Its always more efficient to use your Sawvivor or Sven backpacking saw to fall a dead tree up in the backcountry. Remember we find our driest, best firewood inside such vertically standing dead wood. But it needs to be felled and processed with your saw and your blade of course. But sometimes you may be without such a saw, having only your chosen survival knife with you. If its a blade like the affordable, high-value Ontario SP10 Marine Raider knife then youre in good hands. Furthermore cutting down standing dead wood remains a good test of the chopping capability of a given knife. Here, after hiking in with Allie, we chop down a smaller tree with the SP10. Its an impressive survival blade and delivers on my initial impression (see my table top review of the SP10).