by David E. Petzal

I’ll spare you the usual litany of reasons why the world as we know it is coming unglued. Needless to say, you should be shopping for the occasion, and if you’re looking for a good fixed-blade knife, here are two that are so similar in purpose and construction that I decided to review them together.

The Ranger Puuko is made in Finland, where it was designed as a survival knife by a Finnish officer named J.P. Peltonen. The original Ranger has a 6-inch blade, but people noticed that if you lopped an inch off that, it would make a dandy hunting knife. And so the Ranger Puuko you see here has a 5-inch drop-point blade made of forged tool steel hardened to Rc 58 and coated with Teflon, a 5-inch handle of hardened rubber, and a totally cool leather sheath with a safety liner and an internal rubber keeper that snaps down on the handle and holds it firmly in place.

It’s not a pretty knife, or a finely finished one. It’s meant to be used very hard. The blade is thick and strong, sharpens very easily to a blood-curdling edge, and holds that edge reasonably well. The price for the either the 5-inch-blade Ranger or the 6-inch is $169.50 from kellamknives.com.

The second knife is a brand new one from Cold Steel, and can best be described as a Ka-Bar on steroids (pictured below). It’s called the Leatherneck SF (for “Semper Fi”) and follows the general lines of the Ka-Bar, but with improvements. The 6 ¾-inch blade is made of a steel called SK-5, which is the Japanese equivalent of American 1080, a high-carbon tool steel. It’s hardened to Rc57-58 and came to me with an appallingly sharp edge and kept it extremely well. As with the Ranger, this blade will rust, and so it, too, is coated.
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by Phil Bourjaily

This week on The Gun Nuts, Eddie Nickens talks about trail guns, using my two .22 handguns as examples. As Eddie points out, .22's are fun and inexpensive to shoot and can be loaded with a wide range of ammo. Nevertheless, they may not fit the bill as everyone’s trail gun.

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--Dave Maccar

As a natural pessimist who assumes everything could go south at any given moment, this video piqued my interest. Take a look at the LifeCube emergency shelter, a tent system with an integrated hard floor that serves as its own heavy plastic shipping container when not deployed. The cube has detachable hoop wheels so it can be moved over uneven terrain. Once the whole thing unfolds, it forms a raised 144-square-foot platform.

Check out the video of it’s 5-minute deployment, and try to ignore the corny music if you can.

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By Jim Baird

Before we left the tree line, Ted and I experienced very deep-powder snow in the bush around Great Bear Lake. We were not used to riding snowmobiles in that type of powder and got stuck badly a few times—luckily we knew how to get ourselves free.

How It’s Done: Getting stuck in deep snow happens when you cannot keep the machine level while moving. It’s very important to center your weight and turn by shifting your weight from side to side. You also get stuck when you don’t go fast enough through the powder, which causes your skis to sink in deep and the front of the machine to bottom out. After that happens the snow doesn’t provide enough grip for your track to push your front end through the jam. Your track will just kick all the powder out from underneath it, and your machine just sinks deeper. Reversing is futile at this point as well.
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By Jim Baird

Why did I do this trip? That’s a question that I don’t actually have a solid answer for. There are several reasons, but I always find myself sputtering when asked. I know that sounds a little odd. I traveled 755 miles through the frozen Arctic by snowmobile while camping out in sub-zero temperatures with polar bears, dangerous ice conditions, and blizzards all constantly looming, and I can’t think of a solid reason why.

George Mallory said it beautifully when he was asked: “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” His reply: “Because it’s there.” Mallory died attempting to climb the mountain. I am not a mountain climber and I can’t relate to his fate. It does remind me to stay safe. I can relate to his answer, though, and I’m going to roll with it.
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By Jim Baird

Now that Jim Baird is back from his two-week-long Arctic adventure, we thought we’d catch up with him to talk about the highs and lows of his trip and hear about how it feels to be back home.

F&S: What’s been the toughest part as far as readjusting back to “normal” life?
Jim Baird: Seeing so many people around me. I felt a little claustrophobic at first. Also, it’s a different mindset when you only have to focus on regular daily activities—and not on your survival. This makes you feel complacent to things that may have seemed stressful before. That’s a good thing.

F&S: Ten years from now, what memory of the trip do you think will stand out as the best?
JB: When I was driving on the smooth ice of the Amundsen Gulf in awe of the scenery and I first got the feeling that we were going to make it. Sometimes it’s the scary memories that stick with us. This way we learn from them and are safer next time. It’s a survival instinct. In the future a dangerous moment from the trip may end up being the “best” memory because it could end up saving my life. It is also often an exhilarating feeling to have survived something dangerous. I learned from being chilled to the bone as the sun rose over Prince Albert Sound. I learned from realizing there was only an inch of ice under my feet at a pressure ridge on Great Bear Lake. I definitely learned from coming close to driving off a canyon wall as we traveled in the dark. I will remember these things as part of the adventure and cherish them—but at the same time remember not to let them happen again.
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