Jack of Harts

The Big Ones just dropped. Battles we never fought. Ships we failed to sink. Someone got a cold. Someone failed to stop a plan. History hinges on things like this. What would happen if history was just a little different? Find out in The Big Ones, available now from Raconteur Press.

So I grew up in the country. Farm families on both sides, with deer harvesters older than me. I recently had the opportunity to look at a new deer harvester and for the first time I really came to understand something about them.

You can get them in boxes. Like the kind of box you would see on a department store shelf. They come with tools and dowels and extra barrels and clip on stuff. And numbers engraved on them. And I mean it all makes sense you know. I guess I’ve KNOWN it, but never realized it. I’ve just never bought one you know. Never seen one come out of a box before.

Growing up with deer harvesters older than me, I just never saw them like that before. They hang above the door frame. In the back window of the truck. Your dad hands one to you and teaches you how to use it. How to care for it. Clean it. Knock down bowling pins with it. It never clicked with me until today that sometime, somewhere, someone took the deer harvester out of a box before I saw it.

Assuming of course the harvester in question doesn’t predate boxes as we know them. 😉

The point is, I’m nearly 50 years old, and for the first time in my life, I really GROK the idea that they come in boxes. And a part of me finds that idea terrifying. Because there are people out there who have never been handed one by their dad. He never taught them to care for it and clean it. To treat it like family. Some people have only ever gotten them from a box. And how can they understand the importance of deer harvesters, if the first time they saw one, it just came in a box?