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he author ordered these knives from Dave Ferry to give as gifts to the guide and the ranch manager who led him to a whitetail buck that scored 194. T T he knife is one of man's oldest tools and certainly the oldest still in regular use today. It is probably the most intimate tool a man can buy, something that rides on your belt or in your pocket day in, day out, something that—if it's properly made—fits into your hand so perfectly that it becomes an extension of your hand. The late Bob Loveless once told me that a knife's handle should fit your hand like your own . . . And then, being Bob Loveless, he named an intimate portion of the male anatomy that I won't mention. Australian outback to the Italian Alps. For the last decade or so he has been making hunting knives with his own design modifications: his drop-point hunters are slightly deeper at the ricasso (the unsharpened flat between the guard and the beginning of the grind) than most, making them significantly sturdier; one of his skinning knives is designed to double as an all-round camp knife; his caping knives are also intended to make ideal bird and fish knives. But more than just designing his p o r t i n g L i f e S Jameson Parker Dave Ferry designs knives to fit specific tasks—and your hand. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 7 5 D ave Ferry, of Horsewright Clothing and Tack in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, has been making custom knives for a quarter century. He started while earning his living as a California Highway Patrolman, doing day work on local ranches, and teaching natural horsemanship and ranch-roping clinics. Back then he focused on knives for working cowboys and ranchers, creating blades specifically designed for the tasks around a ranch: castrating calves, for example; cutting baling twine; and as a vital part of a cowboy's emergency gear. If you get in a wreck with a horse and need a knife, you need it right now and desperately. His ranch knives are carried and used by horsemen all across America and from the