Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Need a hunting knife.

Hey guys, i need some help, i need a hunting knife and just thought i'd ask on here to see what you guys like/suggest. The catch is that i need to keep the price under $100, $75 if i can.

The Beretta Loveless Hunter with a Zytel handle can be had for a bit less than $50. Excellent.

Might wanna check this one out...

Buck Mini Vanguard
item #38-886-598-00
It's on sale at Bass Pro for 50 bucks.

Are you looking for a skinning knife or more of a Bush knife for Survival (Making lean to shelter, chop firewood, etc) ?

That actually looks pretty ideal, and Buck uses good steel in their knives, for the money. Very "drop point hunter" like.

That's a great blade; have one in the wooden handle version, and it's almost too nice to use. Really like the balance and size/shape of the blade.

He said for hunting, so I would assume it's for field dressing deer, and maybe field butchering, which involves some skinning too. A bushcraft/survival knife is a very different animal, requiring a thick blade with a nearly straight spine, squared off up to the tip to accommodate batoning through wood. To hold up to this, you generally need either a scandi or convex grind/edge, which puts a lot of steel in support of the edge.

Best grinds for game processing are hollow grind (very little steel supporting the edge). Hollow grinds don't hold up well to bushcraft/survival tasks, but can be made sharper and do fly through field dressing tasks with ease. Drop points are ideal for this (putting the point significantly lower than most of the spine line to avoid unintended poking of holes), but not for bushcraft, which knives ideally have a nearly straight spine all the way to the tip, squared off the full length, with very little drop at the point.