I spent my earliest years in Tennessee, and "toad sticker" was a common term used for knives. Most knives I encountered at that young age were standard pocket knives, but "pig sticker" was another term I heard sometimes. I think toad sticker was intended to have a somewhat humorous tone, but sticking pigs with larger fixed blade knives to bleed them out when preparing to dress them was a common practice, as it still is in many, if not most, cases today. One of my earliest memories was watching with great fascination as three grown men struggled to load a very large hog into the back of one of the little pickup trucks in use then. It was maybe a mid '40s to 1950 vintage, and the hog would barely fit into it. They had boards on the side of the truck's bed and a ramp leading up into it. During the struggle one of the men was bitten on his hand and, after binding his bloodied hand with his handkerchief, he grabbed his Winchester and had to be restrained by the other two men so he wouldn't blow the hog's brains out right then and there. That hog was lucky to live long enough to go for a truck ride. I'm sure he met a pig sticker shortly, though.
