Many decades ago, when I was a young guy full of vinegar, I was working as a machinist for a company in Gaithersburg Maryland. One of my co-workers was an older.guy named Andy. Andy was from down in Virginia by Mount Rogers, the highest place in the Shenandoah Mountains. He was an old country boy who'd grown up "huntin" just about everything there was. So huntin' season he invited me down to the old family farm in the mountains for a weekend hunt. It was to be an education for this city boy from the Washington D.C. suburbs.
I was a young guy all full of myself, as well as a full fledged knife nut and gun. nut. I was packing my Remington 870 with a Hastings barrel, cantilever mounted scope and Randall custom sheath knife. Opening day morning, we're up well before dawn and out of the house with a cup of coffee and a biscuit in our stomach. Waiting on the stand for daybreak. Andy had walked out with his old red and black checkered wool coat and in his hand was on old Harington Richardson single barrel shotgun he said was loaded with a "punkin ball". His term for a slug. By my over enthusiastic standards he was woefully under equipped. An old break open shotgun and not even a large 'huntin' knife on his belt.
Well, just after day break I hear Andy's shotgun go off, and he's got a really good buck. Down with one slug right through the boiler room. Andy sitting there smoking his pipe. He knew that old shotgun he'd had for longer that I'd been alive. He takes out his pocket knife, the very same well worn little Buck 303 cadet stockman style that I'd seen him use a zillion times at work, and goes to work. Main blade maybe a bit over 2 inches, simple little stockman. He does a surgical neat job of field dressing that deer with his little pocket knife as I'd ever seen. I came away from that deer hunting trip with an education in real life and a change of attitude. Did Andy mean to do that?maybe. I was a cock sure sometimes arrogant gear snob at times in my younger day, but by the close of my 30's I had learned. Simple is good. That old mountain man with some simple old few pieces of gear skunked the city boy with all his hot lick gear that cost way to much for just bragging rights.
The little worn pocket knife that you know well, is a good thing. Buck cadet, Victorinox cadet, no difference. It's the Indian, not the arrow that does it. Theres Indians in the Amazon jungle with a simple trade machete that will outwork any survivalist or "Bushcraft" joker with his 500 dollar special bushcraft knife.
