Why Bowie gets all the love and not Hudson Bay

What is the modern equivilent of the bowie in terms of hype marketing and myth vs reality?

most modern competition cutter style knives have a similar shape or a modern shape to that original knife, with better handles for sure though. Google competition cutter and look at the styles. All very similar. The general large camp survival knife of today is the closest relative for reality. The myth, well any knife with a funky curving clip point.
 
What is the modern equivilent of the bowie in terms of hype marketing and myth vs reality?

Basically a lot is. Though we know exactly what Rambo's or Bear Gryll's etc knife looks like. But people want to associate themselves with something cool, or adventurous, or dangerous, or heroic, and they can do that buy buying a knife that looks like a knife someone cool, or adventurous, or dangerous, or heroic uses.

Exactly what happened with Bowies, except no one knew what they looked like, and "Bowies" turned into anything. Big, small, folding, daggers, clip points, toothpicks, etc etc etc, and the myth kept growing (and continues to grow) since 1820-something.

Really there's nothing wrong with any of it, how many people wear Nikes to be like Mike? (Does anybody want to be like Mike anymore? :D)

That said, plenty of documented early Bowie history is there, despite the fact that no one knows definitively what the Sandbar or Alamo knives were.
 
I misunderstood the question I guess but Marcinek is right, the Rambo knives are the modern mythical equivalent.
 
Really there's nothing wrong with any of it, how many people wear Nikes to be like Mike? (Does anybody want to be like Mike anymore? :D)

I'll take is salary. $60 million a year from Nike alone with a net worth of a cool billion. Thems a lot of bowie knives!
 
If you want to see the pattern come back, get companies into it. :cough:Cold Steel:cough:.

for all the older ones on this forum cold steel made some frontier type knives with carbon v steel in california one was a hudson bay one was a red river they had leather pouch sheaths had one should have kept it. havent we all done that with a knife we owned lol

Yep. If you're interested in Cold Steel's take on Frontier knives, these, unfortunately, are long gone.

image.jpg2_zpsyshnxzvi.jpg


image.jpg3_zpsqczdtxxt.jpg


image.jpg4_zpsuytdhkuc.jpg


image.jpg1_zpstpwudi5w.jpg



But you still might find these around.

image.jpg5_zpscll3rif8.jpg


image.jpg6_zpsxxe6exi5.jpg


Cold Steel bowies, on the other hand, remain in the lineup. If I had to hazard a guess about the OP's original question, I'd say the bowie's longevity/popularity has to do with:

1) The romance surrounding the legends of its origins and Bowie himself.

2) The multi-functional capability of the design in its modern incarnation.

3) The knife's uniquely American symbolism. No other knife comes close to so singularly representing our American heritage.

The Hudson Bay may have a small element of reason 2, but none of reasons 1 and 3. So despite its more widespread use in the early days of our nation, it will never supplant the bowie in popularity.

-Steve

P.S. - None of these photos are mine; I pulled them off of the Web. Their rights/copyrights belong to their respective owners.
 
You could argue fairly that Bowie used a Rezin at the Sandbar fight. Supposedly the knife he carried at Sandbar was designed by his brother. Then, later he carried a Bowie after he had James Black make a knife to his design in 1830. Bowie added the clip point to the original Rezin design.
 
You could argue fairly that Bowie used a Rezin at the Sandbar fight. Supposedly the knife he carried at Sandbar was designed by his brother. Then, later he carried a Bowie after he had James Black make a knife to his design in 1830. Bowie added the clip point to the original Rezin design.

You could. You'd be wrong, but you could.
 
In the modern world, carrying around a big honkin knife in the woods are at "camp" is a PITA, that's why Hudson Bay knives are not popular anymore. I carried a big bowie when camping as a boy and it was not practical.
I would have to disagree with you. A well-made camp/chopper is very useful. For my uses, its safer and more versatile than an axe outside of winter. Besides, people naturally gravitate towards big knives.

As for why the Hudson Bay isn't more popular? Primarily, it doesn't have the glamorous history of the Bowie. Most any US man can tell you who Jim Bowie was and probably the knife that he had.
Hudson Bay is just the opposite. It is a very practical design and a very boring design. You could call it the Sabenza of it's day.
Knife makers (low end and high end) want to sell knives I would bet money that a Bowie would sell more than a Hudson Bay.
 
Because a knife that's good for killing (and happens to do other things well) is WAY cooler than a knife good at being... a boring thing.

Bowie made knives an action accessory, one that made you cooler just by possessing it.

It's the difference between driving an acura and driving a sports car. You're handsomer, more suave, and more capable because you're able to put your identity and self worth into an object.

Then the legends spread, and high quality imported English knives in Bowie patterns made it silly to choose any other knife, because Bowies were available, high quality, and capable.

Zero
 
for myth and hype I'd have said american style tanto a few years ago, now it would be anything with multiple aggressively different edge geometries.

At the end of the day you could do the same back and forth with any two roughly analogous styles. the fact that a bowie has some "styling" to it makes it stand out, where as the utilitarianism of the HB makes it very indistinct. The large old hickory butcher knives are pretty much that style, but are not sold as such. Arguably an ESEE-6 or Junglas is closer to being an HB than a bowie, but are not marketed at all that way. Add the fact that outside the US Bowie often just means big.

useful or not, people gravitate to tools that work for them, and when you are processing a large animal like a bison, it makes sense to have such a large knife. I suspect that due to the more industrial nature of bison hunting that may be why the big HB found some success. where the beaver trapping being a far more individualized "cottage" industry, save for hide processing and transport, In those cases, I'd guess smaller knives would have been the more common tool, and that individualism would have watered down any distinction in style, although I do know that there some specific small game skinners that do go back some, I don't know how far back, and to what degree they were used.
 
for myth and hype I'd have said american style tanto a few years ago, now it would be anything with multiple aggressively different edge geometries.

At the end of the day you could do the same back and forth with any two roughly analogous styles. the fact that a bowie has some "styling" to it makes it stand out, where as the utilitarianism of the HB makes it very indistinct. The large old hickory butcher knives are pretty much that style, but are not sold as such. Arguably an ESEE-6 or Junglas is closer to being an HB than a bowie, but are not marketed at all that way. Add the fact that outside the US Bowie often just means big.

useful or not, people gravitate to tools that work for them, and when you are processing a large animal like a bison, it makes sense to have such a large knife. I suspect that due to the more industrial nature of bison hunting that may be why the big HB found some success. where the beaver trapping being a far more individualized "cottage" industry, save for hide processing and transport, In those cases, I'd guess smaller knives would have been the more common tool, and that individualism would have watered down any distinction in style, although I do know that there some specific small game skinners that do go back some, I don't know how far back, and to what degree they were used.
That's exactly what I think, looking at popular Randall and Becker models the HB pattern just got streamlined, it's evolution morphed it's original form out of use. Hey it happens. I drive a 4 door family car right now that would spank the hell out of an 80s corvette both straight line and in handling. It's the nature of technology and building better mousetraps!
 
The Hudson Bay was always a combination meat cleaver and butcher knife. Some say another name for it was "buffalo knife" and given the amount of chopping it would require to rough butcher one of these animals on the open plains I would believe that. One Confederate blockade runner was sank off the Southern coast during the civil war with, among other things, a large quantity of these knives on board, so they were being used in places besides the far north. I think a more modern equivalent would be the "lamb splitter" but those are no longer made either.
 
Modern heavy choppers seems like they fall into a very similar catagory as Hudson Bay. If you gave a larfe becker to a trapper of the day he would be familiar maybe?
 
I suspect that most of the North American hudson bay trappers or mountain men had a horse and often a mule or pack horse to lug all their stuff around unless they traveled by water. Big knives get heavy including the hudson bay or the bowie. I like both patterns and I'm somewhat taken by the simplicity of a hudson bay knife. I don't think the large hudson bay knives were very convenient skinners, just like bowies. Bowie's were fighters. Hudson bay knives were camp knives.
 
Back
Top