Menu
What's new

Sawdust and Snakes

Charles Hans said:
AND all of us boys carried pocket knives ,even to school where we played Mumble Peg during recess, Don't remember any one ever getting hurt with one. The good old days!
Click to expand...
Yep, I carried a pocket knife to school (and everywhere else) daily from about the age of 7. My last three years of high school I also carried a 4" Buck Folding Hunter on my belt. Every day. And nobody had a problem with that.
 
I was able to carry a pocket knife as soon as I could demonstrate that I could sharpen and care for it properly. That was, like Vaughn, around 7. Maybe 6. Dunno for sure. Carried one ever since all through school. One thing I was really proud of was the Marine K Bar fighting knife I was issued. Fantastic knife and saved my bacon more times than once in Nam. If you ever had one, you'll know what I mean.
 
I was moving an old cabinet in the garage of a house I had rented in Novato, Calif..... when I pulled it down, there was an old K-Bar knife in the wall behind it.... the leather on the handle had dried to the point it's loose, but the knife is still in good shape... a little rust that can be removed.... I've kept it for about 30 years now and think maybe I might try putting a wood handle on it.... may need some lessons from Tom at Wolf Creek Knives.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
I was moving an old cabinet in the garage of a house I had rented in Novato, Calif..... when I pulled it down, there was an old K-Bar knife in the wall behind it.... the leather on the handle had dried to the point it's loose, but the knife is still in good shape... a little rust that can be removed.... I've kept it for about 30 years now and think maybe I might try putting a wood handle on it.... may need some lessons from Tom at Wolf Creek Knives.
Click to expand...
I'm sure the steel hasn't expired. Sounds like a great project.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
I was moving an old cabinet in the garage of a house I had rented in Novato, Calif..... when I pulled it down, there was an old K-Bar knife in the wall behind it.... the leather on the handle had dried to the point it's loose, but the knife is still in good shape... a little rust that can be removed.... I've kept it for about 30 years now and think maybe I might try putting a wood handle on it.... may need some lessons from Tom at Wolf Creek Knives.
Click to expand...
Soaking the leather by immersing the handle in neatsfoot oil might swell it to fit. It'd be a shame to alter an otherwise good Kabar.
 
Mike Stafford said:
When I was a kid all of us boys had a bush axe. We thought we were a bunch of Vikings after seeing The Vikings with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine. The closest thing we had to a Viking axe was a bush axe so we marched around with our sharpened to razor sharpness bush axes. We built camps down in the woods and cleared the forest to get the timber we needed for our camp. We carried a sharpening stone all the time to keep those bush axes razor sharp.

Woe be unto any unfortunate snake that crossed our path. I am pretty sure we invented sushi because that is what we turned every pitiful little snake into.....

Now this was a long time ago. I was about 10 or so and so were the other boys. We marched up and down the road everywhere with our bush axes. We went to the little country store with our bush axes and the only restriction was that the owner said we had to leave them on the porch.

Can you imagine a bunch of 9, 10 or 11 year old boys marching around with bush axes over their shoulders today? First the police would come and arrest the kids and the parents would be hauled into court for failure to supervise. When we got older and all of us got 22's we marched around with them. The man at the store also said we had to leave them outside on the porch. Today a SWAT team would be called. Times have changed....and best of all we didn't shoot up the school or anything else but tin cans and crows.
Click to expand...
I can see it. Fairly close to the same experiences. machetes, fishing poles & shotguns. Hunting and fishing. I was in a large group of kids and to of the older boys had a machete, I was probably 7, they hacked up a black snake into links. Then they picked it up with the machete and tossed it, the snake landed on my shoulder and sort of wrapped around my neck. It wasn't till I well into my 20s that I stopped killing snakes.
 
Dave Hawksford said:
I can see it. Fairly close to the same experiences. machetes, fishing poles & shotguns. Hunting and fishing. I was in a large group of kids and to of the older boys had a machete, I was probably 7, they hacked up a black snake into links. Then they picked it up with the machete and tossed it, the snake landed on my shoulder and sort of wrapped around my neck. It wasn't till I well into my 20s that I stopped killing snakes.
Click to expand...
Dave, we were down in the woods building a camp. I was chopping on a sapling with my trusty bush axe and a black snake fell out of it and landed around me neck. As soon as I saw him there I did a Roadrunner imitation and ran so fast that snake was left suspended in mid-air.

When it hit the ground its life was not only short but so were all of its pieces.;)
 
Don't like snakes, never have. A world without them would be OK by me.

Had occasion to get near a rattler once while staying in a firetower on top of a mountain in Idaho. I was on the way to the outhouse and stepped off the end of a rock stairway and heard the rattle behind me. Fortunately he was no closer to the step when I stepped down. A few rocks tossed in his direction convinced him to find someplace else to sun and I took the long way around to the outhouse for the next few days.

Since moving here my only experience with snakes has been chasing them down with the lawn tractor.
 
I have only encountered three rattlesnakes in the wild in my life. The first was a pygmy rattler that was crossing the street near my aunt's house at the beach. Us kids were poking it with a stick and generally harassing it until my uncle came out and snatched us back and explained that it was a rattlesnake. I never saw another one but people said there were a lot of them on the island where my aunt's cottage was.

The second was a few years later when my scout troop was hiking part of the Appalachian Trail. We were caught in a terrible overnight thunderstorm and our clothes and sleeping bags got soaked. We hiked down to a little town and found a laundromat to dry things out. While we were taking turns at the dryers several of us went to a little store to buy junk food. We were standing at the register paying when the old man asked what we were doing. We told him hiking and camping on the Appalachian Trail. He said, "You boys better watch out for the buzz worms up there." "Buzz worms?" we asked. "Rattlesnakes, boy, rattlesnakes....."
Well, the very next day we were hiking the trail and came upon a fallen tree and the first person in line jumped up onto the tree and immediately heard a buzz worm. Sure enough there was a timber rattler sunning himself right in the middle of the trail near that fallen tree. We had to take a detour.

My last encounter with a rattlesnake took place over 30 years ago about 60 miles from here. I was going to work one morning on a deserted two lane country road through the flat sandy plains of eastern N.C. I saw something in the road ahead that looked like a large limb. I slowed down because I did not want to hit it. To my surprise as I got closer that limb was moving. It was the largest snake I had ever seen except for one in a zoo or something. It was a canebrake rattlesnake of humongous proportions. That snake looked to be 4-5 inches thick and I swear it was almost as long as the lane was wide. My father and grandfather grew up in an area where they would find canebrake rattlers in the tobacco patch that were too big to kill with a hoe. Well, this one was so big I would have needed a back hoe for the job. I am not particularly afraid of snakes but that snake was scary big.
 
Mike one was enough for me. I was climbing the rock face of Sugerloaf Mt here in MD. I was just about to the top and reached for a ledge to pull myself up and as I did I came eye to eye with one. Lucky for me he was curled up back in a crack. He didn't have a second to rattle. Thank God he was back in that Crack or he would have tagged me in the face.
 
Dave Hawksford said:
I was climbing the rock face of Sugerloaf Mt here in MD. I was just about to the top and reached for a ledge to pull myself up and as I did I came eye to eye with one
Click to expand...

One of my two experiences was almost identical to that. I was climbing a face in AZ outside of Phoenix and pulled my eyes up over the ledge. Except he was coiled and started making angry noises so I just lowered myself back down. Luckily he decided to let that be that.

The other close run in was in the same area (slow learner? maybe..). I was trail running and cleared a small hill and there was a smaller one stretched across the trail right in front of me sunning. I didn't have time to stop so just kind of took a really big stride over him before he figured out I was there.

I've seen a few on the trails up here but not very close so was able to give them plenty of room. There's one trail on the Washington side of the river that's supposed to be pretty thick in the summer. I've hiked it in the spring and didn't see any at all. A friend was riding his mountain bike down it late July though and said that was a super bad idea, basically went down the whole trail with his feet propped up on the front forks because he didn't want to put them low enough to reach the pedals. Said it was just think with buzzing noises the whole way down.
 
Brent Dowell said:
I used to keep track of how many I saw a year, but then it just started getting ridiculous and I lost count. Have almost stepped on them a couple times. The sounds that come out of me when that happens are not very manly, and I tend to do a very interesting dance.
Click to expand...
@Sharon Korn we need video of this the next time it happens! :rofl:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top