Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Best Simple Firestarter

We use homemade fire starting "cookies" made of fatwood sawdust/shavings stuck together with a paraffin/Vaseline mix and with a greased cotton ball on top. It burns for at least 5 minutes, usually 8. I used to use Trioxane but haven't found any lately. We also carry pre-split fatwood sticks to feed in and keep the under fire going if needed.

The idea is to keep a hot little fire going long enough to dry out twigs above it till they will burn, dry out more, etc. It is kind of intensive, and you never stop drying larger pieces of wood. Dry some twigs and put them under cover or inside a plastic bag overnight to start a fire the next morning.

Best source of twigs and sticks is the dead lower limbs on evergreens under an overhanging canopy. They may be damp but are not soaked like anything touching the ground is. Start with as close to hair diameter twigs as possible. Break off forks so that the fine sticks lie close together and parallel rather than springing out too far apart to feed the small initial flame. It takes awhile to get a fist diameter bundle of the small twigs half the diameter of toothpicks or less.

If you have a vehicle, chainsaw, splitting maul, gasoline or diesel you have more options than when backpacking. On a super wet backpack hunt one afternoon I used a saw blade on my knife to cut out a 6 inch long piece from under the driest log, then shaved/split that as thin as I could.

Below is a pic taken while we were elk hunting in early Sept. on the driest day I ever recall.



Then another taken about 11:00 AM on a dry sunny day while hunting Roosevelts in the Olympics.