Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire burn piles

Not everybody appreciates them. Who knew?

I think it's because they don't have one of their own. Probably never have.

Awful early, for non clarity?

Wish the idiots around here would quit lighting them, its occupied way to many of my personal hours the last 2 weeks putting out their stupidity.

Years ago I needed to rent a backhoe. While I had it I dug 3' deep burn pit in the back of a pasture. The pit helps keep the wind from blowing junk around until I next light it up. I've been replacing some windows and I dumped a bunch of scrap from that job in there yesterday.

In the summer the county will declare a fire permit season. The permit's free. All it's for is so they know who's burning so they don't send out fire trucks every time someone reports a little smoke. They can just make a quick call to the permit holder to see if he's burning at that time.

Wish I had a place to have a good one.
I actually do, but it is 15 miles from the house.

Apparently they're outlawed in my lovely home state now. At least if the elderly Northerners next door call the Fire Marshall and claim the smoke is affecting their breathing anyway....

"Ya know, people with breathing problems..."

It's not that they light them.

It's that they don't know WHEN to light them.

I still have more than a few from Hurricane Harvey to burn. Maybe after some spring rain on a calm day....

I should point out that I live on an acre and a half and burn on the side bordering 20 acres of cow pasture. Guessing that darn wood smoke must have picked up some contaminants as it rose over my house and fell back down to theirs 100 yards away.

Been burning a big one every year for a long time. Use the spot for gardening in the spring. I follow the rules and never have trouble keeping it under control, or with the authorities. I have a little private party with hot coffee and my iPad. I use a propane "flame thrower" to light it and back-burn the perimeters. That puppy sounds like an F16!

My fire is strictly for garden waste and tree trimmings. Any form of trash or garbage is illegal to burn here.

An elderly lady across the street got a big fat ticket for burning out of season.

Set a slash pile alight yesterday. About 10 ft high and 25 in diameter. Wet as hell. 15 gallons of diesel and two bales of straw, Got most of the center to go. Neighbors didn't complain. Couple stopped by to admire it once it got going.

As soon as it's light enough I'll go see what's left, but pretty sure I'll be piling the remains into a new pile and try to get it going again.

Be nice to have a excavator with a thumb right about now.

Yes, yes it is.

We put out TWO that lit them on whatever day the 40mph wind was forecast to hit.... And got damn lucky on both of them. So did structure owners...although we almost got trapped in a narrow lane with one of the brush trucks...but I don't care what the chief says later, I'll back out and over and through fences to get turned around...

Here, you are simply asked to call in to dispatch ANY time you light a fire. That way we don't get paged out for nothing... its SO easy to dial and give em your name and phone number and address....and so much less work for me. ANY page I get is an hour minimum of my personal time.... 353 pages last year...

I always call, or tell my neighbor across the street in advance when I wanna burn. He's the VFD fire chief here.

My dad used to burn brush on the back of our place. There was a church about 1/4 mile away, boy scouts used to meet in the basement, which was only a couple hundred yards from where he'd burn. One evening he came back to the house shaking his head, he'd gone to check on the pile and found the boy scouts "putting out the forest fire."

You'd think a neatly-piled 8-foot tall stack of brush with the leaves raked away from it on all sides would have been a tip-off, especially for boy scouts.

I grew up just burning pine needles when you needed to burn 'em. No calling anybody for permission, or to let em know you was thinking about doin' it. Times have changed. Especially for those of us dealing with California transplants as neighbors.

I know folks don't like to waste that minute of time... but please think of the folks that get to respond at all hours, when a snowflake drives by and says oh my...

One of our last was a structure fire page... so we had a full response for once. Chief, Engine, Engine 1-2, Tanker and a couple of grass trucks... to find the place thats a 20 minute drive, was burning trash in a barrel in the back yard behind the house....

I once lit a six foot tall pile of tires by accident one time.

That got everyone's attention for miles around.

Around here they call if they see smoke in the distance. Not a clue what is burning.