Eastern Longhunter Knife
An 18th century Longknife fresh from our shop.
This knife is made by Josh Wrightsman using traditional 18th century methods and finished in an English style.
Blade length of 12 and 3/4 inches and Overall length of 19 and 1/4 inches.
“Through Tang” construction holds the Deer Antler handle and Wrought Iron guard in place.
Guard and brass ferrule have been file worked and engraved in a traditional 18th century manner.
Sheath is included.
Pair this Eastern Longhunter Knife with one of our Eastern Longhunter Belt Axes or our 18th Century Spike Tomahawks for the perfect set!
A bit of history about the Eastern Longhunter Knife.
In the mid-1700s, as hunters like Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton pushed beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, they realized their heavy European swords and dainty kitchen knives were useless in the thick canebrakes of Kentucky. They needed a tool that was part axe, part skinning knife, and part fighting knife.
Blacksmiths of the Virginia and Carolina frontiers took the profile of the German nicker—a slender deer-hunting knife—and married it to the ruggedness of a French butcher’s blade.
The “Longhunter’s Knife” was usually forged from old files or broken springs, hammered thin enough to slice through a buck’s hide but tempered hard enough to limb a cedar tree. It typically featured a straight back, a subtle “swedge” on the tip for piercing, and a handle of elk antler or curly maple.
To a Longhunter, this knife was his “personal estate.” It rode in a rawhide sheath or dangled from a buckskin belt. It was the tool that skinned the 30,000 deerskins shipped back to London in 1768, the utensil that carved “D. Boone Cilled A Bar” into a beech tree, and the last line of defense when a rifle misfired
As the frontier moved west and the “Longhunter” era faded into the age of the Mountain Man, the knife evolved into the heavier Bowie knife. But for those few decades in the deep woods of the East, the slim, wicked blade was the literal edge of the frontier.
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