oldmanwilly
Gold Member
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2014
- Messages
- 3,922
Howdy,
I've been pondering on this for a while and decided to put thump-tip to screen and release it into the ether. Nevermind that I'm typing this on a full moon. Pics are forthcoming, I promise.
The last few years have been tough for many. I am blessed as I have gained so much recently (a daughter and a new job), but have dealt with challenges like all others have.
I come from German stock who settled in the Texas Hill Country shortly after gaining statehood and am proud that mein volk have persisted here since the 1840s. Naturally, hunting down here is a matter of culture, tradition, and survival. I have not had much time to hunt in recent years due to several deaths in the family, the aforementioned arrival of my daughter, and one or two other kerfuffles along the way.
Luckily I found time for a walk through the pasture on the evening of December 31, 2021. With the abundant dead fall from a previous ice storm and a strong southern breeze I was able to sneak up on two whitetail does and a spike buck (only does pictured). The hunt was, frankly, idyllic and after the action I had work to do with my knives: 1) Something new, a Carothers UF2; 2) something old, a BF 2021 Annual Barlow; and 3) something older, a Marbles Woodcraft, circa 1920s or earlier. I dragged the 2 does to a wide, flat rock in the pasture, pulled out my knives and started cutting. However, after a moment I noticed that a previous hunter had left something behind:
I couldn't help but marvel that I was using a modern CPK knife to clean one deer, next to another deer I cleaned with a Marbles knife made before my Opa was born, on the same flat rock and next to an axe/scraper used by someone else sometime in the last 200-20,000 years.
My people have survived here for nearly 200 years. The natives thrived here for many thousands of years before mein volk. And the deer have survived here for many thousands of years before any human roamed nearby.
I do not have any grand, philosophical conclusion in these observations. All I know is that people and other creatures found a way to thrive here before me and with fewer (or lower quality) tools than I have now.
Times are hard now. Times have been hard before. I take comfort in the knowledge that my ancestors, those that came before them, and even the critters who came before them, have gotten by, on the same land, and on much less than my family and I have now. Therefore I think that, going forward, we can get by despite what may come.
Time is a flat circle and, somehow, down here we're still cutting the same meat, on the same rock, with only slightly upgraded cutting tools, and cooking it over branches from the same trees.
View attachment 1844145
(Pictured: backstrap from a doe pictured above, grilled recently and sliced with a DMC EDChef XL)
I must sign off now. An armadillo is threatening the garden and needs must.
Guten abend,
Will
I've been pondering on this for a while and decided to put thump-tip to screen and release it into the ether. Nevermind that I'm typing this on a full moon. Pics are forthcoming, I promise.
The last few years have been tough for many. I am blessed as I have gained so much recently (a daughter and a new job), but have dealt with challenges like all others have.
I come from German stock who settled in the Texas Hill Country shortly after gaining statehood and am proud that mein volk have persisted here since the 1840s. Naturally, hunting down here is a matter of culture, tradition, and survival. I have not had much time to hunt in recent years due to several deaths in the family, the aforementioned arrival of my daughter, and one or two other kerfuffles along the way.
Luckily I found time for a walk through the pasture on the evening of December 31, 2021. With the abundant dead fall from a previous ice storm and a strong southern breeze I was able to sneak up on two whitetail does and a spike buck (only does pictured). The hunt was, frankly, idyllic and after the action I had work to do with my knives: 1) Something new, a Carothers UF2; 2) something old, a BF 2021 Annual Barlow; and 3) something older, a Marbles Woodcraft, circa 1920s or earlier. I dragged the 2 does to a wide, flat rock in the pasture, pulled out my knives and started cutting. However, after a moment I noticed that a previous hunter had left something behind:
I couldn't help but marvel that I was using a modern CPK knife to clean one deer, next to another deer I cleaned with a Marbles knife made before my Opa was born, on the same flat rock and next to an axe/scraper used by someone else sometime in the last 200-20,000 years.
My people have survived here for nearly 200 years. The natives thrived here for many thousands of years before mein volk. And the deer have survived here for many thousands of years before any human roamed nearby.
I do not have any grand, philosophical conclusion in these observations. All I know is that people and other creatures found a way to thrive here before me and with fewer (or lower quality) tools than I have now.
Times are hard now. Times have been hard before. I take comfort in the knowledge that my ancestors, those that came before them, and even the critters who came before them, have gotten by, on the same land, and on much less than my family and I have now. Therefore I think that, going forward, we can get by despite what may come.
Time is a flat circle and, somehow, down here we're still cutting the same meat, on the same rock, with only slightly upgraded cutting tools, and cooking it over branches from the same trees.
View attachment 1844145
(Pictured: backstrap from a doe pictured above, grilled recently and sliced with a DMC EDChef XL)
I must sign off now. An armadillo is threatening the garden and needs must.
Guten abend,
Will
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