During the fall of 1962, shortly after Gary joined the shop as a full-time employee, Bo's son-in-law Bill Baker brought a good friend of his to the knifeshop. Norm Sherwood was an avid outdoorsman and resident of Colorado who was preparing for an extensive pack trip into the wilderness. He was familiar with the Randall line and liked the Alaskan Skinner design for the field-dressing of game, but for his impending wilderness outing he needed a more heavy-duty, all-around field and camp knife, one which could even be used to cut brush for a cooking fire as well as to field-dress game.
The style of knife he desired was unavailable, so Norm and Bo started sketching out ideas. Their final design showed a short blade with a well-rounded belly for skinning large game animals, while the top was shaped somewhat like a shallow, inverted "V." The foward portion of this top edge was sharpened, using a wide cutting angle, like those on a hand ax. This top cutting edge could be used for chopping brush or some of the heavier cutting chores necessary with a large game animal. Just ahead of the hilt, the blade top was thumb-notched, in the manner of Tommy Thompson's Model 11 Alaskan Skinner. The very sturdy, heavy-duty blade was to be made from the full thickness of 1/4-inch forging stock.
"He wanted a heavy-duty knife with the top edge sharpened so he could cut through sinew and ligaments with it, maybe small bones, and not ruin the good edge down below," was how Bo related the short story of this knife's origin. The name for this new knife was suggested by Bill Baker as soon as Norm and Bo had finished their design. It was termed "The Bushmaster" because its reason for being was Norm Sherwood's upcoming pack trip "into the bush," and that name has stuck with it ever since.
...While looking at the old photograph, ... Bo and I nicknamed this original style "The Tadpole," because of its fat-bellied, long-tailed appearance. Bo's comment was that "we liked it well enough that we adopted it, but it's not a pretty knife, and we just didn't sell an awful lot of them."
...Because of its moderate popularity, Bo kept seeing the knife in the shop and was always reminded of how displeased he was with its overall appearance.
...Sometime during the early months of 1964, Bo received a sketch and order for another "special order" knife that must have fueled his desire to modify the Bushmaster design. It seemed that Robert E. Carter, Jr., of Granite Mountain, Arkansas, had his own definite ideas about the style of a heavy-duty game preparation and field knife he wished to carry "in the bush." His design sketch showed a 1/4-inch blade of 4-inch stock, with a sharpened top cutting edge like the Model 19 Bushmaster. But Carter's blade wasn't as fat as the Bushmaster, with its cutting edge shaped more like the Model 11 Alaskan Skinner, and the blade top didn't rise up into the peaked, inverted "V" shape of the Bushmaster. Carter didn't want his knife to have a sharp point either, wishing the cutting edge to be carried around a well-radiused front end. For a handle, he chose one of Micarta with finger grips, similar to that shown on the Model 20 Yukon Skinner.... Carter finished off his special request knife with thumb notches ahead of the brass hilt and a compass set into the handle butt.
...Sometime in late 1965 or early 1966, Randall Knives changed the design of the Model 19 Bushmaster to a more pleasing shape, which would also render it more compatible with its other styles. It appears that Carter's special request knife figures prominently in this redesign effort.
