Perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, I recall that one of the hottest things in the knife world were boutique steels with weird names. Ultra-tough, ultra-durable. CruWear. Elmax, Maxamet. S110V. All steel makeups that I generally have not given much thought to since initially diving headfirst into the marketing for them years and years ago. Being a Spyderco devotee, there were always plenty of options to choose from, and the differences between all of these variations seemed to be vast and of much importance.
It seems as though the steel wars followed the trajectory of the horsepower wars — after a certain amount of real progress in absolute edge retention ability, we hit an inflection point. The “best,” whatever that meant to you, had hit such an economy of scale that whatever qualities of steel you wanted, or however much power you wanted to put down, became readily available and for what steels of far lesser quality would have cost ten or twenty years ago.
Is the thrill with these premium steels gone? Maybe not for many blade enthusiasts, but for me it certainly is. I’ll explain why, and what qualities I think are vital for a practical hunting knife.
For an EDC-style knife, I think maximum edge retention with minimal maintenance necessary is a great quality. Opening packages, cutting food, and whatever else you might need to do on a daily basis, you don’t want to have to think about the tool that you’re using. Like anything else you’d carry everyday, it should just work with almost no extra thought given.
Before I became a “bird dog guy,” I carried a Spyderco Manix in 154CM every day. There’s really nothing I don’t love about this knife, except when it came time to sharpen. 154CM is certainly not the absolute hardest steel offered by the manufacturer, but to this day, I’ve never been able to really get a satisfactory edge back on this knife on my own terms; one that would approximate the performance of the factory edge. For the layperson who is into knives for a reason besides the trivia of them itself, I think this is a common frustration. Don’t get me wrong, I can get it sharp… but it just isn’t the same as the way that it left the factory.
Even if you do know your way around a whetstone several orders of magnitude better than myself, the practicality of bringing all of your sharpening gear out into the backcountry is called into question here. I’ll suggest here that in order to look forward to your punched tag and freezer full of meat, we should first look backwards to some older, more forgiving steels.
While I have become a convert to the modern style of replaceable-scalpel hunting knives, I still tote around a stout fixed-blade almost everywhere I go. Perhaps this is a mental hangup of mine, perhaps it’s a valid preference… I don’t care.
My honest experience has been that Buck’s time-tested 420HC is still perfect for tasks around camp, and is probably my ideal steel for dressing game. It is the archetype of the holy trinity of hunting knife steels for me — resistance to corrosion, edge-retaining ability, and ease of sharpening.
I have broken down an entire bull elk with just a 119 and a 113. Here’s the workflow myself and my partner experienced: cut for perhaps five or ten minutes, touch up the edge on a Worksharp Guided Field Sharpener for a minute or so, and repeat. Perhaps every other time the blade began to noticeably dull, all it needed was a hone and a strop and that edge was back to it’s former slicey glory (Buck’s hollow grind and compound bevel does, admittedly, also have something to do with the slice-factor) .
No extra thought or arcane sharpening knowledge needed.
As for the corrosion resistance? It won’t rust. I’ve tried, and it won’t. Perhaps if you dropped it in the bilge of your halibut boat for a month.
Of course, more modern steels can and would hold their edges longer in these types of situations, but the extra difficulty in sharpening them in the field, on the clock, with next year’s protein at your feet is a trade-off I’m not willing to make. For the average hunter, I think they would agree.
Like most other hobbies, knives can be shrouded in gatekeeping and elitism, two things that I usually find supremely counter-productive. New steels are great, of course, as long as you know what you are getting into and some of the tradeoffs you will make practically, in the field. I value that aforementioned holy trinity of ease of sharpening, realistic edge retention, and corrosion resistance, and I also value not spending any more money than I need to. Buck knives might be a bit of a cliche at this point, but they are a cliche for a reason.
Or, you know… just get a Tyto to clean your next trophy.
