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make our departure for the mountains. My brothers, Steve and
Darryl, were always good at finding great picking grounds. We
all hunted big game in the general area, so we all took on some
responsibility for looking for berries any time we were in the
hills.
In the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, I spent a lot of my
time up in the Cascade Mountains. I was a firewood
hunter/gatherer as well as a berry hunter. I always searched
for good berry patches while I was on a firewood gathering
trip. Some bushes can be completely barren, while others are
loaded with berries! I took notes on where the good bushes
were and led the troops to that very spot on our next excursion.
This gave me the role of one of the scouts. Remembering the
Forest Service road numbers and showing the group to the
best picking areas was a great responsibility.
Another role or duty the men had as well as scouting was
to fashion as many huckleberries picking buckets as there
were people to pick so everyone would be able to pick. We had
to maximize our efforts and get a bucket on every kid who
could walk without spilling the berries. I made these picking
buckets out of old Folgers coffee cans by punching holes though
both sides of the can. By doing this you could run a long string