How To Build A Concealed Wilderness Fire

hey folks my name is Joshua in yard I specialize in emergency and tactical survival bushcraft and preparedness here in the Eastern woodlands of the United States and today I'm going to show all of you how to build a Dakota fire pit or Dakota fire hole so we are in a position or we're in a situation where we think that we want to be hidden from observation we want to kind of keep a low signature keep a low profile one of the best ways to do that you know if you still need to have a fire is called the Dakota fire pit or Dakota fire hole it's the same thing so with that you know it has some advantages and disadvantages obviously some advantages are is that it's you know in the ground then it conceals it's very easy to conceal the disadvantage is is that it creates a lot of grounds fine if you're using a Dakota fire pit it's because you don't want to be seen and while using a Dakota fire pit you know hide you from an immediate observation what it does is leave behind a lot of sign if you don't do it right so if you're being tracked you know if you're concerned about being observed you should be also concerned about being tracked and if you are concerned about being tracked there is a way that you need to take this thing to assemble this thing to build this thing so that you can put it back together which with as little displacement as possible and leaving us as little a signature as possible for when you pick up and move out of here I'm not just going to dig it out in the open what I'm looking for is you know anything like big trees that's going to offer me any type of cover and concealment but I'm also looking for something next to a smaller tree like this little oak so that when I have smoke coming out of this this will help dissipate that smoke and it'll give me less of a visual signature you'll still be able to smell it but you know you you won't be able to see it from as far off because this will dissipate all that smoke and it offers me some more additional concealment for my area now looking at the ground as it is right now you know I've got some ferns growing a little bit of blueberries some sassafras I've got some more pines some pinecones and of course I've got the stuff on the some sticks some old ferns some old leaves and you know of pine people's now if I just start digging here and throwing this stuff everywhere then it's going to be hard to put back so the first thing I need to do is pull out a poncho or a tarp or something and set that up so that as I'm removing material in layers I can set it aside that way if I have to leave really quickly and I want to cover my tracks or when I'm done with this I want to cover my tracks and move on I can try to put everything back to as close to what it looks like now and have less of a chance of a tracker finding me now the first thing that I need to do is disturbing as little that's still living as possible I got to get myself an area here that I can dig that I'm assuming that you have some sort of digging instrument on your go bag if you don't you can easily do this with it with a with a digging stick I'm going to try to keep the green stuff and I want to pick up this stuff layer the best I can so that it can be easily when I leave and I'll take more than I need here just so I can show you the technique [Music] quarters right there save that for later not my shovel I'm going to take off this top layer and what I'm going to do when I dig this is hopefully this isn't in the way but I want to preserve that these are going to have to go but what I want to do is I'm going to dig a six to twelve inch circle so digging a six to twelve inch circle where my main pit is going to be and that's as big as it needs to be that's about a ten inch and there were about I'll make it bigger there's about twelve inches and then on the upwind side the predominantly upwind side I'm going to put a ventilation hole and in this case the upwind side is kind of coming from that direction so I'll probably put my main hole right here and I put my vent hole out here alright the vent hole is obviously quite a bit smaller this is six to twelve inches your ventilation hole is between six to eight inches and it actually tunnels down but I want the main portion of my fire to have the smoke come up through this tree so this is going to be a good setup so what I'm going to do is take those top layers just kind of score around and if you're doing this in like a sod then you want to keep that layer intact because that's what's going to go right on top before you cover it with your deaf you're deaf layer this is pretty sandy soil here but if it collapses for some reason I'll show you that technique to fix it but I've kind of scored around and got my top layer now let's start working my way through this has got a lot of roots keeping it intact I'm gonna want to keep that integrity as best I can and we'll go back together a lot easier in the end [Applause] there you go [Applause] and get my other whole and kind of the top layer of that because I wanted to write back on top there like a plug now all I'm going to do is dig this down to a depth of about 12 inches deep and I have to keep in mind that all of this that I take out has to go back in so I'm going to put it over in the poncho in a separate area [Music] so now that I've got this dug about 12 inches deep what I want to do is start doing my connecting hole and the connecting hole is you know six to eight inches so it's not quite as wide in diameter as the main hole but it is facing predominantly upwind which in this case is coming in this direction [Music] so what I'm doing is I'm kind of digging away with this stick and in a permissive environment you know I could get a big baton and just beat this through and connect the holes and it's a lot quicker but I'm trying not to make noise I'm trying not to be found try not to be seen so I'm taking the time to dig it out and then just scoop it out with my hands and once I get down past the roots I might be able to poke through a lot easier [Music] now once I know that I'm deep enough I'm gonna start going from going deep to going across they connect these two holes at this point you need to be really careful because you don't want to break your bridge and it's really tricky with this soft sand it makes it easy to dig but it makes it hard to maintain the integrity of this bridge but if it does happen to break which I don't know if this went well it looks like it's holding up pretty well if it does happen to break you can dig this out you can lay sticks across here and then you can pack dirt back on top of that and achieve the same thing [Music] [Music] all right like I poke through I'm just going to clean that up and we'll be in business [Music] [Music] all right so another very distinct advantage of this type of system is the fuel that you need to supply this and keep a hot can be you know a lot smaller so one that saves you a lot of time and energy processing larger larger sustaining fuel but to it's it's a lot less of a signature that you're leaving behind you can just continue to feed little broken sticks that you find all over the place and not make a lot of noise with the with the hacking with an axe and the sawing and things like that so similar to kind of what the the Swedish stove or the Swedish fire log principle or the rocket stove principle you've got that going on with the Dakota fire pit as well and I took the time and collected some tinder anytime you're walking along you never know where you're gonna need to stop and sit down and set up camp you don't know what's available in that area so always always you know possum mentality fill that possum pouch as soon as you find something stow it away so what I've got here is kind of collection of some course some medium and some fine material and I try to do all my tinder bundles that way because my goal is is to save resources I don't want to use a lot of fuel and I don't want to use a lot of the fare of cerium rod so my goal is to be able to get you know if I'm using a Ferro rod like I'm going to do for today if I'm using a Ferro rod I'm trying to get that in three strikes or less one strike being the goal so building that correct tinder bundle from the get-go is is its key so I collected some brooms edge I've got some dog fennel which is dry and then I've got some milk thistle fluff I find slash superfine tinder so my course tinder is anything that has a cuticle land plants have a waxy cuticle on them you've probably felt it in like a straw bale something like that but they have a wax on them that you have to get through that wax first has to melt before it can ignite just like any solid wax so that course material anything with the cuticle goes on the outside this fine dry brittle dog fennel you know wild flower flower heads that sort of thing that's going to be on towards the inside because that's going readily accept a spark and then just to be safe I'll put some sort of flash tinder in the middle in this case I'm using milk thistle or I'm sorry bull thistle that's what I found that's what I'll put towards the center so I'm gonna build that real quick get this fire going and we'll boil some water I'm going to take my brooms edge also known as broom sage to some I'm going to take the folded I'm gonna fold these flower tops towards the inside because that part is a little less all right I've still got a piece put that towards the inside it's a little too brittle to fold into a to true bird's nest but I've got it I take these super brittle flower tops and put towards the I'm gonna flip that so I got the good fine stuff there take this flash tinder this thistle and pack it right there and towards the middle there's a Ferro rod I don't have to have you know a perfect sorry some of the using a Ferro rod I don't have to have a perfect bird's nest I just want it to go from the finest to the more coarse material so the key thing is I've got all my fuel on standby you've got all my smalls and I've got some sustaining fuel there but if my tinder bundle is correct I should be able to get this within one strike so a couple of things that I will caution you with if you're in an area that has a lot of resinous conifers like I have here you really got to be careful that you don't catch the roots on fire so in my main fire pit I was really careful to take the roots out and pack those with with sand to try to protect them because they can smolder for a long way and travel that entire route and spring up a fire somewhere else the same is true if you're building one of these in an area that has a really dense kind of of peat flooring if you have a lot of peat really anything with a lot of organic matter that can that can smolder can carry this carry this heat for a long way and spring up fires elsewhere so the other thing that I'll caution you on is these things are highly efficient this is extremely hot right here like a rocket stove and I've got a great bed of coals here I'm going to boil some water here on water on here on the second but just to kind of demonstrate a point of how efficiently these are as far as you know what size fuel they're using you don't want to put too much in there or else your flames are going to be this high and you're defeating the purpose of putting it in the ground like this so just to kind of illustrate that point I'll throw a really small handful of sticks in here just to show you you know once this gets going it's going to smoke for a little bit but once this gets going you know that little dab that little bit of fuel is really kind of all you need to really get this thing stoked up again and you'll see how high that goes and once you build one of these and play with this for a while you'll see just how little fuel it takes if you put more than a big handful on you know your flames will start climbing and will start getting out of your hole like you don't want like right now it's it's a few inches above my hole so I'm kind of defeating the purpose of it altogether but you can see I only threw in just a small handful of sticks but that'll give you an idea and give you a gauge of just how efficient these can be Alan Kay a buddy of mine that won the first season of alone he used one of these similar similar to this in a shelter of his and that you know prevented him from having to take large bits of fuel and break it down into smaller bits he could just find little sticks like that throw a handful in once in a while and keep his fire going relatively easy with with relatively few with relatively little expenditure of calories so that's just from a handful that gives you an idea now I'm going to grab some green sticks I'm gonna make me a little grate across here and let these die down a little bit and I'm going to boil me some water on here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] enesta Dakota firepit do you have any questions post them in the comments section below but on this share it with your friends if you got anything throw it in the comments and I'll see you in the next video thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Prepper Advantage

Views: 526,109

Rating: 4.8677993 out of 5

Keywords: AlfieAesthetics, camping, fire pit, hiking, survival, Naked and Afraid, Military, Bear Grylls, outdoors, SHTF, camping fire, bushcraft, how to build a fire pit, build a firepit, bushcraft usa, how to make a fire, survival guide, wilderness survival, how to build a fire, survival skills, survival tips, Ray Mears, dakota fire hole, survival training, how to survive in the wild, survival fire starting, fire starting, bushcraft skills, dakota fire pit, survival fire, wilderness fire

Id: r1-88AitC8I

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018