Cold Steel makes some interesting claims regarding this knife, stating that the Ultimate Hunter is a big game hunting knife with the best blade lock in the industry plus the strength and power of a fixed blade. That may be a bit of a stretch, but the Ultimate Hunter from Cold Steel is still a good knife.
Designed by company president and long-time hunter Lynn C. Thompson, with the assistance of custom knife maker Lloyd Pendleton, the Ultimate Hunter packs a strong 3-1/2-inch hollow ground skinner blade of VG-1 high carbon stainless steel into a 5.9-ounce folding clip package. Open and locked, the full length of the Ultimate Hunter is only 8-1/2 inches. That small size might make the knife a good skinner, but this isn’t exactly built for big game unless your biggest quarry is a deer.
Comparing it to the strength of a fixed blade isn’t exactly useful, since you can find all degrees of good and bad in fixed blades and any other type of knife. The strengths of the Ultimate Hunter are competitive, but if you want stronger, it’s not hard to find it. The blade of this knife is 4 mm thick, and the construction is stout — as Cold Steel’s video demonstrates, the rocker lock supports a static load of at least 150 lbs.
With a generous grip of traction-enhancing black Kraton, the Ultimate Hunter will provide easy handling in all types of weather and slippery conditions. For field dressing and skinning game, the knife is reasonably capable — but any folding hunter will present some problems when the work is done and you’re faced with cleaning all its gaps and critical working parts. If you want the knife to open smoothly with one hand, as the Ultimate Hunter does when clean and oiled, you can’t ignore the maintenance. That’s when you may wish you had the old fixed blade with you — the one that cleaned up easily in wet grass or that handy snowbank.
