So, it was a fine vacation, and I saw some new country. My friends were great as always, and we had other things to eat as well as fish. Fishermen use a lot of fancy terminology to describe what they do, but I know how to catch salmon. You get a huge three-pronged fishhook. You throw it in front of a fish and haul it in hard. Sometimes it will stick in the fish, and you get the poor thing ashore. Snagging is against the law, of course, and I would never bother anyway. It's just nice knowing how.
I wish fishing tackle were heavier, had more muscle, looked like it could do something. Then there is all that string, cheez! Boxes and boxes of sharp and shiny little things that are supposed to look alive, or worms, and crawfish, and eggs—for what? To catch something that happens to swim by, that I don't want, and the people I try to give it to don't want either?
Fishing is for Art, not for me.
Art Troup is a terrific fisherman. He is as good as they come. Actually, my old friend is good at whatever he decides to try, but at fishing and flying light aircraft, he excels. You should know that that black hat he has been wearing since ancient times was my hat. I put on that beer can hat band. Art lost his and confiscated mine. Ah, well. He looks better in it than I did.
30 - Hunting Knives
Like guns, I seem to have always owned hunting knives, but despite the years of packing assorted blades, I never really began to learn about knives until I arrived in Alaska. At that time, I was sporting a beautiful 6-1/2 inch hunter by Bo Randall of Orlando, Florida. The first time I went out with Art Rausch, the Old Guide, I showed up with the long Randall dangling from my belt. Art looked at the big blade for a moment then asked, "What in hell are you, a Mexican bandit? "
Knowing the fame of a Randall knife and having carried a Randall fighting blade through some of WWII and Korea, I had sudden reservations as to Art's own qualifications as an outdoorsman. As was so often the case, Art was right, and I was all wet. I kept the Randall for many years. It hung with the rest of my extensive knife collection, but I never used it on any continent.
Years before coming to Alaska, I hunted Germany from one end to the other. I noted the small blades used by the proficient German Jaegers, but their game was often small. Did it not follow that bigger animals should require a more hefty blade? In Alaska, I found that it did not.
For the past five decades, my hunting knife has been a Case jackknife with two blades. That is what Art Rausch carried, and in the end so did about everyone who came into contact with him.
If, at the time Art showed me his Case folding knife, anyone would have suggested that I would ever recommend such a blade for everyone, I would have chuckled loudest of all. Cleaning my first moose, I found that a long, heavy blade could not trim neatly around the pelvis to detach all the cords and joints to let the heavy hind legs flop out of the way and to free the tubes leading from the animal's viscera. The thick, wide blade was simply too big. Next, I found that reaching far beneath the immense paunch to free everything for pulling out, the big blade was awkward as well as dangerous. I could never be quite sure where that sharp point was in relation to my other hand, which was also struggling to hold the great mass of guts out of the way.
When I tried to cut through the moose's breastbone I got another lesson. My big knife wedged itself in the cartilage. I could not get through. Art came and did the job for me using his pocketknife. He straddled the animal's rib cage and slid the knife under the sternum and hauled upward with his shoulders. The Case sliced the bone and cartilage cleanly. A few repetitions and the animal was laid open to the throat, sharpening time came. I stoned and stoned. Art whipped the small carbon steel blades across his stone a few dozen licks, and he could shave with them. I stoned on into the gloom of night.
I am well aware that the above facts contrast about one hundred percent with the advice being handed out these days about what a hunting knife ought to be. What I read and hear makes me wonder how much game advocates of huge and menacing blades have actually worked on.
On the other hand, an expert like Elmer Keith does not agree with me. See his letter at the end of Chapter 10.
It may be a case of "Different strokes for different folks," but I think Keith was thinking about hunting in Idaho when he writes of blazing trails back to his downed animals. For Alaska, I am right.
An Alaskan hunter cleans his grizzly hide.
A belt knife of carbon steel that sharpens easily and holds an edge a reasonably long time is an excellent choice—provided the blade is NOT over four inches long and is thin and without a heavy back strap. I find the pocket knives more convenient, but there is inherent danger in folding blades. Cold hands inside a huge animal could cause a blade to close and inflict a severe wound; therefore, choose a folding knife with a locking open system or go to a short straight knife. If a straight hunting knife is preferred, I would recommend a Buck #16. It is the right size although the metal is a touch too hard for my preference.
The author's knife has two blades. The stockman's blunted blade is perfect for running the long incision in the abdomen of a game animal without cutting into the viscera. The other blade is normal shape and is best for trimming around joints and the close work at eyes, nostrils, and lips. Try that with a conventional hunting knife and your mount will look like a Jack the Ripper victim. Either blade does well for slicing away hide, but the pointed blade is best. Gary McMillin of Fairbanks uses surgeon's scalpels for careful trimming. Not a bad idea.
If a reader decides that a pocketknife is his cup of tea, there are certain points to consider. No doubt other companies make knifes equal to the Case, but I stay with that company because using a Case I have never had a hinge pin let go.
Guide and hunter, Johnny Rhyshek, skinning a Boone & Crocket grizzly in the Beaver Mountains. Big bear, small knife—and that is good.
I have friends who converted to jackknives but chose other brands and had hinge pins bend or break. Such an occurrence is enough to turn a hunter back to straight knives.
I have never had a knife that was satisfactory for both cutting and field sharpening that did not rust if neglected. Conversely, I have never owned or used a knife of the stainless steel variety that I could easily sharpen. I would rather have a knife that I had to sharpen more often than desirable than to encounter one that I had to spend hours honing to get back into shape once it got dull.
Johnny Rhyshek doing delicate work with a scalpel. Around the head, a surgeon's touch is needed.
Cleaning a moose, I normally sharpen each of the two blades on my Case one time, a little more than halfway through the job.
The sharpening takes five minutes maximum. I could get through an entire animal without sharpening, but halfway through I usually need a breather anyway.
It would be pointless to include a battery of knife photos here. One can buy books on the subject. Suffice to say that most alleged hunting knives look better than they work.
All of the fast and efficient skinners that I know use short thin blades. I do not know one that uses one of those freaky shaped blades becoming faddish these days. We all own lots of weird knives, of course. The knife is close to hunting mystique, and somehow we buy or are given queer ones now and then.
We try them, then store the things along with the other intriguing but less than effective items we gather, like Peruvian ski masks, battery powered hand warmers, and imaginative ammo belts.
There is an argument that claims a heavy knife can be used to smash through thick bone by beating on the back strap with a rock or club. Probably true, but why bother when there is always a point to delicately separate?
A mighty Bowie knife can allegedly be used to cut firewood. Huh! I do not know anyone with hands strong enough to keep a fire burning from wood trimmed by a knife.
The fact is, you cannot even whittle as well with a huge knife as you can with a typical folding pocketknife. I do not suggest that we hunters sit around our fires carving willow wood flutes, but I have made tent pins, and ramrods, and I once made a willo
w ramp for a lost Model 94 Winchester's rear sight.
It is my solemn belief that if you try a three or four inch long, thin blade on your next big animal (whitetail deer size on up), you will never again carry a short sword. Back about 1960, Jonas Bros., perhaps the world's most famous taxidermists, phrased it as follows:
A knife is absolutely necessary, of course, but a little bit of thought should be put into the selection of it. Some hunters could do a better job of chopping cane than they could skin out a trophy with the cumbersome equipment that they end up with. A good knife of all 'round skinning would have a blade 3-1/2 to 5 inches long with a fair amount of curve. The author [one of the famed Klineberger Brothers] uses a heavy-duty pocketknife with two blades about four inches long or a sheathed hunting knife with a 4 or 5-inch blade of good steel. A small sharpening stone is handy to carry along.
Choose a top brand knife with a blade of not more than four inches (three inches is better for me). Get a high carbon steel knife that will sharpen. Then take care of it. You will never need more.
When backpacking far from civilization, I carry two knives. One rides in my left shirt pocket, the other in my pack. Both are Case folding knives. If I lose one, I have another, and if I should break a blade (which has never happened), I have three others going for me. How can you beat that?
In the earlier chapter on Dall sheep, the photo of Art, Jerry, and me with our sheep shows the outline of my Case in my shirt pocket—just as described above.
Herein lies a story. A year or so ago, I received a phone call from the Master custom knife-maker, Ron Duncan of Cairo, Missouri. A friend who likes my books, Tom Andres, had contracted with Ron to make me a superquality hunting knife.
Ron Duncan may be the best knife-maker in the United States. His blades are Damascus steel. There is nothing finer, and few knife-smiths have mastered the art. Duncan knives are incredibly sharp and strong, and they stay that way. Damascus steel, as Duncan makes it, can be readily sharpened, and the knives are handsome.
Ron made the knife shown here for me. I remain overwhelmed both by Tom Andres's gift and Ron Duncan's skill. What a knife! The blade is a hint over four inches long, which is my maximum, and the grip is effective and good looking.
Even the Duncan-made knife sheaths are minor works of art. Ron's daughter Lacey hand-molds and stitches each sheath to exactly fit each knife's special shape and the new owner's requirements. They are strikingly good looking sheaths, and the knives come free easily. Except for the filler strips that keep the razored edge from cutting through stitching, my sheath is made from a single piece of leather—including the closure strap. More importantly, they hold the knife securely. A knife must never be lost due to a cheap scabbard. That is not a consideration with Ron Duncan knives.
I write this in the fall of 2005, and the Duncan knife is being tested by Fred, Harvey, and Chris Thebes on a sheep and grizzly hunt with Master Guide, Ray Atkins, in the Alaska Range. The first return comments have been:
"This knife never gets dull. You don't need to re-sharpen it."
"Will you sell me this knife? I need one like it, right now."
[No, I will not!]
If you need the best-quality hunting knife, contact Ron Duncan. As I write this, you can call him at (660) 263-8949 or see his web site, www.duncanmadeknives.com. Duncan is an honest and dependable straight-arrow man. I like him, and I recommend him.
Art Troup works on a freshly shot rabbit. No, the bunny was not grizzly bait.
31 - Some Hunting Philosophy
We hunters are often asked "Why do you hunt?"
We could answer, "We hunt for the meat." Or, we could say, "We hunt to thin the herds so that the animals stay healthy." Neither answer is, of course, complete. Both may be partly true.
A need to hunt is allegedly traced to early man's search for food and is therefore justified as some sort of hereditary instinct. Of a certainty, we hunt animals "because they are there," which is a direct theft from a similar inability by mountaineers to give meaning to their hobby.
Probably, the challenge of the hunt is a primary attraction for genuine hunters. To go into the fields and outwit an animal in its own habitat can be demanding, and the mechanics of the shooting itself can offer immense complications.
We all say that we like being out in the hills, but that hardly explains the desire to hunt while enjoying those hills.
The facts are, it is not easy to explain the thrill and enjoyment of the hunt. It does little good to demonstrate that men have hunted since the world allowed them aboard. Harley-Davidson motorcyclists have a similar problem explaining their avocation. They have a popular T-shirt that says "If I have to explain, you will not understand."
To discuss hunting intelligently, and with reason rather than emotionalism, certain delusions must be dispensed with. The most primary is a belief that natural death among wild animals may be a beautiful demise, merely dropping peacefully into a final sleep within a sylvan glade. Failing abilities to forage or flee expose the old ram, billy, buck, or boar to starvation or death by fang and claw from another species. There are no Golden Years among wild animals. The weak are killed and eaten by the strong. The prime cast out the aged, and death comes to all wild things amid pain, fear and loneliness (if a species can experience loneliness).
The Bambi Syndrome that graces wild creatures with all sorts of human attributes such as awareness of family, planned social orders, or respect and care for the aged ignore the obvious fact that when an animal gets old or ill it is in a heap of trouble for which there is no cure but death. Animals have no "Elephant Graveyard" where they can expire in peace. Where man has not eliminated the wolves, wolverines, coyotes and panthers—we must include bears as well, deaths are often violent horrors at the fangs of a carnivore. The rest starve or freeze to death.
If I seem to belabor the agonies of dying animals, it is not without purpose. I reiterate because too many alleged animal lovers refuse to recognize that killing an animal does not cause it "extra''' agony. To put it more bluntly, shooting a game animal probably saves it much pain and suffering.
As civilized people, we put our pets to sleep when their bodies or minds decay. Many of the same kindly souls who put old Rex "to sleep" (which we must remember is actually having the old dog executed) blindly ignore the nastiness of natural death in the wild.
A genuine trophy hunter takes only mature animals. Among those that retain their horns throughout a lifetime, a great trophy means the animal has little time left to live anyway.
Few glorify animals more than do big game hunters. The zoo-goers may ogle an animal with unbridled admiration, but the ogler's mind turns away at the next exhibit. The hunter studies his quarry. He knows its habits and its habitat. He savors the hunt before, during, and following the adventure.
Hunters assumed responsibility for game management a century ago. Hunters provide funds and political interest that have resulted in the protection of animals across our continent
License fees from more than twenty million hunters contribute toward the purchase of public game lands, for stocking programs, and for the salaries of men in the field, such as wardens and management officials.
All do not accept such considerations as justification for hunting. An irate lady once informed me that when I got to hell I would surely be attacked by all the great bears I have killed, trampled by a herd of deceased bull moose, picked to bits by the flocks of ducks and geese I have taken, and severely pummeled by the host of innocent rabbits that fell before my gun. (She did not know about the legions of crows I took during my youthful years.)
Such a series of potential miseries might have disturbed me. However, I soothed my savaged nerves with the thought that while I was undergoing such severe torment, she, in her turn, would be crushed beneath a herd of Black Angus cattle, pecked by a million or so chickens, and gored by a multitude of swine, all of which she devoured with unthinking relish during her life span. I decided I preferred my own suffering to her
s.
Surely, stalking, taking a wild animal, eating him, and honoring his memory has merit equal to raising a domestic beast, grooming it for slaughter, then executing it for the table. For any of us to eat meat something must die, and the individual who enjoys a cut of beef, pork, or lamb cannot logically shudder over the activities of a hunter.
Now this is a meat rack to remember. Build your rack strong. Alaskan game is big and heavy. Within a few days, this rack will permanently bend. No problem, the moose meat will be gone by then.
Killing is NOT the hunter's primary pleasure. Killing is a by-product of the hunt—just as the act of killing is not paramount to either a butcher or the steak eater. The shot in hunting punctuates success or failure of the planning and travels, the hoping, hiking, climbing, and perhaps crawling. The shot establishes a victor and a vanquished. It grants an animal a further lease on life or rewards the hunter with food, a trophy, and special memories.
Often hunters are faced with the proposal that we could simply photograph the game and not kill it Then hunting would be humane and more palatable for those with thinner blood. Photographing, however, is not a substitute for collecting the game. It is easy to say "I could have shot him," but far too many shots are missed for one to casually claim he could have. You cannot know until you have done so.
A perhaps clumsy but understandable comparison of photographing versus collecting an animal might lie in evaluating the idea of photographing a roast beef dinner and saying, "I could have eaten it." There is not much satisfaction there.
It is grotesque that in the mores of members of thoughtless animal rights groups we can breed and raise creatures to slaughter for food. I mean cows, sheep, and hogs, and we can husband, butcher, and eat assorted birds such as chicken, ducks, pigeons, and turkeys. But, if a man goes afield and does the same to wild animals he is considered somehow immoral. A man can routinely bash a beefs skull with a sledge and it is all right, but if the same man shoots a whitetail deer he is brutal. A man can slit the throat of a hog, but he is inhumane if he hunts down a wild boar. A man can behead a legion of domestic fowl without recrimination, but he is murderous if he enters the fields and takes pheasant, quail, doves, or partridge. Such attitudes are at least irrational, but they exist and are typical of anti-hunting groups and other poorly informed people.
The Hunter's Alaska Page 24