If you skin the deer within a day of killing it, you don't really need a knife at all. And the little bit you do, anything will work. If, for some reason, you want to let it hang with the skin on, your in for more work. My uncle used to hand everything til the end of the season, then process it all at once. He'd have to use a pair of vice-grips to pull the skin off, in that case, the kind of knife might be more important. In my opinion, skin it as soon as you get it home and the skin will pretty much pull right off.