Knives for Deer Carcass Preperation

This month I’m glad to welcome on board our team of staffers Larry Fowles who has agreed to write a regular column on deer hunting and all that it entails. Before we start I have included a brief bio of him so you can see what he’s about. Pete Moore (Editor) Shooting Sports Magazine

Larry Fowles went straight into the meat trade from school as a trainee, then qualified as a slaughterman and worked for four years around the South West in abattoirs both large and small. He also spent two seasons in Norway and contracted for their sheep (and reindeer) cull prior to winter. He left the trade and spent 13-years in the oil industry around the world, during which time he gained an honours degree in History and Philosophy. Returning to the UK he retrained as a Meat Hygiene Inspector, working for 11 years in various facilities from largely automated plants processing 2200 pigs daily down through small abattoirs with a throughput of just a few cattle, sheep and pigs. He was also heavily involved in the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001, providing slaughtering services on farms with a fellow inspector. Now retired from the industry he runs an unrelated business with his wife. Throughout this time he has been an active stalker, holding an FAC for over 30-years. Larry has been the sole stalker on three adjoining estates in Berkshire since 1997. The annual cull is largely fallow, numbering around 70, with 25 roe, 20 muntjac and the occasional fox to placate the small shoot that runs on one Estate!

Personal observations

All stalkers like a good knife. I have numerous, from 6” boning knives through fairly expensive, hand-made 4” fixed blades down to small folders. Get a couple of hunters together and talk is almost as much about blades as calibers and rifles. Though all knives will open a carcass and prepare for the game dealer or freezer, which one is better at the job?

Ask the experts

If you wanted some good tools for car maintenance, I expect most of us would look to a mechanic and ask what they used in Which knife is best for stalking? Tools for the job; you’ve shot your deer, which was the easy bit but what sort of knife are you going to use to prepare it for the table? their workplace. So perhaps it would be useful to ask what equipment is used in abattoirs up and down the country. A knife is constantly in the hand of the slaughter man, butcher and inspector. So it seems likely that these tradesmen could give an insight into what’s right for the job!

Having spent quite some years doing two of the jobs above, the answer may be surprising.

The ubiquitous 15cm (6”) Victorinox, Swibo or Dick (among others) plastic handled boning knifes are almost exclusively used.

They are cheap - around £10 each, less if bought in bulk and are made of relatively soft steel, typically 56 Rockwell hardness. In contrast, a custom or more bespoke knife will have a hardness of 60 or 62 and easily be ten times the price! So what’s going on and why are they so universally used? It cannot be the cost alone, as all tradesmen use the best they reasonably can - ref the references above to mechanics.

Big softy

The key is the softness of the steel. A butcher will need a knife that has some ‘give’; as in it needs to bend a little around bones and joints. The slaughterman, when skinning a beef carcass, also wants this give in the blade to aid separation of the skin to the underlying fat around the contours of the body. The harder, often more expensive blade has no give at all, it is rigid. Take a butchers knife and you will easily bend the tip a few cm each way.

But more than that, a soft blade is easy to sharpen. It may be reasoned that a harder blade will stay sharp for longer, so will not need sharpening so often, which is true. But it is not that simple; as it will also be harder to sharpen. As it starts to lose its edge, it will need to be put on a stone, diamond plate or wheel to regain an edge. The softer steel blade is more plastic, the edge will roll after some use, but can be easily aligned again by a brief steeling. Watch a butcher at work, the steel is used very frequently, and does not interfere with the flow of work.

This may have no impact on the stalker who culls the occasional animal. The longevity of their blade’s sharpness is enough to see them through to the larder and beyond. They may well be very pleased with the feel and balance of their expensive knife, and will sharpen it with care after every successful stalk.

However, cull four deer in a stalk and it is a different story. After the second or perhaps third carcass- 3 heads, 12 feet as well as the soft tissue - that expensive blade, which was razor sharp at the start, starts to dull a little. It cannot be brought back with a few quick strokes on the steel. Another knife may be needed, or a halt in proceedings to clean up and put the hard blade to the diamond plate or stone. This may not be practical at all in the circumstances.

Short and simple

I regularly cull four or five deer of a winter morning, but wouldn’t be without one of my nice 4” knives - I can carry it in a pocket, too. I will, however, do much of the work with a ‘trade’ knife that is in the back of my 4x4! So what to take from this?

This is one example of the tradesman perhaps having different criteria to the occasional user of a knife, who has time between uses to re-sharpen the blade at their leisure. Also, I would say it’s not necessarily the stalker’s poor knife skills that render a knife dull. It may just be that the beautifully honed razor’s edge attained may be too fine for the job in hand, so just isn’t that long lasting without needing a touch up on a stone. A toothier edge on a cheaper knife maintained with a steel could well be better suited for the relatively indelicate work of breaking down a carcass. Think on!