As a professional barber, Aahmes Deschutter not only has instinctive eye-hand coordination, he also knows his way around sharp things.

So it shouldn’t be a shock to hear the amiable haircutter was able to toss a knife with enough exactitude to place second at DangerFest 2024, an international knife-throwing competition held last month in Pierceton, Indiana. 

“It's a big deal just for the fact it is the largest event, and it attracts some of the best throwers in the world,” Deschutter tells Capital Daily.

Deschutter, who’s been cutting hair at Victory Barber & Brand on Blanshard since it opened 13 years ago, says precision is a requirement for his work and in his sport.

And make no mistake, knife throwing is a sport, popular particularly in Europe and Asia and with pockets of play here in BC, where axe-throwing is becoming the new bowling. There’s a professional league, the WKTL—World Knife Throwing League—a world championship, and an international knife-throwers hall of fame in Pembroke, near Ottawa.

“It’s widespread throughout all sorts of cultures around the world,” Deschutter says.

People have been throwing knives in friendly competition—and probably more often with a wager at stake—since the days of the fur trader, he says. 

Ten years running now, DangerFest has grown to become the largest knife-throwing event in North America, with 137 competitors this year, some amateur, and others professional, including Brandon “Danger” Dillon, its founder and a well-known figure in the knife-throwing community.

It's about the rotation and distance

There are several disciplines in knife throwing, including no-spin, where Deschutter says the knife actually does a one-quarter rotation. “It's leaving your hand, maybe at a 45-degree angle, and then as it flies, it straightens out, going perfectly straight, and then enters the target.”

Then there’s the half-spin or rotational. “The classic throwing that people would see in a movie. It's just where the knife rotates, end over end.”

Amateur competitors throw from a distance of two to six metres while it’s 3-7m for the pros. “Everything just gets exponentially harder as you get farther back,” he says.

Deschutter had his Indiana on

Deschutter placed seventh among the 117 amateurs in the no-spin and rotational events, and in the top 20 for the fast-draw.

But he kept his shear best for a trick shot that earned him second place. With his left hand, Deschutter tossed a tin can into the air and with his right, threw the knife so it sliced into the can, pinning it against the wooden target.

“I like trick shots because you get to be creative and it’s all up to your imagination—just like a haircut.”

DangerFest also features side competitions, including one where the knife thrower walks through an area where he has to chuck blades at various targets at different heights and distances, sort of like what you’d see on TV when a police officer practices his aim in a walk-through shooting gallery.

“It’s all instinctive,” says Deschutter, who stopped chucking knives about 15 years ago but decided to pick it back up again over the summer.

“And, you know, it was an amazing thing, because 15 years ago, you were lucky if there were one or two guys on YouTube that threw a knife, that even shared how they would throw it,” he says.

Now, he says, you can learn so much by watching the many knife-throwing tutorials that have popped up.

“You look at China, and you go, oh, there's like 50K knife throwers there.”