A tale of two knives and two uncles
By Dave Bates
For the Observer-Reporter
Each deer season, as I begin to organize my pack for the upcoming hunt, I am confronted with a recurring problem. Which of my favorite hunting knives do I carry? Both do the job nicely. Both are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Both are practical and perform the task of field dressing a whitetail deer proficiently. Both hold fond memories of the uncles that gifted them to me. I worshiped both men as a boy and cherished both later in life as a man.
James Vernon Watson, my uncle Jim, gave me a Buck 102 four-inch fixed blade Woodsman as my graduation present from Jefferson-Morgan High School back in 1984. Coincidentally, this was around the time that George Block began writing his first outdoors columns for the Observer-Reporter.
The four-inch blade has the perfect balance and handles superbly when field dressing deer. The knife holds an edge extremely well and has never seen anything but a razor finish since it came to me. It cleans easily as it possesses no nooks or crannies for blood nor entrails to hide. It is a classic in every sense of the word.
Uncle Jim bought a similar knife for my brother Glenn on his graduation from high school. He gave similar knives to his sons, Jim and Sam. It became sort of a right of passage in our family. I believe he would have presented my son with the same blade had he lived to see a son born to me, but alas, neither transpired.
As for uncle Blair’s bequeathment, it was as with so many facets of Blair’s life. Where Jim was top shelf all the way, Blair was a child of the Great Depression. I was given his middle name, Howard Blair Watson, as my middle name, David Blair Bates. I have Uncle Blair’s old Ted Williams Model 53, which is really a Sears knockoff of a Winchester Model 70. Uncle Blair refused to spend money on himself and always made due with whatever presented itself. I can still see him dressed in his zip-up hooded sweatshirt and orange cape vest, blue jeans and three-eyelet rubber-knee boots. It was the only hunting outfit I can recall him wearing.
For anyone else, he was generous to a fault but no way would he indulge himself. In the case of a hunting knife, he carried an old butcher knife for many years and after that an ancient, rusty, Western fixed-blade knife from Gatling’s Automotive in Waynesburg. One cold, winter afternoon, as we sat drinking coffee in his kitchen, he produced a shiny new three-inch bladed Schrade folder. A pretty little knife. It was a promotion from the Copenhagen Company. Lord knows if there was anything that Unc identified with it was Copenhagen snuff. He said he’d been saving it for me but I insisted that he carry it afield. He simply refused, stating, “It’s too nice… I’ll just end up losing it.” It has been one of my two, go-to knives ever since. It possesses the traditional brass bolster, butt and rivets of the classic folder style of knives. It is emblazoned with “Copenhagen” in several places, including the blade and scales. I don’t clean it nearly as often as I should and the crevasses of its surface collect gunk at every turn. I do keep a sharp edge on it. Always. But its demeanor is distinctly set apart from that of Uncle Jim’s blade. It’s certainly not what I’d call an heirloom but I can’t look at it without thinking fondly of Uncle Blair and it always manages to bring a smile to my face.
I have dressed nearly every deer taken with one of these two knives. I have other knives; several actually. All would do the job but it would feel like cheating if I were to reach into my pack for anything else. On occasion, when hunting with someone who knew these men and maybe thought as much of them as I did, I’d slip one of the knives out of their sheaths and into their hand as they prepared to field dress a deer. No words spoken. Knife in hand. Examined momentarily. Recognized for what it is – an extension of one whom we loved, one who has gone before us, one we have learned so much from and remember, still, so fondly.
This column is dedicated to my Uncles, Jim and Blair Watson.
Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com