Machete

All of us are on a journey in our lives, and some of us, because of “free will” take the rougher roads.  As you can tell from my stories, my journey has been a series of almost unbelievable circumstances, near death experiences and miraculous favor shown to me by God.  I think God wanted to teach me there was more to my life than just surviving one stupid decision after another.

I decided to share my experiences with you, even the ones that don’t exactly show me in the most favorable ways. As T.D. Jakes once said, it was all a part of “working on my story”. I lived the life of a full-blooded pagan, worshipping the only god I knew, me! So, to the best of my drug saturated memory, this stuff is true. You may legitimately ask, “Why share this stuff?” The Lord gave me the answer to that question and said, “Boy, there’s other men out there playing a fool just like you did. Go get’em, the Kingdom is big enough for all of ya!”

I was a student at Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College in Tifton, Georgia in 1977, where I just began working on pre-forestry classes required to get into forestry school at the University of Georgia.  I was also working part-time at Sears where I replaced tires, batteries and worked on lawn mowers. There were only a handful of employees and we all did what we had to do to keep the place running. I had very little free time and when I got a chance, I was in the woods bowhunting for deer, as the season had opened about a month earlier. At that time, we could only shoot bucks and the limit was two per season.

I was a relentless hunter and was looking for my first deer with a bow, as the prior year I shot a button buck and an eight pointer with a rifle. The button buck was an illegal kill that year as it was antlerless, but I didn’t know it when I killed it so I ate it anyhow.

I remember shooting a four pointer with my bow on a late October afternoon while it was feeding on crabapples at the Chickasawhatchee Wildlife Management Area. It was too late to trail it that evening so I came back the next morning to find it, and after a few hours following a very sparing blood trail, I found the beautiful creature covered up with leaves. It had been found by a bobcat the night before and the cat had eaten about 3 or 4 pounds of meat off of one of the back hams.

Sometimes, as members of the family called predators, we just have to learn to share a little, so I decided to keep the rest. I tagged and gutted the deer where I found it and drug it to the truck, a 1963 Chevy step-side that had heat in the summer and A/C in the winter, but always ran.

After a visit to the check-in station where the rangers weighed the deer and pulled one of its’ jaw bones, I was headed home to Tifton, as the Wildlife Management Area was a little southwest of Albany and a good hour and a half from my luxurious 75-year-old apartment that I rented for $100 a month. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment that was a part of an old house occupied by the elderly farmer and his wife who owned it.

My apartment was on the side of the house that had the most sun, a blessing in the winter and a curse in the summer. The location actually came in handy when I sold psilocybin mushrooms to guys who liked to do hallucinogens but couldn’t afford LSD or mescaline.  I set up racks on the side of the house to dry the mushrooms that I picked out of the cow patties in the pastures around Tifton. It was a great side enterprise as I sold the dried mushrooms for $30 per one-ounce bag.

I had no competition cause I told everyone who bought them that if you pick the wrong ones they will kill you. The farmer came over one day and saw the racks of mushrooms and said, “Steve, be careful with those mushrooms, I think you may have some that will make you sick!”  I said,” Yes sir, I sell most of them.”

He didn’t have a clue.

For those of you who never tried mushrooms, people would eat one or two wrapped in a piece of white bread.

The taste was terrible.

The cow patty would have tasted better, if you get my drift. But the high from the hallucinogens was crazy, as it would make you laugh at some of the stupidest stuff, anyhow, that’s just what I heard.

Back to this exciting deer story!

I had skinned and quartered the buck in the back yard on an old swing set that looked like it was from the 50’s, and brought the pieces inside my kitchen to either debone or cut up for roasts. I had a machete I was going to chop the legs off with below the hams. Well, this is when things got interesting, as I was ready to celebrate the kill before finishing the butchering task and decided to smoke a joint and drink a beer.

Once I got a good buzz going, I decided to chop the legs off, so I drug the first leg to the edge of the table, hanging the hoof end off the edge so that it would fall on the floor when I chopped it off.  I had my hand just above the part I was cutting and raised the machete like a master butcher, (slightly stoned), and threw all my weight into the chop.

One small but ugly problem.

I missed the leg and chopped into my arm just above the wrist. The machete cut through veins, nerves, muscles and tendons to stop slightly buried in the bone. I would have screamed but I was dumb founded instead.

How did I do something that stupid?

I dropped the machete and wrapped a towel around my arm, jumped into my truck, drove to Sears and asked the manager what he thought I should do. He asked,” How bad is it?” I showed him and he nearly fainted, saying, “How’d da hell you do that?” I innocently said, “Butchering a deer.” He just stared at me and said, “Get in my car and let’s go to the emergency room.”

Well, several stitches later and a pain killer or three, I’m lying in my bed, smoking a joint and drinking a beer, thinking, “How’d da hell I do that?”

Just think, I’m one of His favorites!

THOUGHTS FROM THE HUNTER KIND:

We have all heard that you can’t fix stupid. Well there are a number of ways to get stupid if you weren’t born that way. And I found one of them all by myself!  Over time, the Holy Spirit repaired and renewed my mind, but left my sense of humor intact. When I look back, I wonder what the Lord had seen in me that was worth saving. If you are wondering the same thing now, ask Him. He speaks English, and a few other languages!

Prayer of the Hunter Kind:

Galatians 5,  speaks about our sin nature and the only way out….

Lord, I pray away my sin nature in the blood of Christ, that Your Holy Spirit guides me in the ways that make You a pleasant scent to those hunting for freedom from themselves.