My PH told me that it was not unusual for a client to make a present of his custom made "safari knife" to one of the staff at the end of the hunt. This pleased the party involved no end, because he immediately sold it for a tidy sum.

The staff preferred to use cheap ($1.00) Chinese made butcher kinves because they were easy to sharpen. The custom made knives held their sharpness much longer, but were almost impossible to resharpen, once they lost their edge, whereas the cheap knives could be resharpened with a few passes over a stone when they got dull. Some were worn down to the shape of filleting knives.

The only knife I had with me was a Swiss Army knife, which I once used to skin out an impala, just to prove to myself that I could. The gunbearers could skin out an animal almost as fast as I could pull off a sweat shirt.