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Wispy woodsmoke in wild lands is like soft butter melting on oven warm bread; not necessary, but oh so good! Campfire is in my DNA, the flicker of yellow flame and the smell of woodsmoke complete the wild lands experience for me–it’s a personal thing. Most outdoors enthusiasts feel as I do. Nevertheless, low impact camping methods are essential today–it’s a public thing. I expect to find our public wild lands unmarred and in nearly pristine ecological condition. I am obligated to leave wild lands as I find them, or better. I try to reduce impacts, to Leave No Trace.

Efficient biofuels burners bring the smell of low impact woodsmoke to out of the way wild lands away from crowded established campgrounds and within many sensitive habitats where inefficient open campfire is a poor practice that may cause lasting impacts (Wherever you camp, check local fire regulations and lookout for seasonal red flag warnings and fire bans!). I use only carry-in fuels when treading highly sensitive habitats. The MSR Pocket Rocket IsoPro stove and the MSR Dragonfly liquid fuel stove are my favorite bottled fuel choices, they cover all the bases.

Small wood burners consume just hand fulls of tiny twiggy fuel to boil camp water in ten to thirty minutes, including time for preparations and fuel gathering. Better designs support secondary combustion by venting preheated air into the combustion chamber, clean burning and very efficient. Efficient small wood burners are a boon for reduced impacts in wild places. I was in the market for an ultralight low impact wood burner. I bought this little multifuel burner to test the popular BushCooker design recipe cooked up by Don Kevilus at Four Dog Stove Company, a family business* located in St. Francis, Minnesota. Don offers three models, mine is the largest, rated for three persons.

The BushCooker LT III is an innovative design very well made. There are no moving parts and its sturdy titanium construction is very light weight. These are essential ingredients for years of trouble free ultralight utility, I expect. This is a winning recipe, and it’s my new go to stove for ultralight excursions wherever free fuels are abundant.

This is a biofuels anywhere burner. More than biofuels: I’ve burned alcohol, hexamine tabs and trioxane tabs in it: they all boiled water as rapidly as expected. Above all, this is a biofuels burner. I’ve burned lots of wood in it, from willow & pine to oak & hickory. I’ve burned a cow patty and hand fulls dry deer dung in it, too. I recommend Don’s BushCookers for anyone willing to obtain basic fire-making skills. If you don’t mind tinkering with tinder, this multifuel stove offers you low impact biofuels options for your backcountry treks.

Using ultralight biofuels burners…

Ultralight wood burners, all of them, require preparations and close attention during use. You can’t get your twiggy fire blazing, then walk away to gather more fuel expecting to return to tall flames twenty minutes later. One important exception: I use the stove for batch-loads when fuel is dry and I have a lasting firestarter. I light the batch at the top after loading the fuel and the starter (cofuels system). One good fuels batch can boil water quickly and simmer for fifteen minutes, more than a half-hour burn time.

Preparations begin along the trail with gathering dispersed dry fuel–and keeping it dry. Next, assemble enough prepared tinder and kindling beside the stove to get the blaze going and keep it going. How much is that? Try two large hand fulls of twigs about the size of wooden matches, along with four large hand fulls of finger-size fuel (for a Mors Pot full boil). I mush petroleum jelly into cotton balls for the fire-starters I carry with me in the wilds. Fluff the cotton fibers of one cotton ball, ignite by showering sparks into it. Then, pick up the burning cotton with a couple twigs and drop the whole thing down the throat of the stove. Then add fine fuels, followed by coarser fuels as flames rise and smoke diminishes. Once you obtain full flame, be prepared to add index finger-size and smaller twigs regularly until you get your water boiling–at least one fat twig every 45 to 60 seconds may be about right, experiment. Trial and error will refine your skills and ease success. Make the first burn count, or start over from scratch after dumping out accumulated ash. I carry a titanium drinking straw in each of my cook sets, the metal straw allows me to direct a jet of blown air into a struggling kindling core from a safe distance to fire it up, saving many ‘a fire start. Practice at home.

A note on air jet tubing…

Food grade titanium straws are vastly superior to the old brass tube I used before I discovered the trendy new straws. Brass and other metals are heavy and leave an unpleasant taste behind. Titanium is tasteless and very light weight, of course. A three-foot segment of flexible tubing that fits over one end of the straw allows me to keep a good distance between my face and the smoky flaming fire lay, and to bite the tube closed as I inhale another breath. The straw produces a jet of blown air that allows me to keep the straw at a safe distance from the super-heated air and smoke near the fire. I hold the straw in a bare hand and if my hand gets too hot, the straw is too close to the fire lay. Keep the straw cool to touch. WARNING: This method requires absolute attention and caution. Inhaling even a small amount of super-heated air and smoke into the mouth and lungs through a tube can cause serious injury!

My first attempt to cook using my BushCooker failed! We pulled into a high campground in Great Basin National Park late our first day in the field. Determined to cook the first meal on my brand new stove, I quickly gathered a small amount of damp fuel and started the burn without delay. The initial burn was impressive, but I ran low on fuel quickly. I had gathered mostly small stuff, not enough finger-size fuel, and everything was damp from afternoon rainfall. I left stove-side to gather more fuel, but the stove was out before I returned. Lesson learned! Later, on trail in the Ruby Mountains, the BushCooker cooked all of our meals using abundant down wood, limber pine and Engelmann spruce, no worries.

Titanium anything comes dear, this is a pricey cook stove. I bought a set: a BushCooker LT III titanium stove with a 1.8 liter anodized aluminum pot and a titanium windscreen. Inventor, Don Kevilus rates this set a three person camp cooking system. I paid $160.00 for it. It’s a long term investment, biofuels are forever free! I will need to burn a lot of free biofuels toward eventual payback, and I will. For the same money, I could have purchased about 36 MSR IsoPro fuel canisters, or 12 gallons of white gas fuel, or 9 gallons of cheap wood alcohol, or a little north of 500 hexamine fuel tabs, the more costly, cleaner burning kind! I paid for much more than a wood burner: I bought freedom. Biofuels burners cut the tether to fossil fuels supply logistics and free you from the time consuming effort in using large inefficient scarring fires in wild lands.

Out of the box, the BushCooker LT III is a three piece set. The stove is a single solid construction that functions independently. A separate titanium base plate helps protect vulnerable surfaces from burning heat and reduces ground moisture drafting. A separate tin cup holds alcohol under the firebox. The stove with base plate and tin cup weigh in at 11 ounces on my postal scale and can be purchased alone for $105.00.

Wood burners need windscreens, it’s axiomatic. I’ve used MSR foil windscreens for many years, but the slick-looking titanium windscreen designed for use with the BushCooker really improves the system, it’s a must-have. I consider it an essential part of the stove. Two thin titanium tent stakes are included with the windscreen. The stakes slide through vent holes in the stove skirt to level the windscreen above the burner base. The windscreen forms a closed cylinder that rests elevated on the protruding stakes, or it is placed on the ground, held open for active stove feeding when heating larger volumes of water.

I think the ideal ultralight companion pot for the BushCooker LT III may be the Snow Peak 1400 ml titanium pot, but I bought the package that includes the heavier Mors Pot offering more utility and a little nostalgia for similar pots I used when I was a young boy scout. The complete BushCooker LT III stove set with windscreen nests inside either cook pot choice. The 1.8 liter black anodized Mors Pot sports a subtle pour spout and comes with a snug fitting lid, a five-position bail, and butterfly handles. The Mors Pot is loaded with old fashioned utility. It’s your basic campfire-friendly water boiler for mid-weight to light-weight camps supporting two to three campers. The Mors Pot with lid weighs in at 10.9 ounces on my postal scale and can be purchased separately for $36.00. The Mors Pot is Four Dog Stove Company’s  reproduction of a favorite old sooty cook pot used for decades by venerable Canadian bushcraft instructor, Mors Kochanski, author of Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival.

I ordered the BushCooker LT III set by telephone. My laptop browser tripped over the online basket function at Four Dog Stove Company’s website, so I called Don direct just before closing time on a Monday and we talked about his stove for about 20 minutes. Don is very knowledgeable and passionate about his family manufactured products. Don’s Four Dog Stoves website is loaded with instructional information from a guy who has been there, done that for decades. Don’s enjoyable YouTube videos offer reliable information and exhibit important skills, and advertise his products honestly. Regrettably, most other YouTube’n-eer’s offering outdoor guidance don’t measure up!

The stove and kit I ordered arrived Wednesday, just two days later. Out of the box, the titanium stove, the titanium stove base plate, and tin fuel cup were nested inside the rolled titanium windscreen, that nested inside the 1.8 liter Mors Pot, the Mors Pot lid snugly fitted over the exposed end of the windscreen. Two thin titanium stakes were inserted into the pour spout of the Mors Pot. The main elements were each wrapped in paper for protection during shipment, the corrugated box was of heavy construction–thoughtful packaging.

The product’s fit and finish suggested freehand assembly. Some irregularities in vent cuts and weld spacings (70 hand welds!) lent the stove a craft barn charm that’s hard to find in the metals’ marketplace, today. A little tarnish colored the charm when I first attempted to set up the system and could not immediately level the windscreen on the titanium stake supports. A peek underneath found that the internal fuel box had been welded a little off axis, leaning to one side enough to hang up the tin fuel cup until jiggled into place. Fiddling with the setup obtained level after tipping the close fitting tin cup, a minor annoyance, but no deal-breaker. The fire box tilt does not impact functions. I called Don: he offered immediate replacement with shipping refunded, without commenting on my picayune complaint. I received a replacement just in time for my departure to NE Nevada’s sky islands. The perfectly symmetrical replacement stove’s weight measured slightly less than that of the original stove.

Flexibility: Don’t overlook the co-fuels flexibility in this cook system. Co-fuels enable batch-loading. A lasting firestarter, or combining a little wood alcohol or a fuel tab or two with twiggy fuels gets the burn going the easy way and reduces chemical fuel consumption, nearly bomb proof even if you don’t know tinder from kindling.

The BushCooker LT III will go with me regularly on future outings, high and low, heavy and light. Wispy woodsmoke and nearly silent trailside water boiling are basic ingredients for enjoying the fullness of outdoor experiences. Take away that noisy bottled fuel stove jet sound and the raised camp voices yelling over that shrill drone and you will hear natural sounds, the full nature things wild and free. The functional beauty of quiet gear is too often overlooked. Nevada’s biologically diverse sky islands reward careful observers and all who listen well.

We enjoyed the coarse call notes of pine nut gathering Clark’s Nutcrackers’ family groups echoing off the cirque walls surrounding Island Lake in the Ruby Mountains: more so, the distant plaintive calls, sort of a blend of elk bugling and a kid’s slide-whistle, of the Himalayan Snowcocks roosting on cirque ledges.

Next time you are out there in the great outdoors, turn off the noise and tune in the nature of things. A BushCooker will help.

An historical note on secondary combustion wood burners…

Secondary combustion designs for small wood burners have been around a long time; back in the day, you made your own. My first was a “two-can” stove made long ago as a boy scout using an old fashioned Hi-C can (no longer distributed in cans, as far as I know), a number ten tin, paint or coffee can, snips and a can punch. Our handiwork, back then, produced a design that was very similar to the patented and recently released Solo Stove, which is remarkably similar to the long successful BushBuddy stove. The two-can stove is easy and fun, and much more efficient than a single-can “Hobo” stove. First, you punch-open the Hi-C can and drink it all! Then, more punching; tin snips, a pointy knife, followed by sharp-edged can cuts all over fingers; break out the band-aids, boy scouts. Yes, it’s been a long time since kids reached into refrigerators after school to grab a can of Hi-C opened using a can punch opener! Even longer-lived, secondary combustion burners have been around almost as long as tin cans, I’m sure.

*We are pleased to buy family, buy local, buy Made in USA.