As a hunter, your favorite pastime can often take you into remote areas that are hard to access or navigate. It makes for an unparalleled outdoor experience, but it can also lead to a dangerous situation if something goes wrong. In this two-part series, a continuation of our ongoing offerings of survival tips here on our blog, we’ll go over one of the most important survival skills you’ll need to make it back home: building a fire.
Copper Ridge Outdoors wants to make every hunting trip the best one yet with some of the best hunting gear available. Whether you need a portable hunting blind for those trips into the wild or you’re looking for steel plate shooting targets and stands for your personal range, we are dedicated to providing you with equipment that will meet your needs and exceed your expectations. We welcome you to explore our blog and part one of this fire-building series for more survival tips and hunting advice, and we hope you choose us for all your outdoor hunting supplies.
Build Your Frame
A survival situation in the backcountry is not typically a good time to build a bonfire. It can be effective as a signal fire, but depending on your environment – specifically if you are in an area of dense trees and vegetation – a big, largely uncontrolled fire can cause more harm than good. In most situations, you will want to build a frame that is focused and self-contained. An A-frame is a simple style that many of us likely learned as kids camping for the first time, and for good reason: it’s easy to build, easy to remember, and effective. It makes a particularly good cooking fire should it come to that.
To create an A-frame fire, place your big pieces of firewood in the shape of an A, with two pieces in an open-ended triangle and the third laying like a crossbar across the top. Then place your kindling against the crossbar to create a sort of small lean-to. Your tinder will go beneath this lean-to, where the fire will be able to catch the kindling once ignited.
Light It Up
If you are in the habit of carrying a lighter with you, then this step should be simple. If not, you may have to get creative. You can try to ignite your fire with friction methods like the hand drill – which we have probably all seen attempted in movies or on TV – but your chances are better using other methods.
Get Creative
Igniting your tinder with a lens, for instance, will probably be much easier as long as the sun is out. Many kids discovered the incendiary properties of lenses for themselves and used it to melt plastic toys or terrorize ants. The principle is the same when trying to ignite a fire in the backcountry. Eyeglasses and binoculars can both be used if you are without a magnifying glass — simply angle the lens toward the sun and aim the concentrated beam of light toward your tinder.
Survival Matches
If you are reading this blog post and preparing for all the possibilities, you can find plenty of fascinating online articles and video tutorials instructing you on all the weird ways you can start a fire without a lighter or matches. However, your time is likely better spent ordering a pack of survival matches. There are many different brands and styles available – all of them lightweight and easy to pack – and many are made to be wind- and waterproof.
Order the Hunting Gear You Need Today
Here at Copper Ridge Outdoors, we may not sell waterproof matches, but we do have a broad collection of hunting platforms, shooting gear, and more. Our goal is to improve your hunting experience, whether that means designing AR500 steel plate targets to help you hone your accuracy or creating hunting ladder stands that combine safety, practicality, and comfort. You can count on Copper Ridge Outdoors to create equipment you’ll love. Explore our inventory today to get started!