Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What knife do you carry during deer season?

It ain't gonna win any points with knife snobs but Buck does a very nice job with their 440. If you can't get through a deer or a big mess of fish without your Buck knife going dull chances are it is your "honing skills" that are the problem and not the knife. Likely, your honing is creating and leaving a wire edge or burr that is snapping off which is costing you the performance of your knife. If you get a "better" knife, and use the same technique to sharpen it, you won't get all out of that one that you could either.

You're assuming i'm starting with a freshly sharpened knife. I like to sharpen in the field at the kill, so I might already have two animals skinned out when I sharpen it. I know how to sharpen a knife. Been doing it for 60 years.

btw My Buck 110 is a 4 dot 1981 425M steel.

Sure was! I thought you were jumping on the Buck knives are "useless" and have to be sharpened constantly bandwagon. They only do if you don't do it right.

Not at all. I love Buck knives. I enjoy my ritual, and love sharpening at the kill. It reminds me of when I hunted with my dad.

Best to keep an edge and not wait till it's lost. I don't fill up my truck when it's on E either.

Me too! The KOA I pictured above has been an awesome gut zipper. Have never had any trouble with it.

I do. That's when it needs gas.

Most recently I used this knife my KA Swearingen:

(sorry, don't have a close up photo of it)



5160H edge tempered. I have cleaned two deer with it and it still shaves. Needs oil, of course, but it's still very fine.

Nice knife, but tell us about the gun.

Shiloh Sharps #1 Sporter, in .45-90

Absolutely true.

He just needs to learn how to sharpen a knife.

To prove it.....just send it back to Buck for sharpening.

When you get it back you'll be so happy to have an actual SHARP knife.

Good grief! Read my response to that post. I can sharpen a knife as well as anybody.

Then why aren't your knives sharp?

As I suggested previously.....send one in to Buck for a proper sharpening and see how long it STAYS sharp once truly sharpened.

Ok, i'll explain again. I'm sort of old school, and have done things the same for many decades. Instead of starting a hunt with a sharp knife. I just sharpen it when it starts to get a little dull. I've done this since I was a kid, and got used to sharpening my knives in the field. As I mentioned earlier it's a bit of a ritual with me. It's how my dad did it, and I just copied everything he did. As kids will do.
So, I always have a couple of stones with me to touch up an edge. I may have an elk and muley on the knife before I touch it up. Maybe more, maybe less. If I would start off a hunt with a freshly sharpened knife I wouldn't have to sharpen it in the field at all.

Like I said at the start of all this. I like the ritual of sharpening my knives at the kill. Strange for some, but normal for me. It puts a smile on my face, because it always brings back good memories of past hunts. Especially, with my dad who has long passed away.

That's fine.

We all need our traditions and that's healthy.

Dances with Wolves was a great movie i've watched 5 times. Your name reminds of it everytime I see it.

Pretty cool name.

Ain't that the damn truth.

True, but they're cheap, and made in the US. That has to count for something?
Plus,....Buck is a cool name.

Pretty much sums it up. There's a reason hundreds of elk guides use Havalon knives. I saw a guide at a show two years ago who had two Havalons on his table. I asked him what he thought of them, and he said the previous season he wanted to see how far he could go with one blade. He skinned one bison and X elk on one blade. If I told you the number it would strain credulity. He did use a steel to keep the edge up, but it was a pretty impressive feat, nonetheless.

Besides that, think about a guide's priorities. He wants something that works, not something that has "soul" (whatever that is). He wants to take weight off because he's walking miles in rough country with a load of meat on his back. So rather than take two or three knives with "soul," plus tools to resharpen them, he takes a Havalon with a few extra blades. Saves time. Saves energy. Saves money.

When his clients saw him using the Havalon, they all wanted one, so he became a dealer and buys enough to resell to clients. The two he had on his table were what he had left from the previous season.

I carry a Havalon every day. And by the way, the blades are not made in China. They are surgical scalpels, and they are made in India, the same place where the blades are made that your doctor uses to operate on your gut. If that makes a difference to you, I suppose you could ask your doctor to use an American-made knife with soul. Good luck with that.

A couple of incidental facts:
1. I know several doctors who hunt, and all of them use surgical scalpels for field dressing and skinning. So do all the taxidermists I know. They just want something that works.
2. A few other companies have capitalized on the Havalon idea, and are trying to compete against them. But Havalon's parent company, Havels, is a medical supply company and the blade Havalon uses is proprietary. It's better than the standard scalpel blades others use. It's more resistant to breaking and more user-friendly. (The pictured Havalon knife earlier in this thread is not wearing the Havalon proprietary blade.)

Steve.

Found a photo of the Swearingen:



As far as the Havalons, I watched a guy break one cleaning a small whitetail. He was only cutting meat, no abuse, and he was lucky he realized the blade had broken, before it cut him.