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Kizer Teaches the Sheepdog New Tricks

July 21, 2023

The Kizer Sheepdog, one of the company’s most popular collaboration models, returned last month with a few new tricks up its sleeve. This 2023 Sheepdog gets a retooled deployment, renovated blade, a new lock, and a new look to go along with it.

In the Kizer Hall of Fame, the original Sheepdog C01, designed by custom make Chris Conaway, is right up there with other blockbusters like the Gemini and Feist. And like those other superstars, it has seen a fair number of variations since its came out: different sizes, materials, locks – there are quite a few Sheepdogs in the pack at this point, but there’s always room for one more.

The new Sheepdog benefits from the ambidextrous nature of the Clutch Lock

The first thing to note about the ’23 Sheepdog is the blade length; at 3.15 inches, it’s bigger than the Mini Sheepdog and just a tad smaller than the full-size original (and significantly smaller than the Sheepdog XL, which has a blade length of 3.94 inches). It has a notch on the nose of its blade profile, but otherwise this is the same cleaver shape that defined the Sheepdog from the beginning, and certainly contributed to the rising popularity of cleaver blades for everyday carry in general.

Made from 154CM steel, this Sheepdog’s blade opens, not with a flipper, but with a sort of cross between a thumb stud and opening hole. The opening hole is still there, but a thumb stud is buried into the crook of the cutout. At the end of the day it’s an ambidextrous opening method, which goes well with the presence of Kizer’s Clutch Lock, the Axis Lock-style mechanism they’ve begun rolling out on a handful of recent releases. The new mechanical element is housed in an aluminum handle, which is anodized either black or an eye-catching purple.

The new Sheepdog is available now, along with other June ’23 releases like the Fighter and Aggressor.

Knife in Featured Image: Kizer Sheepdog C01C

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