Stop making fun of us. You don't understand how much more difficult it is to make a fire from foragewood when you live in a subtropical climate (e.g. Southeast U.S.). Not only is our air (and thus our wood) constantly at a much higher dew point, we also have the harder trees like oak and such. People who live in the Western U.S. don't realize this, because their state forests burn themselves to the ground on a yearly basis because it's so dry. Batoning is much more necessary in the southeast because the wood is so much more wet and thus harder to burn.