Then she already has your knife and your screwed.Originally Posted by aficion
my knife is on my vest. only had to use it once to cut myself out of tangled paddle lease playing in the waves.
I'm so confused, I'm not sure if I lost my horse or found a rope.
I have had to cut myself out of a bush hook underwater while diving.
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Was she creepy before or after you bought drinks for her?
Termite fart so much they are responsible for 3% of global methane emissions.
Dont worry until she hauls you home to meet dad and bro...and you hear banjo music playing on the porch.
My scuba knife, carried on my lower leg, was only used to shuck oysters and clams, yet I was always glad it was there. Unlike some girlfriends.
My go to fixed blade knife for AT hiking is a Light My Fire Mora knife. Its a 3.75" blade, 3.4oz and looks very non-threatening. Basically a glorified kitchen paring knife with a fire steel attached to the handle. That fire steel I hope makes it "dual use" and in places like NJ where like mentioned earlier everything is pretty much illegal at least as a hiker on the AT you can argue the whole "explainable lawful purpose" and "weapon under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses" pat of their law.
I usually keep it with my cook set on the side pocket, next to my spork, so it hidden in plain sight but not a concealed weapon and looks like just another utensil. Its useful for food prep, whittling, digging out splinters, and God Forbid for last ditch Self defense.
I guess if you only hike the AT you don't need a knife, but I don't personally understand why anyone would put themselves in a potential survival situation without a decent knife. A solid knife with a tang is 2 to 4 ounces. Mora knives are excellent.
Maybe it's an experience thing. None of the most experienced high mileage hikers that I have either talked to or read about carry anything more than a pocket knife. Andrew Skurka for example just packs a little Victorinox Classic swiss army knife. And he has been places most of us will never go.
Two thoughts here:
(1) A survival situation is pretty darn rare. Things have to go badly wrong.
The more time one spends in the back country the more chances there are for something to go badly wrong. But:
(2) Can you folks think of a situation where things go badly wrong on the scenic trails without any bad decisions coming into play? (This is only a semi-rhetorical question. As someone who has led back country hikes and this summer will be leading 2-3 day back country trips, I am interested in answers.)
My point here is that good decisions prevent things from going badly wrong. And my hunch is that those who have a large amount of experience tend to make few bad decisions.
Still, I will never fault someone for being prepared. And it may well be someone else's bad decision that you end up trying to help rectify.
Last edited by Meriadoc; 02-09-2014 at 20:35.
I think you already hit the nail on the head with your comment above. This site is focused on hiking the Appalachian Trail primarily and it attracts the Lightweight High Mileage crowd. Surprisingly few folks (in my opinion) on this site show much interest in bushcraft or other skills that are required to be considered a woodsman. I love the A.T. but it is admittedly a sort of wilderness trail with training wheels. For the most part it is safe to say that if you get hurt on the A.T. someone will probably pass by and find you and that search and rescue will most likely be able to get you to safety. All of this is a very good thing because it allows thousands of people to get out into the woods each year that otherwise might not get the chance, but it is very different from being a skilled outdoorsman.
Last October I had the chance to spend a week on the trail with a friend who is of the bushcraft/survivalist way of thinking and it amazed me how much he knew about the land that I didn't. He could reliably point out the locations of unmarked water sources, constantly identified edible and medicinal plants as we passed them, could start a fire in ways that I know about but can rarely do sucessfully and even spotted the soldiers that were trying to remain unseen in the area of Hawk Mountain shelter. Meanwhile I was lighter, faster and more efficient when it came to hiking, I knew how to pace myself and how to gauge realistic distances we could make on the trail each day. We both learned a lot from eachother during the trip.
And for the record he carried his mora knife and used it every day.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
As you pointed out, hiking and bushcraft are two separate skill sets, with two separate objectives. Also I don't think it's an just AT hiking thing either. I have been hiking in MI, CA, AZ, AK FL and a few other places to boot and you just don't see a lot of experienced hikers carrying much more than a pocket knife. As a matter of fact there was a time when my friends and I would joke saying you could tell a hikers experience level by the size of their knife.
Don't get me wrong, there is much value in a quality knife. But it doesn't have to be big or a have a fixed blade.
You need something like a Kabar in case you are attacked by a grizzly bear.
LOL Supposedly that is where the name Ka-bar comes from, a hillbilly Fur trapper who wrote a letter to the company in the 1920's saying that he "kill a Bear" with the knife. Actually Kabar makes not only big military knives, but hunting knives, and camping knives. The BK-11 and BK-14 are great small fixed blade knives. Shug Emery over at Hammock forums can be seen sometimes carrying a Mora or a BK-11 on his shoulder straps of his pack.
That's pretty much the difference, some are not just hiking/traveling. We are taking the time to enjoy living in nature often diverting off main trails for several days. My knife is used every day, from cutting cord, as a digging tool, as a prying tool, cleaning game/fish, food preparation, making a pole spear, carving a design into a walking stick, as an ice pick, to help climb a tree, to climb a cliff, making small traps, as a backup fire striking tool, for dinner, for hammering tent spikes, for cutting ripstop, for freeing self of entanglement, as a rescue tool, as a can opener, for a making a spoon, as throwing knife for fun, combatting feral pig or other animal or person, and for river diving for gold nuggets and chipping them out!
The people who don't carry knives, I believe them when they say they don't need them, I just just approach hiking as a much different activity than they do, and I would probably find them boring as a travel companion.
it would be either my Becker BK14 neck knife or my Mora Companion.
I tend to keep a small swiss army knife with scissors and a can opener in my first aid kit, and a small knife like an ESEE -3 or a Becker Necker hanging around my neck inside my shirt when hiking.
I have had a knife of some sort on my person pretty much every day (aside from Army Basic Training, Infantry School and Airborne School) since I was about ten. I feel naked without a knife clipped into my pocket or somewhere accessible on my body. Unlike most folks out there, I tend to run into a need for my knife almost daily, whether it be something mundane like opening a package, or something a bit more sporting like cutting my way out of a greenbriar, grapevine, multiflora rose, bittersweet, or other nasty thicket. People have made fun of the fact that I always carry a knife and keep it razor sharp....right up until they need to borrow it.
But you don't need a lot of knife on the AT or on most hiking trails. A little bushknife, Mora, ESEE-3, Becker Necker, etc. is ample for a fixed blade, and a decent Swiss Army type knife is an excellent choice for a folder.
My everyday carry knife is a Benchmade Osborne Rift. It is an Axis lock folder. Very robust folder. I'd leave it home on a hiking trip.
As an aside. The legality of virtually any knife will vary state to state and location to location. Most school property, for instance, is zero tolerance ground for any knife not owned by the school for use in a workshop or kitchen. By contrast, in some states, a private citizen can own and carry an automatic knife (switchblade), without any special licensing. There is a movement to get rid of anti-switchblade laws completely as a relic of the 1950's fear of streetgang thugs wielding switchblades. All that said, even if you are legal to carry one in your home state, simply carrying it across a state border is a violation of federal law.
Andrew "Iceman" Priestley
AT'95, GA>ME
Non nobis Domine, non nobis sed Nomini Tuo da Gloriam
Not for us O Lord, not for us but in Your Name is the Glory
A stupid cop, maybe.
I almost always carry an ESEE Izula II. I certainly could get by without it but I never hike without a fixed blade knife. Just sleep better knowing I have it.
I carry a BK 14 mainly because I use a Bushbuddy wood stove and often find myself processing wood. I also have a Mora Bushcraft Black but usually carry the BK14 because it is smaller.
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