Leatherman Steens Fixed Blade Hunting Knife

The Leatherman Steens has a strange name - and it's an unusual knife - but it is one of the best new knives I've seen in a coon's age. The cutting edge has stood up to much use with only a very little bit of sharpening needed to restore a (literally) razor-sharp edge.

The gut hook is the best design I have seen to date... and the saw is very creative, not to mention large and sharp. This is now one of my favorite knives, one I wouldn't want to be without when hunting any kind of truly big game.

Pros

Cons

The first time I saw this knife at the SHOT Show, I was enthralled. "Enthralled by a knife," you ask? Um, yes, definitely enthralled.

Here's the thing... what you have with this knife is a tough fixed-blade number that I find comfortable, practical, and just plain nifty. At first glance, it's just another fixed-blade knife... but it includes a full size gut hook and a heck of a honking-big bone saw, hidden away in the handle.

First, there's the knife. Nothing spectacular here, although the blade is extremely good at holding an edge, and works great for everything from skinning catfish to scaling bluegill to skinning & quartering wild hogs. I never heard of S30V stainless before I handled this knife, but I now know that it is extremely good stuff.

Next, there's a gut hook. To access it, you press the bolster lock and pivot the knife handle 180 degrees. Voila! Now the blade is safely encased in the handle, and you have a gut hook of enormous size and good design at your disposal.

I used this gut hook to slit the hide for skinning when I needed to clean four wild hogs. The overall design is great, as it lets you pull properly on the hook - and the placement of the cutting edge in the hook is perfect. It was like smoothly unzipping the hogs' clothing - but without the hangups you sometimes get with zippers.

Last but not least is the massive stainless steel bone saw. This pivots out of the handle and locks in place, covering the cutting edge of the blade. This saw is aggressive, sharp, and BIG. Should work on big game like elk, moose, and such. And the gut hook certainly looks big enough for those critters, too. If I ever go hunting for such big beasts, I want this knife to go with me.

Put all this in a nice-looking red-brown leather sheath with its own diamond sharpener, and you have the Leatherman Steens hunting knife.

- Russ Chastain