Is there such thing as a Skinning Axe?

plus 1 on not needing much blade to skin deer, though certain other animals require a lot of cutting

Since I've been making hatchets (about 20) for about a year now I'll throw in an idea... if you intend to choke up on it and use it like a knife, it needs a sort of comfy handle all the way up. That means no thin sections, like on most hatchets cut from plate, and no overly wide sections, like on traditional wood handled hatchets. Learned this while making my first bow-drill fires, making all parts with my hatchet, and slicing my steak, and making a spoon, and a bowl....
 
12-9-5.jpg


I have used one of these for skinning, chopping chicken wings, dicing veggies, etc.
 
You don't need a knife to remove a hide from a kill. I've skinned dozens of deer by making my initial cuts with a flint chip and then using my hands as wedges to move quickly through the connective membrane between muscle and dermis.

In biology class we were taught "blunt dissection". That was to use the tips of a closed scissors to break the membrane between the meat and the dermis, very quickly removing the skin from the carcass. Since then I have NEVER used a knife to clean game, for any purpose. For small stuff I use my shears to break the skin, then fingers to do the skinning (usually but not always latex gloved) and for bigger stuff, coyotes and bigger, I utilize scissors for all of it. I carry a pair of commercial poultry shears for the entire skinning/cleaning process and have never even carried a knife for this purpose. If a large bone needs cutting I use a bonesaw. Otherwise the poultry shears do the job admirably.

The list includes scores of mammals, literally hundreds of waterfowl and perhaps a thousand (maybe a few more?) doves and pigeons. Not one knife. Sorry guys!

Can't wait to get my first elk this winter. Love to see the face of the guide when I do this.

Maybe I need to get back to work on my S35VN shears with G10 handles. :D
 
When I was young, we had knives that came with interchangeable hatchet blades. It was a leather sheath that held a regular knife and a hatchet blade in a pouch behind it. You pulled down a lever on the butt of the knife to takedown the blade and then inserted the hatchet and snapped the lever back down. Haven't seen one in quite some time, but if I were asked to make a skinning hatchet, I think that's what I'd do.


Scroll part way down, and you'll see vintage ones:
http://www.jaysknives.com/westernknives_1.htm
 
Back
Top