Walked up and down the rows of a bean field for a couple hours this afternoon, and found this nice flint blade, still sharp enough to dress a deer after a couple thousand years. Somehow it survived intact in a field that’s been plowed at least a hundred times.
Amazing how they hold up!
Have you ever actually dressed out a deer with either an old broken point or knife, or a freshly-struck flake?
Have done them with each. A real kick at some kind of deep level for me...
Years ago, I skinned one of my Dad's deer with a broken midsection of a large point I had just picked up while walking out from my stand , and a few yeaes later some of the guys in my hunt club had me demonstrate using sharp flakes to dress one out at the camp, and that was fun. It was different, though, when my son brought home his first bow-killed deer. He had been so busy with work, school, and football that he had not had time to stay in practice with his longbow, so he took this doe with a compound. As we were hanging her up to start the gutting and skinning, he stopped and said, "Dad, I know I didn't take this one traditionally. Could we dress her out using flint?" I durn near got teary-eyed... I struck three flakes of glassy Flint River chert from up in Georgia... He went down one side, and I the other... It seemed to go faster than what it does when we use steel skinners. Processed the entire deer with those flakes, except busting the pelvis to separate the hams... whacked that through with a 'hawk!
We each still have the flakes we used, as embodiments of a great shared memory.
My apologies if that was a bit long-winded... We all have ancestors who did this, regardless of our ethnicity.
It was a great grounding experience for both of us.
