Awesome! I don't own a flare launcher but it's good to know none the less.

Just be careful about waving flares around. Some of them like to drop red-hot, plasma-of-death, burning liquid all over the place.

Although the resulting screaming and cussing that happens after you get some of that stuff on you might get the rescuers’ attention, too.

Excellent documentary post of using the pen flares, as well!

As you may have noticed if you have been following this forum, everyone here has different areas of expertise. Some members hike, some camp, some canoe and so forth. Each type of outdoor activity brings its own useful tips/info to the forum. As you may have guessed am in the Military and I hunt a lot so obviously my outdoor gear is either a uniform or geared toward hunting of some sort.(thus the real tree stuff)

I am not quite certain what criteria a person needs to meet to be a redneck as such. I have all my teeth, didn't marry a cousin and don’t have scrap cars all over my yard. I do have a big dog, drive a big truck and have a big collection of guns.(plus I wear real tree camo a lot) Do I qualify with those points I wonder?

I don't know if this is Canada's Texas or not, but there are a lot of folks here who share my way of thinking.
YEEEEEEE HAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Well we do have a lot of oil and a lot of cows...

Minus 10 is "...relative mild..."???

You guys scare/impress me to no end...

I've been snowmobiling when it was -25*F. On a snowmobile it's pretty scary, the air at ~20mph feels like it goes right through your snowsuit (even my heavy duty Gore-Tex lined suit). Gloves don't seem to do much either.

If I didn't have the built in hand warmers on my sled I think I would have lost my fingers in under an hour, same with my feet (lucky for built in foot warmers).

It taught me to:

#1 Wear even more clothes, as well as glove liners or maybe over-mittens.

#2 Pack more disposable hand-warmers (they worked surprisingly well to help keep hands and feet warm when stopped).

With that in mind, my favorite quick starting fire device is a hand held marine flare. They work like road flares, but are safer to hold and can easily be cut down to half size. They're also more water resistant than road flares. Burn time isn't as long as a road flare (only three minutes) but that is plenty of time to get a fire going.

If you know anyone with a boat they probably have some laying around that are out of date, and are therefore no longer needed by the boater. Even if they are out of date by USCG standards they still work for at least a few years later, I've haven't had one fail on me yet and most are 2 or 3 years out of date.

I went ice fishing today. I should have started a fire so I could try a few things myself. But I don't think it got colder than a few degrees below zero so a fire wasn't needed.