Dakota Fire Hole

A little known survival aid related to wilderness fire making skills is the Dakota Fire Hole, also known as the Dakota Fire Pit. This handy device is easy to construct and has marked advantages over other types of camp fire constructs. Once you make a Dakota fire hole and try it out, you may choose to use this method on a regular basis.


Making a Dakota Fire Hole is initially more labor intensive than simply building a fire on the surface of the ground. However the outlay in energy required to make a Dakota fire hole is more than offset by its efficient consumption of fuel; it greatly reduces the amount of firewood required to cook meals, treat water to destroy pathogens, or warm your body.
The Dakota fire hole is a valuable wilderness survival aid because it burns fuel more efficiently, producing hotter fires with less wood. In many areas firewood is scarce or requires a large amount of time and expenditure of energy in foraging to obtain it. Once you build a fire, efforts are better spent attending to your other wilderness survival needs rather than in the constant gathering of firewood


Dakota Fire hole Other advantages of the Dakota fire hole are that it creates a kind of woodstove with a stable platform that is very convenient to cook over.

Should you need to conceal your fire, the fire hole will limit the amount of visible smoke that rises from the fire, since the fuel wood is burning hotter and more efficiently. The pit will also help conceal the light emitted from your fire, especially at night when even a single candle flame can be seen from miles away.