In reality, you don’t need either type of knife to go into the woods in the western world (excluding some very remote locations). If fact, most backpacker and campers never take anything more than a multitool. If you think about it, when was the last time you really had to use a knife? Most people only use their knives to open food packages. A person should have a more serious knife just in case, but in reality you can camp every weekend for the rest of your life without needing it.
Past that, people carry knives depending on what they want to do in the woods. The bushcraft community is big on carving and woodwork, which favors the small, scandi grind knife. Hunters usually carry a much more curved, while also small knife for skinning. The larger knives are carried by people who do a much larger amount of wood processing in the forest. I know people who don’t carry an axe, but use only their knife to cut and split wood for shelters and fires. I know some people here disagree, but the basic physics of a large blade make those tasks much easier.
That being said, we have to be aware that there is a high degree of fashion awareness when people select their blades, no matter what size or shape they are. It’s just part of the game. From what I have seen, I think there are as many people who carry big, serious looking knives like a Busse, so they can look like the big man in the forest, as there are people who carry Moras because that is what “real woodsmen” carry. That shouldn’t undermine the fact that different knives perform certain tasks better than others. Select the knife based on what you want to do. I don’t buy into the “one knife for every outdoor related activity” theory.
