Lawrence,
I did read that thread. Great info and a well done review. It is from 04-13-2013 not 2005.
I started this thread because I was so impressed with this knife I figured it would be a lot more popular. A lot of knife for the price. This is the only knife I have in duplicate.
I have to agree with you about the 119/120. Tried and true. I field dressed the first whitetail I ever shot with a 120. Great knives. I will be buying both the 119BR and 120 BR.
Monfletch,
Sorry, I must have confused your join date with your posting date. While continuing to think that a lot of people will be deterred from the Zombie Apocalypse motif, Buck, it seems to me has tied its hands a bit by not going against the brands out there that reviewer after reviewer are saying are great. I'm a hiker and not a camper but I spent a lot of time studying what may be the current premier survival and camping series of knives, the Beckers. Ethan Becker has an excellent reputation for making knives. He was asked to make a modern-day replacement for the USMC fighting knife, and developed the BK7 -- notice the lack of a Zombie name. He was working for and building upon Ka-Bar. After watching a ton of You-tubes, very few of which mentioned Zombie-related knives, I bought the BK7.
Becker was aware of the Zombie craze but he approached it in his own way. He developed the BK2 with the idea that if you could have only one knife to take into an Armageddon (that's the word he used and not "Apocalypse") situation, the BK2 would be the knife to take.
Becker's idea wasn't to take a minimalist approach to knives which in a sense the Ka-Bar 1217 is. It is a Combat Utility knife; so it has done and will do camp chores, but its primary duty was as a fighting knife. If you ran out of bullets, and back in the days when people were using the M1 with its 8 round capacity, that was a real possibility. I was in the Korean War and in our training we didn't go beyond WWII training; which meant that we never carried more than 60 rounds -- because the 30-06 round was pretty heavy. A bandoleer of 30-06 rounds would weigh you down.
The BK7 isn't like the Ka-Bar 1217. Its primary duty is the camp chores. Becker defined the soldier as a camper with an attitude. The BK7 fit that definition better than the Ka-Bar 1217. I did a lot of YouTube watching and if Becker knives aren't at the very top they are considered the very best you can get for the money and hint that they may be the very best period. So a better question to ask might be "why should I buy a "Buck Punk" for $92.76 from Amazon when I could get a Becker BK7 for $81.30? As to the lesser priced Reaper that is more in the category of the lesser priced Beckers affectionately known as the 'Tweens," the BK15, 16, & 17. I bought the BK17 but actually prefer the Buck 119. The 119 is a "serious" and well-proved hiking knife. If in my older age I decided to do some camping I'd definitely prefer the BK7.
A question I wonder about is who you are directing your question at? Is it Buck people who love the 119, 120, 110 and 112? Or is it survivalists who are out there batoning, feathering and using their knives to prove that they can start fires without matches? Earlier I thought it was the former group, but in case you intended to address the latter group, they probably aren't reading the Buck Forum. They are over on the Becker Forum.
Lawrence
