Best Pocket and Field Knives UK 2026: Victorinox vs Opinel vs Morakniv

Three makers account for most of the knives that actually get used in the British field, and they are not really competing with each other. Victorinox builds a multi-tool you happen to be able to cut with. Opinel builds a folding blade that costs less than a box of cartridges and takes a frightening edge. Morakniv builds a fixed blade for people who need one to work, not to look at.

Pick the wrong one for the job and you end up gralloching with a corkscrew in your palm, or carrying a sheath knife round a supermarket car park because you forgot to take your belt off.

This is a straight comparison of the three, by job, using what BushWear actually holds.

Quick picks

• Everyday carry in a stalking jacket — Victorinox Classic SD, around £21. Twenty-one grams, and the tweezers earn their keep on ticks alone.
• Best all-round folder — Opinel No.8, around £12. The default answer for most people, most of the time.
• Best folder for field dressing — Opinel No.12, around £20. Full 12cm blade, locks, cheap enough not to baby.
• Best fixed blade on the hill — Morakniv Companion (S) Hi-Vis Orange, around £19. Orange because you will put it down in the heather.
• Best for the larder bench — Mora ProGrip Straight Wide Boning 6" Stiff, around £20.
• Best pocket knife with a saw — Victorinox Huntsman, around £40.
• Cheapest knife worth owning — Morakniv Basic 511, around £9.

The three makers, honestly

Victorinox make pocket tools with a blade in them. That is the correct way to think about a Swiss Army knife: the cutting edge is one of fifteen or sixteen things it does, and it is not the thing it does best. Where a Victorinox wins is on the days you did not plan for — a screw backing out of a bipod, a snapped bootlace, a tick behind the ear, a cable tie that needs cutting off a highseat. It is a knife that lives in the jacket permanently and gets used weekly for jobs a sheath knife would be ridiculous for.

Opinel make the simplest useful folding knife anyone has managed to build. A blade, a wooden handle, and the Virobloc ring — a stainless collar Marcel Opinel designed in 1955 that twists to lock the blade open while you work, and twists the other way to lock it shut for carrying. Most of the range is carbon steel, which takes a keener edge than stainless and comes back faster on a stone, at the cost of needing wiping and oiling if it gets wet. They are cheap enough that losing one in a wood is annoying rather than expensive.

Morakniv — often just "Mora" — make fixed blades in Mora, Sweden, and they are the brand professionals reach for when the knife is a tool rather than a possession. A Scandi grind, a rubber or polymer handle that grips when wet, a plastic sheath, and no pretence. They also make an entire second range for the larder: boning knives, trimmers, gutting knives, butchery blades in the same Sandvik steel. If you process your own venison, the Mora larder range is probably more relevant to you than anything in their bushcraft line.

Before you buy: locking, non-locking and UK law

This matters more than which brand you prefer, and it is the thing most buying guides skip.

In England and Wales it is an offence to have a bladed or sharply pointed article in a public place without good reason or lawful authority. The long-standing exemption covers a folding pocketknife with a cutting edge that does not exceed three inches — and "folding" has been interpreted by the courts to mean genuinely non-locking. A knife with a locking blade does not fall inside that exemption, whatever its length.

The practical consequence for the three brands here:

• Opinel folders lock. That is the whole point of the Virobloc ring, and it applies right down the range, including the small No.4 and No.6. An Opinel is not a "carry it everywhere" knife in law.
• Morakniv fixed blades are outside the exemption by definition.
• Most small Victorinox pattern knives do not lock — which is why a Classic SD or a Compact ends up living in a pocket in a way an Opinel cannot.

None of this is a problem when you are out stalking, rough shooting, on a keepering round or working in a larder: that is the "good reason" the law contemplates. It becomes a problem on the way home, when the knife is still on the belt and you stop for fuel and a sandwich. Take it off with the rifle.

The official summary is on GOV.UK's page on buying and carrying knives. This section covers England and Wales only; the law in Scotland differs in places, so check before carrying in Scotland.

Best for everyday carry in a stalking jacket

Winner: Victorinox Classic SD — around £21

Fifty-eight millimetres long and about twenty-one grams. It carries a small blade, scissors that are genuinely sharp for their size, a combination nail file with a 2.5mm flat screwdriver tip, and — tucked into the scales — tweezers and a toothpick. The tweezers are the reason half the stalkers who own one bought it. Ticks, thorns, splinters, and the bit of bramble in the dog’s pad.

It is not a working blade and nobody should pretend otherwise. It is the knife that means you never have to go back to the truck. See the Classic SD.

Step up: Victorinox Compact — around £52

Ninety-one millimetres, sixty-four grams, fifteen functions including scissors, a 5mm wire stripper, a pressurised ballpoint pen and a multipurpose hook. Our own description is honest about what it is not: the blade does not lock and does not open one-handed, which keeps the knife slim rather than making it a dedicated working blade. Buy it as a tool kit, not as a knife.

Stock is shallower on the Compact than on the Classic SD, so if you want one, do not sit on it.

Best all-round folder

Winner: Opinel No.8 — around £12

An 8.5cm carbon steel blade, a varnished beech handle, the Virobloc ring, roughly 45g, and a closed length near 11cm. It is the best-known knife the French maker produces and it is the right answer for a very large proportion of people asking which knife to buy.

Carbon steel is the trade-off worth understanding. It sharpens readily, holds an edge well and comes back on a stone faster than stainless. It will also discolour to a grey patina within weeks of real use, and it will spot with rust if you put it away wet. Wipe it, oil it occasionally, and it will outlast you. See the No.8.

• One size down: Opinel No.6, around £10 — the smallest in the range to carry the locking ring.
• One size up: Opinel No.9, around £14 — a 9cm X90 carbon blade and a fuller grip, which suits heavier work: preparing game, cord, kindling, packaging.
• Stainless, and smarter: Opinel NE06 Edition Nature, around £28 — a mirror-polished clip-point in Sandvik 12C27 modified stainless, around 7.3cm, on a walnut, ebony or Italian olive handle. Just over thirty grams. It is the one you give as a present.

Best folder for field dressing

Winner: Opinel No.12 — around £20

The largest of Opinel’s traditional carbon steel pocket knives: a 12cm XC90 blade on a 16cm beech handle. With that broad blade and full grip it is a capable choice for skinning and field-dressing as well as everyday cutting jobs.

There is an argument, and it is a good one, for doing your gralloching with a knife you can replace for twenty pounds. Blood, hair and bone are hard on an edge, sheaths get lost, and a knife that costs less than a day’s diesel gets used properly rather than kept nice. The No.12 is that knife. Keep it dry, keep it oiled, and keep it away from the dishwasher.

The counter-argument is that a folder is harder to clean properly than a fixed blade, and a gralloch gets into the pivot. If that bothers you — and it should bother anyone processing their own venison for the table — go fixed.

Best fixed blade on the hill

Winner: Morakniv Companion (S) Hi-Vis Orange — around £19

A 104mm blade in Swedish stainless from Alleima (12C27), 2.5mm thick, profile-ground to a Scandi edge at 56.5 HRC. A moulded polymer handle with a patterned TPE rubber friction surface and a substantial finger guard, which is what keeps the grip honest when your hands are wet and cold. 219mm overall, 118g, polypropene sheath with a belt clip.

The hi-vis orange is not a styling choice. You put a knife down in heather, bracken or leaf litter once and you understand immediately why the orange version costs the same as the black one.

• The classic: Mora Frost Clipper, around £15 — a 4in stainless blade, rubber grip handle, moulded plastic sheath, 100g. It has been the bushcraft and hunting default for years and there is nothing wrong with it.
• The small one: Mora Eldris, around £30 — a 59mm stainless blade on a 143mm knife, 80g, TPE rubber handle, polymer sheath, designed to hang round the neck. Short blades are underrated for caping and detail work.
• The cheap one: Morakniv Basic 511, around £9 — a 91mm C100S high carbon blade, 2mm thick, Scandi grind at 22–24° total, red polymer handle with a pronounced black finger guard, 110g, 206mm overall, combi-sheath included. At this money you should own two and leave one in the truck.

Best for the larder bench

This is where Mora stop being a bushcraft brand and start being a trade supplier, and it is the part of the range most stalkers have never looked at.

Boning: Mora ProGrip Straight Wide Boning Knife 6" Stiff — around £20

Sandvik 12C27 hardened by deep refrigeration at minus eighty degrees to 58 RC. The wider blade section gives you body to work around joints and through heavy connective tissue; the stiff grind gives the control and leverage that boning demands. The double-moulded rubber handle is etched, which is the difference between a secure grip and a slip when everything is wet. See the ProGrip.

Detail work: Mora Curved Boning Knife 6" Flexible — around £26

The 154mm flexible blade curves along bone structure and gives under controlled pressure, then returns true. That is what lets you follow contours closely and take flesh off cleanly with minimal waste, particularly in tight spaces around joints and ribs. Black elastomer handle, no moving parts, easy to wash down. See the curved boner.

Buy both if you are jointing regularly. Stiff for breaking down, flexible for cleaning up.

Wildfowling and the fishing bag

The Mora Gutting and Cleaning Knife with Spoon, around £26, has a 118mm semi-flex stainless blade long enough to run tail to gill in one stroke on a decent fish, with a spoon built into the handle end for taking the kidney and blood line off the backbone. A specialist tool that does one job properly.

Best pocket knife with a saw

Winner: Victorinox Huntsman — around £40

Sixteen functions: large blade, small blade, woodsaw, scissors, corkscrew, can opener, cap lifter, screwdrivers, wire stripper, reamer, punch, tweezers, toothpick, multi-purpose hook and key ring. The woodsaw is the reason to pick this one over a Spartan — it will take a finger of hazel off a highseat approach or trim a shooting lane sightline in a way no folding blade manages.

• Tougher handle: Victorinox Farmer, around £38 — nine functions on a fluted Alox handle rather than the usual Cellidor scales, with the woodsaw and reamer retained. Fewer tools, better handle, and it takes a beating.
• The traditional choice: Victorinox Spartan, around £25 — descended from the original 1897 Officer’s Knife and still one of the firm’s best sellers.

Carbon or stainless?

Decide this by how you store knives, not by how you use them.

Carbon — the Opinel traditional range, the Mora Basic 511 — takes a keener edge, holds it well, and is quicker to bring back on a stone. It will patina grey and it will rust if it sits damp in a sheath or a jacket pocket. If you are the sort who wipes a knife down and puts it away, carbon is the better cutting tool.

Stainless — the Mora Companion and Clipper, the Opinel Edition Nature, the Mora larder range — asks nothing of you. It is marginally harder to sharpen and, at the same money, will not hold quite the same edge. For a knife that lives in a wet game bag, or one that gets washed down after every use in a larder, it is the only sensible choice.

Note that the entire Mora butchery range is stainless. That is not an accident: hygiene regulations and a hose are not kind to carbon steel.

Keeping an edge

None of these knives arrives blunt and none of them stays sharp. A Scandi grind — which is what the Mora fixed blades carry — is one of the easiest geometries to maintain, because you can lay the bevel flat on a stone and feel when you have it right. The Basic 511’s 22–24° total angle is straightforward with nothing more than a flat stone.

Carbon steel is faster to sharpen than stainless, which is part of why the Opinel range holds its reputation among people who sharpen in the field rather than at a bench.

We carry the full range of stones, steels, pull-through systems and diamond sharpeners under Knife Sharpeners. Buy one at the same time as the knife. A knife you cannot sharpen is a knife you will stop carrying.

FAQ

Are Opinel knives legal to carry in the UK?

An Opinel has a locking blade, so it does not fall inside the exemption for a folding pocketknife with a blade of three inches or less. You can own one and you can carry one with good reason — stalking, shooting, work, fishing — but it is not a knife to have on you by default. Check the current GOV.UK guidance if you are unsure.

What is the difference between Mora and Morakniv?

Nothing. Morakniv is the brand name; the knives are made in Mora, Sweden, and most people shorten it. We list both spellings across the Mora range.

Is a Swiss Army knife any good for gralloching?

No. The blade is too short, it does not lock on most patterns, and the pivot is impossible to clean properly afterwards. Use a fixed blade or a proper folder and keep the Victorinox for everything else.

Which Opinel size should I buy?

The No.8 for general use. The No.9 if you want a bit more blade and grip. The No.12 if you intend to skin and field-dress with it. The No.6 if it is going in a gilet pocket and will mostly cut string.

Do I need a separate knife for the larder?

If you process your own carcasses, yes. A boning knife is a different shape, a different grind and a different flex from a hunting knife, and trying to joint a beast with a Scandi-ground bushcraft blade is slow and wasteful. The Mora boning knives start around £20.

Carbon or stainless for a first knife?

Stainless. Learn on something that forgives being put away wet, then buy carbon once you have the habit of wiping a blade down.

What is a Scandi grind?

A single wide bevel running from the edge towards the spine side of the blade, with no secondary micro-bevel. It cuts wood exceptionally well and is easy to sharpen because you can rest the whole bevel flat on a stone.

Where to next

• The full hunting knives range — folding, fixed-blade, skinning and caping
• Victorinox Swiss Army knives, Mora and Opinel
• Knife sharpeners — stones, steels and diamond systems
• Larder equipment and deer extraction
• Best Deer Gambrels UK 2026: Napier Apex vs BushWear Stainless vs HME
• What Equipment Do You Actually Need to Start Deer Stalking?

Prices are correct at the time of writing and stock moves. Check the product page for current availability.