Camper Man’s best friend: the belt knife

Length
Choosing the right length of your belt knife is a life-or-death decision. A really long blade, which experienced woodsmen cleverly call a “sword,” lets you swagger through the forest saying “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
 
A short blade makes it hard to trim firewood without accidentally cutting off your thumb. A medium blade lets you do both, but not very well. You should carry all three sizes, so you think you’re prepared for every possible situation.
 
Material
Historians say most knives found on the American frontier looked like large kitchen knives. Hmm… they were “found” there? Somebody must have thrown them away. But why?
 
Ask any cook: with a drawerful of expensive knives that don’t cut worth a darn, your default knife that actually works is the Kmart blue-light special from 1992. It’s made of tin, with serrated edges.
 
So American frontiersmen went around wantonly discarding worthless expensive kitchen knives in favor of the blue-light special. And when those frontiersmen bit the dust, their sons inherited the blue-light knives. They aren’t sold in stores anymore, so you’ll have to scour eBay, flea markets and garage sales.
 
This is your main knife. Keep it on your belt at all times… although if you’re crouching over a cat-hole you just dug in the dirt, make sure your main knife doesn’t get anywhere near your main parts.
 
Jackknives
Many of our forefathers carried jackknives. So did our foremothers, who used theirs for deboning turkeys, stitching quilts, and performing emergency C-sections. Your early forays into the bush probably won’t include those fun activities, so let’s stick with masculine jackknives with tools for:

• skinning, stuffing and mounting a wild boar
• trimming unruly box hedges around your campsite
• fixing that one stupid Christmas light that keeps winking out, making the whole string go dark
• opening beer cans

​Be sure to buy a jackknife with a hole in one end. That lets you hang it around your neck with twine as an emergency lanyard, along with a forged I.D., if you stumble upon an annual meeting of grizzly bears.
 
Speaking of grizzly bears (the greatest fear of beginning campers, even in Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes): don’t even think of waving your puny knife in the grizzly’s face. The bear will just snort derisively, pull out a pistol, and shoot you dead.
 
If worse comes to worst
Is that grizzly reaching for his pistol? Are you hopelessly trapped by a raging forest fire? Or is a nearby camper playing an out-of-tune guitar and singing “If I Had a Hammer”? Grab your main knife and perform ritual seppuku to hasten your final exit. If it was good enough for samurai warriors, it’s good enough for you. 

For more advice to keep you (barely) alive in the wilderness, check out The Dumb Zone: A snarky look at your Obsessive Climbing Disorder at Amazon.