A Dash of Sult N Papper 05/23/22 > Battle Axe ? BATL AXE? Hell yes….

There are certain...

There are certain words that trigger the brain to automatically think of something and there are some old sayings that have pretty much slipped away over the years. When I hear the term “Battle Axe” I automatically think of some old man’s bitching wife. “She’s just an old battle axe, pay her no mind.”, was what that neighbor who lived down the road would say. Have you ever heard the term “battle axe” before?

I'm imagining that...

I’m imagining that some video game would have that term in it but since I'm not a gamer I can’t say for sure. Splinterlands? Dungeons & Dragons? Any at all?

Well, regardless of any video games have the term battle axe there is a competitive sport of axe throwing and not just for lumberjacks. Today some close friends and I got together at a local business that hosts axe throwing. It was my idea to do this since I had run across it when I was up in Fort Worth a few months ago on a business trip.

A business that distributes some of the products I represent was having an open house for their customers and vendors and they hired a mobile axe throwing company to come set up at the open house along with some other games they had to play.

The mobile axe throwing business just happened to be right next to my table display so I visited with the young man running the axe throwing throughout the evening. I wasn’t going to fill out all his forms on some mobile app just to throw an axe at a target; I’m a hard pass on online forms. As things were winding down the young man came over and said, “Hey if you want to throw a few I’ll let you pass on the forms.”

“I don’t need to throw a few, all I need is one shot… so I can send my youngest son a picture.” The young man offered to show me how to throw an axe but I declined his offer, and went right to the throwing line. I didn’t need his lessons, just wanted to see if I still “had it”; growing up there were plenty of trees that made good targets for throwing things at and I was pretty good at throwing what we called “hatchets”.

I’m guessing that inflation has caused a “hatchet” to now be considered an “axe” so what that three foot long piece of hickory with the double bladed steel head on it is called I have no idea. To me it is still an axe but what the hell do I know?

One throw- ...

One throw – One Bulls Eye. I still “had it” ; I got that picture I wanted and texted it to my youngest son. My son was impressed to say the least; he had competed in a lumberjack contest one summer when he went up to Minnesota on a youth trip and did pretty damn well for himself by making it to the finals of that competition. He didn’t fare that well in the log rolling contest but he said the water wasn’t as cold as he expected it to be; to his credit he had never done log rolling before so we’ll just leave it right there.

The young man...

The young man running that mobile axe business was pretty impressed as well with my throw and said, “You might have done this a time or two?” To which I replied, “Maybe, what makes you think that?” His reply was, “Form, you’ve got the form down pat.”

He then proceeded to ask me if I was interested in joining their axe throwing league. I explained to him that I wasn’t from the area and I was from Houston so he proceeded to tell me just how big this relatively new sport is; I had no idea that it is even on ESPN and the world championships are held in Fort Worth.

He recommended a ....

He recommended a couple places in Houston that he knows and so I gathered up a few friends and my youngest son to go check one out. We selected the BATL AXE located in the area known as “the Heights” because it came with high recommendations from some other folks we know. I have to tell you that those folks couldn’t have been more correct on pointing us there.

The staff was...