Which survival knife would you choose ?

Here is my opinion. Tom Brown Tracker. I say this for MANY reasons. First I'm going to go with the negative factors (that I'm aware of in it's design). It's a LOT heavier than than the Bushman, the saw on the top of the knife is pointless and only adds weakness to the overall knife, it doesn't 'excel' at ANY thing, it's pricey, and it's HEAVY! With that said however, it does a has a lot of potential. First, you can use it as a hatchet. It will do GREAT at chopping things because of it's hatchet like design. Batoning wood, chopping down green/dead wood for whatever you need it for, or cutting up and skinning a large animal. Do you want to chop through the rib cage of a deer with that Bushman? Can you do those same things with the Bushman without jeopardizing it's edge or overall blade? Seriously, do you think it'd do 'good' with cutting down 5" thick oak or batoning wood with a diameter of 12" or greater? Probably not, the blade and grind (to me) is far too thin. On top of that, The Tracker will be able to skin, slice, whittle 'okay.' No, it's not going to be 'GREAT' at those things but it WILL do them. The Bushman will also do all of these things but at what cost the edge or the well being of the overall knife?

I too have a Tops 'Survival' knife and will be soon getting rid of that problem. As far as weight/usability goes it's more a liability than a 'help.' I'm getting a bushcrafter's knife that has a 5" blade 1/8" thick that will serve ALL my wood crafting needs in a survival situation. I've also got a small skinning knife and a multi tool. These 3 will still be lighter than my 'survival' knife and serve FAR greater functions.
 
Just my personal opinion... I came to the conclusion that heavy knives are crap.

Most Survival knives seem to be just shy of a pound or over...
Weight=Energy.

People need to look at what our ancestors used... the size and weight of the general knives they carried that were not intended for human on human combat but general tasks... what we often today call bushlore... survival lore...
A heavy knife uses more energy to use, which means its draining your stored energy supplies quicker then a lighter knife, very important in a survival situation.

Also
Something which I have not seen mentioned on the forums is the big knife effect...
When people have heavier knives they just seem to want to use them in inefficient ways which use even more energy...
Using a wood wedge to split wood including slivers off logs works better then battoning... and it just takes a small knife to make the wedges.

Having a smaller knife can make you think things though and find a better more efficient way to do something that does not involve bashing at logs and tree branches with a sharpend crowbar till your arm is fatigued and you then decide to think of a better way.

For this reason I think Moras are great... I would prefer full tang but they are light.. Mora+sheath is about ~112 grams... thats I think around 2/6th of a pound.
Becker bk9 is over 480 grams the blade alone, and the default sheath I think is another 180... thats ~ 1.5 pounds.
Mora+folding saw can weight less then the BK9.

As of today... my goto "survival blade" would be a bk15... its quite stout general blade without being overly heavy, however its default sheath is way to heavy and a kydex sheath fixes this. It performs great splitting kindling(which is not battoning) butchers chickens and rabbits effectively and general cutting tasks, holds the edge well is easy to resharpen and while not cheap its not expensive either and losing or abusing it would not bother me very much. That said at the end of the day I would rather a mora or other light knight with a saw/machete/axe in a survival situation.

Also discussions like this often to me at least fail to point out the relative lack of importance a knife has in survival situations(not to say they are not important at all). While im sure some people will snicker with me bringing it up, I think Naked and Afraid series showcases just how unimportant a knife can be compared to something as simple as a pot. Of course in the real world people dont get stuck in the bush with just a knife... so a knife does not need to be the "ONE" tool for survival but rather complimenting other equipment.
This is where the real question comes in, what cant your other equipment do that knife XYZ can do... and what can it do that other combinations of tools/knives could not do as well or better for the same weight.
A knife that can do everything is awesome... till it breaks... and you cant do anything...the less you rely upon a specific tool the less it getting lost or broken harms your chances of survival.

Its 3:13am, please excuse any mistakes or complete lack of sense in my post.
 
I'd take the Bushman too, but, what do you guys think about a kukri as an all around survival/outdoors knife?
 
I would go for the Bushman as it is similar to the knives I already use.

No matter how many times I see the Tracker, and People showing me how useful it is.... that sure is an ugly knife.
 
I've never used either before but I would be very interested to try the Tracker. A hatchet seems like the better tool for similar size/weight but I'd like to try out the Tracker to see. Too bad there isn't a way to lease one for the weekend.
 
The tops has higher resale value... I'd get the tops and then exchange it for something more to my tastes. :D
 
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