What exactly is a cattle knife?

[Sword and Shield]

Inspired by the Queen cattle knife, I have to ask- what is the definition of a cattle knife?

Most people say clip or spear master blade, spey, and a punch is pretty definitive. However, there are a bunch pictured in LG4 with the stockman complement of clip, sheepsfoot and spey. Is it just the equal-end utility shape making it cattle, or something else?

If a cattle knife needs not have a punch, what do you call a serpentine cattle with clip/spey/sheepsfoot? It sounds an awful lot like a stockman to me, but LG4 muddies the issue a little.

Compounding the issue further is AG's catalog, with a stockman with punch. By the above, this would be a serpentine cattle knife. By most people's definitions, it's a stockman with punch.

Help!

 

[gorlank]

Here's my two cents, a cattle knife is in essence an older, heavier duty version of the stockman. Always a equal end, and to me a true cattle knife never has a clip main blade but a spear. Of course, like all there are always exceptions but that's my definition of a true cattle knife.

 

[John Schedel]

Here's my two cents, a cattle knife is in essence an older, heavier duty version of the stockman. Always a equal end, and to me a true cattle knife never has a clip main blade but a spear. Of course, like all there are always exceptions but that's my definition of a true cattle knife.

Actually, I would turn your statement around; the stockman is a newer, lighter (though not necessarily "lighter duty") version of the cattle knife. A quick look at Levine's book shows that cattle knives were made in all manner of patterns, though equal ends were the most common. In fact, there was a
"serpentine" version that seems to have been essentially a stockman that featured a spear master blade instead of a clip point. From what I understand, it was the spear point master blade that often set the cattle knife apart from its descendant, though it seems that this distinction was not universal.