I just watched the Arctic survival episode by Les Stroud, but was interrupted at the time when Les was starting a fire using his gun.
Did anyone watch the entire process? What did he do to the bullet to start a fire?

I recall the mythbusters doing something similar.

From my SAS- survival handbook: Remove half the gun powder from the cartrige, put that on your tinder.
Put a small cotton pad into the cartrige. Load the cartridge in the weapon and fire.

I'm not relying on this one.

Jim pretty much covered it.

Les kept blowing his tinder all over the place. It was pretty amusing. He eventually got a fire going after 3 or 4 rounds.

I try like heck to make sure I always have 8 or 9 other ways that I can exhaust before I have to resort to that one. I've been successful so far.... <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Come on Les; this one is just silly.
So many more useful ways to use the gun (hunt, signal).
So far I have loved his 1st season; what I saw of it.

I seem to remember reading somewhere a long time ago that you remove the bullet and perhaps some of the powder, stuff a rag into the end of the barrel and fire it into the air. Hopefully the rag would drift back down on fire.

Please, please, please, don't EVER fire a gun with any object in the barrel.

What did Les do with the bullet, remove it? (I am imagining some volunteer SAR person approaching and getting a bullet between the eyes.)

Tom, I've read about that method, too. I don't think you wad it tightly, though, enough to block anything or blow the gun up. More like for muzzle-loading.

Frankly, starting a fire with a gun sounds like you didn't plan ahead at all. Like starting a fire with gasoline without an emergency room nearby.

Now, if you had a flintlock...

Sue

I've never tried it, but from what I have read/heard, you pack the wadding into the cartrige case, NOT the barrel.

Seems to me, if you had a pretty short barrel, like a 2" .38 or something, you MIGHT be able to pull the bullet, dump all of the powder into a pile on your tinder, put the muzzel close, and pull the trigger. The flash from the primer MIGHT light the stuff off. Last ditch effort in my opinion...

I've done it. You remove bullet and @ half the powder charge. Loosely fit a wad of cloth,paper, cotton etc back in case. I stress loosely, we don't want to create overbore, or excessive backpressure. Point firearm DOWN and discharge the weapon. You will with luck have a burning or smoldering tinder @ 8' out on the ground. The worse case is the tinder has allready burned out before it exits the muzzle. Always inspect bore afterwards for residual obstructions.This would be a MacGuyver stunt if Richard Dean Anderson wasn't against firearm ownership. Don't laugh, but cowboys used to place funeral money or early matches in their 6th cylinder. A FOOLPROOF, or fool's way of starting a fire with a weapon is to use AP ammo. I know of 3 major fires started this way by irresponsible shooters.If you have a firearm for Bart the Bear hiding behind the forest coke machine there is no excuse for not having a small kit stored in the cleaning buttrap or in the cartridge sock on the stock. My prefered last ditch method over this is using a fresnel lens by moonlight.