THE ULTIMATE WILDERNESS KNIFE !

[vikingdog]

I think it's time to revive this thread.

[pinnah]

I find this to be a really fascinating topic and am super, super glad to see it revived.

IMO, there are (at least) 4 different ways that one can think of wilderness travel and with that, at least 4 different ways to think of knives for the backcountry.

The first is from the backpacking/climbing school of thought. I'm thinking here about an approach to wilderness travel as espoused by groups like the Seattle Mountaineers (Freedom of the Hills) or NOLS. The emphasis here is on light weight and minimal impact to the land.

The second is from the hunting/fishing tradition - what I think of as the Field & Stream mind set. The emphasis here is on game cleaning and the set of tasks around fishing and hunting activities (like hook removal).

The third is what I think of as "cultural legacy". This can be the idea of the Maine Guide, the Trappers of the upper mid-west, the mountain men of the US west or different traditions from around the world. This is wilderness travel as part of your cultural identity.

The fourth is what I think of as the survivalist/bushcraft mindset. To mind, craft and technique are key here.

For some of us, travel in the backcountry is some blend of these different mindsets, but I think these are major distinctions that I see. And at a general level, I think one's equipment choices get driven primarily out of one camp or another - including boots, clothing, packs and even knives.

While I hunt and grew up fishing, I'm definitely way out in the backpacking/climbing/ski touring/bike touring end of things. From this vantage point, if one is relying on a knife to survive then that's an indication that plenty of mistakes have been made long before hand. You don't need a knife for shelter because you're carrying shelter on your back, or should be to limit impact. You don't need a knife for fire, because you're carrying a stove, again, to limit impact - at least in the most routine of situations. This means you can get by with a very small knife to deal mostly with kitchen and EDC type uses.

Travel on or near water has it's own set of concerns regarding cutting one's self free from lines.

First aid requires bandage prep and small folding scissor are good for that.

Emergency fire starting in the winter is an issue but what works best for that depends on your local vegetation. In the northeast, I find folding saws to be infinitely better for cutting small deadfall and limbs than any knife or hatchet.

Some backcountry (and bike) travel is very equipment intensive. I find dedicated repair tools to be better than any multi-tool. If I'm going to repair a ski binding deep in the winter woods, I want a ratcheting t-handled screwdriver with a proper posi-drive tip, not some crappy fold-on-you multi-tool screwdriver with an ill fitting phillips head. Climbing crampons and bikes (yes, in the backcountry) have their own repair needs and I find that multitools are lousy answers to those needs. YMMV.

My solution:
+ Light 3" blade locking folder. The Opinel #8 works fine. I recently got a Buck 482 and that's just about perfect.
+ Small SAK with scissors in the first aid kit.
+ Small folding can opener with the camp stoves. Rarely used because I almost never carry cans into the woods, but just in case.
+ Separate repair tools depending on the mode of travel.

[rangerbluedog]

nice post Pinnah.
It's obvious you've put some thought into this.
Me thinks you might have some experience on which to form an opinion on this subject.

[IMBand]

I hit the wilderness in some of the most remote and unforgiving real estate there is and my
knife choices are pretty simple. First one HAS TO BE a medium to large bowie-style fixed.
Currently I am using a Benchmade CSK-II (I did carry the smaller Gerber 950 for many years).
Second knife to never leave the road without is a back-up knife to the bowie. I like a 6"
fixed for this, but recently bought a Cold Steel Master Hunter from basser5 that would make
a perfect back-up and it has a VERY stout 4.5" blade. I gave that knife to a good buddy for
Christmas a week ago and think I will look for something similar to it with a 4.5" blade. The
last knife I almost always carry is a medium sized SAK (and a Wyoming Knife if I am hunting).
Those 3 are must haves for the wilderness here, but I like to take others too sometimes.

The Ultimate Wilderness Knife for me = at least 2 knives, if not 3.


IM


**If anyone has a USA made Gerber 950 like the one in the pic (or similar skinner blade model) I
will give you a good price on them. Would need to be NM with sheath.

[garddogg56]

When deep in the back woods my backpack allways has a carpenters ax,camp knife and a Buck 119 on the belt.I use to keep a Vic officer but I change to a Imperial Matterhorn.

[coffeecup]

i have a "scatchet" i use to carry in my butt pack when fishing as a just in case. You can use it as a skinning knife, a hammer, a hatchet and has a gut hook built in the back of the blade. All you do is find a suitable limb to make a handle out of and screw it into the "threads" that are cut into the tool. Kinda neat tool but heavy, i'll try and find it and get a picture up.

I had one of those for about an hour back in the '80s--someone swiped it from me! Been looking for another ever since, but the only ones I've seen on eBay have gone for too much.

It's funny--I've got a stack of the promotional material Charter Arms made up when they sold these, but I don't have the actual tool!

[pinnah]

I hit the wilderness in some of the most remote and unforgiving real estate there is and my
knife choices are pretty simple. First one HAS TO BE a medium to large bowie-style fixed.
Currently I am using a Benchmade CSK-II (I did carry the smaller Gerber 950 for many years).
Second knife to never leave the road without is a back-up knife to the bowie. I like a 6"
fixed for this, but recently bought a Cold Steel Master Hunter from basser5 that would make
a perfect back-up and it has a VERY stout 4.5" blade. I gave that knife to a good buddy for
Christmas a week ago and think I will look for something similar to it with a 4.5" blade. The
last knife I almost always carry is a medium sized SAK (and a Wyoming Knife if I am hunting).
Those 3 are must haves for the wilderness here, but I like to take others too sometimes.

IMBand, was wondering if you would be willing to say more about where "there" is and, better yet, if you could describe a day in the woods in terms of mode of travel, what your doing, how you handle food cooking and shelter and where and how your knives get used through out that.

I'm fascinated by the different ways people travel in the backcountry and doubly fascinated by how knives fit into that.

Thanks!

[vikingdog]

Hey Pinnah check this thread from Barry, probably my favorite post of the year.

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... t=23L+goes

[MikeEngland]

What are ranger pacing beads?

[pinnah]

When deep in the back woods my backpack allways has a carpenters ax,camp knife and a Buck 119 on the belt.I use to keep a Vic officer but I change to a Imperial Matterhorn.

Garddog, nice jacket and set of tools! Same question for you that I asked IMBand. Could you describe a typical day/night in the woods and where your knife gets used? How you travel, cook and make shelter? I'm particularly interested since you and I tromp about in similar woods!!

Viking dog, that TR is just great. That's definitely a style of camping I'm not used to and I'm green with envy. That looks like big sky western style camping and great fishing!

Here are a few shots from a backcountry ski trip from a while back. This is on the edge of the Sandwich Wilderness Area in NH. You ski in towards a pond, follow a brook and logging road up a drainage to a height of land with a nice pond and then ski out on an old logging road on the other side, returning to the Waterville Valley area. I'll see if I can cover the basics with a single shot...

TRAVEL - Travel by ski means being able to repair skis. Bindings are the most common problem so I carry a ratcheting t-handle driver in my wax kit. It's the only way to get enough torque to the ski bindings, which are typically held in by posidrive screws. In the picture below, a ski pole lost a strap, which can hobble the skier and the party, so it's worth fixing as well as can be done. It's almost impossible to see at the bottom of the shot, but there's a Leatherman Wave being put to use here. I really dislike multitools but the pliers do come in handy and the Wave also packs a small saw blade. Everything else on it is just about worthless really and it is in the process of being replaced with small locking vice grips and a proper folding saw.

The picture shows us all with packs and that is real typical. The packs have weight bearing hip belts and that makes holster carry of anything a real pain in the neck. I feel naked without a knife on me, so that means something in my pocket. Left pocket almost always has my altimeter, sometimes backed up with a compass. Right pocket has a light folding knife.

SHELTER - This trip is a day trip but the party is carrying enough gear to keep 2 people alive over night in the cold. Temps here are just below 0F. There is a light sleeping bag, stove and fuel in the set of shared community gear. Most people carry a light mylar bivy sack. Emergency shelter would be a trench in the snow, lined with balsam boughs and packs, covered with light tarp and balsam boughs and secured with snow. A folding saw perfect for cutting boughs with minimal effort.

FOOD PREP - Food prep, such as it is, is restricted to cutting dried meat (hard salami), cheese and bagels and spreading peanut butter. Simple 3" knives are fine for this. Hot meals are based around rehydrated carbs (pasta, cous cous and yes, ramen) and soups - all of which are done on a stove. We don't build fires, even on the coldest of winter trips (we max out at about -10F as things get real hinky real fast below that). No axe or saw is needed for this style of camping, but lugging stove fuel is. That's a trade off.

Would really love to hear about how others travel in wild places and if and how their knives get used.


Equipment Repair by Pinnah, on Flickr

[vikingdog]

Mike, I never heard of them either and had to look them up:

"The tool is usually constructed using a set of 14 or more beads on a length of cord. The beads are divided into two sections, separated by a knot. 9 beads are used in the lower section, and 5 or more beads are used in the upper section. There's often a loop in the upper end, making it possible to attach the tool to the users gear with a simple Prusik knot."

"There are two ways to use the beads. One is to represent the paces the user have walked, while the other is to represent the distance walked."

"Both methods requires the user to know the relationship between the paces walked and the distance travelled."

"As users walk, they typically slide one bead on the cord for every ten paces taken. On the tenth pace, the user slides a bead in the lower section towards the knot. After the 90th pace, all 9 beads are against the knot. On the 100th pace, all 9 beads in the lower section are returned away from the knot, and a bead from the upper section is slid upwards, away from the knot."

"In this manner, the user calculates distance travelled by keeping track of paces taken. To use this method, the user must know the length of his pace to accurately calculate distance travelled. Also, the number of paces to be walked must be precalculated, or the distance travelled has to be calculated from the walked paces."


"For every 100 metres the user walks, one of the lower beads are pulled down. When the ninth of the lower beads are pulled, the user has walked 900 metres. The next time the user has walked 100 more metres, one of the upper beads are pulled down, and all the lower beads are pulled back up."

"Using this method the user must know the number of paces walked in 100 metres. An experienced user can also adapt the pace count for each hundred metres depending on the terrain. When using this method the user doesn't have to calculate, or look up how long distance to walk or the distance travelled."

[rangerbluedog]

If you're out in the woods a lot, and don't have a GPS - you need these, a good map, and a compass.
Make your own - CHEAP!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Army-Ra ... /?ALLSTEPS

[Edgewise]

I imagine the ultimate wilderness knife would be a knife someone like Kit Carson carried.
Unfortunately, I don't know what he carried.
Harry Wolhuter was a South African game warden in 1903 when he managed to kill an adult lion with his 6" bladed
knife. I'm told in those days it was probably close to 1095 steel.
Ka-bar got it's name from a knife that killed a bear. These are wilderness knives that have been tried and
true in extreme, unexpected situations. SAKs have saved lives in the wilderness too, but not from
lion or bear attacks.
I don't think a folding knife would do it.

[garddogg56]

Pinnah;after catching the thread I see what ya want.The only sking I have done was downhill my outdoor adventures are mostly hunting and fishing although I do steward a lot of land around Sebago lake and Moosehead.I also partake in search and rescue with the warden service but they due a great job seeing we don't spend the nite in the woods.As for the tools I use the ax for limbing fur trees for shelter and the hammer end for driving limbs for leantues,The 119 is for kinder and kindling when Burch isn't available.The Johnson is all about WOOL I'm not into modern fibers L.L. Beans has offered micro fibers but I trust WOOL and I do love Beans wool lined boots and wool glovemitts.The Matterhorn is for everything aspecially wittling to pass time which is the most important thing during an unexpected overnite most of these servival tactics are because of my grandpa and a bush pilot that was my scout leader.Here's a pic of the inside of fannypac also a solar blanket godsent

[garddogg56]

The ULTIMATE thing when in a search and rescue or an unexpected overnite is to keep your wits about ya I have read this whole thread and seen all these pretty knives axes and equipment if you don't keep your head I usually find all these tool all over the woods OHHH YA the best thing to bring into the woods is a good dog

[tank]

To stick to the topic of which knife you would choose, my hands down favorite is the bark river bravo-1 with a firesteel. Here's mine. A close second is the fallkniven f1.

[vikingdog]

That's a beautiful knife Tank!

This is an interesting thread. I'd like to see one about survival in the woods and what you would want to have in your pack.

[pinnah]

Tank, great looking knife. How long is the blade? Can you say more about why a fixed blade and how you would carry it?

Garddog, thanks so much for following up. Fascinating. I think we're actually pretty close. We both carry tools for cutting limbs: you, a hatchet and me, a folding saw. We both carry 2 knives for general purpose use. The big difference seems to be size and weight. I carry a locking folder to your fixed blade. And you carry a classic camper variant whereas I keep a key chain SAK in my 1st aid kit for the scissors.

Could you say more about the sorts of woodcraft techniques that you use with your Buck fixed blade that you wouldnt attempt with a light knife like the Buck 482? Do you used the battoning technique for splitting kindling?

This is an interesting thread. I'd like to see one about survival in the woods and what you would want to have in your pack.

The thing I find interesting about this discussion that I don't see in, say, backpacking only forums is that our shared interest in the knives is drawing together different approaches in the same discussion. I don't mind saying and reading more so long as the center of focus remains on the knives.

From the mountaineering perpective, there is a saying attributed to Yvonne Chouinard, "Speed is safety." This rooted in the alpinist ideal of moving fast and light and in which extra weight is to be avoided. One of the classic books in US climbing is "The Freedom of the Hills" by The Seattle Mountaineers. They are attributed for coining the phrase "the 10 essentials". Here's a link to their list. Note, they call for a pocket knife or (gak!) a multi tool.

http://www.seattlemountaineers.org/sbten.htm

[rangerbluedog]

Just for you Mike:
Most of my wilderness adventures are either in the swamps or foothills of coastal SC, or in the Smokies, or Appalachians. The time is from one to five days.
I still haven't found "the ultimate wilderness knife", but I have settled on two knives that I carry most of the time. The Ontario RD-6 for shelter building, trail clearing, and firewood gathering (pic attached). I also carry the Victorinox Trekker for the small stuff. I don't know if this counts, but for eating utensils on the longer trips I take my Boker knife/fork/spoon combo. It has a built in salt&pepper shaker.
I also take:
small handgun
guitar strings (for snares)
fishing line & hooks
space blanket
1 roll toilet paper
neckerchief
small towel
spare socks
good hat
sunglasses
"soap in a sack", made by junebug
water bottle with filter
canteen cup (2x)
MREs
dry rice
firestarter (magnesium)
lightweight rainjacket or poncho
compass
ziplock bags
1 black trashbag
small flannel sleeping bag
small first aid kit
probably other stuff I can't remember right now (I'll add as I recall, I'm too lazy to get up and look)
All stuffed into a Maxpedition "gearslinger"

[Forensic Jim]

I'd have to rely on my ESEE/RC-5P to take in the wild. The spine is 1/4" of 1095 carbon steel. This knife is big and stout and would be a real work horse in the woods.

[Jigslinger]

Most of my "wilderness" activities involve a canoe or single man inflatable pontoon boat so I don't really have too much concern about weight. Like most of you, I don't think one knife is practical and besides, it's more fun to carry more than one knife. I always take one large fixed blade knife. I just like to have a big knife, usually a Buck Nighthawk, KaBar Marine combat, or a Bowie. It is in a dry bag or pack. I carry a 3.5'' rubber handled drop point Explorer 440 stainless I got years ago for most general use. Tough little knife. Then in my pocket I have a Gerber LST. At hand is a multitool and a Swiss Army knife. Overkill? Oh yeah, but that's what's fun. If I could only have one it would be the Nighthawk or KaBar.

[garddogg56]

Phinah; the big differance here (I think) is that your trips are well planed were as mine are helping in search and rescue or wrapped around hunting and fishing.If I were to go on a fishing trip overnite I would have a different approach as I do most of my travel by foot or canoe I also like to use a mountain bike to get to remote ponds since Maine has became the land of the swing gate for an example I would replace the ax with a Buck folding saw,then replace the 119 with a w49 then pocket a Buck 303 or a Schrade 34ot .No matter what that little fannypac goes with me. So does the Lab and Springers

[IMBand]

Beautiful dogs GD56! We love Springers!! My wife got our first one the day after she graduated
High School (we drove to Castle Rock, WA to get him) and our second one is now almost 8.

IM

[garddogg56]

Yea IMBand,I didn't know they were highstrung till we got a Labador Great hunters and companions The Springer in the middle past away 1year ago last July best dog I ever had

[MyDogsHunt]

OHHH YA the best thing to bring into the woods is a good dog

^^^This^^^
Bet y'all knew I was gonna say that though.

Back on topic.
I'm certainly not an expert on Bush Craft" or "Woods Craft" or what ever they're calling it these days, but for a survival knife I'd think that the money and research that our military puts into every thing they do, that K-Bar USMC knife posted above would be a good choice.

If nothing else, and all things being equal, I'd choose it for the nostalgia factor.

Charlie