Of the many different types of knives out there, the choices of what you can purchase are practically unlimited. Depending on what you are doing, you have several choices to make. The most important thing you need to ask yourself is what are you going to be using it for. Any hunting knife that you buy should be taken into consideration of whether or not it would make a good long term survival knife. Pocket knives are different, because they are naturally smaller and more compact and have multiple functions (some of them) and aren't going to be subject to the amount of abuse that a hunting/survival knife is going to. For the average hunter a good lock-blade folder is usually plenty, you have multiple choices for blade length and if you purchase a brand name like Buck, Schrade, Gerber, etc... then you usually end up with a good blade. For a hunting knife you don't hardly need anything with a blade larger than about 4 inches or so, even for skinning and boning and those are specialty blades in themselves. For a survival knife, the better choice would be a longer fixed blade with a full tang. You need to be able to chop with it so it needs to be heavier but not so heavy that it becomes load bearing. It needs to have a drop style point for delicate work but can also be used to spear and skin with as well. You will see lots of cheapies out there with a survival kit in the handle and all that but be warned, unless you buy a very high quality knife of that sort, you are buying junk. Generally speaking, most people will never use more a pocket knife, but if you are on this site then you aren't most people and will need something more. I never hit the bush unless I have two knives on me, sometimes three. I have a good sheath knife (fixed blade), a pocket knife of some type usually being a swiss army knife of some kind or a small lock blade, and I ALWAYS carry my Leatherman WAVE. I like the WAVE due to the fact that the most commonly used blades are on the outside of the handle and you don't have to open the tool to pull a blade. It has a fine edge blade, a serrated blade, a three sided metal file and a wood saw. It also contains stubbed needle nose pliers with bottle grips and two styles of wire cutters (hard and soft). It has a good pair of small scissors, phillips and flat drivers and an assortment of punches, awls and a good can opener. This is an invaluable tool in most situations, I carry this thing everywhere I go and if it's not on my side, it's laying on the front seat of my truck. It's on the salty side, around $80 or better (last time I checked anyway) but you won't know how you got along without it once you have it. There are other multi-tools out there and some are good and some are shit, you just have to use your head when buying. More to follow, my hard drive that had all my photos and on it plus the eight other posts I had pre-typed for this (among other things) took a giant crap on me so I have to go do all the photos again and all the other stuff I had but bear with me, it's coming!