Need help selecting a camping knife?

Visit a sporting goods store and discuss your needs with the sales clerk. They can demonstrate several choices for you.

Is this an EDC knife or just to keep in you truck to use every once in awhile?

Is this going to be a food prep knife or a general utility knife?

As a utility knife I carry either a Swiss army or a Leatherman.

I also have a folding buck knife and a short bladed skinning knife that I carry when I am big game hunting.

I do most of my camp cooking with an Alaskan Ulu knife. It is the best all purpose cooking knife I have ever run across.

unless youre planning on fighting off a bear, a leatherman has all the tools you need. make sure you bring toilet paper, matches, and zip lock bags for your socks!! :)

I don’t recommend using a folding knife as a cooking tool in a camp setting. The crevices and slots that hold the various tools are an ideal place for bacteria to grow.

And camps are not the easiest place to clean them properly.

I just took a wilderness survival course at my school. We were all issued these knives. I absolutely love it. It is pretty damn sharp and holds its edge for quite some time. I was using it to chop down 2in thick branches and its still pretty damn sharp. Having a hammer on the back end is also quite useful.

@uberbatman I want to go to your school. If this is just for camping, I agree with @WestRiverrat, no folder. If you want an EDC knife, you can’t beat the Spyderco Delica.

@uberbatman‘s knife looks good. Agree with @WestRiverrat about the folding and crevices. Not sure what you’re planning on using it for specifically, but I just went to a drug store and bought a kitchen knife that came in a plastic sheath for a recent trip. It worked fine for the one use, but the “stainless steel” (seriously, stainless steel these days is a joke) started corroding soon after. Probably the exposure to ocean. My point is that a cheap $2 knife is a good short-term solution; @uberbatman‘s is better if you’ll be outside for a while or often.

In many cases, the all-in-one model has to make sacrifices to the performance of the various parts.
Knives are, quite often, one of these cases.
I would recommend getting a simple knife to accompany your multi-tool.

I’ve found the Gerber EVO series to be pretty useful. It’s just a knife, fitted with a two-and-a-half-inch folding, locking blade, suitable for most of the cutting tasks that the modern suburbanite might face throughout the day. The blade is stainless steel, the handle is cast aluminum, and the whole thing is open, for easy maintenance. The knife can be opened with one hand.

Agree with @Nullo If it’s an all-in-one, the knife isn’t going to be as good.

@zwingli As others have said it needs clarifying what your requirements are, just a knife or a multi tool?

If a multi tool is what you are after I would also recommend Leatherman. I have the Leatherman Wave which I bought 4 years ago. That thing is solid.

I’ve used it for camping around europe, for diy jobs around my house, for fixing my car . . . . .

I’d definitely buy another, but I don’t think I’ll need to as it’s as good as new.

Get a Becker Tactool or a Kukri. I have both and they are awesome. You can do anything with them.