Texan pocket knives.

CaseTrappers come in small (2&3/8s"), medium (3&1/2"), and large (4&1/8") and even 4&5/8" sizes. In the locations where Trappers are predominant, what size is the most popular?
 
Guitarist7.62 said:
The trapper at least to me just feels like a sturdy will work knife, and it has two full sized blades. Nothing wrong with a stockman but they often times don’t have the “heft” of a trapper and for me the trapper just fills my hand better. that’s my reason why they are more popular.
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This is also my thought, my dad was a full time cattle rancher until about a month before he passed and he always had a Case Trapper in his pocket (no sheath) and I had my Schrade yellow trapper whenever I was visiting but I never carry it anymore because it is very noticeable in my pocket since it does not have a clip and falls to the bottom of my pocket (I did see that Case is now offering a trapper with a clip!). I work in an office but we wear jeans and golf shirts so I leave mine untucked and carry some pretty large knives (ZT 0300, 0560, CRK 'Zaan, MT Scarab, etc.) but the clip keeps them vertical in my pocket so they are not noticeable.

Ours and most of them that I see are the Large versions, a little over 4" closed.
 
S Sidehill Gouger that's why God made horses and ropes. So you don't have to hold em down while working on em.

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Every where I've ever been they've got it done though.
 
Horsewright said:
S Sidehill Gouger that's why God made horses and ropes. So you don't have to hold em down while working on em.

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Every where I've ever been they've got it done though.
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You don't keep a horse around for 15 brood cows. My brother-in-law runs around 100 head of angus but he doesn't use a horse working them either. So how many calves do you cut a year?
 
Horsewright said:
S Sidehill Gouger that's why God made horses and ropes. So you don't have to hold em down while working on em.

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Every where I've ever been they've got it done though.
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God also made squeeze chutes! Lol! That’s the difference between a cowboy and a farmer! I castrate at birth! No horse or rope! 4 wheels and a calf hook. No chaps but carhartt overalls. Not a cowboy hat but a ball cap. No cowboy boots but hiking or work boots. The only thing that farmers and cowboys have in common is the love for fat calves and a good pocket knife!
 
FarmKid said:
God also made squeeze chutes! Lol! That’s the difference between a cowboy and a farmer! I castrate at birth! No horse or rope! 4 wheels and a calf hook. No chaps but carhartt overalls. Not a cowboy hat but a ball cap. No cowboy boots but hiking or work boots. The only thing that farmers and cowboys have in common is the love for fat calves and a good pocket knife!
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Ok, I quality as a farmer then. :) I also never had a ranch crew like the photos, just me out in the pasture with a new born calf. Same goes for my brother-in-law. One of his favorite stories is about being out in the pasture trying to pull a calf when a local preacher walked up to him and tried to get him to find religion on the spot. He told him to take his coat off and give him hand with the calf!
 
For the calf processing they do they need the extra help. It would be easier to castrate and vaccinate how traditional cowboys do it. I hate castrating in a chute. I don’t like pulling calves in a chute either. I’d soon rope a cow and tie her off to a tree or truck. I cut a many of calves in a back of a truck with a boker stockman. That was the best steel in a knife I’d ever had.
 
S Sidehill Gouger and F FarmKid Ah different perspective I guess. One of my mentors was asked what the difference was between a cowboy and a buckaroo. He said the cowboy uses his horse to get a job done with a cow, a buckaroo uses the cow to make his horse better. We'd keep the 15 cows to train the one horse, not the one horse for the 15 cows, lol. We lean hard to the buckaroo style of doing things. Lofty ideals, goals and other nonsense aside, we're a pretty small outfit of 2,000 acres. We sold off about 70 percent of our herd due to drought some years back and have been rebuilding by keeping as many heifers as we can every year. Getting back but not there yet. The ranch that borders us to the west and north is 57,000 acres and the one that borders us to the east is 10,000 acres. Combine all three together and you have 69,000 acres. Where my son cowboys they have pastures bigger than that. Talked to him on the phone briefly the other day as they are branding (started first part of April and will go through mid July). I asked him how it was going and he said they'd done 1500 so far and had another 4,000 to do. Now that's a branding. They try to do between 175 to 200 a day. Course they got to go find them, sort off drys etc and all the other work too. Lots of riding to get that done. Eight man crew and each guy has eight horses in his string.

We're right at about 65 cows on our place counting replacement heifers. So right now we're branding about 50 calves a year. We gather every three months and process all the new calves. Our grass is very strong but lacking in selenium and copper. So everybody gets a vitamin mineral injection (MultiMin) every three months. We've been very fortunate to run a hundred percent calf crop for the last five years. Extraordinarily good bull and we've never had to pull a calf, even with a first time heifer. Our calves always top the sale too. Its good.

So back to Texans and their pocket knives. That's Monty on the left, a transplanted Texican. He always carried a Texas Toothpick folder in his pocket and one of my fixed blades on his belt.

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Cold that day. I remember more than coffee in that cup.

Here's what I mean about getting them horses better.

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Above shot my son was working for a nearby ranch. They'd bought 300 bred heifers. He was calving em out and was having to pull one out of three. Need a good horse when you are all by yourself, in the middle of nowhere without any happenstance preachers to help, (that's a good one!). This one, the calf was dead inside. It was so big my son had to cut the calf apart inside the heifer just to get the calf parts out. Buddy is a good one, he held that heifer down the whole time. I had his sire and his dam. Back to folders my son is a dedicated Case Trapper kind of guy, even though he's a native born Californio.

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This isnt knife related but reading this thread reminded me of my previous life working in Northern Australia .
I worked and lived on a cattle property that was 3 million acres ( thats Million with a M ) .
These videos dont really capture the true reality of life there , but some people might be interested .




Ken
 
We are in the mountains in the southwestern part of Virginia. A lot of agriculture goes on round here. Beef cattle being king because of the grazing. Hardly any row crops because of terrain. Everybody virtually runs cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, or horses. Most everybody carries a medium stockman or modern. One guy is an order buyer and runs feeder calves and stocker calves. This year he is running 25,000 head. He has a weekly take up of buying cattle where people bring him their cattle. It’s kinda like a sale barn. He gets about a thousand a week. I know he carries a one hand opening knife. I’m seeing more modern knives with the older guys too.
 
It’s like anything else. Ford vs Chevy or John Deere vs case. It goes the same with pocket knives. Our whole family was trapper guys. Every year at Christmas we would a trapper in a stocking. Case or boker being the top choice. I had friends that was neighboring farmers some of them was die hard stockman people. So each their own. But to me there is nothing like a old yeller case trapper. I think I’ve talked myself in to digging out my trapper and carring it. Have spent some time in around Amarillo and Hereford Texas. A lot of trappers and Texas. I bought my first mooremaker trapper at a tractor supply. A hillbilly in the Texas feedlot country. That was a site to behold. I stuck out like a hammer struck thumb at Amarillo stock yards. Heck I even spent my honeymoon back in the panhandle.
 
Thanks. I know huh. I've made him several fixed blades over the years, but he trades them off. J jmarston
 
I used to think that too about the truesharp, but I think i see about as much of that as i do cv when it comes to working case knives. I used to would not even consider an ss case until I got one as a gift. I still prefer cv, but the ss isn't that bad. I might be off in my assumptions, but at least to me, reminds me of victorinox steel. Like the pics, everyone needs to keep them coming!
 
jec88 said:
I used to think that too about the truesharp, but I think i see about as much of that as i do cv when it comes to working case knives. I used to would not even consider an ss case until I got one as a gift. I still prefer cv, but the ss isn't that bad. I might be off in my assumptions, but at least to me, reminds me of victorinox steel. Like the pics, everyone needs to keep them coming!
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I actually just received a full size trapper last week in trade. It was in SS and from all I had read on the forums, I figured it would be akin to a sharpened butter knife. Received it and sharpened it. I kept sharpening and sharpening looking for that huge,floppy burr that I had read about but to no avail. After a week of carry doing anything and everything, unless I was doing a side by side cutting test cutting something known to be hard on knives, I doubt I could notice a difference. I do miss that patina though... offsets the yellow delrin so nicely.
 
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