Neetones - I assume your forays into the "wilds" are on foot and not horseback, ATV, canoe, boat, snowmachine, etc. What you should carry depends greatly on where you will be carrying it. Look at the history of indigenous peoples and you'll see a variety of methods for dealing with excursions into the wilds. In South America, give a Yanomano indian an 18" machete and he'll do just fine. He can use the machete to fashion tools and clothing from the biological materials at hand. In temperate and sub artic climates where the need for fire may extend beyond cooking, an 18" machete will still work okay, but not as well as a saw or camp axe mated with a small fixed blade knife. Northern indians tended to carry a flint knife and a flint hand axe, but only if steel versions were not available. Having to use your cutting tools as weapons should not be overlooked. Saws, like the folding Swede saw, are great until the blade breaks or they need sharpening. They don't make for good weapons. A camp axe is fairly easy to sharpen with a flat rock, can be used as a splitting wedge, a hammer for breaking up rocks or ice (chopping a hole in a frozen lake for water is much easier with an axe than a large fixed blade), for chopping wood and breastbones, and they make pretty good weapons. The small fixed blade can be used for all other cutting chores. Even so, if I had only one cutting instrument to carry anywhere, it would be a 7 to 9 inch fixed blade knife made of a tough steel, like INFI or Carbon 5. My survival kit, which is designed for carry around my waist, contains a handpowered chain saw, a SAK, and a small fixed blade. The remaining space is devoted to fire starters, wire and cord.
What gets used most is the high-performance fixed-blade (TTKK, AGR Deerhunter), with the big chopper and the folder being used much more rarely. 
