OK, so we all talk about how naked we are without your knife. How did you feel when you lost your first knife that was something you really cared about! My first knife I bought that I was just in love with was a 3 blade trapper pocket knife, similar to this one!
The rounded blade or the Spey blade was perfect for walking around a leg. The pointy blade was great for starting an area around the legs, once the cut around the foot had been made the pointy blade or the subtle clip point blade could be used to start the inner part of the skinning job and the warncliff blade was used for any type of a drawing cut!
I still remember it like yesterday, I would have been about 12 years old. It was my first year of running a trap line. If bad weather was coming in I would run the line in the morning before I went to school, and then again after school. Bad weather or a front meant a change and the animals fell that before it comes and are much more active.
I ran the line that day and I had several muskrats. I always skint my catch as soon as I came off the line, in the afternoon! That 3 blade trapper was my go to knife! I had one I kept in the skinning shed for dressing in the middle of the field on certain skinning jobs. It was similar to the green river skinner. However a lot of times on small game it was the only one I needed! That was back when any hardware worth it salt had a board full of pocket knives or a least one whole display case full of them!!!
I grabbed my first rat (muskrat) and hung it on the skinning gabriel reached into my pocket, and there was a hole in my pocket. I stood there a second with my finger in the hole. I had on two pairs of pants, so hoping against hope. I shed the outside pair hoping some how it had gotten trapped in between layers. No knife, I stood there in dis-belief, my 3 blade trapper was gone. Every time I ran my line for the next few days, I looked for that knife!! It would have been a miracle to find it as the line was, 3 miles long! After a week I gave it up and went the local hardware to purchase another!!