The Deer Hunter

I've started doing my knives in small batches of 2 or 3, which makes the construction a bit more efficient, but means that my postings will get more clustered.  So here's the first installment of the hunting season cluster:

This is a deer hunters knife for a good friend who is also one of my beta-testers.  It's a deer hunter because the blade is a longer and proportionately narrower than a typical hunter.  My tester tells me that will help with the infamous sphincter removal cut.
His job this year is to take this knife and use the crap out of it, and let me know what he thinks.  The blade is 6" hammered out of 3/16ths 1084.  I ground it in the medieval style without a ricasso at his request.  He like the edge going all the way up to the guard.  Last years model made it through 2 deer, 6 rabbits, and a drop on the cement floor before he asked for the edge to be touched-up ("It's still sharp, but not crazy-sharp like before.").  Last years was 1075 heat treated by eye.  This one is 1084 heat treated in my new DIGITAL HEAT TREAT FURNACE!!!  Wooooo!!

So I'm hoping it will perform even better.  The handle is stabilized tiger-stripe maple from my brother's woodpile.

I kinda screwed up cutting it because the tigerstripes show more on the top and bottom of the handle than on the sides.  :-\  My fit & finish  is getting better - the seam between the maple and the pommel is perfect.  Between the guard and maple it's very close, but not quite perfect.  Once i can get them all perfect I'll be ready for the ABS journeyman smith test.