as an old time member of the Ax and Saw Club i have always
held that the right tool should be used for the task..
asking a knife to do the work of an ax is over reaching..
on a recent canoe trip i used my hand ax to save my fork..



while having dinner a local squirrel grabbed my biscuit dough
covered fork and ran up a pine tree with it..i think he was
put off by the fact that i was pitching small sticks and
stones at him to keep him out of my food bag..i was in the
middle of dinner and did not want to get up and chase him off.
he nibbled off the dough and ran down and into the woods
leaving my fork on a large branch..attempts to knock it down
by throwing firewood hunks at it did not work..
a rope tossed up and around the branch failed as the fork
was on a stout limb..what to do???..well taking my trusty
hand ax i quickly cut the small branches off a dead Spruce
tree--cut it to length--about 18-20 feet and using it as a
prod knocked my fork to the ground..



OK..it's a goofy story..i could have made the poll work
by knocking the branches off with a club and cutting it
to length by breaking it off between 2 trees...but the
point is the ax was made for that job and did it quickly
without using a lot of energy..i have always thought that
a medium size "working" knife and a hand ax were much
better as part of a tool kit than a huge knife..