Sunday, December 21, 2008

Last Train to Clarksville.


  The good Dr. and I hunted last weekend and this weekend my brother and I went up.  Brother is a Dragonov kind of guy and shot two does with his.  I mostly watched tree lines and little bucks.  They are logging behind the farmhouse and we walked out to look.  It's a natural site for Precolombians and the logging scars were full of pottery, flint chips and village trash.  When it rains we are going to have a good look at it.  I found this freshly-broken point in a log-drag mark.  We actually took four big jugs of water back to the site and washed it looking for the hasp but no luck.

  This point looks like it was originally much wider but was sharpened several times, working the edge back but losing the angle.  The site is the end of a ridge 100 feet above the creek below.  Wonderful overwatch for wide flat riverbottom in three directions.  Folks lived here on and off for centuries.  

  Might be a knife blade, might be an atlatl point.  No native flint so the material got walked in.

  What a life.  Deer hunters and gatherers, farmers, living right here.  No Internet, no power, no written language.  You had to memorize everything.  You would know everyone within walking range, have an encyclopedic knowledge of your technology and a firm grasp of your religion and cosmos.  All those folks dead and forgotten. Language, culture, technology, all gone.

  Folks these days can't do a fraction, don't believe in God, can't gnaw a plastic chair or a ballpoint pen out of a root much less butcher a deer.  

  Who's the ignorant savage now?  

  Gas, whatever the heck gas actually IS, was 1.39 a gallon for the 4-runner, whatever a 4-runner is.  Maybe they are hatched from dragon's eggs.

Update:  Had a shot at a shootable doe last evening but mostly didn't want to be bothered and the light was nearly gone.  I painted her with the red dot and took the slack of out the trigger.  (AR carbine with a YHM forearm)  She was just over the hill crest but mostly exposed.  Sure wish those cheap red dots had a little magnification.  I heard the Dragonov and held off.  His evening doe went 100 live weight to 80 field dressed.  Teeth looked about 5 1/2, some of the oldest I have seen at Clarksville.

Update:  Have you hugged your atlatl lately?

4 comments:

Adam said...

Cool stuff, never found an arrowhead before.

Robert Langham said...

Yes, but have you hugged your atlatl lately?

catfish said...

Actually, I've got several atlatls at work from a guy up in Montana I believe...

Nice tools; I've got both weighted and un-weighted versions, for the record, I like the light ones.

We cheat and use aluminium darts, but I'm good for about a 125 yard throw on a good day; no real gaurantee I'll hit anything important, but they're fun to throw around.

d smith kaich jones said...

We had the kids in tow today, stuck in traffic coming back from Barnes & Noble. From the back seat Jace informs me that in the olden days, people didn't even have wood - they had to make their own. Silence from the 2 adults in the front seats. Finally I asked what they made it from. Now a momentary silence from the back of the Jeep. They bought wood, I was informed, and then made their trees. ??? More silence from those of us who think we know better. Smiles. I asked where the wood came from - that wood from which the trees were made. Ahhh, from the backseat comes the reply. Seeds, he says. God gave them seeds. In fact, he says, God gave them all the seeds; he didn't save any for himself. There are apparently no trees in Heaven that don't exist on Earth.

Back then, men were men. Making their own trees.

:) Debi