Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting using coal in a tent stove?

Found a great deal on a stove for my wall tent. A hunting buddy tells me he has the same stove and that this model works so much better with coal rather than wood.

OK - I'm looking to try it but I have no clue where to buy coal and don't really know the type of container I should get to transport it.

Anyone burning coal and can tell me the basics of first-time coal burning?

Coal rocks. We burned it in the army in our pot belly stoves to heat our GP medium platoon tent. No chopping wood and burns hot and long. It's messy though.

Farrier supply store here sells it. As well as various yards that will sell lump coal.

However they are getting harder to find.

What kind of stove did you get?

Any wood stove will work with coal, but a grate of some kind will keep the coal from getting buried in the ashes. A very even heat can be had with a grate and a very controllable (air tight) stove.

Those plastic sacks are a good coal carrier. Those sacks are tougher then needed, and conforms to the irregular shapes. Or a box, pails or what have you.

A good lump of coal is nice with a brisk night when your short on sleep. But I wouldn't use it if I believed I were up-wind the elk I wanted to hunt.
No proof of why, but coal fires are not real common. Not like wood smoke smell.

Coal gives off a real pungent odor before it cokes and burns well. Again, no proof, but I would not risk moving a drifting herd through the nite.

Good wood is a must, gold standing dead or dead leaners will make any stove sing.

Good standing dead Douglas fir is about as good as it gets in the Colorado mountains. Is there a chance your friend chose coal over marginal wood?

You can get it off ebay but the shipping is 3x the price of the coal.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/COAL-for-bu..._DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27cae9f56b

Coal burns better if you knock the ash off of it every so often. A grate will then allow air around it for a much better burn.

I prefer charcoal to coal......

There's a landscape supply ie: rocks of all kinds, in SW Denver that sells it by the 15lb bag if ya know of someone coming your way from here.

I was working along RR tracks in UT this summer and found a bunch of it free for the pickin up, but didn't want to check it in my luggage

Huntsman, I bet you get a good burn from that once it gets goin, pretty hard to get started up high.

Coal will put a stink that most game are not use to.

Coal can burn very hot please take note.

Thanks for the replies.

This stove does have a grate to separate the burn chamber from the ash bin - pot belly style.

I like the charcoal idea. Especially since its readily available, light, cheap, clean.

A lot of coal has a relatively high sulfur content. You are smelling the sulfur oxidizing into sulfur dioxide.

In southern Colorado coal is pretty easy to come by. Just ask some of the locals, cause most everyone that doesn't live in town keeps a small supply for cold winter nights. I use to buy from a fellow in La Veta, and there was another good supplier over in Gulnare. Usually 1/2 ton would last me the winter with the wood I cut and burned.

Up north I know there is was coal dealer in Idaho Springs, and I'm pretty sure there is one in Frisco, but it's been a few years since I spent any time there.

Be careful how much coal you load in the stove, it will get very hot if you don't have real good air control.

If you can get it you want Anthracite coal. It has much higher BTU per lb than western varieties.

Don't let Obama read this thread or he'll be out to outlaw elk hunting in the name of clean air.

Ain't that the truth!

Just for Obama, I did a little research.

$0.13 cents a pound good for your carbon-footprint?

Just got off the phone with the folks at the link below.
Bulk lump coal, with some good sized lumps(new shipment) so a few of those plastic woven sacks, heavy dog-food or grain sacks would be handy for hunting.

http://m.ainsworthrocksales.com/Location

Where camp will be this year, a west or north-west wind (blowing towards DC) would in no way effect my hunting!
Think I will bring up a good measure in case of a cold snap.

Thanks for the link!

IIRC both Anthracite (hard) and Bituminous (soft) have about 25 million BTUs per ton. Anthracite is much cleaner, less soot, but more expensive. Soft coal was used in the coke ovens for steel-making.

You really need shaker grates in your stove/furnace to burn it right.

I still prefer Kingsford-tuminous coal. Always bring a bag, or two.....

Yeah, but you use the match-lite stuff. Poser.

yeah, I've never done this stuff before....

OK then, lose the coat and tie, put your eye-talian loafers on the shoe-holder and come on over, I'll show ya how it's done.

I refuse to walk that far bare-footed.

Ah, so it's true, you were wearing a coat and tie!

The coal was a big success.
I did not sleep in the tent but the fellas said that they got up to feed it a lot less often than with the wood stove.

They said they were stoking it until this little stove glowed red. (That part made me a little nervous). They averaged about 10lbs of coal per night.


Thanks to K Salonek for the recommendadtion on the place to buy coal. Was able to buy 70# bags from that place.

How would charcoal briquettes work in a small Ti stove? If nothing else, they might make a great starter to get the wood dried out and burning well at high altitude. Maybe just a couple on a bed of sticks. Getting my small Ti stove going at 10k+ was noticeably harder than at sea level. Going to have to experiment with this.

I soaked cotton balls in candle wax. They will burn for 5-7 minutes. I'd get some good tinder gathered, then light the cotton ball. Feed the tinder slowly and she should go pretty quick. I like the waxed cotton balls a lot. Once lit, it provides just enough instant heat to get a draft going quickly too. Equals less smoke in the tipi. Maybe they'll help you get it going. Super easy to make.

I got a couple bags of anthracite coal for use in my Davis tent stove with coal grate. My thoughts were that I could shovel in some coal before bed and it would keep burning all night. Didn't work so well as the coal needs to have the damper full open to burn correctly. With it throttled back as you would before going to sleep the coal didn't burn completely.

I tried charcoal this year and it works dandy!!! Still warm in the morning, just open the air to it, pitch in a couple logs and fire gets going quick, thanks Huntsman22!

Instead of starting a new thread I thought I could restart this one. I have a thread going on the deer hunting page about my upcoming Adirondack Wall Tent Camp. My intention was to stockpile some firewood for the November hunt when my wife and I were camped there a couple weeks ago. That didn’t work out for a few reasons. Anyway, I got to thinking about burning coal. The stove I got has a coal grate. So I found a supply of Anthricite stove coal and gave it a try yesterday. I got a good hardwood kindling fire going and piled the coal on. Not much luck on the coal burning. I kept adding hardwood, but the coal didn’t want to burn. I’m thinking about maybe trying charcoal or pressed wood logs, anything to get the coal lit and keep it burning. I’m boating in to the campsite so 2-300 lbs of coal is in my weight limit. Gathering firewood in the area I’m going to isn’t really feasible at this point. Any tips at all are really appreciated.

Anthacite is a lot harder to start.Try bituminous.

Coal takes a long time to ignite and burn freely, so that is where a lot of people fail. A coal fire burns from the bottom up therefore air needs to draft up. Many people start a fire with small twigs or kindling and and add larger pieces of wood then applying coal. I have found that it helps to place large pieces of wood down for a base first then build a fire on top of that. Start with a small combustible, then twigs or thin kindling, then add larger pieces as fire increase. Lightly apply coal, At this point you should be about 30 minutes from the start. After another 15 minutes add more coal across the entire fire box. After another 15 minutes apply another layer of coal. At this point the large wood pieces that were laid first should be burnt up and coal should have dancing ladies.

In my titanium tent stove, I’ve been burning the pressed sawdust/wood pieces and they burn much longer than any softwood. The can be found in bricks or log shaped. In my stove, the smaller ones ignite better. I think the bricks sawn lengthwise might be even better. You add them to a fire that’s already hot. Our farm store sold a 20lb bag of kiln dried bug free hardwood for about $10, and that works too. Whatever you decide, test it at home so you get no surprises. DON’T plan on the chemical based fire logs in a stove. Just trust me on that one. Also, if using a Seek Outside Ti stove, replace or discard the old style spark arrestor. Thank me later.

Kawi good to see you on here

If you try to go more than 2 days without cleaning out the chimney pipe, it will smoke you out. Other than that, It’s great.

What I found with coal is you want big lumps as in football or bigger size. Mix in with wood and it burns easy. This is with bituminous coal. I get mine in Sheridan, Wyoming and always bring a few hundred pound sacks to camp.
Anthracite is much harder to get going and requires much more air, which is why it works poorly in most tent stoves.

I just use one of the Mr. Heater models that sits on top of a 5 gallon propane bottle. Instant heat.

I used a Big Buddy heater in my camp trailer for years. I had it plumbed into the propane lines. I got tired of water running down the windows and walls so I just finished replacing it with a forced air furnace for $600. It hasn't been cold enough give it a good workout yet.
The Big Buddy puts out 18k BTU on high which will heat a pretty big tent.

There's coal mines in Northern Colorado. The coal mines I've worked for would sell a pickup load pretty damn cheap.

We've driven through Shiprock, NM a few times. It's on the Navajo Rez. Along the highway you'll find dozens of Indians with pickups selling coal by the gunny sack, hay by the bale, etc.

There’s two abandoned coal mines by Kayenta. The Navajo dug coal out of the ground before Peabody got there. I imagine they still do. The coal mine fed a power plant and the EPA said shut it down.

In my opinion Peabody screwed up the land by using so much water that they lowered the water table and now the natives are screwed.

Miguel - did you find coal locally? I’d be curious about where it can be found. I know we don’t live too far apart.

Never used coal but am following this thread

i have never burned any coal as an adult, but i sure shoveled my share as a kid. it was all we used. the whole house would take on a sort of dark shade inside from the coal dust and smoke.

Where can you buy coal?

A lot of coal mines had coal for sale pretty cheap. When I was a kid almost all campuses had coal fired boiler in the center of the campus, including schools and hospitals, even downtown businesses. You could buy coal at lumber yards, many houses had coal fired furnaces including ours.

I’m mostly familiar with mines in the west but there were many coal mines in the east. Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota and Montana have or had coal mines.

I guess in these days, I’d google “coal for sale” or ask at local lumber yards.

'Bless my soul," it's green mark coal'. I scooped some of that in the old stocker hopper,

Tractor Supply - Anthracite & Rice Coal. Never knew!

When I was attending the Univ of Idaho back in the '60's, there were steam tunnels connecting all the older buildings. They were off limits but many students would go down there and run around through them.

What about the charcoal idea mentioned earlier? Anyone done that?

I was thinking we would burn wood during waking hours and throw in some charcoal before going to sleep to extend the length of the last burn. Does that make sense?

This is my setup:

I've burned a lot of charcoal in a cylinder stove. Just make sure ya use a grate. Or the fire might be laying under the stove in the morning.....

McCabes supply in Watertown had a good supply of all types. I got anthracite stove coal, golf ball to baseball size. $6 per 40 pound bag. I’m going to give it a go again today. I think the trick is to get a good bed of hardwood coals before adding the coal. I’ll update with what I find.

No luck getting the coal to burn. I burned a hot fire of well seasoned hard maple for 2 hours. I put about two big coffee cans of coal into the bed of hardwood coals. Then I put 4 or 5 pieces of maple on top. I left it like this at noon. I got home at 5 to find the wood had burned to ash and the coal was discolored but not burning.
I think I’m trying charcoal next. I also think I’ll be making an extra trip into the camp site with a load of seasoned maple.

I see you did not take my advice for a better outcome. Can lead a horse to water, but.......

I started out with 4 large pieces laying side by side touching on the base of the stove. I built a fire with split dry cedar kindling. With the kindling burning hot I put split dry hard maple on top, appx. 2”x2” pieces. With the maple burning hot, I put about a coffee can of coal on top of that. About 30 minutes later I put in larger pieces, about 4”x4” and another can of coal. This is how I left it. 5 hours later, wood ash and cold discolored coal. I don’t see how I deviated much from your suggestions.

I'm betting your using anthracite coal. Bituminous burns much easier. I start a fire with regular wood. Prior to bed time I throw several football size lumps in and set the damper at 50%. Coal needs air to burn

Charcoal puts out a lot of CO. Make sure you know what you are doing using it in a tent.

Yes, I’m using anthracite.

That's your problem unless you burn the stove wide open you won't get it to light.

Huntsman22: Our Elk camp has that exact same stove!
We use a stainless steel side tank on it that attaches to one side and fills with about 3 or 4 gallons of water.
It adds an amazing amount of heat to our wall tent and the availability of hot/boiling water is fantastic at our remote campsite.
We also added, a couple years ago, a "warming platform" on the other side that attaches to the studs that I see on your stove - that is very handy as well.
I hope you can get after the Elk this season.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy