# KNIVES FOR HUNTING



## black bear84 (Jan 28, 2005)

KNIVES FOR HUNTING

Many of us hunters of long have a love affair with the tool of a successful hunt; the knife.
In our minds, we have this idea of the perfect knife that will fit our hand like a glove; that will perform surgery like a scalpel; that will not need to be sharpened ever, and will remove a cape as well as field dress and skin anything from a deer to a moose.

In our search for the perfect blade, we accumulate many of them that are probably as good as the best knife ever made, but in our search for Nirvana we keep adding new blades and hoping to do enough hunting to test all of them on game.

On the other hand, some hunters are not interested at all in the tool. My friend Frank that has probably field dressed at least fifty deer with the same Buck hunter knife in the last 20 years removes it from the pack once every year in hunting season to field dress a deer or two, and the blade goes back into the same pack to wait for next year's job.
Perhaps his father being a butcher has something to do with it. He was taught how to field dress a deer early in life, and to him it is just a necessary job that has to be performed. To others like me it is a culmination of all our efforts and should be done as elegantly and as clean and bloodless as possible and with the most effective of tools.

I have found in my long search for the perfect blade that many of today's knives in the market qualify as superb blades for the job. A good knife blade of 3 ½ to 4 inches will be plenty for most chores. Preferences in my case are for the drop-point blades, but I have had good service from clip points or other shapes.

Some of us like a fancy wood or antler handle or perhaps some engraving on the blade. Those I label dress knives and are a great way to stir a conversation between fellow hunters. I am one with that type of taste and will always appear at camp with a fancy blade. The truth is that I perform all of my field dressings with a plain one that I keep hidden in my pack.

Here is one of my fancy blades, the Browning model 122 one of one thousand, and the one that does the actual field dressing, a Buck 192 Vanguard.










Best wishes

Black Bear


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## NDTerminator (Aug 20, 2003)

From when I first learned of Randall knives back in the 70's, I coveted one. My wife had this beautiful Model 8 made for me and gave it to me for Father's Day last year. It's perfect. She even had the RH shealth replaced with a LH for me.

During the 06' season, it worked on several deer and a 340 class 6 point elk...










Here's my #2 favorite. It's a Hattori HA-6, made by Ichiro Hattori. Hattori knives are roughly Japan's equivalent of a Randall (if you saw the Kill Bill movies, Hattori made the swords used in them). The top picture is how it came out of the box, the lower is after I had it customized by Sunrize River Custom Knives. I had the stacked washer grip replaced with black canvas micarta sanded to 120 grit and shaped to my specs, the finger guard re-shaped, and a left hand buffalo hide sheath made for it.

The Hattori permanently resides on my 44 magnum's gunbelt...


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## Horsager (Aug 31, 2006)

I also use the same 192 Vanguard, they work quite well. I also really like the Schrade/Uncle Henry LB-7 and the Gerber Gator for folders.


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## markHOYT311 (Jul 10, 2007)

buck knifes!!!! all the way....the pathfinder great for gutting and just about anything you need to cut and the skinner works great i use both 2 of the best knifes i have ever bought!


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

The type of steel is perhaps more important that the shape of a knife. I do not like a blade over 3 ½ inches for working on a deer. There is to much leverage working against you when you get the tip of a five inch blade hung up in ribs. 
Randall makes a great fighting knife and they and Gerber were very popular with soldiers. At that same time nothing surpassed Morseth for the quality of steel. If you remember the old Buck trademark it was a knife being hammered through a bolt. When Morseth first came out their catalogue was a picture of a Morseth being hammered through a Buck knife. 
For years factories gave us the very poor stainless 420 steel. Boiling water nearly took the temper out. Then the miracle steel 440 came out, but it wasn't much better. Not to long ago the large factory types noticed a lot of business going to companies like Benchmade. People were looking for better steel. For a long time D2 was used by custom knife makers, but the market really opened up with ATS-34 and Benchmade and Spyderco along with many others still use that steel. 
For a short while Damascus steel was the rage, but it wasn't anything that history claimed it was. The greatest improvement in edge holding capability came with CPM 440V. The was Crucible Particle Metallurgy, and it allowed more vanadium to be added to the steel without separation. With ATS-34 the average Rockwell Hardness jumped from 57 in the old Buck knives to 60 to 61. With the introduction of CPM 440V 62 Rockwell was not uncommon. Now a new super steel has come out called ZDP-189 and the Rockwell hardness is 67. Plan on buying diamond hones if you buy a blade of ZDP-189. Don't bother taking sharpening utensils into the field with you. A knife made of this will go through five or six deer and perhaps still shave. I received one for a retirement present and have not sharpened it since January. I would guess in another year or two I will have to sharpen it again. 
Now if the broadhead manufacturers would start putting out some good steel. The G5 in ATS-34 would be astounding.


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