Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Favorite job-specific deer knives ???

I know many of you have too many "favorite" knives to pick a true favorite but if you narrow the task down, what would be your pick of the knives you have?

Best knife you have for gutting a deer in the field?

Best knife you have for skinning a deer in the field or back at camp/home?

Best knife you have for breaking down/deboning a deer at camp/home?

And your favorite all-around deer knife, if you have one?

Thanks, RS

ive never gutted a deer in the field, always cleaned at the skinning rack.

A handy knife for that is the Outdoor edge swing 'n blaze. Kinda a community knife at camp.

I usually use one of my Winstons.


And i Debone deer while hanging, I dont gut it either. I'll reach in and get the inner lions ( sweet meat)


All around favorite? CAnt go wrong with a Winston #43/45

The perfect store bought knife? Spyderco moran.

having had and used some fairly expensive knives, these days i mostly
use a forschner or an old hickory boning knife for the whole process.
the one i've used these last few years is an old boner that some friends
gave me from a box of junk they'd bought at an auction. i figure it's either
an olde forge or an old hickory. it's so worn and old that any lettering is
long gone, but it's razor sharp.

it took me a lot of years to figure out to use what professional butchers
and meat cutters use all day long to make a living with. it's way easier than
trying to use some of the itty bitty knives i've used to dress animals with.

The stone handled knives I posted have a VG-10 steel blade that is incredible at slicing, They just stay sharp forever. When they do get a little dull, it's a simple thing to put a couple strokes on a crock stick and they're back to shaving sharp.

I used one I made about four-five years ago with a nice walnut handle to gut, skin, quarter, debone the necks, remove the back straps and do a lot of work separating muscles in the butchering process for nine consecutive deer without resharpening it. After the ninth deer, the blade was still sharp enough to keep going, but it wasn't shaving sharp any more. That was done over a two years and part of a third. One of the years, I didn't shoot any deer until muzzle loader season in December when it was consistently below zero which made skinning a real bitch.

Prior to using these, I had been using a KOA Jaeger Hunter which has a similar blade shape but is D2 steel. It's a fine knife, but not as wear resistant as the VG-10

When I break down the skinned deer I just make a quick slice around the joints and then reach inside with the tip and cut the cruciates. Deboning doesn't take much, and the small tip is really handy and makes quick work of it around the joints. I will generally use a more rounded tip when I debone the scapula, but other wise these little knives work as good as any and better than the vast majority. My father used a little Marbles with a blade not too different for all the same work. The blade was of course just carbon steel and as such required sharpening after a single deer or sooner. It was also susceptible to rusting which these are impervious to. The blade is pretty ideal for everything I do, it is not an ideal skinning knife, but it makes the fist slices up the legs better than any knife I have used and works OK for the little bit of cutting I need if I can skin them while they're still warm.

I did the handles on the pair I posted in stone because I had access to the lapidary tools necessary and because a knife as good as these deserves something special. I see no reason why a near perfect knife can't be beautiful as well as durable.

Can't count the number of bucks/bulls I've seen taken apart with a sharpfinger, but it's more than a few....

That being said, for my $$$ nowadays, Howe mountain knives gets my bidness..... stupid good blades...

for over 25 years, a Randall #11 did virtually all of my deer and hog field work. Currently, I have been using a Loveless style drop point by Rick Menefee, several nice drop points by Tim Olt, a very nice L. Rossi small knife and a good performing Sodbuster style fixed blade by Gene Ingram. My current 'favorite' may well be one of Rick Menefee's Little Dumpling knives. It excels at everything.
Through the years, I have come to favor a good stainless steel over carbon steel knives. S30V and CM 154 have proved to be very good.
My animal processing knives always ride in the day pack, never on my belt. When I am hunting, I carry a sturdy camp style knife as a belt knife, for those tasks you run into other than cutting hide and meat.

Miles,
You must have some exceptional VG10 and really poor D2...

My favorite hunting knife is a Winston #43. I've tried many and keep coming back to some variation of a 43. This is the knife I actually carry in the woods and field dress whitetails with. It could be used for skinning/quartering, but I haven't tried it yet. I do have a Winston #92 I'll be trying this year to breakdown the animal once it's hanging, but in the past a Bark River drop point gunny has been my favorite to complete the skinning task. Once it's quartered, I use 3 different forshner boning knives to debone and cut up my meat.

I make no bones about it, I believe that all the VG-10 I have IS really exceptional knife steel. I only have half a dozen D2 blades as opposed to twenty give or take VG-10. All of the D2 is by different makers. The bulk of the VG-10 came after the D2. I got my first D2 back when I was in high school. The best D2 I own was made by Dale Atkerson and hardened/tempered by Rick Menefee from what Dale told me. It's a brute of a knife, and I wouldn't hesitate to use it to chop down a red oak and expect it to come out undamaged and still sharp. But...as far as staying sharp through a lot of cutting and ease of sharpening, neither it nor any other D2 I have or have had is all that close. I do have one VG-10 that while it is a nice cutter, it is actually more on the level of D2, and not comparable to the rest of my D2. I have one VG-10 that will hold an edge as well as the rest of them, but it is a bitch to sharpen, I think due to blade design.

This is my opinion. It is based on hands on working with 7 or 8 steels starting from scratch (from the mill) and going to completion plus a variety of production blades (steels) over the last 25 years or so.

Given comparable 1- geometry, 2- heat treatment and 3- sharpening it is very difficult for a user to be able to definitively tell the difference
in actual hands on use of the MANY good steels being used out there.

When you do find that one special knife, it is something special to you. Kinda like finding a wife. There are a million other ones out there
that if they had come along first would have been THE number one, but.......

As we know, this discussion started around the campfire about a hundred thousand years ago and is good for another million.

Tim

Yeah, geometry matched to steel matching sharpening to the job are really important. The D2 brute that Dale made for me sharpened like the VG-10 blades wouldn't work near so good as it does. Nor would the VG-10 blades be at their best sharpened like the D2.

I would say though that the difference in geometry with a knife set up like most VG-10 for slicing work does have a tendency to stand out enough to notice. I can make some of my knives slice like VG-10 by sharpening them to a very steep angle like the VG-10 blades but I do not own any alternate steels that will not lose that edge much faster because they shouldn't be sharpened to that steep an angle. I'd like to try some S30, S90 and S110 though, just waiting to find the right blade to try them with.

Don't know much about a specific knife for deer but friend of mine doing bow hunting with a group, always carry in his backpack a set https://goo.gl/zeZ33N of course in a bag (not the plastic case! )

I hate carrying a fixed blade knife on my belt when hunting and I don't wear a pack so I prefer to just stick a folder in my pocket. I've got Buck 110's and 112's, Uncle Henry bear paws, etc. and while they work fine are a bit bulky and heavy. The ones I use the most nowdays are an old Puma 970 Game Warden and an old nylon handled Parker. Both are a bunch lighter and thinner than the Bucks and schrades and I can have the guts out of a deer in about 2 minutes with either.

I've never tried any other technique than the "conventional", field dress and drag down to the house. Usually about a 150 to 500 yard drag. By "conventional", I mean no hacking on the pelvis or ribs, which would leave it open to all the debris from the drag, not to mention the awkward flopping around of the legs during the drag. Nor do I quarter and bone in the field. I do my skinning and butchering at the house.

I've experimented with at least a dozen different knives. I always come back to my Buck (103) Skinner that I bought when I was in my mid to late teens, my first "real" hunting knife. It just feels right to me. It isn't the optimum for coring the anus, I use something longer and skinnier for that, but other than that.. it's perfect for me. Yeah, given my druthers, it would be nice if it were made out of a more exotic steel, say S30V or something, and I greatly admire a pretty ironwood handle, but it would have to be shaped exactly the same.

Mostly, I use a Case Trapper or a 110 to gut, skin, and quarter deer. Then a Dexter boning or some kind of fillet knife to cut meat off bones, trim silverskin away, and get the cuts ready for the freezer and grinder

I hunt several miles back in blocks of rough, steep heavily timbered public ground that run into hundreds of thousands of acres. I gutless quarter and debone in the field and sack 'em up in game bags, strap on a frame pack and hike the meat out to a cooler in the bed of the truck. The meat gets iced down and later pulled out and I cut my steaks, backstraps, roast and for ground meat, sausage ect. It then gets vacuum packing for the freezer. I like knives and I like to use my gear. Knives from Ingram, Dowell, Menefee and Dozier have gotten the bulk of the work for the last decade. I have knives for the deboning and quartering in the field and others for the actual butchering and processing at home.

I guess I'm just a knife slut.



I don't skin all that many deer these days.

But I do skin a hog now and then.

Where to start?



Dale Howe "Buffalo Skinner, 3V steel, rams horn scales.

Lotsa belly, and a good rough surface on the horn. But then I don't push much with a skinner. Mainly pull.




this skinner from Dale Atkerson, "Slaughterville Knives" with D2 steel and micarta scales is amazing in the hand. Prolly as sweet as any I own.




A drop point hunter by Mike Williams, leaf pattern damascus and amber dyed stag will do the job with aplomb!




a magical semi-skinner in A2 by Ricky Bob Menefee. I've skinned near a dozen hoglets and haven't had to touch the blade up yet!




Todd Theyn makes an awesome Nessmuk inspired skinner from L6 steel. Buffalo horn scales. A bigger knife that I normally use, but it will cut a hogs head clean off.



Got a half dozen Doziers in D2. The do the job nicely!

and last but not least, a special set from Gene Ingram. Nessmuk, A2, desert Ironwood scales......





I've become inordinately fond of the way this bigger knife works!


ya!


GWB

I don't really have a favorite. Don't really have that many knives though.

I love the little Moki Banff. It is a bit small though. Another favorite is a Howe I gave my nephew.

I like VG-10 and cm154 over sv30.

The softer carbon kitchen knives are great simply because they are so easy to maintain an edge on. Cut a ton of fish with a Dexter Russel Sani butcher knife. Far prefer it to a fillet knife for salmon. The little Victorinox paring knives are great.

Lots of great blades out there.

My deer knife has changed a bunch since moving from Idaho to South Dakota. Nearly all my Idaho deer, and elk, where boned out since they were backpacked out. Dragging wasn't an option and I only ever quartered one of my 14 elk and lord only knows how many others I helped cut up and carried out. My Ingram #7 has seen the most duty but then my Tim Olt blade been worked hard; early on always found me with a Kershaw Elk Spring which is on it's third blade. When hunting miles back in I carried an ultra light, sub 3 ounce, D2 blade Tim Olt provided. It doesn't take that much longer to bone out a deer with a 2 5/8 blade and cutting ounces increased my time a field.

In South Dakota we get to shoot numerous deer per year and just about anywhere is close to a road and relative, to Idaho, flat. I've since stepped up to a 5" fixed blade and cut all the way through the sternum to grab the larynx. This is faster, safer, and easier than reaching in. My big blade, an inexpensive Polish made D2, makes splitting the pelvis simple. I don't bother to butcher my own deer, I take them to a shop down the road that does a better job than me. Never enjoyed cutting up game - now if I can only find someone to clean my fish.

I've never carried a sheath knife on my belt after learning they always bang against my rifle. I never hunt without a backpack and have numerous packs for various hunts, hunting knife is in the pack and a folder in my pocket.

O hell GWB I don't know if it would be more fun to visit you in Texas killing pigs or handling all those gorgeous knives. Will say you have great taste in blades.