A butcher knife of good make is one of the best and cheapest of sheath knives. The common mistake among amateur hunters is that of buying too heavy a knife with too thick a blade. Unless you expect to indulge in hand to hand conflicts, or cut brush, such a weapon is excessive. I myself have carried for the last seven years a rather thin and broad blade made by the Marble Axe Company on the butcher knife pattern. This company advertises in its catalogue a knife as used by myself. They are mistaken. The knife I mean is a longer bladed affair, called a "kitchen or camp knife." It is a most excellent piece of steel, holds an edge well, and is useful alike as a camp and hunting knife. The fact that I have killed some thirty-four wild boars with it shows that it is not to be despised as a weapon.
Your compass should be large enough for accuracy, with a jewel movement. Such an instrument can be purchased for from one to two dollars. It is sheer extravagance to go in for anything more expensive unless you are a yachtsman or intend to run survey lines.
I have hesitated much before deciding to say anything whatever of the sporting outfit. The subject has been so thoroughly discussed by men so much more competent than myself; there are so many theories with which I confess myself not at all conversant, and my own experience has been so limited in the variety of weapons and tackle, that I hardly felt qualified to speak. However, I reflected that this whole series of articles does not pretend to be in any way authoritative, nor does it claim to present the only or the best equipment in any branch of wilderness travel, but only to set forth the results of my own twenty years more or less of pretty steady outdoor life. So likewise it may interest the reader to hear about the contents of my own gunrack, even though he himself would have chosen much more wisely.
My rifle is a .30-.40 box magazine Winchester, with Lyman sights. This I have heard is not a particularly accurate gun. Also it is stated that after a few hundred shots it becomes still more inaccurate because of a residue which only special process can remove from the rifling. This may be. I only know that my own rifle to-day, after ten years' service, will still shoot as closely as I know how to hold it, although it has sixty-four notches on its stock and has probably been fired first and last--at big game, small game, and targets--upward of a thousand times. I use the Lyman aperture sight except in the dusk of evening, when a folding bar sight takes its place. At the time I bought this rifle the .33 and .35 had not been issued, and I thought, and still think, the .30-.30 too light for sure work on any animal larger than a deer. I have never used the .35, but like the .33 very much. The old low-power guns I used to shoot a great deal, but have not for some years.