At SHOT this year, Karen Lutto Leatherwood showed me around the Outdoor Edge booth. One item that stood out to me was their Vantex 4-Piece Kit. The kit contains all of the knife designs to skin and process your big game.
Let’s start with the carrying case. It comes with a canvas roll up case which I like. When rolled up it is 12” long by 3 ½” wide and 2 ½” thick and is held closed by a Velcro patch plus it has a strap to ensure it stays closed.
Outdoor Edge Vantex 4-Piece Hunting Knife Kit
Once you unroll the kit, you see that it holds three knives and a sharpener. The sharpener has preset angled carbide and ceramic stones. I’d advise using the carbide option sparingly, as they can remove a lot of metal fast, thereby shortening the life of your blade. BUT-if you learn how to use this type of a sharpening system it can work fine for you plus, it is a super lightweight sharpener to carry in the field.
All three knives have removable Polypropylene sheaths in which the knives snap into place firmly. I figure that you’ll just carry the whole kit but you can remove the knives if you just want to carry one or two and throw them in your pack.
I’ll break this heading down individually for each knife.
Caping Knife
I like the handle and feel like I have a firm grip when using this knife. It has a finger choil on the blade, which allows me to choke down on it. It also has thumb grooves on Top of the handle for your thumb and the bottom for your little finger. Then it is unique in that it has thumb grooves that extend to the tip of the blade. I’ve never owned a knife that has them extended that far down the blade. So when using the caping knife I feel like that I have a firm grip. The kit doesn’t have a clip point knife to cut the pattern but that’s not a problem, a caping knife works fine for this task.
Skinning Knife
As you would imagine, the handle on the skinning knife is allows for a fuller grip. It too has finger and thumb grooves on the handle. And it has thumb grooves on the spine 2/3’s of the way down the spine. The blade design is a drop point which is a good skinning design.
Boning Knife
This handle also allows for a full filling grip. It too, as the others has thumb and finger grooves on each end as well as thumb grooves nearly half way down the spine. All three knives have a lanyard hole in the hilt of the handle in case you want to tie on a lanyard. The only problem I have with the boning knife is that it has a super stiff blade. On a boning knife half of the good boners like a semi-flex and the other half likes a super-flex but no good boner likes a stiff boning knife.
So as a summary, how would I grade the Outdoor Edge Vantex 4-Piece Kit? I love the concept. And I like the roll-up canvas holder. And yes, I could process my big game with this kit. And yes, the three knife designs that I’d recommend are included in the kit but here’s why I’d have to give it a C grade though.
You may say that I’m anal on knife designs but why not do a little research before producing a knife so you have the most functional design? It always puzzles me when knife companies don’t research what constitutes a good design and I’m talking about 95% of the knives on the market. Most knife companies jump in the knife world without ever obviously talking to anyone knowledgeable on knife designs. I could list out a page full of companies!
Here’s why I say all of the above. The base of the caping knife is 3/16-inch too wide. The Boning knife is a super stiff blade. Yes, even among experts’ preferences vary but for sure all of the good boners use either a flexible or a semi-flex boning knife BUT never a stiff boning knife.
I still learn new knife tips everyday, so I by no means know it all but here’s my background. I worked for 45 years in beef packing plants, three of the top four companies plus numerous smaller ones. At Con Agra we killed and processed 25,000 head of cattle per day. These guys perfected the boning knife. Why don’t knife companies just mimic the professionals?
I could get a butter knife out of the kitchen and put an edge on it and bone out a moose. But that doesn’t mean that it is the proper boning knife. Go ahead and use whatever knife you want, just don’t tell me that it is the perfect design if it’s not. Get my drift? So yes, this is a functional kit but with a few minor tweaks it could be a really good kit.
The MSRP on the Outdoor Edge Vantex 4-Piece Kit is $89.99 and as is usual, we will close with the company specs off of their website.
- BLADE LENGTH
- Drop-point: 3.5″
- Caping: 3.0″
- Boning: 5.0″
- OVERALL LENGTH
- Drop-point: 8.3″
- Caping: 6.8″
- Boning: 9.9″
- Blade steel: 7Cr17MoV
- Handle: Glass-filled nylon core w/ soft touch TPE
- Sheath: ABS/TPE/polypropylene
About Tom Claycomb
Tom Claycomb has been an avid hunter/fisherman throughout his life as well as an outdoors writer with outdoor columns in the magazine Hunt Alaska, Bass Pro Shops, Bowhunter.net and freelances for numerous magazines and newspapers. “To properly skin your animal you will need a sharp knife. I have an e-article on Amazon Kindle titled Knife Sharpening for $.99 if you’re having trouble.”
