What's the manliest thing you have ever done?

I went deer hunting about a mile from my family's farm house. It's hard to describe the location, but it's in a very steep Valley. It's a bitch to get in and out of on foot. It takes about an hour and a half to get back to the house from the bottom of the valley.

Although it's inconvenient to hunt there, the place is full of massive deer. I shot a deer at the bottom of this Valley one cold fall morning. As I was gutting this large deer, I accidentally cut my finger with my sharp knife. It wasn't just a little cut, I was gushing blood.

I contemplated my options, either walk the 1.5 hours back to the house and patch myself up. Potentially losing the freshly harvested deer meat to the warming temperatures, or find a way to patch myself up and get this deer home.

I had no first aid supplies with me, and I almost decided to hike home. But I couldn't stand the idea of taking this animals life and leaving it to potentially spoil in the woods. So I removed my boot and used the same knife that had gouged my finger, to cut my sock into several strips. I fashioned a bandage out of the sock pieces to stop the bleeding.

Once the bleeding subsided, I still needed to gut this deer and get it home. I did have a small back pack with some snacks and some bottled water. The snacks I packed were still in a plastic grocery bag. I used the bag to make a (hopefully) water tight seal around the wound, and used the elastic from the sock to tie it tight around my finger.

I did my best to keep the injured hand out of the deer guts, but to anyone who has ever field dressed a deer, knows it's a two hand job. I got the deer gutted and proceeded to drag it the 1.5 hours out of the little Valley and back to the house. I loaded the dead deer into my truck and went inside to finally wash my hands. To my surprise when I removed the makeshift bandage, the sock and plastic bag had kept any trace of deer blood and guts away from my deep gash.

I drove the deer to my local butcher, and dropped it off to be turned into burger, jerky and steaks. Then I drove myself to the hospital to get about 10 stitches on my finger. It never got infected or anything. This was several years ago, but the manliness I found in myself still impresses me to this day.

It was before cell phones were so popular. If this happened today I would have just called some family or a neighbor to help me take care of this deer. Not so simple 10 years ago.

/r/AskReddit Thread