Article here today is out on a little bit of a trick me and my pooch, and just out enjoying enjoying nature a little bit thought I’d shoot this article here of how to start a fire, I’m going to use a Ferro rod, but I’m going to do This article, I know, there’s a gazillion articles out there on how to start fires – and I mean everybody – that’s about making articles on bushcraft and survival on the stuff shows you how to make fire.
So I’m not trying to harp on something. That’s old, but it’s very important, but I wanted to show you something that places to look for some dry tinder. If it’s wet here in northern Idaho, it’s been raining while it snowed for a while and then it rained and then it snowed and we’ve got a little bit of snow this morning. So things are pretty well soaked. I mean i’ll show you here in a minute how health soap things really are, but i’m going to show you a place to get some dry tinder and that i’m going to drop my bags here and my gun and after I do that I’ll I’ll show you Warmer to find some dry tinder, at least here here in the north northwest, you know a lot of pine trees and such back east.
You know you can find the same stuff. I just might be a little harder to find, but you can do the same thing. So show you here, quick, sorry about shaken but show you here. Hopefully you can see it. I don’t know I can and see there on that tree all the water. On those I mean there, you can see it just fell off, so you can tell how wet you know how wet it is right now. So all right! Well, I’m going to drop my stuff here and we’ll be right back with you, alright guys.
So I already got my my fine twigs and that all gathered up. I didn’t want to bore you with that. There’s a lot of good information out there on how to do that and I’ll show you a little bit how I do it, but there’s like I said, there’s a lot of good information out there from you know all kinds of guys. You know Dave Canterbury, Jamie burly, Sarge, farrier, sorry Sarge. If I butchered their name – um snow Walker, critter, you know, there’s there’s a bunch of good guys, and I know those guys are all kind of related in one way or another, but they do have a lot of good information.
But so I’m not going to bore you with. You know that that type of information on gathering the twigs and stuff, but what I am going to do is show you some really good things that you can use here to get your fire going, especially as what is it is, and without any char fire cubes Or anything like that, so I’m going to turn around here and try and get this camera set up here for you. But this is what you’re looking for these trees that have woodpecker holes in them, those real old trees.
I mean that one’s broke off at the top, but in those holes, fellas is very dry tinder and I’m going to get this set up and now uh I’ll get right back with you, okay. So this is what you’re, after this stuff right here all them finds. Here’s some real nice stuff right there and again you want to keep in mind which side of the tree this is on, and you know where the Sun is going to hit the tree and kind of where the best best side of tree to get this stuff.
As from is but I’m going to get things set up here, get this camera back here and gets it in here, so you can kind of see how I do this sorry about this. I got a fasten, the camera to my pod here. So, okay, there we go now. What I do is I like to take a piece of bark or something like that and take it here’s another good spot. You just might have seen a bunch of this stuff fall. All the bugs have chewed a lot of real fine material in there and that stuff is dry.
I mean that stuff is bone, dry um, but what I’ll do is I’ll take a see if I can get a little piece of a better piece of mark here but I’ll take. You now take my knife and I’ll get in these holes places like here I mean that you can see how soft that is. I can just take that and stick my knife right in there. That’s the stuff! You want to get that stuff right there I’ll pull that off man, that’s good good stuff, right there, real good stuff! You can’t ask for much better than that.
I like to get a lot of the fine stuff too, not just that of course or stuff. So I’ll take this stuff with the fine shavings and I’ll gather gather a lot of this stuff up. You can see they’re all that good rotten material, and you can also make char you can make charter out of this stuff. So you know, if you don’t have char or something you can make your char out of this like punk, wood or whatever.
You want to call it the woodpecker holes and this real chewed up rotten wood here, that’s really dry, but I get try and get a whole try and get a whole pile of this stuff and I’ll. I got that that’s probably about what i’ll use and i’ll show you something else here, i’m going to head over through to my my site and i’ll show you where I, where i’m going to set up my camp and i’ll, show you something else that works very Well too, I guess I could show you one thing here, while i’m here, if it’s dry, if you can see it back here hanging, I try and zoom in for you now.
You don’t have necessarily have this back East, but right in there there’s a old man’s beard or likin that stuff, if that’s dry, that makes really good fire tender, to least in the in the West here. So I’m going to head over to the camp and moola I’ll show you another really really good thing. I found that works really good for getting your fire started. So I’ll, be right back with you, okay, guys, so right, right! Here’s where i’m going to set up my fire lane have my fire and everything, but this is what I wanted to show you these dead, pine nettles right here these are dead.
Obviously you can see the difference between these and these. These I just take these and I strip these right off the limbs and those there are incredible, I mean just incredible and they can be damp, wet verbally, not soaking, wet, but they’ll work, i’ll, gather up a big old handful of them and i’ll show you what I do with them here in a here in a moment, but those things right there, those dead, pine, nettles work, awesome, really really really good.
So I’ll be right back with you soon as I get off get these gathered up all right. So hopefully you can see all this. What I, what I like to do first, is find me a piece of bark, a nice piece of bark like this one and I’ll take and hopefully and see this I’ll put my pine nettles on the base right there like that, and then what I’ll do? After that is I’ll, take my my whatever might rotten wood or my stuff.
We got out of the woodpecker holes and I’ll put that down, follow that down on there and what that will do if you catch that stuff on fire, if you catch that on fire there, that will hold a number a really long time. I mean that that will hold a really really long time so show you here. I’ve put my pieces on top. I hope you can see that okay on top of my pine nettles, so what I’m going to do is I’ll take and I’ll just take my Ferro rod and I’ll.
Just take that and I was taking okay right there. We got it, smoldering already come up here and sure yeah try not about this camera around, but there you can see how that stuff works. Just smolder and i’ll just keep catching other parts of that on. I just breathe in a blow on that, and I take my fine, my fine twigs, my real fine, fine twigs. You always want to start with real fine twigs, always start with your your fire lays and stuff with fine fine twigs, that’s what you want to catch and then just blow it to life, and it might take a little bit longer with this type of stuff versus You know like char cloth or something but and like I said these twigs are really really wet so going to take a little bit to try them out long, steady blows now we’ll take you set this whole thing down, read out pup a gent ramble and we’ll Start putting some more stuff laying it right on on top there now this stuff is all wet, so it’s got to dry out.
It’s going to really smoke on you, I’m being it’s really wet. You might have to. You know cater to it a little bit more than normal. You put 10 on my wood buddy, I just throw it throw it on there and I, like Dave, said fire likes chaos. So there you go so I’ve better check this camera. This thing shuts off on me in 10 minutes, so I better make sure where we’re at, but so I hopefully you you’ve got something out of this um, like I said, I’m not trying to repeat – or you know, beat a dead horse, but you know I mean It this things work differently all across the world, all across the u.
S.. You know all over the place things work different, so this is just something that works real good for me here you know Ferro rod, not! I didn’t have no char, no, nothing like that and you can see, hopefully so good how how this all worked and how everything went, but uh I’m going to take time here to relax a little bit. Oh my apologize. I haven’t had much time to make articles nut, but just been really busy and i’m going to have some spruce, nettle, tea and just kind of kick back and relax.
Oh, maybe I’ll jump back on here a little bit later. I don’t know, but if not till next time take care, guys god bless and we’ll see on the next one have a good one, alright guys so we’ve got a good old fire going there that our nettle tea going and thought i’d show you something here, quick, Maybe a little tip or trick that maybe you can use or whatever but show you here bottom my haversack, the haversack I made out of a some brain tanned elk, hide that I had brain tanned, a while back.
My name is here on the bottom this here I keep my my flannel in there. I keep some other small stuff of my reusable space blanket in there. I have my squirrel roaster in there, but on the outside here the piece of neoprene off of a pair of old chest waders. I cut a section out of that and that works really nice too. If you’re coming out in the woods and this grounds wet I’ll. Take that and put that down, you can sit on it and keep your butt dry and just a little you know, don’t weigh nothing.
You know so I just thought I’d show you that they’re, quick and maybe somebody can add that to their pack. So alright guys we’ll take care. God bless you
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