After this happened, I never cut someone who wasn’t me. Photo courtesy of Steve Sorensen

When I was a kid, about one out of every two front pockets carried a knife. I don’t know the statistics on back pockets, but the one time I carried a miniature knife in my back pocket I had a little problem. With the sheath lost, I hoped to avoid making a hole in my pocket by carefully positioning the small, fixed blade knife with the blade pointing up.

When the class bully sat forcefully on the school bus seat beside me — and largely on me — it made a hole in my pocket. It also poked a hole in something else, which is why he got up harder than he sat down. After that I never cut someone who wasn’t me.

As kids, our usual method of doctoring was to rub some dirt into the cut. We knew dirt was dirty, but we didn’t think about dirt being dirty enough to have germs in it. And besides, rubbing dirt on a cut had some benefits. It would plug up the bleeding so we wouldn’t need to go home and get bawled out for playing with knives. And it gave us immunity from dirt germs.

Adults always worry about kids cutting themselves. They forget that a guy can’t outgrow accidents. As a teenager, I was working alone one night in the meat room of a corner grocery store. While trimming bones for ground beef I sliced into one of the joints on the middle finger of my left hand. I learned that lots of blood vessels run through that narrow crease in finger joints. I also learned what a crime scene looks like. Rubbing dirt into that cut wasn’t an option because right when it happened, the customer bell rang.

I popped out of the meat room with my finger bleeding, and the customer asked me to slice a couple of pounds of baloney. If I had rubbed dirt into my cut, the guy’s baloney would have been dirty. Instead, it was only bloody. The way I figure, two good things came out of this. I found out I didn’t have any contagious blood disease because he didn’t get sick (as far as I knew). And I proved the thing everybody says: “What a guy doesn’t know can’t hurt him.” Also, I cleaned up the crime scene so my boss, the police, and the FBI never found out.

Many years later, my brother and I drove from Anchorage, Alaska to a little town named Tok where we hired two Super Cub airplanes to fly us into the bush for a moose hunt. During the six-hour drive, I was putting the finest edge possible on more knives than we would need.

While skinning one of our moose, my finger started spurting blood. I had buried the point of a Gerber Gator into the middle knuckle of my left index finger. I would have fainted but a lot of moose dirt in the cut got my attention. I figured that was enough dirt, so I self-doctored by making a splint from a willow twig and taping it to my finger.

A doctor back home (who knew me pretty well) had given me some penicillin — just in case. I was out of range for calling him, so I took a chance on the pills. Was it the penicillin that saved my finger? Or the moose dirt? Or the willow splint? All I know is my finger stopped bleeding, but still doesn’t have feeling.

Old timers will tell you a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp knife because you can lose control when you force a dull knife. I found out a sharp knife makes just as good an accident. It was a sharp knife that stabbed the bully in the bum. It was a sharp knife that cut the crease of my knuckle. And it was a sharp knife that severed the digital artery and the digital nerve in my finger.

Are there lessons in all this? Here are five, but you can find more:

(1.) Make sure you have a sharp knife when you field dress your deer this year.

(2.) Look at your weak hand–if you’re like me it’s the one with the most scars.

(3.) Keep your knife in your strong hand and the blade away from your weak hand.

(4.) When you cut anything, work slowly and be sure of what you’re cutting.

(5.) Never cut yourself beyond the ability of dirt to heal.

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When “The Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018 and 2023 national “Pinnacle Award” for outdoor writing.