Knife Techniques That Help in Survival Situations

Survival situations call for quick thinking and resourcefulness. One of the best tools to have at your disposal during this time is a knife. With a reliable blade in hand, you have a handy instrument for various purposes. If you’d like to prepare for any scenario that might come your way, our guide exploring some essential knife techniques that help in survival situations is here to help.

Prepping Your Knife for Survival

Before diving into the techniques, let’s talk about how important it is to have a well-maintained, sharp knife. Dull knives make tasks harder and increase the risk of accidents when using extra force. This is the last thing you’ll want to deal with during a survival situation. That’s why you need to keep up with your sharpening. You never know when you’ll end up in one of these scenarios, and a smooth, sharp edge will prove invaluable when employing each of these survival knife techniques.

Performing Emergency First Aid

Even with a sharp blade, accidents are likely to happen. Whether they come from your knife or another source, your blade will be able to assist in the dressing of your wounds. You can use it to cut bandages, create makeshift splints, or even remove foreign objects lodged in your body. In extreme cases, you can heat the knife and use it to cauterize a wound. Just be cautious and make sure to sanitize the blade to prevent infection.

Building a Shelter

One of the critical aspects of surviving outdoors is creating a safe and comfortable shelter. With a knife, gathering branches, cutting leaves, and even carving out wood for insulation becomes much easier. A well-crafted shelter will protect you from harsh weather and animals while helping you maintain body heat in colder temperatures.

Starting a Fire

Fire cooks your food, keeps you warm, and offers a level of protection against wildlife. Fortunately, having a knife can help you create a fire in a number of ways. First off, you can use it to shave small bits of dry wood or bark to serve as tinder. You can also use your knife to create a feather stick, where thin wood shavings curl around a stick and easily ignite with sparks. Additionally, you can use your blade to scrape a flint or ferrocerium rod to generate sparks.

Creating a Spear

As we mentioned, fire is great for cooking your food. But if you don’t catch anything, your fire won’t be quite as useful. Luckily, knives are great for hunting purposes. Since getting close enough to your prey to use your knife will be difficult, you may need to fashion a spear with it. You can do this in one of two ways. For the first method, locate a long, straight branch that’s sturdy enough to withstand pressure. Carefully use your knife to whittle one end of the branch into a sharp point.

For the other method, using the same type of branch, you can also split the end of it into two sections and secure the knife in the split, creating a spearhead. This method works better if you’re able to remove the handle from your blade since that’ll help it sit better in the split section of the branch. Check out our selection of ESEE knife handles. You might be able to find one that best suits your survival needs.

Throwing as a Weapon

If you can’t find a sturdy enough branch, you could try using your blade as a throwing knife instead. While not ideal, throwing it might be a viable option if you need to close the distance between you and your prey. Just be sure to learn and practice the proper grip, stance, and release techniques so that you can accurately throw your knife at a target. Remember that practice is essential to develop effective accuracy when throwing a knife, so take the time to hone this skill before relying on it in survival situations.

Prepping Your Meals

After you’ve secured your prey, you’ll need to prep the meat. Once again, knives are great here. You can use your blade to descale a fish, skin game, and trim fat from meat with ease. Outside of prepping your game meat, you can also use your knife to cut plants, fruits, and nuts you’ve found in the wild. Just be sure to clean your knife if you’ve used it on meat recently.

We’d also like to note that in addition to food, you can use your knife to help you gather water. You can do this by using it to carve into tree bark or cacti if there are no fresh water sources nearby.

Scraping With the Spine

When in the great outdoors, you might find yourself needing to scrape off bark or remove excess material from a piece of wood. Instead of using the sharp edge of your knife, try using the spine (the dull side opposite the cutting edge). Scraping with the spine allows you to preserve the sharpness of the main edge while still accomplishing the task at hand with minimal risk of cutting yourself. This knife technique is best used in survival situations that last longer than a few days since you’ll need the sharp end of your knife for more important tasks.

Drilling a Hole

Sometimes, when doing some of the things mentioned in this guide, you may need to create small holes in wood or other materials. Since you likely won’t have a drill, you’ll need to do this with your knife. To do so, place the tip of the blade where you want the hole and apply light to moderate pressure. Begin to rotate the knife in circular motions to create an indentation. Increase pressure carefully as the hole deepens, ensuring you have adequate control to prevent damage to your blade or injury to yourself.

Hammering With the Handle

Our final suggestion is one that many people might not consider, but you can usually use the handle of your knife as a hammer in a pinch. Whether you need to pound in stakes, break small branches, or even crush nuts and seeds, the flat surface of a solid knife handle can do the trick. While you can do this while holding the blade, this can be quite dangerous for obvious reasons. If possible, sheath your knife, but at the very least, cover the sharp end with a thick cloth. Once you have a good grip, use the butt end of the handle to strike with accuracy and force.