Burning cow chips is nothing new. What is new is paying $20 for the privilege, reasonable people only ever did it as a last resort.
Chief tells tribe he has bad news and good news. All we have to eat are buffalo chips. But we have a plentiful suppy.
In India you see piles of dried cow dung along many road sides. People buy that for domestic cooking. You can imagine very dense smog and stink when whole town is using that stuff for cooking on evenings.
Imagine using that in your smoker...."honey these burgers taste like sh@t. what did you do different?"....divorce lol
Has anybody actually used dried dung? Jokes, which I love, aside, do they actually smell bad? I can see so if they got wet. But, burning is different.
Welllll, Soyer cookers used by the Brit army were designed to use "any" solid fuel, including (and this is official!) dried camel dung. So, maybe someone knows or has read about it? After all, they were used in both world wars, and the British army fought in countries where camels were used daily. It is my guess that, as long as you keep things perfectly dry, there is minimal smell.
It's actually a good question, "prairie blossoms" aren't really that objectionable. I mean compared to some ... kinds of .. er, deposits. Even when burned, though I haven't tried it. I wouldn't use it in my smoker. Hats off to the guy, there probably are people out there somewhere who will buy it.
Apparently cow dung can be a luxury in some instances. This King James version is a bit confusing -- and funny. Ezekial 4:12 "And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight..”
My S.African friend who lived in the bush a few years said they burned elephant dung in camp at night to keep away mosquitoes. Wonder if cow pies do as well? Double bonus!