If you can dress/skin a deer with a DF your skill with a knife is far beyond mine. For skinning I would prefer a not too wide 3"-4" blade on a deer size animal.

My bias in blade size seems similar to Jerry's: a 5.5" - 6" bladed knife is about the perfect "you only want to carry one knife" size. 6" is a decent size for camp chores and could be pressed into service for dressing game though it wouldn't be optimum for skinning. Both the (old?) SH and the Camp Tramp blades are slightly large (7.5"?) for that single all-arounder..again IMO.

I wish I had been enlightened to SYK sooner so I could have purchased a S6. The upcoming BATAC should be pretty close to my perfect all-arounder.