More Knives and Throwing Some of Them

If you've read a few posts, you know I'm a bit of a knife freak.  Seriously, I need to start making my own knives, I spend way too much money looking for the perfect ones.

Here's a few of my newest purchases, all pretty nice and none of them were over $35:

Left to Right: BladesUSA Throwing Set, Kershaw, Buck ErgoHunter and another Buck

The BladesUSA throwing set I picked up on Amazon for about eight bucks.  I just wanted something to play around with without blowing too much money.  They are about perfect for a starter throwing knife, cheap, and they seem to throw halfway decently.  Downsides?  They are a little light, which is good and bad.  They don't penetrate very well so you have to have a decent throw for them to stick in the target.  As you can guess, the sheath they come with is very cheap but seems to hold all three knives pretty well.  They probably won't last long, but for eight bucks, I'm not complaining.

The two Buck knives here really impressed me with the feel of their grip.  Both were thick, heavy duty rubber.  They feel great in the hand and definitely won't slip, even when wet.  This first one, the ErgoHunter is designed for right handed use.  In the right hand it is amazingly comfortable.  I guess that means if you're left handed it won't feel right.  There is also a weird patch of "rough" metal near the base of the blade.  I'm not sure if that's for fire starting or what, but it looks odd.  Doesn't seem to affect functionality though.  The blade is an interesting shape and would probably work well as a skinning knife or for general camp use.

I couldn't find the name of this model on the Buck website.  I got it at Cabela's and it's probably my all time favorite general purpose knife.  Great blade thickness, it has the same material as the ErgoHunter for the handle but is a much more ambidextrous grip.  This is also the knife that was borrowed from me during the Hog hunt to knife one of the hogs.  Not to get into too much detail but lets say it was extremely effective.  This is my go-to knife for camping and anything outdoors.  Not too shabby for $20.  If anyone knows which one this is, let me know, I'd love to order another couple of these guys.

Like the previous Buck knife, I couldn't find this Kershaw model on their website.  This is a really nice little knife, the kind of thing that would have been perfect for Boyscout camp when my hands were a little smaller.  Now, I generally prefer something with a more sizable handle for easier use.  Nice steel, good thickness, definitely a quality knife, just wish it had a different handle.  It also came with a nice, if not fancy, leather sheath, which is a definite plus in my book.  More on this knife later.

As usual, I'm very critical of knife sheaths.  Most manufacturers tend to skimp when it comes to how the knife is carried.  However, I'm pleased to say that both Bucks and the Kershaw came with very durable, practical, if not particularly pretty sheaths.  All hold the knives securely, will fit comfortably on a belt, and yet easily release the knife when needed.  The Buck sheaths are some kind of thick canvas fabric with formed plastic sleeves for the actual blade inside.  My only complaint would be that sometimes the blades rattle against the plastic when moving around.  The Kershaw, as mentioned earlier, has an effective, all leather sheath.

Now for the fun part.

I recently purchased the Gil Hibbens book on knife throwing (also from Amazon, purchased at the same time as the BladesUSA throwing set).  Well, it's more of a pamphlet than a book, but it had a couple interesting passages and a few good tips.  I would consider it a pretty basic introduction to the concepts of knife throwing, if you already know the basics than I would recommend getting something a little more indepth.  I had purchased the above BladesUSA throwing knives so that I wouldn't ding up any of my nicer knives learning to throw them around.

One of the things in the pamphlet that caught my eye was when the author mentioned that lots of knives can be used for throwing.  I had always thought that a knife needed to have some special balance or something, but I guess it doesn't need to be that specific.  He had lots of examples, many of which I never would have considered throwing...  folding knives, fighting knives (Kabar, who woulda thought?), hunting knives, etc.  So, of course, I got out my extensive collection of knives and tried throwing them all.  Bwuuuuhuuuhahahahaaa!!!  I was surprised at how many of them actually worked pretty well.

Yes, that's the Kershaw stuck in the zombie's neck.  I told you I would mention it again.  Obviously, the knives designed for throwing were the easiest, but the Kershaw threw as well or better than the BladesUSA.  Neither Buck did too bad, which surprised me because they have such large handles.  Kind of fun throwing a knife that heavy into a faux Zombie.  Almost makes me feel sorry for him.  Almost.  The Kershaw seriously impressed me though, it might not be my favorite camp knife but it's definitely my favorite throwing knife.

For survival purposes, I'm not entirely sure how practical it is to throw one of your primary tools.  In most situations it would make far more sense to make a throwing stick or something similar.  However, if you ever thought it might be fun to throw around your knives... you're right.  It's a ****ing blast!  You definitely need the zombie target though, it just adds the right ambiance.

Hog Hunt pt 3

The next stop after mine was Grandpa and my Daughter's stand.  They hadn't seen anything all morning.

It turned out that no one else had even seen a single hog, let alone the numbers that had stopped at my feeder.  At my feeder there'd been at least five hogs for over an hour, with several coming and going.

We drove back to the main camp, they took my hog to get gutted and cleaned.  I got on a another swamp buggy to go with Grandpa and my daughter and the other hunters with the dogs.  Grandpa wanted my daughter to see all of the hunt and they hadn't seen anything yet.  We drove around for a while we saw buffalo, deer, and a variety of birds before letting out the dogs.

We came across another group and decided to follow them since Grandpa decided not to get one.  This other group had already gotten a couple of hogs but they hadn't reached the limit yet.  It was a grand father, a father, and his two sons.  They had gotten two hogs, wounded another and never found it (despite the fact that they had found blood and large chunks of bone from the shoot), and were out to get two more.

Hunting with the dogs was interesting.  The dogs get the scent, chase the hog down, grab it by the ears and keep it pinned until the guides could get ahold of it.  The guides would grab the hind legs, pin it down, then the hunter would kill it.  I wasn't particularly interested in this part of the day, it didn't seem very sporting, but we wanted my Daughter to see it for herself, see how she would handle it.

The dogs grabbed a hog and the older of the two sons was volunteered to shoot it in the head with a 30-30.  He did so, my daughter covered her ears.  It was a good sized sow, they loaded it up with the others.  The guide came over and asked who had a decent knife.  I showed him mine and he said it would work, that he would need it at the next stop.

The next time the dogs got a hog, the guides pulled it out of the brush, and pinned it down.  The guide borrowed my knife and handed it to the father who used it to kill the hog.  Despite what I would have though, it was a surprisingly humane way to do it (assuming the person hits the right spot).

Grandpa hadn't gotten a hog and declined the opportunity to get one with the dogs.  It wasn't the kind of hunt that we were looking for.  If he didn't get one from the stand he didn't need to get one at all.  I'm not surprised that Grandpa didn't go for it, I'm not sure I would have either.

The guide's wife was along for the "hunt".  She was very interested in getting my daughter involved, if only to familiarize herself with the whole process.  She convinced my daughter to get a picture taken with the knifed hog, she's grinning ear to ear.  So much for worrying about how she would handle it.

Then it was back to camp.  My daughter was surprisingly interested in the skinning and butchering of the hogs.  Rather than being disturbed she was fascinated as the guides went about their job, getting the hogs ready for butchering.  She watched them being skinned, gutted, and cut up without a hesitation.  That's far more than I can say for myself at her age, I'd probably have been puking my guts out.

All in all, we all had a good time.  We got to drive around in cool buggies, I got a hog, we got to see a lot of animals and have a lot of stories to tell.  I guess it's time to break out the .22 and get her to the range, next time she probably won't be satisfied just tagging along for the hunt.

Hog Hunt pt 2

I'm not sure what I expected Hogs to sound like.  Honestly, I expected them to be pretty quiet.  What little experience I have in the woods has taught me that wild animals are usually far more quiet than people typically think.  I mean, a loud animal in the wild probably isn't going to live very long.  I guess hogs don't have very many predators to worry about (other than hunters, obviously), these hogs made plenty of noise.

It was still so dark that I couldn't see any of them, but I could hear plenty of grunting, snuffling, and squeals.

The sky slowly lightened.  First. I could just make out shadows moving in the shadows.  Then, slowly I could make out individual hogs.  There were four or five of them in a small clearing under the tree with the feeder.  They rooted around the base of the tree and the clearing, looking for food.  They were all black, or at least appeared black in the early dawn's light.  A couple were slightly larger but they were all pretty close to the same size, not that that helped me much.  Between the distance and the dim light I had no idea how big they actually were.  That might sound funny, but the last thing I wanted was to take Piglet on my first real hunt.

Finally, it got light enough that I thought I could make a good shot.  I put up the rifle, took off the safety... and with my next breath I fogged up the scope.  It went from a clear picture to trying to see through milk.  Well, crap.

I quickly realized that the wind was coming from exactly the wrong direction, every time I exhaled with the rifle at my shoulder the scope would fog up.  Then, it would take five minutes or so for it to clear enough to get a good site picture again.  The lenses were far enough inside the scope that I couldn't just wipe them off.  Eventually, I pulled the neck of my jacket up over my mouth and exhaled into my coat.  It was awkward but it worked.

Finally, I got myself situated enough that I felt I could make the shot.

I sighted in on a hog.  That's when I had a sudden thought.  Say I shoot and kill the hog, what then?

Was I supposed to do something with it?  Was I supposed to call the guides to come and pick it up?  I checked my phone, no service of course.  What if I got to my kill and it turned out to be some 20lb piglet?  When were the guides coming back?  Was I supposed to just sit there with my dead hog for two hours until they came back?

I had gotten into this thinking that Grandpa would be there to tell me what I was supposed to do.  The last thing I wanted to do was shoot a hog and then do something stupid and ruin the meat.  Or do something stupid and look like an idiot.

I seemed to remember somewhere that you were supposed to hang it by it's hind legs, cut it's throat, and let it bleed out.  There was something about the blood needing to be out to keep the meat from being ruined.  I really wished I had someone with me that knew what they were doing.  Do I shoot or not?  If I shoot then I didn't know what to do with it, if I don't than I won't learn anything from this experience.

All these thoughts raced through my head, with the cross hairs still on the hog, 70 yards away and oblivious to it's predicament.

I pulled the trigger.  The hog dropped to the ground, the others bolted for the woods and were gone in a fraction of a second.

I had just shot a living creature.  I sat there for a minute, looking down at the hog I'd shot.  I saw it kick it's legs a couple times then it stopped.  I wanted to go down and make sure it was dead and not suffering, but I waited for a while, knowing that there were other hogs in the brush.

I waited about 5 minutes, thinking that was long enough for the other hogs to leave, I came down and started walking down the dirt track toward the feeder.  The palmettos were chest high and incredibly thick, severely limiting my visibility.  There could have been dozens of huge hogs hiding in the brush a few feet away and I would never have seen them.

As I approached the clearing I could hear the distinct, and now familiar sound, of at least two hogs in the brush around the clearing.  They didn't like me approaching, they started grunting and thrashing the brush.  I got close enough to see my Hog was a decent size and wasn't breathing, then retreated back to the tree stand.

Yeah, I retreated.  That moment was a definite challenge to my conception of my manhood.  I tucked tail and went back up my tree.  At least two hogs, unknown size, in their element, definitely creeped me out.

So, I sat in my stand and looked down at my hog.

I'm not sure how long it was, or exactly what thoughts were running through my head.  I sat there and looked at my kill.  Every few minutes I would look through the scope to make sure it wasn't moving.  I kept wondering what I should do.  It seemed wrong to leave it there in the dirt and I still had no idea when the guides would be back.  I would check my watch, then wonder what i should be doing.

Imagine that, a pacifist, staring at his kill for twenty minutes.  It's almost funny.  Of course, there were other things to look at, but my eyes were inexorably drawn back to the black carcass.  It was like a magnet, always drawing the eyes back to it.

Eventually, I decided that I needed to do something, I couldn't just sit there staring at the hog any longer.  I went back down, intent on hanging and bleeding the pig.  I needed to justify the kill to ease my conscience, if the meat was ruined than it would have been for nothing.

So, I get to my hog and get my first real look at it.  He's probably a hundred pounds and covered in scars, an old warrior.  One of things that surprised me was the smell.  I'm not sure what I expected but he smelled intensely like sweet cranberries, like someone opened a can of thanksgiving cranberry sauce and held it under my nose.  I'll never forget it.

The other surprise?  The bullet hit him in the neck.  It was obviously a good shot, he dropped like someone flipped a switch, but that hadn't been where I was aiming.  I'll never know if he stepped back when I shot, or if I had pulled it (I have a history of that), but I had been aiming for a heart/lung shot, behind the shoulder, not for the neck.  If he had stepped forward, or I had pulled the other direction, then it would have been a gut shot and much, much worse for the both of us.

I heard a hog in the brush.  Only one this time, but it was definitely pissed off by my presence.  It made me nervous but I was determined to do something with my hog.

I pulled some 550 cord out of my pack to string my hog up.  I looked around for a reasonable branch but the only ones nearby were in the same tree as the feeder, which didn't seem like a good idea.  To hang it up I would need to drag it at least 100 yards.  I looped the cord around the hind legs and tugged a little, this was going to be awkward.

That's when I realized that my borrowed rifle didn't have a sling.  To pull my hog to a decent branch to hang it up I would need to set down my rifle and use both hands to drag the Hog.  I probably could have thrown the hog over my shoulder but he was an awkward size and quite literally dead weight.  There was at least one other hog in the brush, I didn't want to set my rifle down, but I had no other choice if I wanted to move it to somewhere I could put it up.

Whatever.  WTF.  I put the rifle against a berm, I figured I would take the trip in steps.  Move the hog, move the rifle, repeat, so that the rifle was never too far away from reach.

I set the rifle down and dragged the hog about five feet when the swamp buggy came around the corner.

They looped a cable around the hog's neck and lifted it.  I reached around the hog and got a quick pic.  It bled on my hand, which seemed strangely appropriate.  I hadn't gotten any blood on my hands up until that point.

I grabbed my rifle, brushed off the dirt, and loaded up.

Hog Hunt pt 1

When I was a kid my Dad was always trying to get me to go hunting.  I loved going to the range and shooting, but never got into the idea of shooting an animal.  I remember a story He told me one time about the sound of a bear when it draws it's last breath.  He appreciated the animal, made sure that it's life wasn't wasted.  I was more of a pacifist, I didn't like the idea of killing anything so I always kind of brushed him off.

Now a days I wish I hadn't.  When I decided to get into survival skills I realized that I needed to get comfortable with hunting.  All those lessons I could have learned about outdoors skills, hunting, and cleaning game that I missed as a kid...

So, when an opportunity presented itself to go for a hunt I jumped at the chance.  This is the story of what happened, it's not all flattering, some of it is funny, but it's all true.

We were headed to Florida to visit the grandparents.  Grandpa wanted to take my daughter with him on a Hog hunt and I basically invited myself along too.  Grandpa had always been big into hunting, I'd gone moose hunting with him once before but we hadn't even seen one.  This hunt was a guided one on ranch land that pretty much guaranteed we would get something.  We would start out at dawn in stands near feeders, then if we didn't get one we could go hunting with the dogs afterwards.

There was a surprising cold streak in Florida that week.  Temperatures in the mornings were down to 25-30 degrees.  The plan was to get up really early, drive halfway across the state, and get set up before dawn.

My daughter, seven years old, was all psyched to go.  She sat right up as soon as I said her name at 3 a.m., which is pretty amazing since she hates getting up early.  We bundled up in layers, grabbed the guns, some food and water, and set out.

We made it about a mile before we got pulled over.

Grandpa looked at me, I looked at him.  We hadn't been speeding.  I expected a fairly hyped up cop, hand on his gun, to walk up.  It was a little after three am, we were a couple of guys in full camo in a big truck... we were either headed out hunting (so we were armed) or we were drunks on our way home.

Instead, an incredibly attractive young female cop walked up, totally nonchalant, and told us we had a tail light out.  She gave us a verbal warning and let us go.  I'm not sure how wise it is to be an attractive cop, apparently alone, working the graveyard shift, but she seemed pretty comfortable.

We made it to the guide's store a little early so we took a little nap in the truck.  We left it running, it was about 33 degrees out.  The hunt was supposed to start at 6 am, about 10 minutes before 6 a truck pulled in behind us.  The driver walked up, asked us how we were doing, and said to follow him.  We went down the road a ways, onto a dirt track, and down further to the camp.  We didn't know it but the store had been bought out and we were supposed to meet at the camp in the first place.  As such, we missed the informational portion of the pre-hunt, we tossed on our jackets, loaded the rifles, and with barely a word we loaded up on the swamp buggy.

I messed around with the rifle a bit.  I'd wanted to bring one of my rifles, probably the Ruger Scout, but didn't want the hassle of traveling with a fire arm.  The rifle Grandpa lent me was an ancient Browning pump action 300 mag.  He'd zeroed the scope for me (we were supposed to go to the range the day before but everyone had been sick so we didn't get the chance).  It was a pretty nice little rifle, though I didn't like the location of the pump lock.  To rack a second round you had to find the lock next to the trigger, hold it down, and pump the rifle.  I'm sure if it was mine it would be second nature, but on a borrowed rifle I really hoped a fast follow up shot was not going to be needed.

It was at this point that my daughter asked where her rifle was (she'd been practicing a lot with her BB gun and has been getting pretty good).  She was very disappointed when we told her that she wasn't shooting this time, that this was just to show her how it went and see what she was comfortable with.  She'd never seen anything shot before so we weren't sure how she would deal with hunting.  When we first brought up the hunt she seemed fine, but who knew how she would actually do?

The swamp buggy thing was pretty cool, like a suped up truck.  Big tires, the bed was up about five feet and had all the seats up there for spotting game.  We BSed with a couple of guys that were in from out of state, bow hunting.

It was pitch black and freezing cold.  All we could see was the area illuminated by the head lights.  Calling it a road would be an insult to roads, it was basically two ruts worn through the forest from the constant buggy trips.  Branches whipped at our faces, a cold wind seeped through our layers.

We pulled in to our first stop.  The guide pointed at Grandpa and my Daughter.  He took them over to a stand and we set off again.  I was a little disappointed, I was kind of hoping to hang out with them, but I guess they wanted the shooters spread out.

I was next up.  We stopped and the guide pointed out a small tree stand.

"Feeders about a hundred yards that way", he said, pointing toward the dark woods.

I climbed the stand, the guide handed up my borrowed rifle.  Then they left me, alone in the dark.

It was only about 20 minutes later that I started to hear the sounds of Hogs sniffing around in the dark.