This. Exactly.
Ideally, you want a 2-knife solution, right tool for the job and all that. A small-ish blade in the range of 3.5" to 4.5" that is your primary all purpose blade, light and tough enough for batoning, but small enough for slicing and detail work. You don't want this knife to be the "sharpened pry bar" survival type of knife. Stock on the blade typically between 0.14" and 0.17", with something like a full flat grind for slicing. This smaller type of blade, I prefer to be a modern stainless steel because if it involves food prep, it's much easier to maintain and to keep clean from corrosion which you wouldn't want around food. Then in addition to the smaller knife, get a much bigger knife in a carbon steel (you want the carbon steel for toughness and easy sharpening on the large blade), as big as you can stand to carry, in the range of 6" to 12" for the blade and preferably toward the upper end of that range. Why? Because the big knife can replace several tools and gives you more versatility. A great example is the ESEE Junglas 1 (10" blade) or Junglas 2 (8" blade). Both of these knives will actually let you do a ton of useful tasks. The Junglas 1 can be sort of a jack of all trades (and master of none admittedly--but it lets you replace carrying several tools): it'll let you clear brush like a machete, chop like a hatchet, baton, hammer, and can still be used for knife tasks too. As you learn to choke up on it, you can do amazing fine detail tasks even with that huge blade. Recently I practiced with mine prepping some food and then using it as a steak knife, mostly just to practice fine slicing with it. It's pretty surprising how well a large knife can work if it has a good edge and a good primary bevel.
If you can't do a 2-knife solution--"what one knife would you take" and all that--then I agree with the poster who said something like an ESEE 6. This is a total "compromise knife" (because not big enough to do serious chopping like a hatchet, and also not small enough to easily do fine detail work), but it's also a great general purpose knife that can do many things KIND of well, if you're set on only carrying one. I've never been in a situation that only required me to carry one knife though, so I like to have adequate tools to do everything I want to do when back packing.
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