What Makes A Good "Deer Knife"?

J. Hoffman said:
Ask 10 hunters and you will get 12 different answers. The thing I hear the most is that what most people consider a good hunting knife are much too big for many.
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Being around hunters and hunting ranches for a good portion of my life, I'd have to agree. One of the most consummate hunters I know uses an LT Wright "Lil Muk" that is about 5.5" in OVERALL length.

I know a lotta' folks use the Buck 119, and I gotta' hand it to 'em. In my humble opinion, that's a big ol' piece of equipment for hunting.

Alas, everyone is different. As we've seen here, about a million times, just ask what folks prefer for camping/hiking, and you'll get about a million different answers. (*I actually kind of enjoy all the variations and corresponding skillsets)
 
Whenever I have to butcher a slaughter or (long long ago) a kill, the hardest part is still cutting cleanly around the anus and then proceeding to split the belly. A blade less than 6 inches long and 1 1/4 inch wide. Any tougher task like parting big joints or splitting the spine, a clean hatchet does it.
 
Green River blade called the "Sheath" knife. It's quite thin.




And


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Opinel "Slim" No 8 fillet knife. Also thin but in both thickness and width for the more delicate areas.

Just what a friend who hunts settled on and has used for years.
 
J. Hoffman said:
The thing I hear the most is that what most people consider a good hunting knife are much too big for many.
Click to expand...

I see it all the time on Reddit and from newbs, for whatever reason an awful lot of people think a "hunting knife" needs to be big, scary, and look like a medieval sidearm. Hell, even Nessmuck and Kephart opined about how silly it was for people to bring Bowie knives to the woods thinking they were good camping/hunting knives. I guess to these people, a "hunting knife" is a knife you use to hunt with in lieu of a rifle?

Anyway, for my money, I like something 3-6 inches long. I think 3 is just a touch too short, and 6 is just a touch too long, but both are very serviceable. Clip or drop point for me, fixed for folding doesn't matter. Not much more than about 1 or 1.5 inches tall from edge to spine, and just sturdy enough to split a sternum.

I've used a lot of different knives to clean deer and antelope, but I keep coming back to a classic Buck 110 or a drop point 110. I once used a Cold Steel SRK and found it did a lovely job. These days I'm actually apt to have a trapper pattern with me and use the spey blade to open up the belly. A full sized trapper will do the whole job pretty well IMO if you don't intend to split the sternum.
 
This Mossy Oak Pro Hunter Gut Hook Knife will likely yield the best results because a gut hook knife is always the ideal tool to use when skinning a huge game. spam link removed by staff
 
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I bow-hunted whitetail for many years, and was blessed to keep the freezer full.

I wholeheartedly agree that bigger isn’t better - to the contrary, anybody who has actually field-dressed a deer will likely tell you that too large of a knife is a hindrance. You need to be able to comfortably work in the abdominal cavity of the animal, without worrying about poking organs that will spoil the meat.

Not to get into my spiritual views on bowhunting, but if a beautiful animal like a whitetail deer is going to be harvested to nourish my family, I owe it the utmost respect. Part of that is to practice incessantly with my bow, and ensure that I take ethical / humane shots. Another part is to track, recover, and dress the deer expertly.

I have a Gerber 3-piece field dressing kit that I always carried in my pack. It consists of a knife, a bone saw, and a two-finger hook (maybe called an “EZ Zip”?). I only used the knife and saw. The knife is a Gerber Gator G-6079, which is a 3.75” partially-serrated clip-point 420HC folder. The handle is glass-filled nylon, covered in a rubberized material, which makes it easy to grip when wet. For me, that is the perfect tool for the job, and it dressed a lot of deer. It wasn’t some custom piece that I needed to fret over. When I was done in the field, I rinsed it off with a jug of water, and tossed it in a bucket - with the saw - until it got home for a proper cleaning.
 
A bud of mine uses his Case Canoe when he has nothing else to field dress deer. This is his Case, given to him around 1964, he had field dressed a deer the week before, and had not cleaned it!

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If anything, this proves you don't need a big, honking knife to field dress a deer. Caveman probably did it with a flint shard.


I gave him two knives and asked him his opinion on them. A gave him a Grohman Canadian belt knife, (on top) and the bottom knife, a #4 Survival with a 5.5 inch blade.


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He preferred the Canadian belt knife. It was smaller and did not get into the way.

When I have skinned deer, this pattern is great. Wide, thin, great curvature, and keeps my hand away from the hide.

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Recently purchased one of these at Cabelas.

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This is a Buck Vanguard with rosewood handle and S30V steel. Blade is 4.25 inches. It feels good in the hand, I like drop points as I am less likely to stick myself. The regular Buck Vanguard is 420HC, and is a very good design for a store purchased knife. I do prefer fixed blade knives as I hate having to clean out the blood, hair, guts, that get inside a folding knife. There is no doubt a folding knife is more compact, and that is an advantage.

I did field dress a deer with a Camillus Yellow Jacket dual locking trapper, Model 716. It worked, but I would rather have had longer blades and a fixed blade knife to split the pelvis.

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