Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Best Simple Firestarter

Like you, I start a fire the quickest way unless practicing with more minimal gear-- or unless my hands are so cold they are losing dexterity.

More than once my hands have been too cold to flick a Bic type lighter using the normal motion. Don't know if that has happened to anyone else. Only once were they so cold I couldn't get the lighter to light by using two hands. If my hands are really cold, I prefer the ferrocerium rod and steel. The flint and steel can be gripped by larger hand muscles that still function after fingers have lost dexterity in the cold.

With a little practice it is virtually as quick to light a greased cotton ball as it is to light it with a lighter. Also, in extreme cold, lighters don't work unless they have been kept warm by body heat inside clothes, and then you have one to three or four tries before having to warm it again. I don't have exact numbers but my experience would say cold below -15 F.

Photo below was well after dark in the Canadian Rockies in late November, -15F or colder. Fingers cracked so painfully in the dry cold that I could not run a zipper. But CDN Rockies are an easy place to start a fire compared to rain forest.