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Deer hunting...with a Knife?
- Thread starter pyro777
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First, train to run a marathon through the forest.
Second, learn to track really well.
According to some anthropology article I once read, primitive man succeeded as a hunter killing prey with spears and knives because man was build for endurance and could run the prey to exhaustion. Prey animals like deer can run very fast, but not for very long. All the prey has to do is run faster than the predator for a little longer than the predator can, and hope the predator decides to seek an easier target once it and the prey have rested and recovered. The theory was that man could focus on a single animal and keep catching up to it, eventually doing so before the prey was rested enough for another burst of speed.
Not something I'd like to try personally...
Second, learn to track really well.
According to some anthropology article I once read, primitive man succeeded as a hunter killing prey with spears and knives because man was build for endurance and could run the prey to exhaustion. Prey animals like deer can run very fast, but not for very long. All the prey has to do is run faster than the predator for a little longer than the predator can, and hope the predator decides to seek an easier target once it and the prey have rested and recovered. The theory was that man could focus on a single animal and keep catching up to it, eventually doing so before the prey was rested enough for another burst of speed.
Not something I'd like to try personally...
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My thoughts exactly. Hard enough to kill a wounded doe with a knife, don't wanna try it with a healthy buck!
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I had a reasonably small doe put me into a fence and break two of my ribs.
Also dispatched a wounded buck with a knife (his spine was severed) and he still beat the tar out of me with his insanely powerful neck and front legs.
No freaking way I want anything to do with a healthy deer.
Also dispatched a wounded buck with a knife (his spine was severed) and he still beat the tar out of me with his insanely powerful neck and front legs.
No freaking way I want anything to do with a healthy deer.
Someone had to say it
After that dam smatchet thread, we just can't help ourselves.
I am also going to bring up another real world point some might not know.....I am a hardcore bow hunter and have taken a lot of big game animals. I am a hands on kind of hunter, meaning I skin and butcher my own game. I have dispatched many wounded deer in the woods and on the side of the road. I like to use a small NAA 22lr revolver behind the ear. I have used knives before and the sound a large animal makes as you slice into a warm blood rich neck may disturb you more than you know. Gasping for air as blood pumps from the wound, feeling the hot blood pour over your hands, muscles twitching and thrashing is more than most non hunters (and some hunters) could take. Sorry if this is too graphic but it is the reality of taking a life with a blade. It's one thing to except these awful experience while dispatching a woumded deer. To purposly subject a animal and your self to this hands on killing technique is another. Don't even entertain the idea of hunting a deer with a knife.
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as a former slaughter man when we got cattle that somehow survived the knocking process we'd slice the spine behind the base of skull and they'd be dead a lot quicker then to the neck which could be really dangerous. It's quick so you dont even get a noise out of them.
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I have seen it done, not with a knife, mind you, but with machetes and clubs. The deer were chased into a boggy area where they could not run as fast, and, once they were worn down, the hunters hacked and battered them to death. I have seen different kinds of pigs, tapir, and even a giant ant eater killed this same way. No guns were used at all, ammo was too scarce.
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I read the first post and though "yeah, that sounds possible". The way I thought to do it was:
The only other way I'd use a knife to kill a deer if I had the skill to do it would be to use the knife to make a bow & some arrows then kill/wound the deer with the arrows followed by finishing it with a knife if necessary. But buying a modern bow & arrows would have to be a whole heap easier.
The last deer I attacked with a knife wasn't too big a problem . . . definitely much easier after it has already been made into sausages. (mmmmmm, I love Bambi bangers!)
The only other way I'd use a knife to kill a deer if I had the skill to do it would be to use the knife to make a bow & some arrows then kill/wound the deer with the arrows followed by finishing it with a knife if necessary. But buying a modern bow & arrows would have to be a whole heap easier.
The last deer I attacked with a knife wasn't too big a problem . . . definitely much easier after it has already been made into sausages. (mmmmmm, I love Bambi bangers!)
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reminds me of a hunt I was on in Mozambique while in my early teens. The only man armed with a firearm had an ancient Yugoslavian made AKM with 20 rounds of mixed manufacture 7.62x39 mm ammo in a very worn and corroded magazine. He refused to use it for the actual kill, claiming it was bad luck.
We chased a very weary eland into the mud of a wide floodplain where it got caught up in the muck and made for an easy target. We turned it into a veritable pin cushion of makeshift spears, though it continued to fight with all it had to free itself and escape, finally expiring within what seemed a long time just a few muddy paces from where it had tried to jump straight up only driven itself deeper into the mud. It took all five of us to pull it out of the mud, which was up to it's shoulders, getting stuck ourselves in the process. No one remembered to bring any proper rope to help pull it out. We were too tired to field dress it and divide it for the haul home, spending the night on makeshift reed platforms strung at head height above the bog, a great way to avoid the creepy crawlies and unseen predators, but did nothing to dissuade biting insects.
The reason for the AKM, it was revealed to me, was strictly to provide incentive to any would be predator to turn tail and run. We'd seen lions prowling on the way in, most paying us no attention, a few making for a swift exist on our approach, noisy bunch that we were. He never fired the old war relic in my presence, for though the weapon was considered a bargain (a 20 kilo sack of rice was the going rate for a good used AKM in working order), ammo was harder to come by and generally purchased one round at a time. I was told much of the ammo was sold by, perhaps ironically, troops loyal to RENAMO and the FELIMO factions. It's a wonder the rebel groups or government troops ever had enough ammo to mount an assault on one another!
-E
We chased a very weary eland into the mud of a wide floodplain where it got caught up in the muck and made for an easy target. We turned it into a veritable pin cushion of makeshift spears, though it continued to fight with all it had to free itself and escape, finally expiring within what seemed a long time just a few muddy paces from where it had tried to jump straight up only driven itself deeper into the mud. It took all five of us to pull it out of the mud, which was up to it's shoulders, getting stuck ourselves in the process. No one remembered to bring any proper rope to help pull it out. We were too tired to field dress it and divide it for the haul home, spending the night on makeshift reed platforms strung at head height above the bog, a great way to avoid the creepy crawlies and unseen predators, but did nothing to dissuade biting insects.
The reason for the AKM, it was revealed to me, was strictly to provide incentive to any would be predator to turn tail and run. We'd seen lions prowling on the way in, most paying us no attention, a few making for a swift exist on our approach, noisy bunch that we were. He never fired the old war relic in my presence, for though the weapon was considered a bargain (a 20 kilo sack of rice was the going rate for a good used AKM in working order), ammo was harder to come by and generally purchased one round at a time. I was told much of the ammo was sold by, perhaps ironically, troops loyal to RENAMO and the FELIMO factions. It's a wonder the rebel groups or government troops ever had enough ammo to mount an assault on one another!
-E
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Jason B.
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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MAN UP!
How do you think we as people once and for some still do put meals on the table/rock. Many of us see more danger driving on the e-way daily yet scoff at the idea of primitive hunting because of the danger involved with some methods. People are so wrapped up in the "safety" of the modern world they have seem to of forgotten the way we once survived.
Personally I'd tie my blade to a long stick and wait in a tree but if you want to get extra personal then have at it. If anything it will be a experience to remember and tell your grandkids about.
How do you think we as people once and for some still do put meals on the table/rock. Many of us see more danger driving on the e-way daily yet scoff at the idea of primitive hunting because of the danger involved with some methods. People are so wrapped up in the "safety" of the modern world they have seem to of forgotten the way we once survived.
Personally I'd tie my blade to a long stick and wait in a tree but if you want to get extra personal then have at it. If anything it will be a experience to remember and tell your grandkids about.
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we are not our ancestors, for the most part humans are smaller, dont employ the same degree of thinking in day to day life, are not as active...the list goes on, we're a shadow of our former self.
Plus the fact is our ancestors died daily or were badly wounded during hunts, it isn't as peachy as "manning up"...a rifle that can take a deer down is like $200, your funeral will be thousands on your families shoulders.
DennisStrickland
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one deer tine in your lung will ruin your day forever.personally i would rather take on a boar instead of a deer. more americans die from white tail encounters than rattlesnakes yearly in the u.s.
dennis
dennis
I'm fairly sure that none of our ancestors ever tackled a deer and killed it with a knife. They usually drove them off of cliffs or used spears.
As far as "primitive hunting" techniques like dropping from a tree with a spear... I've actually heard of people doing this with large rocks dropped from trees so that you don't immediately put yourself in harms way by dropping down on it.
Anyway, a year or so ago I was driving around some of the hills here where deer cross, and a guy in front of me ran into a deer right in the middle of the road. It was shrieking in pain while laying in the middle of the road, and the guy who was a kind of cowboy type says, "Well, I can't stand hearing that, I'm going to try to put it down," and goes over there with a pocket knife. He gets maybe three or four feet way from the doe, and it jumps into the air and begins kicking him a little bit before it bolted off down the road a few more yards and laid down. The guy wasn't seriously injured, but he wound up getting cut all over by either his knife or the deer's hooves or both. When the sheriff's deputy finally arrived he thought the guy had been injured in the collision.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that if anyone has ever seen a deer attack they'd know better than to try to go take one on with a knife. You might be able to ultimately dispatch it after disabling it in some other way, but the idea that a man is going to "tackle" a deer and kill it with a knife is pretty far fetched to me. Even imagining that you can get up to a deer, it would kick you so hard and so fast that it would probably break your arms or cause you to cut yourself when trying to defend, and if you can manage to actually land a lethal strike past the intense flurry of hooves strikes it would still be kicking the crap out of you for a few seconds before it died.
A knife just isn't enough of an equalizer when it comes to human beings taking a deer on by hand. I think an equal comparison would be fighting a silver back gorilla with a pair of brass knuckles.
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Wait, what? Humans are bigger now than they used to be - and by a noticeable amount too! In most countries the average human being is several inches taller than the average a couple of centuries ago.
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