While growing up I had a deep fascination with knife throwing. It started young.

I remember sitting around morning campfires on family camp trips. My Dad would invariably engage in one of his favorite pastimes … sharpening a knife with a whetstone and strop. Then he’d shave with it and carefully clean it afterwards.

Then came the part I always waited for. He would wink at me and throw the knife with ease but considerable force at a nearby tree. I don’t recall him missing.

More about my Dad later, after which this will make sense.

I got my first set of matched throwing knives when I was eight. I was already a good marksman with a BB gun by then, and could break it down, clean and reassemble it with practiced efficiency.

The boxes I practiced shooting at weren’t tough enough to withstand a throwing knife, but there was a big old tough tree in my front yard, and I began practicing on it. 

Those first knives weren’t fancy, but they were reasonably well-balanced. The first couple thousand throws were a mite sketchy. After that they smoothed right out.

I practiced close and far, at an angle and straight on, with a soft throw and with all the force I could muster.

After a while there were certain distances from which I could attain some consistency. That wasn’t good enough, and under the tutelage of my Dad I slowly improved.

During the next years he rarely threw the knife himself, but rather showed me how to hold it, gauge the needed rotation, control the throw and follow through.

In my teens, I had a Bowie knife my uncle had given me, and I built a reputation for power and accuracy with that heavy yet balanced weapon.

Thinking back, I learned a tremendous degree of discipline and control from that hobby. The frustrating part was that no matter how good I got, Dad could always walk up, pick up a knife and make a perfect throw that made mine look poor.

There is something I should explain about my Dad. He grew up a mountain man in the back country of Washington State. In his pre-teens, he often took his pack, rifle, knives, traps and canteen deep into the mountains for weeks on end.

It was just him and his Mom living in a cabin, and his trips to hunt, trap and skin were a part of how they got by and made a living.

When Dad was in his mid-teens, War II broke out. At 16, he somehow convinced the recruiter he was old enough and went into the infantry. With his skills, he was the perfect point man on patrols.

Dad survived, but accumulated numerous scars from bullets, bayonets and shrapnel.

When I became a teenager and began shaving, my Dad taught me to do like I had seen him do. I was already pretty darned good at sharpening knives, but he taught me a lot more about the precise angles and pressures and strokes on both the whetstone and strop. I sure remember that the first couple of times it felt like I was scraping my face off.

My Dad chuckled and mentioned to Mom that I would learn to properly sharpen knives a lot quicker than I had learned to throw them because pain is the best teacher in the world.

He was right. I learned quickly!