The one-tool option myth – Dave Canterbury NOT using his own knives to skin animals 

The one-tool option myth – Dave Canterbury NOT using his own knives to skin animals                           

The online knife community is a strange place, especially in the world of bushcraft. My point for this post is to help people who are new to the world of survival and bushcraft spend their money more wisely and to have a better experience using the basic tools needed for bushcraft.

No woodsman of the past went out into the wilderness with only one knife. No trapper, professional hunter, or explorer relied on one knife while in the bush. Horace Kephart and Nessmuk both carried multiple knives while trekking and camping. The idea of the one tool option is a modern mythology propagated by people who sell knives.

David Canterbury is probably the number one person who pushes the idea of the one tool option. And yet, when we watch his videos, Dave hardly ever uses one of his own knives to perform standard tasks 

In the photo on the left, Dave is skinning a squirrel and openly says You don’t want a big knife for this task. He pulls out a pocketknife to perform this skinning task while leaving his belt knife in its sheath.

A one-tool-option knife doesn’t do anything very well other than batoning it through a log, a task you would never have to do in a real forest. 

In the photo to the right, we see Dave using a Mora Classic #1 to skin a raccoon.

The photo on the left shows Dave using a pocketknife to perform fine carving while making a sling spear for frog hunting. 

Rather than spending the money on one knife that doesn’t do most tasks very well, you could buy all these knives!