Several years ago a USPS
"If It Fits, It Ships" box arrived from my long time Texas Pond Boss friend
Dave Davidson.
The box held a beautiful handmade knife. The knife is perfectly shaped and proportioned for the meat butchering/preparation things that Dave knows I enjoy doing. The knife will never wear out in either of our lifetimes. I only need to swipe it a couple of times on a sharpening-steel, now and then, to keep it razor sharp.
I mostly use it during deer season, but it is also great for doing my annual side of beef and our annual hog.
This year's West Virginia rifle deer season opened this past Monday morning at about 6:30 AM. As I was pouring my first cup of coffee, I noticed a herd of antlerless (I only take antlerless) deer enjoying their breakfast near my lower pond. I put a single and customary 150 grain bullet in my old Winchester 94 lever action 30-30 carbine. I had checked the sighting at 50 yards the evening before, with a couple of bullets from the same box of shells.
I walked out the basement door
half-cocked(30-30 lever action safety position) with the solitary shell in the chamber. A beautiful big doe was browsing about 30 yards away. She gave me one look when I walked out the basement door, and went back to munching. None of the other deer paid any attention to me. I let go a blast. She immediately collapsed to the ground without any other movement. When I checked her, she had a tuft of grass between her front teeth. I was happy that she didn't suffer. I went back to the house for more coffee and breakfast.
My wife happened to be looking through our upstairs bedroom window when I took my shot. She said that the other dozen or so antlerless deer were mostly undisturbed by the shot, and quickly went back to grazing.
After breakfast is when my feeble old brain kind of betrayed me. On my way out the kitchen door to get the tractor, I grabbed the field dressing tools I had set outside the basement door, such as my old rain coat with sleeves that that snap tightly around my wrists, Kevlar gloves for use under my rubber gloves, a deer hanging gambrel that fits my tractor front-end loader, a hatchet (for pelvis/breastbone), shovel (to move the innards from the middle of the path to the pond), etc.
The tools should have included Dave's knife. I looked high and low in every place I figured I had walked. I couldn't find it.
I gutted the deer with my 2-inch Old-Timer pocket knife!
When I brought the deer to the basement butchering kitchen door, hanging from the tractor front-end loader, I went up the basement stairs for more coffee. Dave's knife was on the 3rd or 4th step where
I couldn't possible miss it!
Thankfully, I found it so I could quickly and cleanly skin and quarter the deer.
I'm just finishing the butchering and vacuum sealing. Dave's knife and my 50+ year old Rapala fish filet knife did it all.
Thank you Pond Boss Dave D.
Regards,
Ken
P.S. This was apparently the unlucky 13th deer of the herd. The other deer haven't moved far. Twelve antlerless deer crossed in front of me as I went out the driveway this morning.
