meat cleaver for game?

S

SideKick

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Nov 28, 2005
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So do any of you use a meat cleaver to help with game processing? One of my uncles did for years. I thought it was cool now I keep one in camp. I am mostly a pig hunter. Don't get me wrong I go deer hunting every year but all year long I'm pig hunting. I have found for me a big heavy knife is the best way to get through hip joints. Meat cleavers seam to work well. Now I'm not hunting elk or moose. Weight is not a concern. We usually gut in the field and drag back to the truck or ATV's. Once in camp we quarter em. I'm also not hunting huge critters. Mostly pigs 75-150 lb. Biggest one yet was 375 but I did not kill it one of my hunting buddies shot it with his Springfield Operator from about 10 feet. Double tap to head. We got it back to camp and the cleaver proved its self as a worthy tool.
 
You mean like these?
cleavers2.jpg

I think a cleaver is a great tool to have available when processing large animals.
 
No, I don't chop through any bones, I either bone it out, large game, or take it apart at the joints. Chris
 
Yes, the cleaver can be a super tool in the field or the camp. Back in the day, they were the main (along with a slender knife) meat processing tool in the slaughter houses. Today, they employ massive saws which do the job faster and safer. Nothing worse than a worker who had a few too many drinks the night before and then shows up to work having to wield a heavy, sharp cleaver. Such carousing would likely raise insurance premiums. You'd be interested in the accidents that Swift & Co. had to deal with in Chicago as well as their Fort Worth plants. And the fate of the local butcher is sealed having been long since eclipsed by the meat conglomerates and the practical advantages of plastic packing, but the older tools of the trade remain for us to collect and use.

You'll find some great, used cleavers on eBay. There are some good ones out there, but quite a few suffer from badly damaged handles, chipped blades or just plain pitting. Look for Briddell of Crisfield, Village Blacksmith of Watertown WI, Columbia Cutlery Corp of NY, L.&I.J.White of Buffalo NY amongst a host of other names. If the handle is still intact, you are in business if you know how to touch up the edge. Most cleavers are terrifically robust tools and can take an inconceivably strident beating even when compared with thick survival knives. I have seen a precious few broken, and some of those had been welded together again for extended service. Usually they are soft enough to take a superb edge while being almost bullet proof in the process. Many are mushroomed from having been pounded with a hammer. Nothing new under the sun!
 
oh yeah, our meat clever (an olk hickory) is used all the time around here. from butchering chickens, to elk, to our hog...
we love the thing...
 
I have my grandpa's old german f-dick cleaver that has seen easily 70 plus years of hard use, might have been great grandpa's.
10 in blade with an eight inch handle, still use it plenty
We still used cleavers in the abbatoir in the 90's but they had to be stainless with food grade plastic handles, big two handed ones to chop block frozen meat into manageable pieces for the grinders. All the nice old carbon/wood ones are banned in production now for hygienic concerns.

I love the stamped sharpening instruction on the side. Shows a line drawing of a nice convex edge with "correct" under it and a V edge with "VERBOTEN" under it. Pretty simple to understand. German pragmatism at its finest.
They should stamp that on good axes to pound the thought home.

Funny side note:

We had a couple of south asian rookies feeding the grinder using the big cleaver in turns when needed. No english spoken and we THOUGHT since they spoke the same language they would get along........All of a sudden two weeks later some old world argument flared up of Shiite vs Sunni proportions!!!!
We hear some screaming and then they come running through the cutting floor : one guy wide eyed with fear and the other contorted with rage with that 3ft 15 lb cleaver cocked over his shoulder for the finish!!!! It was slowing him down a little and "runner" gained about 12 ft just before the exit grabbed a 1 piece stainless d-handled shovel off the wall, spun and cracked "Hassan Chops!!" across the left shoulder he dropped the cleaver and started running the opposite direction back down the floor with "runner turned warrior" chasing after him with the shovel screaming !!!!!

We carefully split them up and waited for the police, never found out what happened to them after getting fired or what their problem was but the guy that got hit with the shovel had a broken clavicle and collarbone. His arm hung like a noodle.

I do not know what is wrong with me but the whole time I was watching this in wide eyed disbelief the old Bugs Bunny classic kept rolling through my head......HASSAN CHOP!!! I said the phrase about 2 seconds too late afterward for real humour but at least 20 guys burst out laughing.
I cannot even look at a cleaver now without thinking about that day at work.
 
Brad, those two I posted above are RichardJ's. I'm trying to get him to sharpen them up and sell me one. They are huge and with his edge on them I think I could cut through a water buffalo with one "Hassan Chop".
 
These days hunters are more likely to use cordless Sawz-all s .They work very well especially on larger animals [and on stupid hunter's animals that have frozen !! ]. Those large cleavers are impressive .Find a video of there use in the old days !
 
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