I was driving to the bank. I don’t know if I was speeding or not. The bank was going to close in a half hour; I remember being focused on that. I never got to the bank. A deer lunged out in front of me from nowhere, and I hit it with my car. Its legs were broken. It hobbled to the side of the road and collapsed. I sat in my car, blocking the road. I wasn’t hurt, but I was in shock. I was shaking. A dog walker with three dogs on leashes saw me hit the deer, and he stopped and stood still, holding his dogs back. The deer was conscious and alert, with his head up, looking at us. Two men, three dogs, and a deer, none of us moving, just staring at each other. Nobody knew what to do. I sat in my car for probably five minutes. Finally I got out of my car. The dog walker asked, “Do you have a gun?” I said no. He said, “I usually carry one, but I left it home today. I have a knife.”
When he said that, it occurred to me that I had a knife as well. I don’t know if he was offering me his knife or if he was offering to do the deed for me, but all I really needed from him was the suggestion. I have killed 16 deer with my rifle; I know their anatomy. I flicked open my knife. I walked up to the deer, gently stroked its neck, and then plunged my knife into its heart. It was horrible. I was soaked in arterial spray; my arm was drenched up to the shoulder, and my pants and shirt and face were splattered with blood. The deer sprang to its feet, knocking me flat, and hobbled maybe 20 feet, spraying blood everywhere, before it collapsed again. I ran over and stabbed it six more times in the heart.
By this time, three other cars were stopped, and a lot of people were staring at me like I was some kind of monster. They drove past me very slowly, staring at me, not at the dead deer. I was dripping with blood, and they were not hiding their horror. None of them were more distressed than I was. The dog walker was visibly upset, but I felt like he was the only person who wasn’t judging me. He had seen the whole thing. All the other people had seen was some crazy person repeatedly stabbing a deer.
I dragged the body off the road. The dog walker shook his head sadly and continued on his way. I had a towel that I wiped my hands with and then sat on so I didn’t get blood all over the upholstery. I turned my car around and drove home. I found my wife in the garden and told her what happened. Her response was calm and sweet. “Well, go get it.”
I didn’t want any more blood in my car, so I got in my pickup and returned to the scene of the crime just in time to see another guy lifting the deer into the bed of his pickup. I got out of my car and said quietly, “I killed that deer.” He just looked at me, without hostility but also without any inclination to give me the deer. We just stared at each other for what seemed like a minute. For the second time that day, I didn’t know what to do. Then he smiled and said, “My girlfriend has never butchered a deer before and she really wants to learn how to do it.” I looked over at his girlfriend and she smiled too. I said, “Well, as long as it doesn’t go to waste.” He said, “Oh, it won’t. We’re gonna eat it.” I nodded and got back in my truck.
As it turned out, it was a good thing he took the deer. I wasn’t emotionally in any shape to handle a butchering job, or much of anything else. I sat in the kitchen and shook for an hour and a half before I even could take a shower. Last year, my best friend and I both shot bucks at first light opening day, and we had both deer skinned, butchered, ground up, vacuum sealed and in the freezer by nine a.m. That was an efficient assembly-line operation with both our wives pulling their weight. But shooting a deer is very, very different from stabbing it to death.
I’m writing this while still processing what happened. I’m sharing this with y’all acting as my shrink. Please be kind.
I do feel like I learned a few things. Here’s a list:
1. Killing something with a knife is really easy. Afterwards, it’s hard. Since I carry a knife primarily for self-defense, I’ve wondered before what happens when you stab a ribcage. Is it like stabbing a tree, where just the tip goes in, or is it like stabbing a watermelon, where it goes to the hilt and beyond? Now I can tell you, it is like stabbing a watermelon. In Oregon, it is illegal to carry a knife concealed if the blade is more than four inches long. It’s a silly rule. Four inches is plenty.
2. Carry a gun. A knife does the trick, but good lord. Just as a side note, there is no option of lying or deniability or changing your story if you use a knife. You did what you did and there is no backing out of it.
3. A thin, narrow blade is better than a thick, wide one. If I hit bone at all, I wasn’t aware of it. I think a wider blade might be more likely to get caught up on the ribs. I think a single-edged blade would not have worked as well as a double-edged, if for no other reason than that the front edge was unused and really, really sharp. For those who are morbidly interested, my knife is a Microtek Ultratech automatic double-action OTF. If you carry a knife every day, and you wouldn’t think twice about spending four hundred dollars on a gun, why not spend that much on a knife?
4. Bend your arm a little. I had my arm bent for the first six stabs but it was straight on the seventh and I over-extended it. I’ll be feeling that for awhile.
5. Sorry if I traumatized anybody. Thanks for listening.
Traumatic personal stabbing experience
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