Name: Field Reference Cards: Knots, Cuts and Kit, Printed
Brand: YKS
Price: 18 USD
Availability: InStock

Field Reference Cards: Knots, Cuts and Kit, Printed

Eight pocket cards for the things everyone half-remembers at the worst moment: knots, the field-dressing order, and a knife you can put an edge on.

There is a specific kind of failure that only happens in the field: you know you know this, and it will not come.

The knot you have tied two hundred times. Which cut comes before which. Whether the angle on that blade is fifteen degrees or twenty. It is not ignorance — it is that recall gets worse when you are cold, tired and hurrying, which is precisely when you need it.

Printed because the phone is the wrong tool

A card does not need a signal, a charge, or a hand out of a glove. It survives being dropped in the bottom of a pack for a season. It is also faster: a diagram at arm’s length beats scrolling a page of ads with wet fingers, every time.

What is on them

Six knots drawn step by step. The field-dressing sequence as numbered steps. A sharpening card with the angles and the order of grits. A conditions card for reading wind and water. One blank, because everyone has their own thing they keep forgetting.

The honest limit

This is a reference set, not a course. It will remind you of things you have learned and will not teach you to do them for the first time — which is why the cards are terse. If you have never dressed an animal, learn it from someone standing next to you, and take these along for the second time.

What you get

Eight cards on 350gsm stock with a water-resistant laminate
Six knots, drawn large enough to follow with cold hands
The field-dressing order as numbered steps, not a wall of prose
Punched and ringed, so the set stays together in a pack

Questions

Because the moment you need it, you are wet, it is nearly dark, and there is no signal — and a phone is the worst possible object to be holding at that point. This is the same information you could look up, in the one format that works when looking things up does not.

Water-resistant, which is an honest word for what a laminate does. They shrug off rain, snow and wet hands all season. They are not designed to be left submerged in a creek, and we would rather say so than sell you on a claim the stock cannot back up.

Six that cover almost everything: an improved clinch, a palomar, a loop knot, a blood knot for joining line, a trucker's hitch for lashing loads, and a bowline. All drawn step by step at a size you can read at arm's length in bad light.