A customized hunting knife will not make you a better hunter with a better shot … nor will it reward your patience on those cool autumn mornings with better weather conditions, more abundant game, or easier tracking. But once you have made that shot, a customized hunting knife will make the rest of the work a lot easier. Dressing your game will be smoother, faster, and more comfortable with a customized hunting knife, and—of course—more stylish. Let’s look at why.
Retention
In all seriousness, a hunting knife is one of the most important and fundamental tools that a sportsman carries with him into the field because of its edge retention, which is its most important performance parameter. It’s all well and good to start out with a sharp knife, but hide and hair are extremely hard on an edge. This is, after all, essentially why most animals are covered in it!
Those hunting with commercial knives will be accustomed to frustratingly frequent sharpening, a process that is not only time consuming, but is itself also somewhat dangerous to do under cold, slippery conditions. Hunting with a customized, handmade knife is a different experience altogether. Some experienced hunters report where they were able to stretch their edge through an entire season before the need to sharpen again!
Customization
Building off its edge retention, the most obvious and exciting reason is that this hunting knife is customized for your needs! Doing this elevates what would otherwise be a mundane tool, a mass-produced bare minimum of utilitarian efficiency, into an art object that will also outperform its commercial counterparts in every way.
A hunter can choose from not only a unique combination of materials, but can also work with the smith to personalize the:
- Overall size and proportions of the knife,
- Thickness of the blade, the grind (or cross section) of the blade,
- Curvature of the edge,
- Shape of the grip,
- and more.
At the end of the process he gets a knife that looks, feels, and works exactly the way he wants it to. Customized hunting knives really are remarkable tools.
Ready to see some examples and commission your own customized hunting blade?
Take a look at Jonas Blade’s Field Collection!
About The Author
Zack Jonas was born and raised in Massachusetts in the 1980’s and is still a New Englander today. With his growing love for art over the years, he took an introductory bladesmithing class at MASSart. It was there that he learned one of his most valuable lessons, which is that everyone has some insight worth learning. Today, he is a full-time bladesmith and feels incredibly fortunate to have found his calling.