Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting FAVORITE TOMAHAWKS

Best recommendations, uses and results?

I use a folding saw.

Tomahawk? I’m an atlatl guy. More range.

I use a folding saw way more than a hatchet. For what I use a hatchet, a tomahawk works poorly at best.

I sometimes carry a 1-1.5 lb Estwing hatchet, mostly for splitting elk or when I need to split wood for the teepee stoves. I find a tomahawk hard to accomplish much with.

I use my non-folding outdoor edge saw alot more than the hatchet, but if I know or suspect I'll be building a fire I take the gransfors mini.

FWIW have one on order from H&B Forge. Will be my first tomahawk so can't really speak to use but reviews are good. Have been using small axes from gransfors and council tool with no complaints just wanted something different.

Cold Steel Riflemans Hawk.

I have a bunch of hawks, but since this is the "Backpack Hunting" forum and I'm assuming you want it for doing light camp chores and making kindling, I'll recommend a cheap and lightweight option. There's a Bulgarian seller on the "Bay" that sells a "BEARDED VIKING AXE NORSE HATCHET CAMPING HUNTING HIKING BUSHCRAFT CUTTING TOOL Brand New". I bought one to try out against some of my pricier hawks (RMJ, Winkler, WBF, the McCouns & some other custom makers). It is light weight, easy to touch up and because it's soo thin, cuts waaaay out of it's league. I use it around the yard all the time to limb dead branches and clear the driveway. I wouldn't take it into battle (unless it was the closest one I could grab), but for a low price option, I've been really impressed with the value-to-performance ratio. You can probably get one for under $50.

My favorite Hawk??? The one that Billy Goat Gruff is making for me at this very moment!!! LOL

For most cutting chores, one of these Mmilwaukee folding jab saws works great using any recip saw blade. Take a couple blades of different types. The only thing that I can think of that needs a hatchet is splitting kindling. For that, get a very light weight one with a wide wedge shape. Light weight is easy to carry but is hard to swing so don't swing. Use the saw to cut a 2' log and use it to pound the hatchet through the wood.

It's the only way to go....this is a legal hunting method for deer in AL and coincides with the bow season. Bow season is almost 4 months long here.....I'd need the entire season if I was trying to harvest one with an atlatl.

I do use the J. Clarke Outfitter's Axe often.....just for limbing and clearing trails. I guess I'm just not much of a true tomahawk'er.

Speaking of kindling and fire building, I've read many times that the Indians criticized whites for wasting firewood, having blazing campfires while Indians kept tiny fires. The reason was that the steel ax was a white man's invention. Unless they traded for steel, the Indians had only stone axes and firewood was hard to get. Whites could gather large amounts of wood with far less effort with their steel axes. Axes were valuable trade items for the early traders.

Rock Chuck, a Potawatomi guy I used to hunt with joked "White man build fire big, stand way back. Indian build fire small, stand way close."

White man warm, Indian freezes butt off. In modern terms: white man self isolated, Indian spread Covid

Most useful "tomahawk" I own is a pipe tomahawk. I tend to smoke more than wale away on a piece of wood. I can pick up all the firewood I need off the ground.

Now, my most useful hatchet I own is one of those little "Ft. Meigs" axes. I use it for butchering. And I cut the handle down to about 8 or 9 inches long so it fits in my haversack. It’s all very flat.

Haven’t owned one yet, but those Winkler Axes sure look nice. I like the Hunter LT. Had to look them up after seeing them mentioned in a book.

I'm less than halfway through the Dark and Bloody River-- lotta tomahawks being used on both sides. I've been taking note: mostly fatal if it never leaves the hand of the user. Once it's thrown, the effectiveness goes way down.

Here's my question: If you're not burying it in the skull of a Shawnee, what good is a tomahawk? I can see why they were effective. I've had to improvise with a clawhammer on at least one occasion (long story) However, for general camp work, it doesn't do nearly as good as a hatchet.

SheriffJoe;
Good afternoon to you sir, I hope the day's been treating you well and life in general is going where you need it to be.

Honestly since this is the backpacking section, I'll admit that my backpack hunts are usually hours from the pickup anymore in the BC mountains and not typically measured in days if life goes according to plan.

When we used to go backpack camping, I started carrying a Coglan's Sierra Saw, but looking at the new ones now I'm not sure they're still a Japanese made steel in them or not thus can't say about the quality. We had occasion to find a small tomahawk of some use then too, after trying to do some batoning with a big knife and not being entirely satisfied.

I began to make my own tomahawks then, reshaping roofing and drywall hatchets into something lighter and more useful - for the intended purpose I had in mind.

This photo shows a few of them with a Swedish Frost hatchet with longer handle on the left and a Mann Hunter's Pride hatchet on the right. I'll note the Mann weighs in at 1lb 3.8oz.


The one second from the left was my go to pack and hunting tomahawk until this past summer when it went to a new home that didn't have a tomahawk for backpack use.

That gave me an excuse to try to grind out a new design that had been running around in my head for a bit, so now the top one gets to sit in the day pack when I'm wandering around on the mountains behind the house.



The top one is 13oz on the nose, including a sheath and the bottom one is an even 1lb without a sheath. It has a heavier fiddleback maple handle while the top one is hickory.

The top one did open up one each whitetail and mulie buck ribcage for me this fall and it did work just fine for that.

Lastly, I'll note that in getting back into fooling with axes in general this summer, I found that some Swedish cutting axes were hollow ground from the factory - Hultafors Bruks from the '60's? That caused me to go down the rabbit hole of trying hollow grinds on a couple axes I'm working on, one is like an Arvika axe style head, but until I knock down a couple Ponderosas in the yard I'll not be able to test it on greener wood.

The other that I hollow ground was the light carry tomahawk and while it's still early in testing, it surely does a quick job on small poplar and pine trees that have fallen across the old skidder roads we use to get to the trail heads.

Besides the cutting, I prefer a tomahawk for pounding tent or guy rope pegs, but for sure one has to understand that it's nearly an additional pound in the pack and depending upon the distance, elevation change and terrain, it may not be worth it to carry.

Hopefully that was useful for you or someone out there this afternoon sir. All the best to you this fall and good luck on your remaining hunts.

Dwayne

That's why you don't see tomahawks in
hardware stores in the sticks or the city.
I have a couple, old H&B and Cold Steel,
and they're ok for what they are.
Handier in the sense of light weight, not
for work done effectively
Better than a sharp rock as earlier posted ^^
The thing for the bushcrafty trend is " you
can make a new handle and replace it without
tools ". Just me- I've yet to break a quality
wooden tool handle in the woods.

Impressive results in your tool making/modifications.

My main emphasis in utilizing a tomahawk is for the poor shot result that allows wounded game to attempt sanctuary in the extensive thickets out here. In lieu of pruning shears the tomahawk seems the lightest efficient tool for heavy brush. The easily removed head also makes a very good hand tool blade when needed.

Rarely build a fire outdoors except when vehicle camping.

Had to cut my way down to a vehicle that missed a hair pin on a forested mountain road on one incident.

Ever keep pushing down an a seldom-used dirt road overgrown with brush with a shiny truck? Machetes require more effort than a tomahawk in the Pacific Northwest.