I was discussing different knives with this fellow,
and knives came up, and he was saying that JOC
used to use a knife he'd made, and he would sell
his hand made knives to the public.
The way he described what he was talking about,
I believe that he was thinking of one of the Benoit
hunting family. I read some article many years
ago where they were talking about one of the
brothers making some different obviously
homemade knives and sold many of them to
the public, and they talked about the Remington
pump rifles they used, etc.
I've never studied JOC that much, read maybe
a couple of his stories. I do know that he used
270 bolt rifles and not Remington pumps.

Does anyone know what knives Jack O'connor
favored ? I sure don't

I have several of his books and grew up reading his magazine articles. I cannot recall him ever saying much about knives and am fairly certain he didn't hand make any custom knives. You are correct about one of the Benoit's making knives. They were pretty crude in my opinion, but I guess at least a few people bought them. Probably more for the name than the actual knife itself.

Knives that the Benoit's made were intended to be functional, not works of art.

I think that you're right. I have most of JOC's books and grew up reading his articles is ODL and don't remember him writing about knives or handguns. The Benoits made and sold knives, not sure which Benoit, Larry or his sons or his grandsons.

They look like 7th grade shop projects to my eye.

Respectfully, there has been a tremendous renaissance in knife making, steel, etc since his time.

😂

The Benoits were making a tool to field dress a deer, not a museum piece. Something that did the job intended, it didn't have any frills.

It was Larry that made the knives. I have pics of several and they are nothing fancy for sure. All I've seen had clip point style blades with handles of deer antler.

Ask chuntsman 22... He seems to be the expert on anything and everything at least in his little world LOL

He hurt your feelers on your Rambo knife thread?

😂😂😂

She has a sensitive little twat, when it comes to letter openers.

Bahahaha

You're a mite touchy today feller.

Lol I was thinking the same thing.

Well somebody else has said JOC always used
and carried a regular trapper pocketknife to
cut up his animals, but I don't know

The mouth breather Brigade is alive and well

Jack owned quite a few handguns, and wrote articles over the years. There were two with documentation, he owned a K-22 and K-38 both are lettered and were shipped to Jack. A Colt National Match .38 spl was reviewed by him and sold to a friend. I’ve never seen any reference in writing about knives he used.

Whoever said that was correct.

"The only knife a hunter needs is a good, strong, well-made pocket knife" - J.O'C, Hunting in the Rockies, 1947.

"For a hunting knife the sportsman should choose a good substantial pocket knife" - J.O'C, Hunting in the Southwest, 1945.

O'Connor wasn't a fan of belt knives and said so rather caustically in both books. If he mentioned anything about hunting knives in writing after those two early books I've never seen it.

"The only knife a hunter needs. . ."

I would sorta kinda agree when it comes to
field dressing or gutting.
Done a bunch with most every configuration
the smallest being a MiniBuck folder with a
1 7/8 teeny blade. That's all I had that impromptu
trip. I sure wouldn't want to just have a smallish
knife for my one and only, but I would have to
make do.

Still, I wasn't sure because I've not read that
much of O'connor's stories

Cactus Jack did a fair bit of hunting on his own, but he also had a lot of guided hunts. Could be a lot of knife work was performed by his guides.

I would imagine O'Connor's "substantial pocket knife" was a single blade swell-center folding hunter that was popular in those days. A big jack knife.

Since JOC was brought up in Arizona, I was thinking a large Stockman style of folding blade knife.

For whatever reason, I would have thought he'd
have used a 2 bladed folding hunter, like Case
and KBar and Schrade and all those old companies
used to offer before the Buck 110 changed the
game. An uncle used to carry those starting when
he was in the Navy in Alaska back in the 50's and
60's. Him and some other sailors hunted ( poached)
game when they could slip away from whatever
they were supposed to be doing.
IIRC he said he initially had a Case, and later on
started with Schrades. I do remember that when
he was getting on towards the end of the road, he
had those Old Timer folder with the brass liner
lock.
I guess me thinking about them shooting the
white colored sheep and using those type of
knives kinda got mixed around with JOC hunting
( most likely legally) the sheep he hunted made
me kinda think that he probably used a slip
joint folder larger than a standard trapper or
similar

Born in Nogales grew up in Tempe must of had a switchblade. Time in Tucson no dought he would of started carrying a lightweight mountain knife.🤔