While it looks like a knife, I don't think it's much of one. A friend who I hike/backpack with carried that beast for a while(he got rid of it); he was one of those one-knife-does-it-all types also. Trouble was, it didn't do too much very well, or perhaps the more accurate term is efficiently. I normally carry a light 4" knife with either a 3/32" or 1/8" diameter blade and either a Gerber folding saw or a light hatchet. The knife cuts, slices, whittles much, much better than his Cold Steel did. The saw would cut through a thick branch or a small tree while he was still whaling away at some such. The saw and the knife weighed probably about as much as the bowie, never thought to weigh them, and between the two made his 1/4" prybar look pretty useless overall. I could probably skin out a deer with a machete if I needed to, and that's all I had, but large clumsy blades make an easy job just that...clumsy. There's a set of pictures at another site of one of my friends using a 3 3/4" blade that's 3/32" thick to skin/butcher out half a moose. His buddy did the other half with his repro of an old Alaskan design that has a forged 3" blade. Knives are for cutting...period. For one to cut well, it needs to be able to hold a thin, sharp edge for a good while; something 1/4" prybars don't do. I know 'cause I've tried them. I've a Ontario SP-5 that's about like that that I bought off a friend who needed money badly, and after trying it for a while, it now sits in my drawer. No matter how I tried to convex the edge, plus I got rid of that ludicrous "bowie" point and turned it into a straight clip, it was just too durned big and clumsy to do knife things efficiently(and comfortably)....and it wan't as good as a saw or axe. The thought of wearing that monstrosity while hiking more than a mile or so left me feeling a trifle faint....ain't no way. Any time you try to compromise that ability you end up with something that just doesn't do it's designed job well. The old mountain men mostly carried thin bladed knives such as the Green Rivers ,as did the Indians, because they were light and sharp and made quick work of any knife chores that needed to be done; such as skinning out God knows how many Buffalo......they used other tools, such as axes, tomahawks etc, to do what THEY did best. The spent their whole lives outdoors and knew what worked for what job, and what didn't. They may have owned a large fighting knife, but that's what it was used for...fighting for the most part. I've no desire to fight with a stick, or branch or tomato, squirrel, deer etc. If for some reason I need a digging tool, I make one using my knife or axe or saw. Works a heck of a lot better than my knife, plus I don't have to re-sharpen the thing. Same with pounding...a chunk of wood or rock makes a better hammer than any knife. I just, after a lot of years of messing with, and making, knives don't see much use for something like the Trail Master....except maybe fantasizing.
