Knife tied to a long stick: to spear or not to spear?

M

MG_Saldivar

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Feb 5, 2005
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I rented The Black Stallion today because I had heard it had some scenes of island survival.*

Before being wrecked on a deserted island, the 10-year-old boy who is the hero of the story is given a stockman slipjoint by his father. The knife comes in very handy as the boy struggles to survive, and at one point, he lashes it to the end of a stick for use as a fishing spear. The knife falls off the first time it is thrust into water, but the boy is able to retrieve it.

This reminded me of how common it is to see "knife/stick spears" in Hollywood representations of survival situations... Even "survival master" Rambo lashes his knife to spear to kill a boar in First Blood!

It seems to me that anything I would dare hunt (or defend myself against) "by hand" is going have to be small or slow enough to be done in by a sharpened wooden shaft with a fire-hardened point, or, perhaps, with a stone spearhead, or a spearhead jerry-rigged from some bit of metal. I'm far from an expert stone-knapper but I can make a bad stone spearhead more easily than I can manufacture a new locking folder with VG10 or S30V blade!

Personally, I can't imagine a circumstance where I would risk a knife as a spearhead, but I wonder what y'all think?




*The survival scenes are well done but after the protagonist is rescued, the story devolves into a Lifetime-style melodrama so I took it out of the DVD player and replaced it with The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition). :D
 
The last time I was stranded in a Hollywood movie I lashed my knife to a stick and successfully procured food with it...:D
 
Do you carry more than one knife?

I am not saying that having a makeshift spear is the ultimate in survival tools but it could come in handy. I Carry a $17 neck knife, that could easily be lashed to a pole. Lashing it to a pole isn't its only purpose. It is just one more option that could be the most appropriate in a given situation.

Things like that have to be calculated in specific situations. Cost-benefit analysis.
 
I believe this is definitley a bad idea to do if you only have one knife especially if its a folder, but if you have a necker or other small knife, it would be stronger and add weight to the end which might make it more effective.


I saw "The Black Stallion" as a youth and my brothers and I tried this with our pocket knives, in the back yard, it diddn't work very well for us.
 
Wolf you have the proper neanderthal genes !! That will work fine and no chance of damaging or losing your knife !
 
Yeah a couple of the other guys made my point.:)
Being a true knife nut means that if you loose 1 knife do to a spear mishap:eek:, you still got 17 left:rolleyes:
 
I wouldn't make a spear point out of my knife, no. A fire-hardened wooden spear works well enough. No matter how many knives I have with me, I'm not looking to misplace any of them because I wanted to play Rambo with my "survival spear."
 
As was already said, case/circumstance specific. Field expedience. I've lashed my hunting knife to a shaft for a spear. A spear is a knife with a longer handle, handy when you can't/don't want to get "intimate" with your quarry. Case in point: I was out of arrows and had a wounded boar coon in a tree. Climbing the tree and fetching him down by the tail was not an option. Spearing him with a wooden shaft would not work. Hide fur, fat too thick to penetrate. The spear tipped with a knife (fixed blade) did the job. Second case: A wounded wild hog lying in thick briars. A second arrow would likely be deflected by the brush. The lashed knife spear (fixed blade again) reached the hog without alarming him into further flight, and kept me out of the brambles until the animal was finished. Again, used as a thrusting weapon, not throwing.

I've used my knife to fashion a fish/frog spear/gig too. I spread the prongs and added barbs to keep the quarry from slipping off. No need to tip it with a knife. This same multi-pronged spear makes a good twist to retrieve furbearers as well.

I don't know that I would use my knife as a spear point for throwing while hunting. That scenario implys having a bit of time to prepare the weapon, so I would likely make a hardened wood, stone, glass, or metal tip instead.

Codger
 
I was hoping coote would pop in here on this topic. He is probably one of the few, including codger, that has ever used a knife-tipped spear on a critter.

I think that tying a knife on a spear meant to be thrown, would perhaps be a bad idea, because the critter could take off with the knife in him, and goodbye knife, but to use it as a thrust spear would be entirely appropriate under certain instances, such as cited by Codger. Another scenario - you're in a survival situation, and you've managed to snare a critter, but it's still alive. You have to dispatch it somehow and without other tools, the knife tipped spear would be a good choice.

I've heard here and other forums about fire hardenening a wooden spear. What I would like to know is, has anybody, advocating the practice, ever done it? I don't think penetration would be as easy as people think. Just my 2 cents.

(In case this sounds like rambling, chalk it up to pain pills - 4:30 am emergency ward - kidney stones!)

Doc
 
mete said:
Wolf you have the proper neanderthal genes !! That will work fine and no chance of damaging or losing your knife !
Click to expand...

That will work fine until I can upgrade by making a better spear with a stone or bone tip.

Meanwhile carving the proper atlatl kit when I have the time.
 
DOC-CANADA said:
I've heard here and other forums about fire hardenening a wooden spear. What I would like to know is, has anybody, advocating the practice, ever done it? I don't think penetration would be as easy as people think. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...


I've made them and tested them on pumpkins. They WILL penetrate but you need to thrust hard.
 
Well not that ive ever tried it but im sure fish wouldnt be hard to spear with a sharpened point. That would be my first choice when it comes to spearing fish since my knife cant come loose and get washed away or w/e. Plus, I can make multiple points to increase my chance of spearing the fish to begin with, something you cant exactly do with a knife. I dont know about using it to hunt animals though; it does sound tough to spear something with thick hide though.

And I guess it depends on the knife. If its made with strapping to make a spear in mind then why not? Something like the Hoffmann Harpoon would be great. But how many regular knives do you know of are made to be strapped onto a stick to make a spear?
 
i did once nail a skunk that had been hanging around the kitchen by tapeing a big kitchen knife to a old broom handel and spearing him . it did work stunk like heck for a week or so but i didnt get sprayed. no other means were availble to me. i guess you do what you must
 
Nope. Wouldn't do it. Its better to just make points on the stick and fire harden them.

Your knife is too prescious to loose.
 
Just carry a knife for that purpose! like the cold steel Bushman or the tops Hoffman harpoon, I plan on adding both the all of thes to my long term suvival stuff! a Spear may come in handy but I would not use your only or primary knife, have a cheap but strong dedicated knife for the task.

RickJ
 
I would do it with either of my CS Bushmen, they are designed for it. I've seen it done with a bayonet and that turned into a formidible weapon right quick. For the vast majority of knives it sounds like a really great way to snap off a knife blade. Mac
 
A spear could be a very useful device in the wilderness, depending on your circumstances.

Having a blade securely fixed to the end of a sturdy stick is a heck of a lot better option for killing big animals compared to holding the knife in your hand. But if the knife isn't well fastened you could have big problems.

I've speared a few fish in my time, and unless you can pin them to the bottom (preferably a sandy bottom) a knife isn't going to be much good to you. The fish might be fatally speared, but generally they have enough 'wriggle' left in them to shake off the spear point, or the knife might be so sharp it cuts right through the fish and it falls off.

Once you've pinned the fish down, you have to reach into the water and grab the fish from underneath...holding it against the spear. This is another reason not to use a knife blade because it would be easy to cut yourself.

I would be inclined to make a fish spear with two or more wooden or bone prongs. Metal would be better if I could find it.

If you are working from a river bank, you could use a folding knife to make a gaff. You lash the handle of the folder to the end of the stick, then you jam a small stick between the blade and the handle so it doesn't fully close. You then lash the end of the blade so it can't open right up. I used this once to gaff an eel lying in a pool. Eels are very slippery and are hard to grab, but I slid my blade under the eel and pulled it quickly on to the shore...the blade had just enough 'bite' to grab the eel, and the eel wasn't heavy enough to create enough inertia or force to get cut through while I was pulling it ashore.

Like someone mentioned above (was it Codger?) I've tied a knife to a stick to kill a couple of possums which I'd snared, but which had dragged their snares right up into trees where I couldn't grab them and club them. I then used the knife to cut the snare from the tree (which had been tangled by the possum).

Once I was out setting snares for small animals and I spotted some wild goats on a scrubby hillside. I snuck around behind the goats, climbed above them... then set some snares on what looked like trails they would use. I came back down the hill and deliberately spooked the goats from below. They retreated back up the hill and one got caught in a snare. I hastily broke a branch off a tree and lashed my knife to the end of it and used it to despatch the goat.....but I realized that just holding the knife would have been ok in this case because of the way the scrub restricted the movement of the animal. Still...I was able to stay at a safer distance from the animal.

I have a Cold Steel Bushman which has a socketed handle. No doubt is was designed to be turned into a makeshift spear. I would not use it as a throwing spear unless I really had to use it as one. But as a thrusting weapon, or as a means of adding a bit of extra 'reach' it is ideal. I have used it as a thrusting spear a couple of times... the most notable occasion is the one that Doc would have been thinking of. I snared a sizeable boar, then speared it with the Bushman on a stick:
Pigandspear.jpg
 
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