Widely Practiced Hunting Knives and their Uses

When you go out to hunt, then apart from carrying a decent crossbow or an effective firearm, you need to be well equipped with a good hunting knife as well. Hunting knives come in various types and designs and for a beginner, it might prove to be quite difficult to choose a hunting knife to accompany him/her on the next hunting excursion. Also, a hunter’s accessories are incomplete without a hunting knife in it. Of course, after you hunt, you need some tool to help you prepare the meal out of it and that is where hunting knives come in. Let us take a closer look at the hunting knives.
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What are hunting knives?

A hunting knife is a very essential tool to be used during a hunting trip. Hunting knives are the most prized possessions of the hunters. Hunting knives are used during hunting and that is when the food is to be prepared, however, they are not used to actually kill the animals and hunt them down. Hunting knives usually feature single edge blades, unlike daggers which have blades having double edges. However, hunting knives with a single edge are more effective for hunting than daggers with double edge blades can ever be.

Hunting knives are very efficient and effective and execute all the tasks of hunting very smoothly and easily. Also, most of the hunting knives have blades that have a curve in them. Also, there are hunting knives that come with both straight and curved portions in their blades so that the curved one can be used for skinning the animal and the straight one can be used for slicing and cutting the meat. There are so many types of hunting knives and some even have a gut hook at the end of the blade that serves an entirely different purpose during hunting.

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A hunting knife is used to perform a lot of tasks. You can skin an animal from it i.e. you can perform skinning, you can do butchering, you can cut and slice the meat, you can clean the meat. Hunting knives are also used for gutting, deboning and caping. Let us have a detailed look at the uses of hunting knives.

The Uses of Hunting Knives

There are so many uses of hunting knives. Hunting knives assist a hunter at each and every step of hunting. Let us have a look at them.

1- Cutting and Slicing

A hunting knife is used to cut and slice the meat as well. These ones are those which come with straight blades. Their blades are single edged and are very sharp as well which assists in cutting and slicing the meat efficiently and nicely.

2- Skinning 

Do you know what skinning means? Skinning means taking off the skin of the animal you hunt. Therefore, it needs to be done with a very special type of hunting knife known as a skinning knife. A skinning knife is a very important and useful knife among all hunting knives? You cannot perform skinning with a regular knife as it will just ruin your hunt and will waste it. A skinning knife is usually short and its blade has a wide area of cross-section to facilitate in skinning. It is also hard and is not flexible at all. The hunters are very much aware and understand this fundamental task of skinning an animal.

Skinning is also the hardest errand on the hunting field. The individuals who do hunting regulary or from time to time must realize how difficult skinning an animal proves to be. Skinning an animal is never possible with a flexible blade and even with a blade that is not sharp enough. Typical and regular kitchen blades are unequipped for cleaning the wild creatures. A hunting skinning blade can undoubtedly slice through the skin of the creature without tearing the stomach issues and muscles. The skinning hunting knives are short, wide and very strong which makes them perfect for skinning an animal.

3- Butchering

Now you must know how important this step is as well. Hunting knives are used to butcher the animal as well. Butchering an animal means that you need to cut the meat into pieces so that you can prepare the food out of it. We are well aware of the fact that there are bones in the meat as well. So, of course, we need a big and sharp knife in order to do the butchering. And of course the knife should we strong and very durable as well.

4- Gutting

Gutting is also an important phase of hunting. Now you don’t know what gutting is? Gutting is the process of taking out the organs of the animal so that the meat can be preserved and used for eating purposes. Also, if you have a deer as your hunt, the gutting is the first process that needs to be done after skinning it. Also, a Gutting knife is highly distinguishable from other hunting knives. All hunting blades are not similar in designs and characteristics although they may belong to the same family. The hunting knives that are used for gutting have gut hooks on the tip of their blades. These gut hook sections allow the hunter to smoothly and efficiently take out the organs of the animal so that it can be preserved easily. Also, some of the  hunting knives that used for gutting have thick blades and some have thin blades.

5- Deboning

Deboning is a very important use of hunting knives as well. You need to take off the animal’s skin, perform the caping, butcher him but how to do butchering without deboning it first? So, a deboning knife is usually a knife having a thin blade and a sharp edge. Simple regular knives can never perform such tasks and will only prove to be a hassle. So, always use a hunting knife for deboning the meat of an animal.