'The Hunted' movie/kit question.

[Minotaur]

Can anyone identify the knife Jim Bowie used in his famous duel on a Mississippi riverbank? Does anyone know who Slavomir Rawicz is?

Not sure what to do about this one?

If you go looking on the net for James Keating, he used to have a lot of Bowie history.

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

These are rhetorical questions I posed. James Bowie's famous knifefight involved him usiing a rather plebian butcher knife. It was afterwards he designed and had built the knife which bares his name. Rawicz's group escaped with a very plain knife, an unhafted axehead and one week's food supply- and that gulag food. My point is that real life wilderness survivors and knifefighters have more often than not used pretty humble cutlery. There is a golly gee fallacy that some gimicky Rambo, Tracker or other such offering will somehow impart Excaliber like prowess to the user. The entertainment industry is good at this. .44 magnum prices soared after Dirty Harry, though a .44 magnum in full power is a miserable fighting handgun. Slapping 007's name on a cologne will not make anyone a young Sean Connery regardless of how many ungulates surrendered their musk glands.

 

[Swampy Matt]

In the river scene and others, there is a lot of hand swaping going on. If you look really carefully when they are fighting on top of the waterfall, it is not them at all.

I guess that would be the stuntmen trained in Sayoc Kali knifefighting then

My point is that real life wilderness survivors and knifefighters have more often than not used pretty humble cutlery. There is a golly gee fallacy that some gimicky Rambo, Tracker or other such offering will somehow impart Excaliber like prowess to the user....
....Slapping 007's name on a cologne will not make anyone a young Sean Connery regardless of how many ungulates surrendered their musk glands.

The Ray Mears/Woodlore knife is a perfect example of this. It's an OK knife, nothing special, and there are pleanty of cheaper alternatives out there. From what I've seen there are a lot of people out there who have bought this knife - It ain't gonna make you Ray though!

If you need a fancy knife or axe to survive, it isn't bushcraft - it's camping. Everything that you can do with a "Titanium Bladed, Antique Cocobola Hilted, Dragonskin Sheathed, designed by the Elves of Gondolin super survival knife" you can do with a £5.99 chefs knife from Wilko's.

Matt.

 

[Wayne]

The drool of ignorance pouring from my mouth after moderating ETS for years. I want to know where I can buy Slavomir's signature knife and axe he used in his epic escape from arctic Siberia, across the Gobi desert and over the Himalayas to freedom in India. I want to know how it stacks up against THE TRACKER. I am also curious how such a man could live in G.B. the rest of his life ( he passed away last year) meriting less attention than every born again ersatz indian who proclaims themselfs the world's greatest authority on survival and shoves some glorified piece of overpriced foolishness on a starry eyed consumer base.

Couldn't agree more with you Chris.
Saddened to hear Slavomir has passed away. It would have been good to have bought the man a beer.

 

[Stuart]

Sorry to shatter any illusions but this knife I can assure you is utterly useless.

Normally I would happily agree that if you are skilled you can use any knife but this is an exception.

We passed this knife around a group of 15 bushcrafters all with different backgrounds and different preferences in knives, the consensus was that the tops tracker was quite good for beating tent pegs in and also as a paper weight (duel function!) but that was the limit of its usefulness.

If I was stuck in a life or death situation and i had a choice between a lump of flint and a tops tracker........ I would choose the lump of flint without hesitation, far more useful

 

[myakka]

Stuart,
I agree with you about the TOPS version, but the Beck & Linger knives are awsome tools that function wonderful in the wilderness, there only drawback is there big & heavy. I really love my two, but still perfer to carry one of these.

 

[lostplanet]

tried to delete.

 

[C_Claycomb]

In this particular case I think there is going to be a world of difference between the well executed Beck and Linger knives, and the TOPS club. I am not convinced of the validity of the underlying idea behind the Tracker knife. As a universal tool it is probably not a bad idea, however I have trouble thinking when one would carry it and not a better, more specific tool. That is not to say that a well made version couldn;t do a great deal, just that it is overkill for hiking, back packing, or most bushcraft type stuff. It is partly meant as a bomb proof survival tool. As I understand it though, many of the things people say its good for, making arrows, scraping hides, throwing at hostiles (no, really, Tom teaches it) are not things that are going to crop up in a survival situation either.

I think the concept is a solution in search of a problem, and the TOPS version is just a poor imposter of a solution

 

[OldJimbo]

Well it's been fun but enough beating on knives, and making people who own them feel bad. The only thing that matters is edge configuration. That can be changed in a hurry.

The shirt is important since the original poster is from Canada. I have no idea about the movie shirt but I do know what works for cheap. I use cheap poly/cottton workshirts from the superstore which have amazed me in everything from spark resistance through fast drying to warmth/wind resistance. I got a bunch for $10 each. The standard is wool and I got some fancy wool/nylon off ebay from the Canadian Coat Company for $25. Great deals, despite the metal designer buttons.. Ventile couldn't match those even if were cheap.

 

[The General]

It would do well at an after hours adult comedy club though as I can't think of a better joke right now...

 

[Stuart]

Stuart,
I agree with you about the TOPS version, but the Beck & Linger knives are awsome tools that function wonderful in the wilderness, there only drawback is there big & heavy. I really love my two, but still perfer to carry one of these.

I have not seen the Beck and Linger versions so I cannot comment on them, but with the Top Tracker the grind angle is so obtuse and the blade so thick (6.2mm) that it requires a huge amount of effort to cut into a piece of wood, so regardless of it's shape and enormous handle what use is a knife that can't cut?

Thats why I would choose a piece of flint in my stated hypothetical situation at least with that i could create a tool which slices and carves wood well.

 

[Stew]

Stuart,

Who's Tracker is it? If it's not been sold, how about taking Jimbo's suggestion and regrinding the edge.
A nice long convex grind perhaps?

Hm, 6.2mm seems bloody ridiculous though!

 

[OldJimbo]

The Fallkniven A1 is 6mm. Reprofiled to Scandi with that wide bevel it works better than most would believe. The only real downside is that with the wide bevel one needs to split wood so as to get a straight surface for whittling fuzzies from, because you can't follow the bendy contours of a stick.

 

[addyb]

Wow, this thread really took off!

Okay, so it's called the Tops Tracker, and it's a huge knife!

Well, I will agree that it is perhaps too large for bushcraft, and that a flint knife might be a better choice. But, Benicio Del Toro really didn't do a whole lot of bushcraft with it, he uhm...well he went more along the lines of gutting up hunters like you would a dear. So, it does have a use after all! *snicker*

A.

 

[Stew]

The only real downside is that with the wide bevel one needs to split wood so as to get a straight surface for whittling fuzzies from, because you can't follow the bendy contours of a stick.

but wouldn't it be easier to split the wood anyway with the size of the knife?

 

[OldJimbo]

You'd think so - but around here, we often use lower dead conifer branches of six feet or so. You lay them across a log, chop into the middle and pry to open the split back toward both ends. This is easy with a hatchet but pretty hazardous with a knife pounded through point first. The knife tends to come free and you then have a knife throwing atlatl...
With something like a real golok or even a convexed machete it's easy enough to hold one end of the branch against the ground and chop out chunks - but smaller blades don't do that well. And it's harzardous too unless practised carefully.
In drier conditions one can simply saw or chop halfway through a branch and then open the split easily by bending - but that method stops working when things are really damp. The branch then simply breaks. Of course a person could break a branch into many 1 foot sections and then split with a knife and baton.
So I keep coming back to hatchets or axes and the lightest knife I can carry with them - just for speed and ease. I can well see how people in dry places might really like the reprofiled A1, though, as a single tool.