would have it, he was the proprietor of an 80 acre osage forest where all of the finest bows and arrows came from, and now I was the owner of one of his magical staves.
One of the five staves became my first shooter. It was beautiful, it had a jute handle and all of the arrows it shot went directly into the bull's eye. It eventually broke, but my love for bows and arrows remained. I still have 4 of his magical staves to whittle down. I hope the bows I make from them will live up to the legend from which they came.
Goodbye Osage Outlaw, and remember, when all of our handles and passwords have been erased by the great admin in the sky, our sticks and stones and bits of metal and bone will be here to remember us by, not the words that hurt us, or the bones that weren't supposed to break..