The Choke Knife (or uluit)

The first.

WARNING: Always use a sharp edge in a controlled slicing motion. Do not push the tool directly into the object you want cut which is being held by your oopposing hand. Be very careful with all cutting tools. Know and keep contole of the edge AT ALL TIMES; never loose respect for a cutting potential.

Also - ALWAYS use a wood chop block, without glues. NO glass. NO plastic. Plastic in large amounts will get into your food while chopping if you do. Use 2x10 (or as wide as possible) hardware lumber - 20 inches long will work great - or harvest a nice split log of your own - it will last forever.

The following article will advocate for the use of a tool that makes drying and butchering game simple.

Likely the first cutting tool was a sharp rock that would fit into the palm of a hand - the hand,  as a result, would have been located over the edge.

The ulu or uluit was a tool which in the past could have been made of stone or copper and was often used by the Inuit for cutting meat. The design was accurate and would be if meat from large animals was for the most part all you had to process and to do it in challenging environmental conditions. 

My experienced position is that in a choice between a conventional knife design and the ulu, the ulu is a no brainer choice for all meat processing tasks.

Tp make one, I cut a pie piece from the total skill saw blade, about a 1/3 of the circle, cut off the teeth, remove disc paint, bevel, and rivet a handle on.

The steel used in most saw blades coupled with the inherent structural design and antler as handle material, will result in a tool that can handle heavy torquing and maintain an edge in the hands of a skilled user.

A typical knife is not an optimal downward cutting tool. The knife is a tool which is optimally designed for thrusting, poking, and ease of carry and unsheathing . 

In a choke knife, the handle position gives it ideal control and pressure right over all of the edge, thus, ease of both precise, prolonged, cutting, and heavy "axe" like chopping. Given that the full length of the edge is also at distance from the hand, it keeps the iteims cut clear of the hand and little edge is wasted before a rehone is nessissary.

Axes (or other choppers like machetes and cleavers) are NOT good butcher tools unless used correctly (making strikes to the back of the head (or spine) while the blade is guided in the desired direction in a controlled way). These chopper tools are very dangerous when tempted into a swing, and they are messy. 

If you have butchered with any blade, 3-6" , you will at some point hold the blade on the spine for  efficiency - holding a conventional knife at the handle requires the movement of your whole arm; but with the choke knife and the handle positioned over the edge, it requires only the flick of your wrist and this also makes it easy to apply downward pressure to a dulling blade.

Most experienced hunters, may  generally end up with a 3" knife blade which is excellent for pulling apart quarters, but not at all efficient for field preserved drying or detailed butchering.  Inexperienced knife users will find that when they get out there, the design of a typical knife - the "heavy" knives of today in particular - make it such that control and leverage pressure is rapidly lost the further away the cut is from the handle; and hence, the 3" knife.

A standard knife design does have its advantages over the CK afield; they provide a dispatching function for wounded animals and can also make the clean initial cuts to the hide; these tasks the choke knife fails at. Regular knives can also batton wood and tough animal sections such as the sternum, neck base and ribs; for these reasons, the standard EDC size knife is an essential pair to a choke knife.

With the choke knife, you wont have to sacrifice inches of sharp edge to take advantage of the "long blade" - the round blade makes it such that you can put a huge amount of force into every inch of the blade, on a modestly sized tool, without focusing too much force on your index finger or using both hands; this is especially helpful when the edge starts to loses its keen, you neglected to sharpen it, and/or the object is freezing, hard and/or dense like soft bone.

9" of edge, though 6" is quite adequate and has its equal share of advantages

What I have used are old circular/skill saw blades. Opt for thin to save time in sharpening and energy to cary. For a handle, I use antler for the unique, structural properties of the material as compared to wood; it is dense and tough, wont split easily, natural, and easy to work with simple hand tools.

Dremel tool or angle grind with a diamond disc a crevasse into the antler handle and fit the pie tip of the steel into it. If antler is used, as wood will likely fail while in use, you can use the angle grinder to grind a crevice/hook in the side of the blade blank to eventually run the nail rivet through as opposed to drilling a hole as I found punching a hole in the metal with a hand held drill difficult and broke bitts.

Food and other debris can get stuck in cracks and between natural antler lumps,  harboring (and spreading)  bad bacteria so grind these down to make a smoothish surface for the grip.

I use iron nails for bolsters or a wire coat hanger bit for a les robust tool but still effective. Get a length of rivet material and cut both ends so you have a piece just long enough to poke out on both sides of the antler. Slide the rivet through the hole with the blade in the proper position of the handle material and hammer down both ends to mushroom or "peen".Make sure the antler is clear and rounded where the rivet will poke though so when hammering to peen them you will only be striking the iron.

With the edge beveled on only one side, it becomes easy to get the hang of sharpening with time. The inherent curvature of the edge make it easy to grind the whole length of the blade.

If you are working in a concereat floored room, putling a sliceing edge back on is as simple as skating the floor lightly.

The key to using a sharp object is not necessarily having the right stroke on your sharpening stone, but keeping the surface of the stone clean and maintaining the angle. 

 You wont need a saw or axe for large game (though the former can help). The trickiest portions: for ribs, the chest can be split to remove offal which must be done from the get-go; you can use a strong, stout knife for this and batton with the tip in the cavity and strike the back of the knife just front of where your hand holds the knife. 

This is a meat tool.

The lower neck, cut away to the bone just after the final front rib. If you can, slice the joint tissue that connect the neck to the spine, and use the head and neck to snap the spine. 

The sternum can be chopped with a ulu, for deer - while chopping hold one rib side and pull it away from the other - keep your other hand well away from the sternum while chopping it! Stop intermittently to pull the two rib portions apart, then continue. One rib cage can be removed from the spine by slicing the connections just to the side of the vesarial spine "hump" on a deer and pushing the ribs sides away from each other - knowing the slice location takes experience. If you don't slow down and check the general locations of the rib to spine connections, you could just crack the rib close to the spine with a hefty object. 

The pelvic structure should be chopped, and leveraged apart on the inner center for deer to remove the colon and bladder - be careful not to burst the bladder while chopping; you can use a strong clean log to strike the back of a conventional (stout) knife or a saw for moose. This is a difficult task for moose, so you may want to just avoid the pelvis split for moose and just carefully cut the leg away from the hip structure. Removing the offal and opening up the two rear legs as just described should be done as soon as possible after death to move the quarters away from each other to dissipate the body heat.

Remember that instead of taking multiple missed whacks at your target with an axe or chopper, making a mess, the ulu can be pushed into the item and the bones and joints slowly maneuvered out of the way.

The choke knife is also effective at degreasing porcupine and bear hides.  When  the hide has been skinned and fleshed the knife can be used in a scraping motion to bursts the fat cells close to the collagen skin (be gentle to not tear the hide or begin to pull hairs through); this scraped oil can be saved and used as a source of calories. 

Think ahead to have a part of the blade that is unobstructed by hand or handle to still "poke".

You dont necessarily need a massive or thick CK, as unlike with knives where bigger has as functional advantage when slicing. 6" works; remember, in the bush pound for pound every calorie is accounted for.

A final important take away is that while using the knife, due to its broad cutting surface, while cutting jerky you want to: make a cut, gently pull the cut away at ninety degrees, and keep the choke knife at roughly forty-five degrees "nicking" the tissue as you move; this seems to be the most effective way to avoid excessive transfer of backteira that may get on your meat.

If you don't have the hands for making your own there are many blade smiths that can be found on Etsy or google to design a unique one for you. Knives of Alaska make a good sized commersal one. 

In conclusion, experience has shown me that on a spectrum of looking at designs more suited for wood working tasks and meat cutting tasks, the ulu would is closer to the animal end.

sheath

hide scraper for dry scraping with c clamp addition (save dry shavings for soup)

For a blade cover I have used a strip of leather with another cloth strip on the inside. Attached to the end of the strip of leather - which is of the shape and sized to cover the whole edge when hugging the blade - is another long strip of leather. Cover the blade with the large strip of leather then use the longer strip to keep it securely covering the edge by wrapping it to the tool. Add the cloth as an additional blade guard. It's quick to make and slow to uncover, but you don't need to be able to quickly expose the blade of a choke knife.

Somehow, when you buy a knife you critique it off the batt for a short period until you buy another... and another - know that the value of a tool is exclusively determined by the hands which are dedicated to holding it. Don't waste steel or a knife. Love the tool until it is gone and used - then get another.