Hoof Knife

I have my suspicions that upon his first meeting with the Olympus, Jeff was fairly uncertain. He seemed bewildered by my obsession with images (I can fill up a 275-picture xd card over 20 times even in uneventful months) and a little uncomfortable with my relentless snapping. Gradually he got used to it, though, even borrowing the Olympus for his summer landscaping project at the plant, and lately I notice that he's perfectly compliant when I want to take his picture. He even slows down or stops when he's driving if it looks like I want to snap something I can't take from a moving truck.

This is the knife he uses to shoe horses. It was handmade for him by a guy in Riverton and though the pictures don't show it, he uses honing oil and a whetstone to get one side so razor sharp it will slice cleanly and smoothly through leather like it was paper. He uses a pencil-like file to sharpen that hook at the end. I think of it as the perfect tool for disemboweling.