Somebody mentioned Loveless. The guy is a genius with a big snort of arrogance. His designs are so minimal and essential... just a tremendous influence on the practical, useable hunting knife that we know and love today. Pioneer. Genius. And overhyped by many, I guess I fit that mold. His quality of worksmanship is surpassed by many custom makers, his designs are not.
Sean McWilliams makes some of the best, most comfortable and ergonomic handles I've ever touched on his Panama Fighter series.
Spyderco Wegner is ergonomic in shape and very good, but is pretty flat sided, a concession to production techniques/cost.
Anything David Broadwell makes is bound to be just outstanding (I have...uh, 7 Broadwell custom knives, the LDC-107 folder is my very favorite tactical folder, just so many design elements went right and nothing wrong, and is accessible from Les Robertson). If you want to see true craftsmanship and sense of style and quality, see anything on his site:
http://www.wf.net/~broadwll/knives http://www.bladegallery.com/broadwell.htm
Bob Dozier's knives are wonderfully minimalistic like Loveless, but a bit unique to Dozier himself. His bigger knives are especially comfortable, the Ranger and Guide's knife. Great rounded micarta profile. They feel meaty, they feel solid and comfortable. And Dozier has perfected the D2 heat treatment to outperform most anything you'll find on the market, including giving CPM 420V and 440V a very strong run.
Bob Lum's stuff.
I have lots of custom hunters that are nice, many are derivatives of Loveless.
Finger cutouts are mostly a bad thing, one subtle index finger cutout is fine (Dozier), but more than one or anything deep/extreme is not good. I quickly grew out of their sex appeal when I realized what they did to grip flexibility (ability to use the knife in various positions, etc).
[This message has been edited by rdangerer (edited 05-27-2000).]