When I was a youngster I read one of the Leatherstocking books in which somebody threw a tomahawk at somebody. (It’s been decades. Except for Hawkeye or Chingachgook, who remembers the character’s names? Not I.) Whoever it was reached out at chest level and caught the hawk’s handle just before it split his skill. Then he threw it back, killing the first guy.

I was already throwing hatchets. But I added to my skill set by deliberately throwing the hatchet so that it would stick with the handle above the blade. Catch that, you tricky redskin! (N.B., this was before political correctness.) Tomahawk fights were rare in my neighborhood, but adding a new hawk-hurling skill-set was fun.