Camping light is one of the reasons you might need a spike hawk. When you can only carry it in, then the easy to use farm tools some prefer in the back of the truck or tractor toolbox get left behind. That tool also needs to be a lot more versatile and replace two or three you can't carry. Like soldiers on patrol, another pound of gear on top of the other 45-60 is something to seriously justify.
Here in the Ozarks, roughing it out in the woodland usually means sleeping on slopes - if it's flat, it's farmed, or too close to water. Hearing the rhythmic creaking of old Jeeps and broken ABS from canoes wrapped around trees over your head doesn't inspire much confidence in the forecast. Better to get upslope and into the wind so that there are less mosquitos. Doing that, you need to remove the common scourge of the Ozarks - rocks. The Ozarks plateau is older than most, much of the topsoil washed down thousands of years ago. Rocks are much more dominant and close to the surface, and they tend to split into shards here, usually because of the cold winters and the action of freezing water. Our plants are equally sharp edged, and the combination of both aggressively attacks whatever you place on the ground - a tarp, Goretex, your backside.
Since you can't take a backhoe and gravel truck to prepare a sleeping site, at least a spike hawk lashed to your pack will do. Hammering the rocks into submission won't help, it just fractures them and they get even sharper. Pry them out of the ground, and you might fashion a 24X72 inch spot to lay down and sleep, preserving your expensive gear. When you back pack or camp light, it's your survival gear that protects your survival gear.
When you use the local firewood to cook, dig a hole in the ground with the spike, and use the back fill as your screen. To put it out, scrape the soil back over, and it will be unsterilized and recover more quickly. Less trace of your presence - as opposed to the half burnt logs I've frequently found as obvious evidence someone was there. Sometimes a really nice site needs to look like nobody ever stays there, and that helps to keep it that way.
If it is a well used campground, or as one poster mentioned, out in Texas, having a spike hawk helps start a hole for a tent peg in hardened ground. It also allows you to dig for other personal needs when you don't plan to pack out everything you packed in and ate. Nobody talks about it, but you need to dig and bury it.
Could you do that with a hammer head hawk, yes - if it's got an integral shaft, not a slip in wood one. The handle of one piece hawks on the market can be used as a pry bar. The key issue is, how much leverage can it exert? You can rate that by how much it will raise something per a full stroke of the tool. Most won't lift more than one inch and a half. A spike hawk can lift 4 inches or more if it's a convex curve head. More prying ability with more leverage in an easier to use way.
Spike hawks may not be traditional in a commonly accepted way, but what isn't changing in this world? A century ago, outdoorsmen in America wouldn't consider using the machete, now it's an alternative to the hatchet they did use. Things come around and go around - the hawk is back in a new light with a different appreciation, one piece construction and a spike used as a prying tool have done that.
