The Hatchet on Alone: What Contestants Actually Use

The approved-items list treats the hatchet as its own category, separate from the axe, and almost nobody picks it that way. Across the 101 contestants with a recorded gear list out of 187 total documented across every US, Australian, and spinoff season, only 5 carried something logged specifically as a hatchet rather than a full-size axe. That is a low number by any measure, but the small sample carries a strange signal: three of those five carriers won their season outright.

The five recorded picks

Alan Tenta won season 10 with a Hults Bruk trekking hatchet, logged in his gear list as "Axe - Hults Bruk trekking hatchet," which is itself a small window into how blurry the axe/hatchet line gets on this show. Jordan Jonas won season 6 carrying what one source identifies as a Broad River Forge Taiga "Moose" hatchet, a single-source attribution worth treating as reported rather than confirmed, since no second outlet names the model independently. Juan Pablo Quiñonez won season 9 with a JP PAXE, a custom prototype hatchet-axe hybrid never sold commercially, built specifically for his run.

The other two carriers didn't win. Sarah Poynter placed fourth in season 11 with a hatchet logged plainly, no brand attached. Dave Nessia placed fourth in season 3 carrying what his gear list calls a "medium felling axe / large hatchet," a description that splits the difference between the two categories rather than committing to either.

Contestant	Season	Result	Hatchet
Alan Tenta	US 10	Won, 66 days	Hults Bruk trekking hatchet
Jordan Jonas	US 6	Won, 77 days	Broad River Forge "Moose" (reported)
Juan Pablo Quiñonez	US 9	Won, 78 days	JP PAXE (custom prototype)
Dave Nessia	US 3	4th, 73 days	"Medium felling axe / large hatchet"
Sarah Poynter	US 11	4th, 42 days	Unbranded

Why the winner rate looks so high on such a small sample

Five picks is too small a group to prove a hatchet wins seasons, and the show's own item catalog lists no products under the hatchet category at all, no rules, no documented size limit, nothing beyond a note that it exists as a distinct selectable option in at least one structured compilation of the approved list. What the five cases do suggest is that a hatchet works as a second, lighter cutting tool for contestants who already have a plan for their primary chopping needs covered another way, rather than as someone's only edge tool. Quiñonez's custom PAXE and Tenta's trekking hatchet both read as deliberate choices by contestants who wanted something faster to swing one-handed than a full axe, for kindling processing and finer carving work, not for felling.

That reads differently from how most contestants approach the cutting-tool slot. The axe remains the dominant pick for anyone planning to fell trees for a full shelter, and the show's data on that comparison is worth reading against this one; see axes vs. saws on Alone for how the show's most common heavy tools stack up against each other. A hatchet, by contrast, looks like a specialist's choice, made by contestants confident enough in their overall plan to spend one of ten item slots on a tool that solves a narrower problem than the axe does.

The hatchet gear page has more on what's been recorded, and the official rules page covers the full approved-items list this category sits inside. For the broader picture of who's won and how, the winners hub rounds up every documented champion across all four filming formats.