SHOT Show 2020: Emerson Releases Mini Sheepdog Line Expansion

Emerson brought a lone new addition to SHOT: the Mini Sheepdog. The knife is a smaller alternative to the original Sheepdog release, but loses nothing other than blade length in the transition and includes the same three-option opening system.

For Emerson, mini versions of knives tend to stick pretty close to the source material; that’s certainly the case on the Mini Sheepdog. The biggest difference comes down to blade length, of course: the Mini Sheepdog scales its cutting edge to 3 inches even, which means that it’s a full half inch shorter than the original big ‘Dog.

The Mini Sheepdog also retains its predecessor’s ergonomic setup. That setup is a bracketed, gently undulating handle shape that echoes the classic Emerson CQC-7. The knife even retains the lanyard hole seen on the full-size model. The dimensional reduction results in an open length of 7.1 inches – 1.3 inches shorter overall.

Users can still open the blade – available as a bowie or a spear point – in three different ways. Of course there is the expected Emerson Wave opener and thumb disk, but in addition there’s a ball bearing pivot-powered flipper tab too. When the Sheepdog model, designed by Lieutenant Colonel and author Dave Grossman, debuted in 2015, it made the news by being the first Emerson release to get in on the then-growing flipper knife trend. It opened the gates for a small but popular category of flipper-equipped Emersons, including the CQC-7 flipper.

This is the only new release from Emerson at SHOT this year, although they have indicated plans to reveal more in the summer at Blade Show. The company hasn’t given a release date for the new model yet.

Knife in Featured Image: Emerson Mini Sheepdog