For a long time I bought a knife a year. Each one was supposed to be the last. None of them were. I had a heavy one I admired and didn't carry, a thin one I carried and didn't trust, and a whole drawer of compromises in between. The Benchmade Bugout was supposed to be another one of those. It is now four years old, and it is the only one I carry.
It weighs almost nothing — under two ounces. It opens with a thumb stud, with the easy, mechanical certainty that good things have. The blade is three inches of S30V steel, which holds an edge longer than I deserve, and sharpens back when I finally get around to it. The handle is a kind of green-gray plastic that I did not love at first and now cannot imagine in any other color. It looks, I think, like something that belongs in a tackle box.
What it is for
It opens letters. It cuts the tape on packages, the plastic on chicken, the twine on firewood, the small loose threads on the cuffs of shirts that should know better. It has, twice, cut me. It has, once, cut a seatbelt in a parking lot to free a dog. It rides in a right front pocket, clipped in, where I forget about it most days and miss it on the days I leave it on the dresser.
It is not, to be clear, a survival knife. It will not baton firewood. It will not skin a deer with any grace. If you need a knife to do those things, you need a different knife. The Bugout is a knife for the part of life that happens between things — at the kitchen counter, on a porch, in a glovebox, in a coat pocket on a long flight where you forgot you were wearing the coat.
The case for the Bugout is not that it is the best knife. It is that it is the knife you actually have.
— from the field notes
The four-year report
Here is what four years of constant carry have done to it. The clip is scratched, badly, where it has caught on a thousand pocket seams. The handle has one chip near the pivot, from a fall onto a tile floor that I winced at and then forgot about. The thumb stud, which I worried about at the start, has not loosened. The lock — Benchmade's AXIS lock, which slides instead of pressing — still snaps closed with the same small confidence.
I have sharpened it perhaps six times. I am not very good at sharpening. The edge has taken my mistakes and given me a usable knife back, every time. This is, I think, the highest compliment you can pay a tool.
What I considered, and didn't keep
For honesty: I have, over the years, also tried the Spyderco Para 3, the CRKT Pilar, the Opinel No. 8 (a beautiful knife that was, finally, not a pocket knife), and a Kershaw Leek that I gave to a nephew. Each was good. None of them stayed. The Para 3 is, by every measurement that matters, a better knife — better steel, better grip, better lock. I did not carry it. The Bugout is lighter than the idea of carrying a knife. That is what wins.
Where it falls short
The handle flexes, very slightly, if you squeeze it hard. People who care about this in reviews do not, in my experience, use their knives. The pocket clip is loose-tip, which means it sometimes catches when you put it back. The blade shape — a drop-point — is fine for everything and exceptional at nothing. If you want a knife that excels at one task, this is not your knife. If you want a knife that does most tasks, every day, for a decade, this might be.
I have, four years in, no plans to replace it. I will sharpen it again in the spring. I will probably lose it, eventually. I will buy another one the same day.