Zedteq Hunting Knives

Darren Englebretsen, New Zealand

Product Testing and Related Information

One of the onerous duties (not!) of being a knifemaker is product testing, so I guess I can't have a website selling hunting knives without a little bit of info on my product testing activities and the related gear that I use. As a moderately active hunter I take every opportunity I can to try out my own knives, especially my non-mainstream models.

Rifles and Game

I mainly hunt goats for the pot as well as varmints (rabbits, hares and magpies), with the occasional deer stalk (red and fallow deer) thrown in. On goat hunts I usually butcher four or five animals each time I go out, so my knives tend to get a fair workout. Rifles that I use include common calibres such as .223, .243 and .308 as well as a couple of wildcats - namely a 270-08 and a 7.62x39 Improved (aka 30 PPC).

Field testing 4 June 09.

I used my raised drop point (RDP) knife to take hind legs from 10 goats, skinning out the legs and cutting through hip and knee joints of each leg. The sweep of this semi-skinner design made the skinning part of the job easy. After 12 legs I could still shave the hairs off my arm. After 18 legs the knife had started to lose its edge however it was still suffciently sharp to process the last animal. At home I touched the blade up with a smooth sharpening steel (a burnisher) which restored the edge somewhat, although it was not as sharp as it would be after stoning. (In the field I use a fine diamond hone to sharpen my knives, as in my experience this gives a better result than a steel). After steeling I then sharpened the knife on an extra fine oilstone to restore a true shaving sharp edge. As an aside, I always make sure I sharpen my knives before going out hunting. The photos below show (left) the knife and (right) rifle used this day (Brno 243, Wilson 24" stainless steel barrel with MAE suppressor, Leupold VX III 4.5-14x40).

Field testing 10 October 09 - Gut Hook Drop Point.

This session was a meat gathering goat hunt as well as an opportunity to test a new model - a gut hook drop point knife. I had made a number of gut hook prototypes before making one that I deemed worthy of further testing. The photo above shows the gut hook knife. As you can see the handle differs from my usual type and is designed to be more comfortable when used upside down. The straight back of this handle also helps align the hand properly when using the gut hook. The blade is of drop point design but has a fairly generous sweep to help with skinning.

The photos below show the gut hook in use. (1) Initial cut under the skin; (2) the end of the first cut, showing how the gut hook had cut the skin but left the underlying thin muscular abdominal lining intact - especially useful if you want to skin an animal before further butchering; (3) start of the second pass to cut the abdominal lining; and (4) completion of the second cut, showing the gut contents undamaged. I was quite pleased with the performance of the gut hook, as this was the very first time I had ever used such a knife. I used the knife to recover 9 sets of goat legs (cutting thru 18 knee joints and 18 hip joints), and the knife was still sufficiently sharp to have done quite a few more animals if required. I found that the raised gut hook portion didn't get in the way at all when skinning. Overall I was very satisfied with the performance of both the gut hook and of the knife in general.

(1) Initial cut under the skin.

(2) The end of the first cut, showing how the gut hook had cut the skin but left the underlying thin muscular abdominal lining intact.

(3) Start of the second pass to cut the abdominal lining.

(4) Completion of the second cut, showing the gut contents undamaged.