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Guthook Knives
A gut hook is a sharpened notch ground into the spine of a hunting knife, built to solve one problem: opening a game animal without opening what is inside it. We carry gut hook knives from Buck, Knives of Alaska, Benchmade, Outdoor Edge, Havalon, and Toor, from dedicated hook tools to full field dressing combos.
What Is a Gut Hook For?
A gut hook unzips the hide during field dressing. It slips under the skin and pulls a clean cut up the belly with the edge facing away from the body cavity, so no blade tip rides just above the intestines. Puncture the paunch and you taint meat and turn a clean job into a miserable one, which is the whole argument for the hook. Off the animal, the same shape cuts cordage and webbing without exposing an edge.
Field Dressing and Deer Gutting Knives
Make a small starting cut at the base of the belly, seat the hook under the hide, and pull toward the sternum like a zipper with steady pressure. A deer gutting knife with a hook, like the Buck Pursuit Guthook, keeps the main edge fresh for the skinning and quartering that follow. The Knives of Alaska Caribou Combo pairs a hook blade with a heavier companion, and the TOPS Muley Saw handles the bone work a blade should not.
Dedicated Gut Hook Tools
Some hunters carry the hook as its own tool. The Toor Merlin is a skeletonized CPM 154 hook that lives on a pack strap, the Benchmade SlipRidge Hook puts a 440C hook in a tiny package, and Havalon's replaceable gut hook blades snap into its blade holder. The Outdoor Edge SwingBlade rotates between a drop point and a gut hook in one handle.
How to Sharpen a Gut Hook
The hook never touches a bench stone. A small round diamond file or tapered ceramic rod matched to the hook's radius does the job in a few light strokes. It wears far less than the main blade, so a seasonal touch up keeps it pulling clean, and compact knife sharpening supplies cover both edges in the field.
More Gut Hook Hunting Knives
Buck also builds the Alpha Hunter Select and Bucklite Max II with gut hooks, plus a folding Pursuit, and Silver Stag adds stag handled hooks in 1095 carbon steel. The Benchmade Grizzly Creek folder rounds out the case.