John:
While the Thai/Burmese hill-tribe "Midh" may well be pressed into service as a fighting knife if required, it is carried as a general purpose knife for everything from sharpening sticks to digging out a splinter, and all the meat-cutting, lime-peeling, chilli-chopping tasks in-between. My oozee even used one extensively for banging on the head of the elephant to make him "behave" on a trip in the mountains a few hours west of Taungoo.
I would love to have acquired a well-used one from Burma, but knowing how much a favorite knife can mean to a tribesman, I didn't have the heart to ask!
Ended up getting a really nice one off a wizened old lady street-vendor in northern Laos a couple of years later. Photos one day...!

So this all had nothing to do with the Puma White Hunter, except to say I always assumed it was a skinner by shape, rather than a chopper.

Apologies for the hijack...