Whether you need the knife for everyday wilderness tasks or for your stockpile when SHTF, you want to make sure your knife has the necessary capabilities. You would use the same care and informed decision-making process when purchasing any type of item that was for use in the wilderness or during an unexpected crisis.

Defining the Survival Knife

Likewise these blades come in a variety of design names which can also be somewhat confusing.  These tradenames include Bowie, bush craft, hunters, camp knives, frontiersman, woods knives, woods craft, or just plain survival knives.  Remember these are often just proprietary brand names and may or may not actually fit the blade type for actual survival work. 

Also a survival knife does not have to be a fixed blade version though that is often the case.  If so, pick one with a comfortable handle, a weight you can handle easily and hang on to, has a good sheath, and a blade shape designed for craft work.  Keep in mind though, that a lot of good folding knives can be useful for survival work, too.  Ideally, I think most survivalists are going to have one or more of both styles.

Tasks of a Survival Knife

If you Bug In, then you may need a different knife or knives than if you are huddled out in the wilderness in a tent camp for a Bug Out. Generally though, our survival knife orientation is more toward the Bug Out camping issues than working around the home or kitchen.  It is sort of like having a big gun to take care of everything for lessor needs as well.

For Bug Out tasking we would want a knife to take on any kind of bush craft work, making up camp, clearing paths, making shelters, trimming out kindling wood, and everything else a larger, stronger knife can handle.

The survival knife could be used for food preparation such as field dressing game or fish, but I highly suspect from experience there are better, smaller knives for this processing type work.

The SHTF camp survival knife could also be used for cutting vines and bark strips for various woods craft projects such as fabricating ropes, lashing, and tying straps.

Naturally there are untold more uses for a classic survival type knife.  If you have one, then I suspect it will be used for most anything around the Bug Out camp or around a residential home.  You certainly don’t need a “do” list for trying to decide if a particular knife can get a job done.  You simply grab the knife and go to work.  If it falls short, or is too much knife, then you trade it for another useful blade or another tool and go back to work. 

Where to Find Survival Knives

There are many good knives that are “cheap” that being a relative term, but there are few really cheap knives worth having. Like I tell preppers about riflescopes, “Do you really think that $35 scope is worth having?”  Not! Only you can decide what value (or money) you want to put into a knife for survival work. 

I find many at gun shows, hardware stores, outdoor stores, hunting supply shops, and gun stores.  Big knife shops and on-line sources include the Smoky Mountain Knife Works, A. G. Russell Knives, Bass Pro Shops, Academy, Dicks, and related type supply sites.  There are hordes of small shop custom knife makers, too.  Buy a knife magazine to find some of those or just do a universal Internet topic search. 

If you have a survival knife, how did you decide which one to purchase?

Article Source: SHTF Blog