I don't worry about getting too fancy with my knives or the latest, greatest steel. Nowdays I generally just use an old Puma Game Warden for field dressing/skinning/quartering and butcher with an early '80's Buck Lakemate fillet knife. I have one custom and many other factory knives with blade steels of 420HC, 440A, 440C, 154CM, S30V, 52100, 1095, AUS8, Carbon V, Chrome Vanadium, Sandvic 14C28N and probably a few that escape me at the moment. But those first two do all I need done and are easy to resharpen to a hair popping edge in a jiffy. I will say that to me, the newer "super steels" like S30V are highly overrated and I've come to the personal conclusion that they are not worth the premium price over more ordinary, well heat treated and ground blade steels.. I have an old '60's production Case folding hunter with carbon steel blades that I can and have taken a deer from field to freezer with, gutting, skinning, quartering, deboning and slicing into steaks, roasts, stew and burger meat without the need to resharpen until it's all done. That's plenty good enough in my book. As to the question of whether Buck's standard production 420HC blades are good enough to get a hunter's chores done reasonably. You bet your sweet azz they are.
Good post^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
