OT: Started the day by killing something.

[Kismet]

Funny, for all of the hunting I do, it still affects me to kill something just standing there.

A dairy-farming neighbor had called to offer me a 5 or 6 month-old calf that had a bad leg and was too small to sell to the renderers. He's so busy, he was just going to shoot it and drop it in a ditch on his property for the coyotes.

I put it off for 12 hours or so, but at dawn I went out and put the poor thing down. (20 ga. slug). I actually apologized. Odd, eh?

I've field dressed, then butchered a couple of dozen deer since I've been up here, and I'm pretty comfortable with it, but let me tell you, the next time you see a dairy cow, use your X-ray vision, and see that they are four legs and a skin holding up visera from the bottom of their spines to the top of their bellys, from the back of their throats to the beginning of their butt!

I could have used BOTH Sarges! The man to help me shift this !calf!, and the knife to get in and loosen the viscera to let me pull it out without puncturing anything. With deer, I use a boat winch and a pulley, but this thing was left in a pole shed and couldn't move itself, so I did it on the floor of the shed. I don't have the strength I once did.

I couldn't take much from her, first there wasn't much to take, and then the heat of the day would eliminate any chance of letting a lot of meat chill. I didn't want to take meat from the bad leg and the ruptured veins in it. No rib meat to speak of in a young one, and her fore-quarters hadn't really fleshed out yet. She was still growing.

I ended up with a quarter and some tenderloin. I used the 12 in AK for slicing the skin (MUCH more difficult than deer), but smaller knives, including the one Sylvrfcln made were the order of the day. Warm flesh penetrates easily.

Maybe if I raised livestock, the whole thing would be easier to do because it would be a part of the routine of being a dairyman, but I know when I eat the first meal. I will thank her.

What does this have to with khukuris? Absolutely nothing.


Kis

 

[Drdan]

And everything! Thanks for the post, Kis!

 

[Stroller]

"I went out and put the poor thing down. (20 ga. slug). I actually apologized. Odd, eh?"

What's odd about it, Kis?
When we take life (in any shape or form) for granted and assume that it is our right to kill without feeling or remorse that we become the basest of creatures.
Don't be curious about your actions in this instance - just be glad you still feel that way.

Derek.

 

[Daniel Koster]

agreed.


I've helped slaughter cows and pigs. Cows are just like big catfish - all guts. I can still smell the smell from the butchery....blech.

 

[mPisi]

Done enough to know I don't like doing it.

We called her Bandita for her spirit.
She always checked the fences all-way-round,
and last of all the gate, which she learned
the trick of, one day, putting a leg up
on the weighted rope, and pulling down
to let herself into the barn and gorge
on duck feed. "No dumb sheep, Bandita," we
would say, redesigning fence, gate, barn
to accomodate her larger vision of how
a barnyard should be lived in. We came
to value her opinion, and we tried
to understand her when she talked.
Earnestly she stood in the one yard corner
offering a view of that foreign place,
our house, ignoring the ducks and geese
clustered amiably underfoot, and talked
to us by the hour. We'd check her over
and she'd stand in silence; then as we
returned to our other life, she called
to us again. "What's with Bandita?"
"Dunno." But on a Friday she went down.
The symptoms were of hardware disease,
not bloat: bad enough either way; if she
had been bought to breed, we'd call
the vet, but every vet call is one
less pair of shoes. Bandita was a gift,
for mowing and for meat. "Don't breed her,"
they'd said, "She's too inbred herself."
Did we do right or wrong to take her,
not knowing of the pile of rusted bolts
in the long grass? Do we know enough
to take so carelessly these lives
into our lives? Alone I trudged out
to the barn, and, speaking words
of empty consolation to those anxious ears,
I looked into her frosted eyes, and placed
behind her wooly skull at once
the iron rod that speaks with leaden grace.

- Richard Bear

 

[Yvsa]

Funny, for all of the hunting I do, it still affects me to kill something just standing there.

A dairy-farming neighbor had called to offer me a 5 or 6 month-old calf that had a bad leg and was too small to sell to the renderers.
I put it off for 12 hours or so, but at dawn I went out and put the poor thing down. (20 ga. slug).

I actually apologized. Odd, eh?


Kis

Kis, maybe you're more ndn than you ever thought.
That's a typical action from a traditional skin. Makes me very proud of you.

 

[Rusty]

I'd guessed that was pretty much what Yvsa would say. Glad I guessed correctly.

James Mattis noted that the way Hindus perform a sacrifice matched Jewish law in many respects.

I think Neil Diamond did a song called "Done Too Soon[/]" That might make an admirable saying for a tombstone marker. It certainly comes to mind when I think of James Mattis.

Bill Marsh, I offer this for your consideration.

 

[munk]

My first and only antelope- a single shot, long yardage, no running on part of animal, and it still smelt so bad I backed away and dry heaved a few times.,

tasted OK later, but antelope is not high on my list.

I can imagine what we smell like- by the fact that usually only injured and sick old cats will bother eating us.

munk