Camping with Wirecutter

I took Tiny hunting last year back up on the Kalifornia/Nevada border. He hadn't been on a weekend hunt since shortly after he surrendered his life to marriage and he was all fired up about it, wanted to know every detail, a fucking timeline, even wanted to plan a menu for an overnighter.

Okay, I do admit that my idea of camping is a little different than most folks. For one thing, I don't go camping just for the sake of sleeping on the cold hard ground. I camp because I'm fishing or shooting or exploring old mining camp sites or whatever and it happens to take more than one day. When I do camp, it's usually stop wherever I end up, kick a spot clear of rocks, maybe pitch a tent, cook my dinner over a stove and go to fucking sleep so I can get up before dawn and continue in my endeavors. Pretty spartan, but I can be up and gone in 10 minutes.

I don't use a campfire over in Eastern California because all there is to burn is sagebrush and pinion pine. Sagebrush burns way too fast and hot - you'll run yourself to death keeping that fire fed - and pinion is just nasty to burn, kind of a greasy smudge. Besides, where I hunt you can count the trees within view on your fingers.

But Tiny just had to have a campfire to cook his pork-n-beans on that his now ex-wife had so thoughtfully thrown at him as we were leaving. He builds himself a sagebrush fire, alerting every fucking coyote within 20 miles with the smell, and squats down in front of me to open his can, giving me a ghastly view of his butt crack.

I swear to God above, I do not know what possessed me to do this.
I leaned over, pulled a burning twig from the fire and touched it to his butt crack.

That motherfucker launched himself a good 10 feet. Picture a 280 pound bullfrog at the Calaveras County Frog Jumps.
My reactions went from "Oh fuck, what in the hell did I do that for?" to "God DAMN, look at that motherfucker go!!!"

When both of us finally got our shit together - him trying to put the fire in his ass out and me laughing - he said he never heard a thing, just felt that ember from the fire land in his britches which set me off into another fit of laughter. Whatever coyotes had missed the smoke damned sure heard me laughing and hooting and hollering.
I still haven't told him real deal.