I’ve always believed that the knife is a tool FIRST and weapon second.
The concept of living off the land with nothing but a knife has always intrigued me. Of course living in the city makes it hard to do any of this since the local supermarket is just down the road, and killing any wildlife is considered illegal or environmentally sensitive.
I do however try and practice the knife skills now and then.
I bring up this topic because this week, the topic of survival and survival knives came up during a lesson with one of my students (Jean). He himself was interested in survivalism, but was not aware of any special methods of using the knife.
I thought this would be a great opportunity to show him a few tricks.
The BEST method I’ve learned of using the knife which has so many practical applications is to utilize the BATON.
Here, you simply fabricate a strong, stout stick, so that you can use it as a “hammer” or as a “baton” to hit the spine of the knife.
By using the baton as an impact tool in conjunction with your knife, you can achieve remarkable “chopping” and “cutting” ability even with a small bladed sheath knife that would only be possible with an axe.
The method is simple.
Simply lay the edge of your knife at the point where you would want to cut. With your other hand, you hammer down on the back (or spine) of your knife so that the blade is driven into it’s target.
With this method, I have cut down small trees. You can also split thick firewood down to kindling size twigs. Not only did we do that, but with Jean, I wanted to show him how to make a quick but proven hunting tool which the Australian Aboriginal people used for thousands of years.
We decided to carve out a “Woomera” (other countries know this as the “Atlatl”). This is a spear thrower made from a branch about 2 feet in length. One end is the handle; the other end has a “hook” which is placed in an indentation at the end of a spear.
By throwing the spear in this way, it, in effect “lengthens” your arm, giving GREAT leverage, giving the spear more power in the throw.
We found a tree branch lying around in the back of my home. It only took us about 20 minutes to whittle the bark off, and carve the “hook” at the end of the Woomera.
What we had then was an extremely serviceable and effective spear thrower.
Jean had never known about the “Baton” method, yet it only took him minutes to learn. Not have thrown a spear with a Woomera before….it only took him 15 minutes to get the hang of it.
Of course consistent accuracy over a distance and stalking prey would take A LOT more practice.
However, in just over half an hour, he learned how to use EASILY FOUND natural resources to arm himself with an effective hunting tool. Compare this to trying to make a Bow and Arrow and even to try and master a sling. I feel this method is superior and much easier to make functional.
Maybe one day, I’ll even make a video on these methods.
Ray Floro.
