The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
And here's your miracle!And unless they add to the NF 14 offerings it will be another run without out stag. Aside from the rendezvous knife, I believe we are going back to September 2022 the 59 run being the last. My point of the Christmas miracle in the first place.️
Well, partly nailed it, lol.
He gets the piece they found on the floor.
That would be the 2018 run, IMHO.
What? No shields?
No we call moose,moose I think we call reindeer,caribou.and man if you cook caribou right in a slow cooker with a good gravey you might never touch venison again.i just ate a bunch of caribou sausage for lunch.but cooked wrong and it ain't that flavorful.now let's see some of those stag drop at exchange or the purple/blue bone and watch the fingers fly lol.I'd leave those Reindeer alone, their antler is very pithy and OK for spacers or inserts, but handle slabs... The meat is very 'furry' tasting too, much prefer Venison or Elk (Moose you call it) .
Relax, there's a secret cache of Royal Sambar in a bunker near GEC, just when you thought it was hopeless...Bill Howard will unleash the masterstroke
I'm in Australia, we have what I believe is the highest wild population of sambar in the world with estimates around 1 million. Although I believe a study this year recalculated this down some.Interesting to get an hunter's in the field perspective
You should take a bit of time to look over the long running Saturday Stag thread, some really good examples of different types of Antler there in situ as knife handles . Red Deer certainly will make good handles when you get the right type - I have knives from France & Germany, Argentina with very nice slabs. American Elk (Wapiti) also offers different but rewarding Antler, some excellent GEC stainless knives have appeared in it and the Buck 2018 Forum Knife is another fine example. European Elk (Moose) can be OK but the Antler soon calcifies in the wild if not retrieved quickly or devoured by animals. My point is that Sambar Stag is universally admired for good reason: its variety and complexity plus its durability. If you look at very old knives from the English & German cutlers of the late c19th early c20th you find Stag of astonishing beauty that has aged fantastically . GEC has had some really admirable Sambar knives until lately when the supply seems to have all but dried up. The Sambar Deer is native to the Indian subcontinent and is a large animal, it is under threat due to vanishing habitat, human population increase, poaching. It is also a favoured prey of the Tiger, another magnificent animal threatened by us. So restrictions have been made on the export of Antler to protect the owners of these antlersThere are small herds in the US- that you have clearly hunted- but they will lack the genetic variety of the Indian animals, may not produce such interesting antler, food, habitat can also impact on Stag quality. Interestingly, Père David Deer were a native of China and became near extinct, herds in England reared I think by the Duke of Bedford? at the start of the c20th , provided individuals for re-introduction to China. Its Antler can be very nice as Polished Stag but it lacks grooves, popcorn, fissures etc and is often pithy.
Finally, the sheer variety of Stag gives it such appeal as one of the finest knife handles and GEC has added to that appreciation over recent years. You really should get that Red Deer Antler out of your shed and made up into knife slabs
Thanks, Will
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