Chef’s rarely work from whole carcasses most meat will arrive from the supplier already broken down into smaller cuts. So most boning knives are shorter as its needed for work bones from joints and most birds beings separated for cooking. The chef’s boning knife will be expected to work down the thighbone of a lamb leg without much collateral damage to the meat, and have enough stiffness in the blade to enable tough tendons to be cut with the extreme tip. Yet the blade that can ‘tunnel bone’ a lamb leg will also serve to remove the oysters from a chicken carcass or shape up a standing rib roast.