Kephart on Hatchets

“The notion that a heavy hunting knife can do the work of a hatchet is a delusion.”

When it comes to cleaving carcasses, chopping kindling, blazing thick-barked trees, driving tent pegs or trap stakes, and keeping up a bivouac fire, the knife never was made that will compare with a good tomahawk.

The common hatchets of the hardware stores are unfit for a woodsman’s use. They have broad, thin blades with beveled edge, and they are generally made of poor, brittle stuff.

A camper’s hatchet should have the edge and temper of a good axe. It must be light enough to carry in one’s belt or knapsack, yet it should bite deep in timber. There is but one way to get this seemingly contradictory result, and that is to make the blade long and narrow, like an Indian tomahawk, or like a Nessmuk double-blade, thus putting the weight where it will do the most good. When there is a full-grown axe in camp I carry a tomahawk of 12-ounce head. The handle is just a foot long. Its grip is wound with waxed twine to give a good hold when one’s hand is wet.This little tool has been my mainstay on several bitter nights when I was lost in the forest, or in a canebrake, and without it I would have fared badly.

For a canoeing trip, or any journey on which a full- sized axe cannot be taken with the camping equipment, a half-axe with 2-pound head and 18-inch handle is about right. With it one can fell trees big enough for an all-night fire made Indian fashion. If such a tool is carried from the belt (seldom advisable) its muzzle should be attached by a frog that works on a loose rivet, thus forming a hinged joint, then the handle will swing free from brush and will not be in the way when you sit down.

– Kephart, 1906

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In the mid nineties, then the internet was in its infancy and information was starting to flow and spread at an exponential rate, the idea that a big chopper was a good substitute for a hatchet or tomahawk was becoming ubiquitous. By the early to mid 2000s, if you didn’t have a big chopper you were but a barely scant survivalist. Certainly the endorsement of then popular survivalists and knife makers attempting to pimp their wares did nothing to truly educate the public.

Yes I fancied the big knife, but never as a replacement for a hatchet, or as my friend Mike Gapp loves to say, “A proper Hawk”. Oh how I remember the heated discussions (arguments) I use to get into with some of these gurus of survival and knife makers. They would come up with “what ifs” that simply had no historical backing of existing in the outdoors. Sure, one can argue the usefulness of a big chopper, when it comes to batoning, but is it reason enough to quickly dismiss all of the other superior attributes of the hatchet, in favor of one task? For that matter, why not just move on to a machete?

Back then, we were but a few who supported the hatchet as a superior tool to a big chopper, for all  Kephart pointed out and then some—For the most part, the tides have reverted in support of Kephart’s thoughts, though there are still few who still hold on to the notion a chopper can out do a hatchet at jobs suited for the latter.

Why do we keep trying to reinvent the wheel?