Almost any knife, within reason, can be used as a bushcraft/survival knife—do you agree?

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Well, yes you're right - but:

We are knife enthusiasts, so carrying several pounds of steel (and feeling great about it) is also part of the experience :)

A SAK or any other tradtional folder + a hatchet will work quite good, but where's the fun in that?

The deep satisfying bite of a nice sharp fixed blade in soft pine is (at least for me) a wonderful feeling, that I inextricably link with bushcraft.
 
I think it depends on if you are "bushcrafting" is going out of your way to kit up to do bushcrafty things or just "surviving based on some knowledge you have using the tool is ya got".

I absolutely think that any knife of even marginal quality can be pushed into accomplishing bushcrafting goals if not pretty or for the long term.

It just depends on if you are going out of your way to flesh out the niche. You don't NEED a fishing pole to catch fish when a bit of line and a hook will do, but it sure makes the job easier ;)

As for bushcrafting specific knives, I get it it that's what you're into. I don't go out of my way to practice such skills, so I just go with what I have on my person and hope that if I am in a bad situation that my handful of skills and whatever halfway quality knife on my person will press through.
 
We should also consider that “survival” can mean anything from getting through a bad dinner to living in a post apocalyptic world. When the hour count on your theoretical survival situation starts to accumulate, you are really going to want much more than a knife; at that point you will be looking for a full tool chest, including what is between your ears, whatever community can be pulled together and a good supply of divine intervention (luck?). Feathersticking is a start, but can you plan, organize, entertain and lead a community? Survival skills may encompass far more than we usually consider.

N2s
 
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Expanding on my earlier comment where I didn't talk about survival uses:
Read up on your Felix Immler. This guy is a real life MacGyver, and can probably survive quite some bad predicaments with a simple SAK.
Realistically, there is no place here in Germany that is further than 6 miles from a street and 3 miles from a builing away... So involuntary wilderness survival isn't quite a challenge here.

But as I like knives, I always pack some pounds of steel, including folding and fixed knives, tools and things to pry myself out of stupid decisions...
 
I agree with the question being posed 100% and have argued as such before. Terms like "Bushcraft" and "Tactical" are marketing exercises first and foremost. These knives may have different grinds or design features that are touted at making them "better" at something, but at the end of the day it is (again) all marketing. People were camping in the woods with old ground down kitchen knives, all other manner of old bladed objects for hundreds of years before the Buck 110, SAK, Mora knife (or any other specific Buschcraftjer design) or their modern equivalents existed. You can do everything you need to do in a survival situation with whatever knife you have on you, if you've got the relevant skillsets. As for tactical knives, I would wager that more people have been killed with kitchen knives than any tactical knife, thought that probably gets tested the further back you go and we start getting into the wars that were fought with bladed weapons because they were the dominant offensive measure at the time!

In any case, I don't look down on or judge folks who like a knife that has been marketed towards a need or want they have. I am only poking fun in a very genial way, as I camped for years with nothing more than a SAK Tinker, an old bow-saw from a hardware store that my Dad had in the garage, a hatchet from somewhere or other, and a Gerber Gator, half serrated no less! I had countless good times, and got all the wood processing, food prep, whittling, and feathersticking imaginable done just fine. But if folks want a specific knife that they like the look of, and feel that the design elements will give them a better experience, than I say go for it. Absolutely. Just get out there!
 
We are spoiled with the sheer number of knives to choose from these days. There are so many knives, makers, manufacturers that it can be rather dizzying to contemplate where to even start if one is a discriminating consumer. We are long departed from the days when you would head to the hardware or general store and pick up whatever they had in stock to suit your cutting needs.

With such an abundance of supply, it makes sense for some form of delineation to occur in terms of marketing. It allows the end user to break down their searches categorically and yes, it does lead to overthinking, but such is the price we pay for being fortunate to have such power of choice.
-"With nothing better to do on 48 hour stakeouts, our knife designs were conceived by secret squirrel black ops teams!"
-"Our blade designs were dna mined from the prehistoric reindeer herders, you'll never need another hunting knife!"
-"Forged from the armpit heat of top grey men, these stickers will provide you the very best in discreet self defense!"
-"Need to cut a perfect square in a round stick for... reasons? Boy, do we have the woodsy knife for you!"

I digress a wee bit. The point is, the marketing is necessary in a sense, for makers to help push their product to a certain demographic, whether they be soldiers, LEO, hunters, loggers, farmers, etc. Most of us know better but how things are defined today is also super helpful when newer folks stumble in here looking for advice on the best options, etc. Whether it's a matter of providing education on labels or drilling down to a user's fundamental needs, that starting point of, "I'm looking for a [insert blank] knife that can do x, y, and z", serves as a basis for how the community can respond and assist, and in may cases, it can open the doors on a whole new "category" of knives that the would-be user hadn't considered.
 
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You can certainly buy knives that are specialized for a certain task. You generally want the thinnest / lightest knife that does everything do what you want to do without failing at whatever task you want it do.

At the extremes, it should be pretty obvious that a scalpel isn’t going to work well for splitting logs and that a machete isn’t going to work well for performing surgery.
 
I think everything has gotten so out of hand in the last 10-15 years with destruction tests,bomb proof knifes, bushcraft, the magnacut craze, batonning, and alot of other things. I have a friend who drives an ice cream truck, hes been cutting open cardboard ice cream boxes for almost 25 years with , of all things, a Kershaw Leek.
 
I'm a Baton Bro, or more like a Froe Fan! Love that Tacti-wack...um...that didn't come out right... But I mostly do it with a proper 5160 big blade as its safer than a hatchet. And winter fires I mostly Froe a log (AFTER CUT with a SAW, one of the more important survival tools with extra saw blades, one can have.) as an Axe or Hatchet can cause worse accident if you make a mistake when half frozen. But I find an AXE more useful than a hatchet.

Well it depends what you want to do with the knife. A survival Knife is to get you home to the warm glow of your computron device and doritos.

If your looking for a one knife option for bushy craft stuff and survival, there are many options. Knife Nerd Site has shown me a back to basics 420 HC is tough and rust resistant, at the cost of sharpening it more often. I'll be restocking my general use folders with Gerbers and Bucks again with it.

There are a lot of one knife options. CS SRK, Gerber Strong ARM, and a lot others. I favor Saber Grinds (High or low), and the most fixed blades I gave away where Gerber Strongarms, and RD6s. I gave them away for in case they needed one and they kept one in the car and grabbed it as an after thought when they went wilderhooding. Almost every one of them made a dire situation an inconvenience, cutting branches for car traction to cutting a new canoe paddle and such. The RD6s are 5160, FFG but as tough as heck. These last two statements were just an example, where a the right tool in the right place can be a big help.

So decide what your need/want is, and ask for advice here, god knows they helped me out a lot around here.
 
DangerZone98 said:
TL;DR: If it cuts well enough and if it’s robust, it can be your survival knife.

To be honest, I’m a city slicker and know very little about bushcraft but I’d love to learn more. From what little I know though, knives aren’t super specific tools like screwdrivers or wrenches for example; you can comfortably use your folder to prep food in a pinch and your ‘outdoorsy’ Mora for house chores. I never found the scandi grind to be a hindrance. As tools, knives can be very flexible within the express purpose of cutting.

That said, I guess my point is that I find it a little amusing when knives are marketed for bushcraft or survival purposes. I’d be totally fine using my non-outdoorsy Recon Tanto as a bushcraft knife.

I guess the ‘within reason’ part of the title covers knives with more specific niches. Butcher and deboning knives for instance. For obvious reasons, they would be impractical as survival belt knives.
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I don't think a slip joint knife would be robust enough to be used for a bushcraft knife.
 
Reaper007013 said:
I don't think a slip joint knife would be robust enough to be used for a bushcraft knife.
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That would fall in the within reason part of the title. I also mentioned deboning, fillet, butcher knives as being impractical choices for the job as they are specialty tools.

But I agree. I don’t doubt some skilled fellows here can make do with a slipjoint. Me personally, I would like my Mora Kansbol or Ruike Jaeger at the very least. I’m not a slipjoint guy myself.
 
Arathol said:
Explain? Safer how?
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When you are an urban dweller your experience with an axe is very limited. You just don’t get to randomly chop down trees in a city for firewood. It is one of the dynamics that have led many to “bushcrafting”. If we are frank about it, 80-90% of the population wouldn’t know where to start to take down a tree; do you start by wacking at the bottom of the trunk or by trimming off the major limbs?

N2s
 
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