Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Who here uses an axe/hatchet

It depends where and what I am hunting. Deer are quite different than moose. Wilderness is quite different than the back 40. Ideally, I prefer to handle my game meat mostly the same way a butcher would. Hang a carcass, bone in, in a proper cooler for ageing. But can't always do that. With that in mind, sometimes I pack out the whole animal and do the entire processing job back in camp. Works great if you have a tractor w/ frontend loader or ATV and wagon or snowmobile and toboggan. Other situations require other approaches. I like to filed dress and split the pelvis and sternum in the field on most of my animals. Usually don't need to do the bone splitting, it's just what I prefer. I use a small folding saw for that. But I quit using an axe for most bone splitting years ago. I have quite a few scars on my fingers and knuckles from packing out chunks of moose that were carved up with an axe. The axe method results in way too many sharp bone shards eager to shred your skin and gear. I like to have a Gerber switch-blade saw in my pack whenever I'm in wilderness areas. Bone saw for carcasses, wood saw is handy for ... wood. If I'm backpacking or canoe hunting, I just carry a knife. And some meat bags. I break down elk or moose into 8 pieces for packing out in cloth bags, bone in, on a pack frame. In a very special few circumstance I debone in the field. I will always have an axe and a saw in the canoe or snowmobile or truck. And a pack frame. I never split a carcass lengthwise down the backbone. That seems like unnecessary and unproductive work for animals that I'll process myself.

Ive seen a professional butcher who does lots of whitetail claim its best to hang the meat with hide on because it stops the crust from forming on the exteeior of the meat and you dont need to trim as much in loss cutting that crust off. Also i remember hearing that getting water on the meat spoils it or ruins it. Butchers wash them down with as much water hose as necessary to get it clean but then its hung and falls off and isnt allow to stand.

On deer i get all the steaks i can and then can all the rest of the deer. Boy that makes good stew and tacos/burittos.

No i dont use an hatchet on them but the thin blade cheap knives i use with the bushcraftbsaw make short work of anything.

I use neither, and don't know why anyone would.

I carry a Gränsfors Bruk hatchet for taking skull plates off and getting wood together for a warming fire. Breaking branches only works so well, and if they're wet (when a fire is most useful) it is really frustrating to break branches for firewood. The hatchet makes things much easier. Other than the skull plate and banging the handle on elk ivories, I don't use the hatchet for breaking the critter down at all. Just a knife.

The hatchet is extra weight, but less weight than packing a full skull and brains out of the back country. I used to carry a saw for the skull plate, but the hatchet works better for what I need.

Maybe use a small dynamite 🧨 charge??

Blow it apart


I guess it’s how you are taught to butcher an animal. I was taught to use a knife. It looks easier with saws I admit.

I don’t use a hatchet on critters very much, but I am a axe/hatchet slut... text coming

Hanging with the hide on has some advantages but a little whitetail is a lot different than an elk. Even if you can get an unskinned elk back to a cooler, there's the problem of getting it cold enough soon enough. An elk's hide is a fantastic insulator in addition to all that muscle mass.

For about 15 years exclusively. I don’t do gutless and I do love a long handled hatchet

I have a round nosed tomahawk made from a carpenters hatchet. It is great for skinning. I some times use it to pound a knife through the rib cage. It is easier to go through the sternum this way, if I use a knife only usually I end up cutting just the ribs. The neck is cleaner if I disjoint it. In camp I will use either a sawzall or loppers.

I have butchered stuff a hundred different ways watching and learning from many different people.

I have used all kinds of saws including sawsalls and real butcher saws. If I am way back in the back country with out my pack mules or saddle horse...I use the saw in my Leatherman to split the pelvis and ribcage.

If I am near my Jeep, ATV, packmules, or saddle horse...I use a hatchet. I grew up with an old woodsman grandad to whom an axe was just an extension of his hands. An axe or hatchet is quicker and handier and faster clean up for me.

There are many ways to skin a cat and most get the job done. But, as my oldest uncle used to say: “there are more ways to kill a cat than choking it do death on butter.”

Have been thinking about a new saw. That's the one I want to try.

I don't break the pelvis until they are hanging and skinned.
Simple leave the butt alone and pull the guts out.
Grab the colon cut it off outside the deer, now strip the pellets out from as far
In as you feel necessary. Tie a knot in what's left.


Or, bone it in the woods.

There are a lot of ways to take a deer apart. Whatever works well for you is the right way.

Like someone else mentioned, hunting big critters like elk and moose way back in the wilderness is a lot different than shooting a whitetail deer on the flat back 40.

For 20 some years I used my horses to pack a camp back in various Montana wildernesses hunting elk and moose. During that time my horses packed out over 20 elk and 3 moose.

I carry a folding Sanvik saw in my hunting fanny pack, and it is great for splitting a brisket or pelvis but the backbone of a elk or moose is just too big for that little tool. A hatchet or axe, which I have in camp anyway, makes short work of splitting a backbone.

Over the years I've also been fortunate to bring a few elk out whole, or at least cut cross-ways in half where I could drag them out. Then when I get these elk home I've used a sawzall or a chainsaw to quickly and easily split the backbone.

One time a buddy and I went on a day hunt for elk. We met in town where because my truck had a slide in camper on it, I left it in a grocery store parking lot and we went hunting in his truck. We both shot 5x5 bulls that we cut in half side-ways to drag out and could load into the back of his truck.

We got back to town about midnight, and the front half of my bull with the antlers still on wouldn't fit through the door of my camper. So there I was at midnight in the parking lot of the local grocery store, cutting the head off my elk with the double blade axe that I keep in my camper.

I use a small game saw my son gave me a few years ago. I used to use a hatchet but the truth is my aim was never very good with that thing.

I carry an estwing hatchet and a wyoming saw in a bag in the truck. Used the hatchet to cut a couple of buck heads off last weekend. Used the saw to cut the skull off. Used a knife to clean and cut up the deer.
I used to hunt with a guy that hung drywall for a living. He cleaned his deer with his drywall hatchet.never saw him use a knife at all. He used his hatchet like a knife and was proficient with it. He had it very sharp too.

Bacho Laplander - good. Can get you past a downed 6" dia. tree on the roadway if you aren't carrying other tools.

REDUX — Needs Repeating.




Some have the idea that 'their' way is the only OR best way.
No one is inferior because they do things in a different way. Conversely no one is 'better' or smarter because they do it
'their' way.

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Well said. Too many posters think the way they do it is the ONLY way, or the only RIGHT way. Hell I'm about to stop carrying anything and just use sharp rocks at the kill site.

a few weeks back our crew shot 4 bulls, my buddy's sawzall made quick work of splitting and quartering them .

I've used a battery sawzall a number of times on game in camp and at home but I sure don't pack it around with me.