Short little report from the field:
I know knives have a lot of different uses, for me they are used in the roles of jack-of-all-trades, backpacking; wood gathering chopper; and short bladed animal processors. In previous posts I praised the S5 as the ultimate do-it-all pack knife and it remains THE knife in that realm. So far, nothing I have ever used touches the greatness of my old Battle Rat for camp chopper, but for some reason, I have been on a considerable search for the ultimate game knife.

This last weekend, some work, but more importantly, Divine Providence came together and afforded me the opportunity to use a few of my scrapyards on my first Colorado mule deer buck taken with the bow. While I have used the SS4 a time or two already on Pronghorn, I (fairly) recently acquired my ScrapMuk in a trade and have been itching to try it out as a skinner. Straight and to the point, the Muk is, without exception, the most efficient cutting tool I own for this kind of work. While the SS4 did “ok” there was simply no comparison when it came to edge holding. Not only did the Muk quarter the whole animal (I use a “gutless” method that does not require anything more than a stout fixed blade) but it also processed it when we got home…and was still arm hair shaving sharp afterwards (this is quite a feat considering the amount of “winter gristle” that we had to cut through).

Anyway, when I first saw the Muk, I was a bit underwhelmed by the unsharpened “un-choil” area. But I have to say that this was not at all a negative for this blade, in fact I think that it aided in the specified task. One thing that I have always had a hard time with my Howling Rat is that big choil that seemed to be a magnet for hanging up on the carcass as I skinned and then, on the meat as we processed the animal. No such issue at all with the Muk, just smooth sailing all the way through! I’ll stop it here but just to say “thanks” for such a great, “user” blade!

The Muk, paired with a SY 154 CM thinner/smaller (3 in or so), pointier (bird dog/wiener dog), choil-less blade would be the ultimate game processing combo. I would think they would sell like wildfire, but I guess Dan and crew have their hands full at the moment. Anyway, thanks again to SY and for Andy Wayne for trading me blades! (Anyone want a used HR? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> )