- Joined
- Mar 28, 2012
- Messages
- 48
Times being what they are, free beef is good beef. Beef in the freezer means we get to stop eating chicken / pork for a while & that is a thing worth celebrating in itself!
So when a rancher friend called & said he had a cow to get rid of, I was glad to get in. Went down to his place Tues. AM, no help available to speak of this time ... 3 yr old hefer, prolaps.
Right about 8:50 AM the .44 went pop.
By 10:30 was ready to go for the garden hose.
1 hour 35 min. I figure to shoot, hang, gut & skin a full sized cow. My personal best.
One of the more interesting things I learned was about the knives I was using. I used 3 of the knives I had along, 1 was a brand new Buck Alaskan Guide with s30v steel. The second was Dad's old folding Gerber from the 70's with a great edge. #3 was a cheap Cabela's Bargan cave special that I really enjoy for birds. The goal was clean with speed, so no time was taken for touching up an edge. Each knife gave me what it could & then was put aside for another day. (There were a couple more in the car if needed...
)
The Buck's steel was great. The edge on the S30V lasted for 1/2 the cow (I started with the skin at the neck, and skinned as well as gutted my way down). The bigger issue though was not the steel, but the handle. It was a folder with metal sides & barely rounded edges. By the time it was dull, my hands were raw & club-ish from holding it.
The Gerber wasn't a razor as it can be to start with (hadn't got it really sharpened since the last cow I did for the food bank) ... but it did probably 1/3 of the cow with no complaints. The handle was better, more rounded edges, but still with that kind of work didn't feel great in the hands.
Then there was the dumb little $10 special from Cabelas. Darn if that thing didn't hold its edge, and feel good the whole time, even though it was the last knife I used. Who ever in China made that one got it right.
What I learned... 1) Love the s30V steel for edge holding. 2) For this kind of hard work, the handle is as important as the steel; or more. I'd gladly trade that two blade Buck folder for a nicely radius handle.
God Bless,
So when a rancher friend called & said he had a cow to get rid of, I was glad to get in. Went down to his place Tues. AM, no help available to speak of this time ... 3 yr old hefer, prolaps.
Right about 8:50 AM the .44 went pop.
By 10:30 was ready to go for the garden hose.
1 hour 35 min. I figure to shoot, hang, gut & skin a full sized cow. My personal best.
One of the more interesting things I learned was about the knives I was using. I used 3 of the knives I had along, 1 was a brand new Buck Alaskan Guide with s30v steel. The second was Dad's old folding Gerber from the 70's with a great edge. #3 was a cheap Cabela's Bargan cave special that I really enjoy for birds. The goal was clean with speed, so no time was taken for touching up an edge. Each knife gave me what it could & then was put aside for another day. (There were a couple more in the car if needed...
) The Buck's steel was great. The edge on the S30V lasted for 1/2 the cow (I started with the skin at the neck, and skinned as well as gutted my way down). The bigger issue though was not the steel, but the handle. It was a folder with metal sides & barely rounded edges. By the time it was dull, my hands were raw & club-ish from holding it.
The Gerber wasn't a razor as it can be to start with (hadn't got it really sharpened since the last cow I did for the food bank) ... but it did probably 1/3 of the cow with no complaints. The handle was better, more rounded edges, but still with that kind of work didn't feel great in the hands.
Then there was the dumb little $10 special from Cabelas. Darn if that thing didn't hold its edge, and feel good the whole time, even though it was the last knife I used. Who ever in China made that one got it right.
What I learned... 1) Love the s30V steel for edge holding. 2) For this kind of hard work, the handle is as important as the steel; or more. I'd gladly trade that two blade Buck folder for a nicely radius handle.
God Bless,
Obviously, a cow is a very different critter than a hog or deer, but my brother has skinned out two feral hogs (with lots of that good old Central Florida sand stuck in their nasty, furry, hide) in one sitting with one of my W2 hunters with no need for touch up and no "hot spots" from the handle. He has also managed to skin out a nilgai cow and a deer or two with the little stag handled 1084FG hunter that I made him a few years back. I tend to do rounded, sculpted wood handles with no corners on hunters, but a well chosen small stag carver can work just as well. Oddly enough, centuries of experience tells us that any type of ivory may be the best handle material for such activities because it gets sticky instead of slick when you get blood on it, but how many people are going to stick their expensive walrus or mammoth handled knives in some animals guts these days?
What's up with the whole "combat gloves" thing? They look like golf or batting gloves to me, albeit in boring subdued colors. I guess I was around people who wore green when the only gloves to be found were old leather work gloves that you might use when learning how to rappel or the big asbestos oven mitt that came in the spare barrel bag for your M60.
