Overkill on the Trail

One of the disadvantages of the bushcrafters who want to make their camp out of available materials in the wilderness is that they have to carry such heavy packs. Of course they need a huge survival knife, to fight bears and ...well, I am sure that they find uses for those knives. The only thing we've every seen someone use a big knife for on the trail is to split wood, scrape wood for tinder, or dig a hole for a tent stake. In each case, we had to smile. We never make fires with wood big enough to split, because they take too long to put out properly.* And with a good lighter and a little bit of paper, we don't need to create piles of tinder for our bow-drill.

And we can't think of a better way to ruin your knife that to use it to dig a hole, or pound in a tent stake.