I wouldn't worry about batoning. It is just a way applying excessive force to a tool. The vast majority of, if not all, practical tasks required for survival can be done without pounding on an knife.
A person can easily skin and butcher any animal with a tiny blade. Which is why scalpel and razor blades have utility and usefully make their way into survial kits.
Our ancestors often used stone blades that were seldom more than the size of a thumbnail to butcher animals much larger than anything your likely to encounter. Larger stone blades cleaved fine to cut smoothly tend to break. Modern game guides, who end up doing the skinning and butchering while "great hunter", the guy who wears the funny hat and pays, drinks beer and shoots the breeze, are seldom seen to use anything with a blade more than three or four inches long. If they use a longer blade they 'choke-up' on it to gain leverage and control.
It is possible to use something as unwieldy as a yard-long machete to do fine work by choking up on the blade but then the weight of the handle is working against you. Machete users will do fine work by resting the weight of the handle on their lap as they work with the fine tip of the blade.
Batoning is largely an exercise in impatience and a way for guys who favor big knifes, what they are compensating for is anyone's guess, to justify carrying the extra weight and bulk of an over-sized knife. I think it gets overlooked that Crocodile Dundee and Rambo were caricatures and their over-sized knives were part of the joke. It looks all woodsy and manly to be whacking a great wedge of steel through stuff with a club, and it makes a great video and advertising, but the actual utility is quite limited.
The attitude seems to be: 'Look at me. I'm splitting shingles'. Which is fine if you need shingles but most of these guys have no way to cut the log to split and no survival use for the shingles and split wood manufactured. If they do they are not in a survival situation; they are homesteading. If you want to homestead bring a saw and pack an axe and/or a froe. All very useful in that context.
Point here is that smaller is functional for most real-life and survival uses. You say you "hunt, camp, fish, hike", which is good but the question is how often do you spend doing those things. Most of us don't spend much time out in the woods no matter how much we want to spend more. Nothing wrong with getting a knife that only gets carried when your out hiking. Some knives, like the fillet knife in the fishing kit, only get used once in a great while.
The question is what role do you want this knife to fill. If your planning on carrying it every, or most, days a mid-size folder with about a 3" blade is going to hang on your belt or ride in a pocket more comfortably and attract less unwanted attention. DR/ETS sells a couple of very nice folders that fit the bill. I really like the RSK Mk1 and if I didn't EDC a multitool it would be high on the list.
If your more a handyman, and don't feel limited by a slim 3" blade, there are many multitools that work well. I like the Leatherman Wave (about $75) and carry one daily.
If your willing to only carry it in or near the woods larger folders and fixed blade knives are better tolerated in that context. The RSK Mk3 is nice and I like its simplicity:
http://www.equipped.org/rsk_mk3.htmBecker makes a line of bloody huge knives but the smaller end of their line with a 4" blade, used to be called a 'crewman', also gets a nod for reasonably prices fixed blade knifes straight up.
If you want to make a statement and gain bragging rights the sky it the limit.
Hint: Anyone shopping for a knife, or anyone who might be anytime soon, or anyone who is interested in knives generally, could do worse than starting by reading this:
http://www.equipped.org/devices4.htmA lot of good information though out and well presented. I don't necessarily agree with every point but the basics are good and pretty much all the available options are covered.
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