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You can’t compromise on survival gear quality, so over 20 years ago, I invested in a Cold Steel SRK. If I could only have one survival knife, which would also be used as a field dressing tool for big game and a meat cutting implement, it would be a SRK. Here’s why.
My Cold Steel SRK has had hard use for nearly 20 years and is still my first choice for a survival knife.
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by Leon Pantenburg
After my first Idaho elk hunt in 1990, I had to make some gear changes. My wood-stocked BDL 7mm Remington Magnum caliber went synthetic. I got heavier boots, warmer hunting clothes, better binoculars 
and a Cold Steel SRK.
The upgrade was great: What hunter ever needs an excuse to buy new stuff? But I got almost emotional upon replacing my Buck folding hunting knife. 
I bought the Buck new for $25 on August 31, 1976 at the Ace Hardware Store in Lovell, Wyoming, and the Buck and I have bonded.
The Buck was in my pack when I hiked the John Muir Trail in California; the southern loop of Yellowstone, Death Valley
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and on several other long hikes in various western mountain ranges. It rode on my hip on my Mississippi River canoe trip from Minnesota to Louisiana, and also went on canoe trips through the Big Black and Okefenokee Swamps. The Buck has been used to clean hundreds of fish, squirrels and rabbits; cut summer sausage and spread gallons of peanut butter on crackers and bread. I used it to gut and skin my first deer.
But after my first backpack elk hunt, I realized that a different survival-style knife was needed. Weight is an issue, and there is only room to carry minimal equipment into the backcountry. Any knife chosen would have to do everything, so it had to be virtually indestructible.
This ruled out folders. Any folder’s weak point is the hinge. Break that, and you end up with two pieces. And, a hinge attracts hair, dirt and other stuff that will eventually gum it up.
Then, I also wanted a longer, thicker blade for gutting and quartering a large animal. While there are folks who regularly take care of their hunting needs with a jack knife, I prefer a four to six-inch-long blade.
My backcountry knife also needed a non-slip handle. Inevitably, the knife gets covered with blood and body fluids during a gutting operation and a slippery handle is dangerous.
And I don’t like guthooks. In my opinion, the hook is a gimmick and only good for a couple of cuts, such as the initial incision to open up the body cavity. Otherwise, the guthook dulls easily, looks terrible on a knife blade, can hook on the sheath or your clothing and serves no other purpose.
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So I thought long and hard about the Buck’s successor before deciding on a SRK. The initials stand for “Search and Rescue Knife,” but I bought it because of the design, the composition of the handle and the reported durability.
My SRK’s high carbon steel blade is 3/16″ thick and 6″ long; the Kraton handle is 4-3/4 inches long and overall length is 10-3/4 inches. My SRK, without sheath, weighs eight ounces, and 10.5 with sheath wrapped in duct tape. 
It appears to have a full-length tang, and the sheath was reasonably good nylon.
The knife came out of its box shaving-sharp, and the steel holds an edge very well. The blade
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also comes with a black finish I don’t like. My first action was to take the knife to a cutlery store and have all that finish removed. There’s never been a problem with rust.
My SRK is used for everything, because it holds an edge and handles well. Over the course of its career, the knife has been carried hundreds of miles on backpacking and hunting trips. It has been used to whittle wiener sticks, been battoned through many pieces of firewood, and has been pounded through a deer’s pelvis with a rock during butchering. It is the knife I use for beheading fish. Several scouts have learned safe knife handling, using the SRK, around campfires at Boy Scout campouts.
The only thing I’d change about the SRK is the finish on the blade! The sheath has been upgraded since I bought my SRK in 1991.
For what I need, specifically, a survival tool that can double as a backcountry big game hunting knife, the SRK is perfect. My SRK has field dressed well over 50 deer and been used on several elk. In one instance, the knife field dressed and quartered three deer without it needing sharpening. The handle never gets too slick to hold safely, no matter how messy the field dressing job gets.
The knife’s performance is so impressive that two of my elk-hunter friends also bought SRKs. Two years ago, I bought a SRK for a hunting buddy who refused to accept my fair share of the gas money on a hunting trip.
But there are some other tasks where the SRK doesn’t particularly shine. It isn’t a particularly good camp knife, since the thick blade doesn’t work all that well for slicing tomatoes, potatoes, or summer sausage. It’s clumsy for peeling potatoes. But that’s why I also, weight permitting, carry some form of Mora knife.
The clip point design works well for gutting and most field dressing chores, but the SRK is not the best skinner. (A Forshner five-inch Lamb Skinner is!) And there are better knifes for meat cutting. Forget about filleting fish: the knife is just too big and inflexible.
Other than a few minor cosmetic tweaks, my SRK has worked just fine. It went along on my October, 2010 elk hunt, even though I was finishing the final field testing of two other knives: a Gerber Gator 46904 Fine Edge and a Cold Steel Master Hunter. The newbies would have done most of the work if I had killed an elk. But the SRK was at hand, if these other knives had not worked as expected. As far as the SRK is concerned, there is no replacement in sight!
(Check out this torture test video!)
(Check out “The Best Survival Knife?” blog by clicking here!)
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