I got the trail Hawk a couple weeks ago but it was until this weekend that really got the chance to try it and this are my impressions :
The first thing that caught my attention is how small and light it is , it weights less than my SF shovel and got a little concerned about its capacity at processing wood , but when you start using it you get a nice surprise ; the long handle gives it good momentum and it bites deep in the wood , although since the blade is on the thin side it can get stuck pretty easily on thick logs , better to use it on smaller branches , I tried to use it to make feather sticks and it works ok , but you get better results with a smaller , sharper blade ( my Pendleton Lite can't be beaten !)
The hammer face came handy when I cut some branches , sharpened one end and drove them on the ground on my first unsuccessful attempt to make a makeshift shelter , but the small hammer makes it hard to hit the small branch top , and the Trail Hawk is too light to be an effective hammer , going for broke I attacked a four inch thick log and to my surprise it took two minutes tops , on my inexperienced hands , to cut trough and against better judgement proceeded to split it ; the first blow got the hawk firmly stuck on the log , lifting both hawk and log the second blow drove it deeper and about the fourth ( or the fifth ?) blow it went trough !
From there the work went a lot easier , the hawk splitting the increasingly smaller pieces of wood in a breeze
Overall I believe the tool choice will depend on how much wood you need to process , to be honest at this point my Pendleton Lite covers my needs at the moment , when I get ready to do real camping my choice will be the Trail Hawk for ease of use and small weight/size and not until I get to do serious winter camping (who knows how many years will take to get there
) will need my Trail Boss , but it is nice to know I am covered that far into the future
