Carry a Gun? Better Have a Good Knife

If you’re a gun person, you need to be a knife person. Knives are indispensable. I’ve used a folding hunter to cut dinner steak and then the next day to open up a buck or breast a fat grouse.

They can be used to cut rope, shave tinder and kindling for the morning campfire, cut limbs for a temporary shelter and, in an emergency, as a fighting weapon.

Being a longtime outdoorsman, outdoor writer, legally-armed private citizen and a native of the Pacific Northwest where there are things with teeth not far off the pavement, I’ve got several good knives.

I’ve had several other good knives but today their whereabouts are largely unknown. My dad, who passed at the very young age of 50 years and a month — long before he should have — used to lose hunting knives. He’s leave them stuck in stumps after field-dressing a deer or on a riverbank after gutting fish.

Old friend lost

For many years, I carried a simple folding knife made by the old Western company. One of the handle panels broke off and I replaced it with a piece of carefully-fitted leather because the blade held a razor-sharp edge. You never want to retire such a tool but I did eventually lose it coming down a ridge trail on the lower slopes of Mount Rainier.

It was the knife I carried daily through junior and senior high school. My shop teacher once needed to borrow it — and didn’t even blink when he asked for it and I handed it over. When he was finished, he gave it back and I didn’t even get hauled down to the principal’s office. Times have certainly changed.

Over the decades, I’ve carried knives by Spyderco while my younger son is a Kershaw or Gerber man. I’ve had a couple of good Buck knives and two Old Timers that were favorites of loggers I knew as a kid.

On the hunt, my kit will include an original Rudy Ruana heavy-blade skinner purchased from a gun shop in Anchorage for a ridiculously low price. It was rescued from a cardboard box marked “Sale” and the shop owner apparently didn’t know what he had and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him. I’ve taken the hides off several deer with hardly a stroke on stone or steel. I once left it outside after skinning a whitetail buck, but it was retrieved by my mother-in-law, wiped clean and returned.

The Stones

Where I used to hone my knives on traditional oil stones, I now prefer diamond sharpeners. I learned years ago to gently push the edge along the sharpening surface rather than pull it. That way, you move the microscopic steel shavings away from the edge rather than onto it.

There’s a round diamond sharpener in my hunting backpack. It never leaves that pack except to be used. After the season, I’ll wash it to remove any blood or game fat, but it immediately goes right back in the backpack.

For my everyday carry knives, every now and then I’ll just give them a stroke or two on a small diamond sharpener just to keep the edge keen.

If they’re used for a particularly messy or dirty job, they get a good wash in hot soapy water and I might even wipe them down with an alcohol pad. I’d hate to get an infection from an accidental knife cut — anybody who carries a knife has cut himself or herself at least once — due to a dirty blade.

With the holidays just over the horizon, now would be a good time to shop around for a good knife as a gift for someone special — or treat yourself!

If you carry a firearm and don’t have a good knife, you’re ill-equipped. Now is the right time to change that!

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