There has always been those who want a big fighting knife and this goes way, way back. I find humorous the stories of Civil War Volunteer regiments being given huge Bowie knives from their home towns, and, I suspect, after the first battle and first 20 mile forced march, these knives were left on the side of the roads.
Of course, if every camp trip you end up in a hand to hand fight with Sasquatch, or if you plan to completely butcher your deer, a big knife would be great.
I think the current trend for two pound knives is based on the automobile culture. Americans don't walk, they drive everywhere. As a teenager I remember showing my Western Bowie to my Boss. He was an Army Veteran of WW2, was on the first troop ship (Jan 1942) to Australia. Except when they were being shipped to a location, he marched. It was hot , humid and mucky in many of the places he visited, and he carried between 60 and 100 pounds of gear on the sight seeing part of the tour. Boss saw my Bowie and said "
imagine carrying that!".
Now I realize what he meant was a big bowie knife was a huge hunk of useless metal to carry in a modern war.
As for knife size, I have a Bud who always gets the maximum number of deer each year in his State. Or very close to it. Based on the maximum times the number of years he has been harvesting deer, his take is around 200. This Case canoe , a knife he has owned since 1964, the weekend prior to this picture, he used to field dress a deer.
I gave him a couple of knives. The first was a Cold Steel copy of this Grohmann knife, the Canadian Belt knife. This knife is small enough to make a useable steak knife. The blade is too thick to pass through fork tongs, but it slices well.
I also gave him a real carbon steel Grohmann survival knife, a much larger knife than the Canadian Belt knife.
I asked him for his opinion after taking the next couple of deer. He much preferred the smaller Canadian belt knife, it was very handy and small enough that field dressing a deer was easy. The larger "Survival knife", not as useful.
I field dressed deer with a Camillus Trapper, it was a bit small to split the pelvis, but it worked well. I prefer a fixed blade knife with a four inchish blade as that keeps my hands out of the guts and I don't have to wash out hair and blood out of springs. I really like my Cold Steel Pendleton Hunter , it has a very sharp 3.5 inch stainless blade, grippy handle, and the concave cross section easily slices through meat.
I am not going to use that knife to chop trees or sugar cane, I have a chain saw for the trees and a machete in the garage for weed wacking.