Kizer Huntsman Goes for Bold Blade and Big Handle

Kizer tapped a new designer for an incoming model, an imposing folder called the Huntsman. This one comes from James Lowe, and is a big, brash design named after one of nature’s more terrifying arthropods.

Lately it seems like manufacturers have been taken with the idea of animal-inspired knives. We covered a slew of Rosecraft knives named after some of the world’s more impressive fauna and, from Kizer in particular, we talked about the Ti’an, a frame lock flipper that made history by being the first knife in the world inspired by the moose. Now we have the Huntsman, which takes its name, and something of its profile, from the intimidating huntsman spider.

Arachnophobes, take our advice on this one: do not Google images of the huntsman spider. You may know about this monstrosity already: it was the star of a recent headline about an Australian family who lived with a particularly gigantic specimen for a whole year. And, of course, you have the pictures and videos of the thing devouring some unfortunate insect or even small mammels. According to Wikipedia the hunstman spider can grow unnervingly large, with recorded legspans of nearly a foot. Ick.

Thankfully, the Hunstman knife looks much better than its arachnoid ancestor. The blade, 3.82 inches in length, swoops and curves in a quite uncommon manner. It’s probably best described as a modified tanto, with a wide, dished grind on the secondary edge and a recurve on the main one. Furthermore, this S35VN blade has four holes in its fuller – a reference to the four eyes on each side of the hunstman spider’s face (do spiders have ‘faces?’).

The handle, made from titanium with carbon fiber inlays, arches up and back away from the blade, with the butt end much larger than the narrower portion beneath the guard. It really does evoke the hunched, threatening profile of the spider, but in a way that comes across as cool rather than creepy. And, unlike the spider, the Huntsman knife uses a frame lock, which comes capped with a steel insert. There’s a wide, sturdy-looking sculpted titanium pocket clip in tow, too.

The Hunstmen should be arriving en masse shortly (the knives, not the spiders).

Knife in Featured Image: Kizer Huntsman

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