Y’all ever have them moments, when it seems you just can’t get it right? I mean, it doesn’t really matter what activity you’re doing, there are times when no matter how you try, your results just don’t quite muster up. Yeah…. That’s how it is every single time I have to sharpen a knife.
Oh, I know how. I have been tutored by some of the best in the art of honing a blade. My dad, both of my grandfather’s, and a majority of the men I grew up around could hone so sharp of an edge, that I swear you could shave the hair off of a sleeping mouse back without interrupting his dreams. But, not I. I’ve read honing guides, and watched YouTube instructional videos, and still can’t develop the desired results. I can get a blade sharp enough to do the job, only not sharp enough to do the job easily.
I bring this up, because I’ve skinned so many deer and hogs over the last few months, that I’m constantly stroking my skinning knives across a variety of sharpening materials and still have time peeling the pajamas off of them big bucks and boars. The boar hogs are the ones to ruin a knife’s edge faster than anything else you’ll work your blade on.
And my whole life I’ve heard the saying, “beware a dull knife, because it will cut you faster than a sharp one”. I’ve sadly found that to be true. My hands are proof of that. Multiple lacerations in varying stages of healing; I even had a blade slip from the leather on a deer recently and I wound up thrusting the blade through my jeans and into a place no man wants a sharp object! The Emperor was unharmed, but it gave me quite a scare.
My solution; I just dropped off all of my skinning and butchering tools to a local bladesmith who is going to sharpen them for me. If you don’t know a local bladesmith, shoot me an email and I’ll send you in the right direction. I’ll keep trying to learn the craft of blade sharpening, but until I do; I’m outsourcing the job!
Any questions or comments on this week’s column, please reach out to me at [email protected]. God Bless, and good hunting!
Toby Benoit is a best selling novelist and professional outdoors-man with thirty-five years of experience guiding and outfitting for big game all across America. Toby is a renowned archer and turkey hunting expert who manufactures custom game calls and is a regular judge at NWTF sanctioned turkey calling events across the Southeast.
