Curious what the thoughts are on the Freeman Hunter.

I like the looks, but have never seen one. This I cut and pasted from the Cutlery Shoppe website...

"...Field & Stream magazine named the Freeman Hunter a "Best of the Best" honoree in 2003, recognizing its place among the finest hunting knives ever engineered. .."

I've come close to getting one but haven't. The AUS-8 steel is reasonably good. It's a good shape. I'd prefer synthetic over the wood. It sounds like everyone hates the leather sheath, but sometimes now it comes with a nylon sheath. In the end, I think I'd rather stick to a smaller folding knife for working on game and carry a larger fixed blade like a Swamp Rat.

Hey ratbert, your post brought back memories of when I took my hunter education class years ago. We were shown a video of this grandpa who had to have been at least in his 70's taking his granddaughter hunting. She had to have been no more than in her teens.

Anyway, she shot an Axis deer on Molokai and he busted out this tiny folder. It didn't even look like a lockblade and it couldn't have been more than a 3 inch blade. In the field, he gutted it and cutting slits in the foreleg right above the hoofs and twisting the joint, turned it into a backpack to carry the deer out. He did all of this in 1-2 minutes. I was really impressed until they got home.

In the back yard, using the same little knife, he skinned and quartered the animal and got the quarters hanging on meat hooks in what seemed like less than 5 minutes.

Boy, I really believe the saying that it is easy when you know how. And he had LOTS of experience. Then we had venison jerky that one of the instructors made from the deer he bagged. Great 2-3 day class! I can't even remember how many days it was now.

An old guy I knew did the same thing, used a small stockman knife on ELK. He took a small hatchet along to split the pelvis, but did everything else, including quartering and skinning, with a little bitty non-locking carbon blade. Didn't have to sharpen it much either...

This grandpa never stopped to sharpen his knife either. And I think it was a stockman as well, although I could very well be wrong.

What really amazed me was his speed and accuracy. He skinned it beautifully.

I really liked the trick of turning the carcass into a back pack to carry it out.

Cabela's has three fixed-blade Freeman models: A drop point, drop point w/gut hook and a caping knife. Looks like they run about $65 to $90.

I've never had a Freeman, but all the reviews I've read have been pretty good.

For just a few more dollars you could own a Scrap Yard Knives Scrapper 6. Scrap Yard Knives is the newest addition to the family of Busse knife companies. The Scrapper 6 is $90 (+$18 for the sheath). Ok, so that might be twice the price of the Gerber Freeman Hunter, but I have no doubt that the Scrapper 6 is more than twice the knife.

http://scrapyardknives.com/knives.htm
https://shop.scrapyardknives.com/displayProductDocument.hg?productId=8&categoryId=4

Wow, the Scrapper 6's blade is 0.275" thick! That is a BIG chunk of metal.

I tend toward lighter weight medium thickness blades and was surprised at how light the Gerber Freeman Hunter was; It looks like a very heavy knife. For me, I have found Doug Ritter's RSK Mk3 to be a fantastic knife! I really like it.

I should have mentioned re the Cabela's version of the Freeman, the blades are S30V.

Re the new Scrapper, probably a very good choice if you need a hellacious heavy duty knife. Get one now if you want one ...when the Swamp Rat/Busse folks change their production lines ... you may not get another chance. I've got a Howling Rat and still wish I'd have picked up a Bandicoot, too.