Yep, I was another year older not all that long ago, and I scored three gift cards for Dick's Sporting Goods from my family. Not a bad haul at a total of about $145. My wife threw me a $50 card. She also got me two pairs of Levi's jeans at $44.00 a pair. Unholy deluxe denims Batman! Yes that was for regular Levi's 505 jeans at Sears. They are on sale now at $29.99 a pair and if I can find the receipts, off to Sears I go to get $28, plus tax, back in our pockets. But I digress. Where was I before I got off to Sears? Oh yes, the daughter gave me a $30 gift card, and the son gave me a $65 gift card. bet you can tell which one is paying her own way through grad school. Not a bad little haul.
So I have made a few trips to Dick's over the past week. Three trips to be exact. I debated getting something like a pair of hunting boots, but did not see any that suited my fancy. I also thought maybe I would get a nice set of camo rain gear, but again nothing made think I wanted to spend any money on what they were selling in that department. Most of it looked like junk, and what was good was way high in price. As it turned out I wound up having to pay their prices because I had their gift cards, but I was not about to go overboard on something that was way too high priced for me.
I also looked at sleeping bags, none that would be up to my standards, not a big selection anyhow. I would want one that would last for years, and keep me or someone else warm down to about 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and the only one they had with that cold rating had a cotton outside and lining. Are they kidding - cotton? I also checked out the fishing department, but to tell the truth the prices were again too high. That stuff ought to be on sale at this time of the year, but not at Dick's. Oh well back to the hunting and shooting stuff.
I decided that I would spend my plastic on things I could use for the upcoming hunting season, and that is just what I did. I got a bunch of things. See the pic, click to enlarge. I picked up a deer scent - deer scent drag double combo pack (two bottles of deer scent - yep deer piss in bottles - and scent drags to make a scent trail as I walk along in the woods), a bottle of pure doe in heat urine (drives the bucks wild), orange trail marking tape (great to put strips of this on trees in a circle around your stand to let other hunters know you are nearby), Hunter's Specialties laundry detergent, Hunter's Specialties body wash & shampoo (really works to get rid of human odor, I have used it for years), a value pack of hand warmers, a 20 pack of plastic gloves (used when gutting deer or handling scents), a single pack of arm length deer gutting gloves (it gets messy inside the body cavity of an animal you are gutting), two 2 packs of wool blend socks, a nice pair of scent blocking hunting gloves, a silicone embedded gun cloth (great to use on firearms you take hunting to keep any water from rusting your gun), 2 knife sharpeners (only one shown in the pic, but both are the same thing), and a Buck Bantam 285 BLW knife. I figure the 4 things that I will get the most use of over the next few years will be the socks (one set of two pair, I'll probably put the other set into a care package for one of our troops in Afghanistan), the gloves, the knife sharpeners, and the knife. The knife is where I may have been ripped off. It went for $24.95 plus tax.. I have seen it as low as $10.78 online, and even with shipping it would be nowhere nearly as expensive as $24.95. As a matter of fact it was offered at $10.78 with shipping adding only 5.03 for a total of $15.83. Who knows when it would have arrived though. If you are interested in the knife at that price, see:
http://www.knivesunlimited.com/folding-knives/everyday-knives/bucknanobantamblw285bk1.cfm
Of course most places online seem to have it for about $18 to $19, so maybe $24.95 in a store was not that bad when you consider shipping added on to the cost of the online knives. Oh well, I bought it not knowing how little it went for elsewhere. Cannot bring it back now either as I opened it already - well I could bring it back - but why be a pain in the behind.
I think I will enjoy the knife for years to come so long as I do not drop it anywhere in the leaf litter on the forest floor. It might be hard to find again if I drop it there. Note the blade is not dark as it looks like in this photo, just regular looking steel. There is a pocket clip on the other side. There is also something on the other side that was rather disheartening - the word: CHINA. I had not realized that even Buck Knives was now making their products in China. What a disgrace, and what a shame. I would rather have gotten a knife made in the USA, next time I'll have to read the package info.
As it is this knife has a 3 1/8" drop-point blade made from 420HC steel, with a hardness of Rc 58. It is supposedly easy to sharpen. I hope so as I am not all that great at sharpening knives. I get the job done on a nice Arkansas Soft Stone I have, but almost always wind up scratching the sides of the blades I sharpen. The knife sharpeners I bought at Dick are only for quick sharpening out in the field, I use the large stone at home. The handle is plastic, or what they call thermoplastic (what's the difference). The handle is on the small side for my liking. It gets two narrow from top to bottom at the butt end for my liking, but it will still afford a good enough grip for the purposes for which I am likely to use it such as gutting deer, camp cutting, or daily cutting chores. It is a lockback knife with the lock at mid grip. There is a thumb stud for one handed opening, but I find it almost impossible to open this with my right hand using just that hand. Funny I can open more it easily with my left hand, and I am right handed. Go figure, but I imagine it will be easier to open as it wears in a bit. Overall it will be a useful knife, and it appears well made. I hope so.Now all I need to do is to get a deer. Not as easy as you may think when hunting on public land, not even with all this stuff.
All the best,
Glenn B
