Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Firewood: What variety do you like best?

Tamarack. I don't care what the charts say but it's the best. Hot, no ashes, usually available up here. I have endless supplies of poplar so that is what I burn if I'm not buying wood.

I hauled home about 6 cord of spruce from a demo job I was on this fall so that will be for the campfires this summer and some of my heat next winter.

My choices are spruce. white birch, and aspen, tho there are cottonwoods in places. Birch is a hardwood, so is the best if properly dried a year or three - the rest are softwoods. Spruce is more prominent tho, and more used, just keeping up with the dead.Aspen isn't really worth cutting for firewood, but sometimes some have to come down, and is used. (I have heard that once dried, aspen logs make excellent sauna buildings)

The beetles are hammering spruce into standing dead, which need removal around the two yards I have here. Home yard is mostly cleaned up, the rental property has a over a dozen big dead trees yet to come down next summer - already took several cords of the most dangerous ones down to my local rec cabin - the only place still using wood. I'm good for about 5 years there already. I'll probably give the remainder away for the cutting and cleanup, if I can even find someone to do it - at least those trees not within falling reach of the unit. Not that I don't trust any Joe with a saw.....

I haven't surveyed the 6 acre vacant lot yet, but I'm sure there's some there also. Not critical at all. Woodpeckers need to eat too.

I'm so far behind at the Interior remote cabin, there are at least a dozen spruce blow downs- big ones - rotting away on the ground within carry distance to the cabin.

Some I trimmed and peeled several years ago to slow the rot if they weren't actually laying on the ground.

The whole damned valley burned up this summer, so I may need them yet!

Gin and Tonics, probably!

Well he’s goddamm expert on everything else

Work as a school teach for 75 years
Has 80 year old students come up to him in the grocery
Invented fire and the push-button automatic transmission and repaired motor homes for another 50 years, etc etc
Uncle Bullshît.

We can subtract volunteering at an animal shelter, skinning a few bobcats or having an olfactory lobe left in that 103 year old brain.

I had the old ass hole on ignore

Somebody stacks wood like my Ma!

It didn't stay like that for long.

I see no point in stacking it. I’m hauling it in every hour with a front end loader and dumping it under a shed cover.
I don’t burn wood or keep a nice anal retentive stack to make the neighbors envious. Fouck the neighbors

Sam

I know as well as you that Russian Olive is a bitch just to be near

Birds love it.....deer too for the cover

Two local counties are trying to eradicate it......total removal

Every time I see I see a new shoot on my place.......its gone...

The other junk tree is Chinese Elm....

I got lazy.....NG is my heat source.......although brandon shot the prices sky high this year

pic.......young buck found the discarded pumpkins

Thanks for posting that logger. Most useful bit in the entire thread.

Thanks for the nothing to nothing data sheet. 🤣

You got hickory…cut it down and make smoked pulled porkbutt bbq and firewood out of it

no brainer


Right here beside the house

For you cat piss burnin’ heroes…this is SHAGBARK

Ash and hickory

Hedge=Osage Orange or Bow d Arc.

Same here. Throw maple in that mix to.

1Minute that looks cool stacked like that. Is there a reason for the pre split rounds in the stack other than saving time?

Pinon, juniper, and cedar are what we burn at the ranch - don't keep wood here at town.
We used to burn some Gambel's oak, when we had some country near Raton that had it - ours at Wagon Mound, the oak is too small.

Shagbark Hickory is Section 8 housing for the endangered Indiana Bat.

https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Plants-and-Fungi/Shagbark-Hickory

Shame... Shame... Shame

Would love to poke fun at that Ford and "load" of wood.

Having a 3/4 ton truck, I used to haul coal in buckets loaded in a Lesbaru Wagon.
No chute or window to the bin, all coal had to be carried in buckets.
It was easier to stop after work and fill 15 buckets in the car than let them dump 2 ton in the truck and have to climb in and out of the bed, and clean up the mess.

Sure looked stupid though.

The best options around here are ash and locust.

The dry variety

We have 42 acres of mostly white and red oak so that is what we use. No complaints. Just make sure once it is split it has 2 years to dry out.