A knife is a tool, and you must choose the correct one for each specific job. While you can dig a hole with a spoon, a shovel works a lot better, and the same goes with knives. Posted on 09/03/2020 8:39:58 AM PDT by w1n1
A knife is a tool, and you must choose the correct one for each specific job. While you can dig a hole with a spoon, a shovel works a lot better, and the same goes with knives.
Also, I don't jump out of helicopters with a tactical knife clenched in my teeth to cut off the heads of the bad guys. I just like to hunt and fish, and gut, skin and cut up what I kill, so my advice comes from that perspective.
- Just because you skinned your first bear with a certain knife doesn’t automatically mean that it is the best skinning knife. In fact, it may not even be a good skinning knife. It just means that it has some sentimental value.
Years ago, the Idaho Press Tribune ran a photo of a 12-year-old boy who had just shot his first deer with an old Winchester .30-30. Beside him in the photo were his dad and granddad, who’d shot their first deer with the same rifle. Do you think you could ever convince that kid that a .30-30 isn’t the best deer rifle?
So if your favorite uncle – the one who taught you how to hunt – entrusted you with his knife on his deathbed, then carry it and be happy. Who cares what I say? Just don’t try to tell me that it is the best design for every task.
Hunters can justify carrying four different knives. These are: a clip point to cut the pattern (the initial cut when skinning), a drop-point knife to skin, a caping knife to skin around the eyes, ears and lips, as well as the feet of bears, and a boning knife to bone out your game.
Do I always carry all four? No. When I’m hunting hard in the mountains, I usually only carry two: a knife to skin my animal and a boning knife. I’ve skinned more than a hundred deer with a clip-point knife, because it’s a versatile choice. However, if you want to keep the hide or mount the head, it’s best if you use a drop point. Read the rest of hunting knives.
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No surprise there. It’s AM Shooting Journal. The article was plagiarized from somewhere.
Or you can pay the butcher to skin, cut and vacuum pack.
I try to own as many as possible, i am covered.
I always wanted one of those Predator (movie) knives/short swords.
This would be a reasonably timely article if I trusted ASJ.
Considering trying to get my first deer this season. Never hunted before, but we have 30 acres and I have a reasonably good chance of being able to take one on our property - more if I start baiting (which is legal here in WV).
Anyhow, pretty sure finding and shooting the deer will be the easy part. The hard part is going to be field dressing, then extracting the carcass mostly on my own. Have a side-by-side with a small winch. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
I just ordered a Morakniv Companion for the field dressing. Fixed blade, orange handle (so I don’t lose it). Recommended on various forums.
Just curious if that’s a good choice. It was reasonably inexpensive.
I’m building an old Savage 325 30-30 that was my late father’s, although he never used it for anything but occasional plinking. Putting on a Nikon 3-9x40 scope, bedding the action and floating the barrel. Should be more than adequate for the ranges I’m looking at once I get the scope dialed in. Our acreage is a bowl-shaped half of a holler with several creek depressions leading to a gully so I’m not going to be taking any long-range shots, but I may have to drag the carcass out of a steep ravine if it bolts before it falls.
Been reading about how best to process the deer afterwards. Kind of overwhelming and plenty of conflicting opinions about the aging and butchering.
Guns and hunting can be far more complicated than it would first appear to an outsider.
I've always just used a 3 - 4 inch drop-point hunting knife for field dressing & skinning; sometimes a buck folder or Mora Clipper. Chef's knife for butchering.
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Morakniv was a great choice.
Field dressing is pretty easy. Just take the insides and put them on the outside!
Good luck with your hunt.
“Have a side-by-side with a small winch. Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
The ‘side by side’ can be your best tool when it comes to field dressing your deer.
I’m disabled and use a Kawasaki Mule for hunting, and I field dress the deer after I crank them into the bed with a ‘come-a-long’. This way you can gut them out standing up and the guts will just roll out on the ground.
Connect the ‘come-a-long’ to the rollover bar, tip the bed of the mule down, and crank the deer right up in the bed of the mule. Lock the bed of the mule and you are ready to gut the deer easier than you ever thought possible.
Once the guts are cut loose you tip the mule bed back down and the guts just roll out on the ground.
Lock the bed back up and drive back to the house. Tip the bed again a wash the inside of the deer with the hose.
Lock the bed and saw the hind legs off behind the gambrel and split the hide on the inside of the hams.
Back into the barn and put a gambrel hook on the hams and crank the deer up using a chain fall or the come-a-long you used before.
Then if the weather is cool enough, you can let the deer age with the hide on for 2 days to 2 weeks.
ALWAYS keep the hide on when you are aging. It will keep the deer cool if the temps come up a little midday, and it will keep the deer from freezing if it gets really cold.
I keep one of these deer dressing kits in the trunk of my mule, along with the come-a-long.
They work pretty good and have everything you need in one kit.
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