As much as I like clip points for general use, the point tends to drag when opening an animal.
Never had that problem, Natman..... I slice a small hole just forward of theither the penis or udder and put 2 fingers and the blade inside, edge up, tip between the tips of the fingers...... leading with the fingertips, slide the knife forward ..... cutting from the inside avoids cutting hair......
My opinion-
For skinning, opening the skin (around the legs- it is already open from the underside of the tail to at least the sternum from field dressing) is best done with a clip point blade, clipped part of the blade pressed to the leg, edge up. Let the edge do the cutting from the bottom side, so the hair does not dull the edge....... I use a home-made skinning knife with a lot of "belly" - it has a short, wide, curved blade- to do the actual skinning.
.....I think gut hooks are a marketing feature*, designed to get peple to buy a different knife. I have never seen them work well for the purported intended purpose...... and you'd need something round to sharpen them, I'd think....
....my dad had one of those Shrade Old Timer Sharpfingers (no guthook) ...... it worked really well, too. Just the right size and shape to fit in your hand to open the animal liken I explained above. Enough of a curve for skinning ,too.
*For that, they work, as when all the knives started coming out with them as a featrure, they sure sold a lot of them- hell, I even put one a couple of my home-made knives.
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