Deciding to leave your cozy home and go hunting or setting up camp outdoors requires courage.
Outdoor living can be challenging when faced with adverse weather, and surviving might be the difference between life and death. As a result, hunting and camping expeditions are carefully planned out, with the locations scouted out well in advance. However, since anything can occur, your safety is still not assured. The one thing you can depend on at all times is your trusty survival knife.
In a true wilderness emergency, a strong, sharp, or even a pocket trustworthy blade can be the difference between life and death; they’re also fun to use when camping every day.
“Do I need survival knives?” you must be questioning yourself. Nobody sets out to be in a dangerous circumstance. But being prepared can transform a dire situation into a minor annoyance or great event.
Moreover, something as small but lifesaving as an EDC pocket knife is never too much to carry. Imagine that you are out on a day hike with your family. When someone becomes ill or twists an ankle, your pace slows down. You find yourself alone in the woods as night comes.
Imagine trying to travel home in time for the holidays, only to discover that the blizzard you intended to beat has shut down the interstate, trapping you in your car for an unforeseen amount of time.
With something as tiny as a pocket knife, you can escape any of the ominous-sounding circumstances outlined above, you might need to build a shelter or a fire, and find food. A set of survival knives is essential for making it through a crisis and prospering under hardship.
What qualities should a survival knife have?
Fire and shelter are typically the two most crucial components in survival circumstances. To accomplish both, you’ll need some creativity and expertise, but a decent knife will make the process much simpler. The attributes a survival knife should have are as follows:
Knife Design
Both making fire and making a shelter require the cutting and chopping of wood, so you’ll need a strong knife that will keep its edge. We often advise a fixed-blade survival knife with a full-tang design, which means the steel of the blade continues through the handle, because durability is crucial — if a knife breaks while being used severely, it won’t save your life. The best knives for learning bushcraft skills are those with full tangs. A folding pocket knife will do just fine if all you want is a trustworthy blade to keep in your pocket, handbag, or glove box.
Knife Size
Survival knives are typically better with larger blades. But not excessively.
Around nine inches, give or take a few, is a good and commonly accepted size for the category.
Again, though, the ideal survival knife is the one you have on hand when calamity strikes, if handled properly, even a pocket knife you carry with you all the time will hold back any threat from getting close to you. — Any blade is preferable to none at all, and every rule has an exception.
So what are the best knives for survival?
Boot Knife
This is a tactical survival knife that may be slipped inside the boots. They are widely used, easy to hide, and frequently double-edged. Many of them can grow to a maximum length of five inches. They are among the best survival knives since they are easy to access and hidden from view whether or not you are carrying them. This gives you the edge in the event of an attack. The hilt includes a firm grip and extended guards that protect your hand from accidentally slipping over the blade. A boot knife is the ideal self-defense weapon.
Combat Knife
It goes without saying that this type of survival knife is best used for self-defense. You bring this knife to a gunfight, and it’s usually employed by the military and other people who like to be prepared for everything. It is also one of the toughest and most durable knives you have ever encountered. It has a pointed blade with a single sharpened tip. For maximum damage in combat, some kinds occasionally include top edges with serrations. If you have anything in your possession in a perilous situation, you are given a fighting chance.
Tactical Knife
This particular type of survival knife can function as a tool or a weapon, depending on the circumstance. It is primarily designed to be utilized outside when hunting or camping in case a wild animal decides to jump you or inside the home when you want to peel an apple cleanly. Its strong blade and firm grip will last you for a very long time if you take the correct care of them. Most of them feature beautiful patterns with deft carvings on the handle and the blade.
Tanto Knife
Tanto knives are among the best Japanese fixed-blade knives. It’s a unique knife with an extremely straightforward design. A long, sharply pointed blade with a small grip that is shaped like a long rectangle. Its sharpness and longevity are proof that it was made from high-quality materials. Handling this knife erratically would be dangerous.
Using a Survival Knife
Using a Survival Knife
You’ll primarily utilize survival knives for woodworking. You won’t be crafting spears and gutting and skinning games from your snares unless you’re a skilled hunter already. Even if you don’t need to know these things to benefit from a survival knife, they are still important survival skills.
In a survival emergency, there are necessary tasks to take, but how you complete them is up to your best judgment. Your urgent demands will vary based on whether you’re in an emergency evacuation, stranded in a blizzard, or injured and lost in the wilderness. In no particular order, here are the items below:
Build a fire: Make a feather stick with your survival knife, ignite a fire using a fire starter, or drill a hole using the bow drill technique. To assemble a supply to last through the night or several nights, you can also break branches with your knife.
Build a shelter: It is worthwhile to construct a sturdy and windproof shelter, even if you are only stuck for one or two nights. You can cut branches to fit your A-frame and join them with notches using a survival knife.
Finding food: A knife at the ready makes creating snares much simpler. It’s also acceptable to skin and outfit any animals you catch. Fishing nets and baskets can be made, or you can carve fishing hooks like the Gorge.
Tool making: Wood carving is your survival knife’s primary use. If you’re trapped or lost, carving useful items can help your survival camp seem more comfortable. Furthermore, it’s a fun way to stay busy.
But here’s something important:
It’s crucial to keep your knife sharp. After all, it is a blade. Numerous online resources are available if you’re interested in learning about knife sharpening in this manner which doesn’t appeal to everyone.
But what if I told you that you wouldn’t need to bother about honing your knives any longer?
SHIELDON is a well-known knife company that not only creates EDC, pocket, and numerous types of other knives but also acts as a helpful buddy who is always there to answer any knife-related questions.
If you frequently handle knives, SHIELDON will liberate you from the laborious task of sharpening blades once and for all.
FAQs
What is a camping knife?
A camping knife is a heavy-duty knife, typically full tang, with a blade that is typically less than five inches long and can be used for a variety of tasks, including splitting kindling, cutting cord and rope, assisting with food preparation, whittling tent stakes, batoning firewood, and clearing brush if necessary. While there is bound to be overlap between the various categories of outdoor knives, the term “camping knife” is used to refer to this type of knife. Although folding knives are often used for camping since they are small and concealable, survival knives should always be fixed blade designs.
How to properly clean a survival knife?
In the woods, cleaning a knife can be challenging, but washing it in soap and water works nicely. When you go home, you can do a more thorough cleaning. Make sure to clean off any apparent dirt and debris between uses while you are camping.
How sharp should a camping knife be?
A camping knife ought to be sufficiently sharp to handle any task you throw at it, such as meal preparation and bushcraft. But if there is an accident and help is far away, a sharp knife can be an issue. The key is balance.
In Conclusion
Knife aficionados are obsessed with survival knives. They feature the best aesthetics of any knife design, and in the proper hands, they may be effective tools. If nothing else, you should at least carry an EDC pocket knife with you on your camping trips to deal with any trouble that could possibly appear out of the blue. There are also additional varieties of survival knives available. Make a sensible choice when making yours.