Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. This week, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about one thing on a backcountry hunt you can't
Speaker 1: go without because after a few days without it, you'll die.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is water, So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you everything you need to know on water purification and filtration.
Speaker 1: For the most part, I like to think that I
Speaker 1: have a pretty iron gut, but I'm going to share
Speaker 1: a story of a one time my gut failed me
Speaker 1: and I drank from the wrong pond. If I were
Speaker 1: to think of a place that I simultaneously love and hate,
Speaker 1: the first thing that comes in my mind is a
Speaker 1: fog Knack Island. Now, fog Knack Island is off the
Speaker 1: coast of Alaska in the Kodiak Archipelago, so it's real
Speaker 1: close to Kodiak Island and it's known for giant brown bears,
Speaker 1: miserable winds, drastic wet weather, and some really tough hunting,
Speaker 1: especially for Roosevelt elk and blacktailed deer. Now, you might
Speaker 1: remember a story that I told with the Meat Eater
Speaker 1: crew a couple of years back about a brown bear
Speaker 1: attack that happened on a fog Nack Island. The story
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell today actually transpired a few years prior
Speaker 1: when my brother Jason and I went on our first
Speaker 1: hunt on a fog Nack. Jason and I had drawn
Speaker 1: Roosevelt elk tags and we knew nothing about a fog kac.
Speaker 1: We knew nothing about the elk hunt. We just decided, hey,
Speaker 1: let's put in for these tags and sweet maybe we'll
Speaker 1: draw them. Had never heard about anyone hunting it. There
Speaker 1: was very little information on it at the time. We
Speaker 1: just thought, hey, this will be a sweet adventure if
Speaker 1: we draw it. Great. So we ended up getting some
Speaker 1: tags and talking to some friends. We found some a
Speaker 1: pilot that knew the area and was able to drop
Speaker 1: us off at a lake. We get dropped off and
Speaker 1: we set up our base camp right on the edge
Speaker 1: of the lake. When we knew that the elk were
Speaker 1: actually over in the next valley. So there's this big
Speaker 1: mountain behind where we're camped, and we decided we'd have
Speaker 1: to climb up and over and down to where the
Speaker 1: elk are. Now, these elk are just giant behemoth animals.
Speaker 1: I mean they might weigh as much as as an
Speaker 1: Alaska Yukon moose. They could be as much as pounds,
Speaker 1: and the big mature bulls for definitely that. I was
Speaker 1: actually just self filming the whole thing, kind of documenting it,
Speaker 1: and so we just thought, hey, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: an awesome adventure. We had two weeks to hang out
Speaker 1: on the island hunt and hopefully both come back with
Speaker 1: some bulls. So the first day you get dropped off,
Speaker 1: you can't hunt because you can't hunt the same day airborne.
Speaker 1: So we set up our camp. We got in early
Speaker 1: in the morning and decided to just go scout. We
Speaker 1: climbed to the top, found a good route, made some
Speaker 1: trail markers, tried to beat a trail in the best
Speaker 1: we could. Got to the top glass and spotted a
Speaker 1: herd of elk way out towards the ocean miles away. So,
Speaker 1: if you're sweet, we know where they're at. Let's look around.
Speaker 1: Be awesome if we can find some closer. But if
Speaker 1: we can't, well we're gonna go after those in the morning.
Speaker 1: The evening comes around, we didn't see you anywhere, elks.
Speaker 1: We make our way back to camp is about a
Speaker 1: two thousand foot climb from the camp to the top,
Speaker 1: and then you got about a two thousand foot dropped
Speaker 1: down to the ocean. So shooting a big animal on
Speaker 1: the other side it's gonna be a major chore now.
Speaker 1: Jason and I got back to camp that night, we decided, okay,
Speaker 1: we can hunt tomorrow morning. Let's get up way before
Speaker 1: daylight and we're gonna hike out to that point be
Speaker 1: ready waiting for these elk. We start our morning early.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good grind up to the top. I've
Speaker 1: got my camera equipment, my hunting stuff, we got our
Speaker 1: our backpacks, and we're ready. We get over the top,
Speaker 1: start working our way down the other side, and we
Speaker 1: start hearing bugles down in the bottom in the in
Speaker 1: the valley, we spot the elk and they're pretty much
Speaker 1: right where we left them, but actually further away and
Speaker 1: a little bit further up the hill on the other
Speaker 1: side of the valley. So we start working our way
Speaker 1: down and plan our stock. We stock down, We get
Speaker 1: into position and we can't really see the elk, but
Speaker 1: we can hear them. There's like a creak in the bottom,
Speaker 1: and some cows start filing up the other side. At
Speaker 1: first we thought there was you know, the night before
Speaker 1: we only saw maybe twenty elk. Well, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of elk in this hurd, maybe double that, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: even sixty elk, not really sure, just a lot of
Speaker 1: elk and just bulls everywhere. There must have been some
Speaker 1: hot cows around and they were just bugling, making noise,
Speaker 1: going crazy. So they start working up the other side.
Speaker 1: Jason and I get set up. I originally wanted Jason
Speaker 1: to shoot first, then he wanted me to shoot first.
Speaker 1: So we just decided, all right, well we're gonna try
Speaker 1: for a double if we can, but we're gonna definitely
Speaker 1: focus on one elk at a time, especially because they're
Speaker 1: so big and we knew we were a long ways away.
Speaker 1: We just figured, well, if it works out and we
Speaker 1: can get to and we can get them, if they're
Speaker 1: near a tree, we can get the meat up in
Speaker 1: the tree, will be fine, and we've got two weeks
Speaker 1: to pack it out. Awesome, But what ended up happening
Speaker 1: was the bulls kind of fed out, so we just
Speaker 1: kind of gave up on the idea of a double one,
Speaker 1: just focused on one bull. I was gonna shoot first
Speaker 1: on this one, and it was a really nice six point,
Speaker 1: the biggest bull in the group. We figured, hey, we're here,
Speaker 1: let's shoot the best one we can and then we'll
Speaker 1: keep hunting. We've got plenty of time. We weren't afraid
Speaker 1: that Jason wouldn't get one, so kind of waiting and
Speaker 1: waiting for an opportunity shot. The brush was really tall,
Speaker 1: so we had to wait for a while. It felt
Speaker 1: like forever. We actually repositioned because as the bull kind
Speaker 1: of he just wouldn't give me a broadside shot or
Speaker 1: a good shot I felt comfortable with. And then they
Speaker 1: moved up the hill further. A couple of hundred yards
Speaker 1: passed where I was comfortable shooting. So we moved up again, repositioned,
Speaker 1: let out some calls. The bull kind of came out
Speaker 1: in the open about across the canyon, stood their broadside.
Speaker 1: I shot, and these are big animals, man, I hit
Speaker 1: him good, but he just stood there. Jason was watching
Speaker 1: through his scope. He knew that it was hit good.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, shoot him again. I ended up shooting
Speaker 1: the bull like two more times, all good shots, and
Speaker 1: the bull fell over like awesome. Now on the stock.
Speaker 1: On the way over, we'd already seen just a giant
Speaker 1: bore brown bear cruising around, so we're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we need to get over there and start cutting this
Speaker 1: thing up, and walked up on the elk. Man, this
Speaker 1: thing was just huge. Is is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: animals I'd ever walked up on it. It was as
Speaker 1: big as everybody had said, as big as any moose
Speaker 1: I'd ever walked up to. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: a giant. So we're looking looking out for that bear.
Speaker 1: We start cutting up. One guy's cutting the other guys
Speaker 1: on bare patrol bear lookout. About the time that we
Speaker 1: get the elk cut up, the brown bear starts coming in.
Speaker 1: So what we're doing is it took two of us
Speaker 1: to kind of even work with some of the quarters.
Speaker 1: They were so heavy. I don't even know what a
Speaker 1: hind quarter would weigh, but man, it's like a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy pounds maybe like they were really big with
Speaker 1: that's bone in, just really big hind quarters. But what
Speaker 1: our plan was is, because we knew that bear was there,
Speaker 1: we could see this bear just sniffing down wind of us.
Speaker 1: He could smell that and he was gonna come in.
Speaker 1: So Jason and I would take turns hauling meat. So
Speaker 1: we'd get some meat off. One guy would keep lookout.
Speaker 1: Then we bring the meat to a tree and then
Speaker 1: we'd hang the meat, or at least just get the
Speaker 1: meat away from the carcass to another tree. So we
Speaker 1: started ferrying meat to this tree that was maybe three
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away because we figured, well, the bear
Speaker 1: will go to the carcass, and we kind of had
Speaker 1: it set up this way. Then once we got the
Speaker 1: meat all off the carcass and removed away, then we
Speaker 1: started hauling the meat up into the tree because we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to start ferrying this meat as far away
Speaker 1: from the carcass as possible. And each station, we didn't
Speaker 1: know how long it would take us between spots. We
Speaker 1: had a full day's walk back to camp, plus a
Speaker 1: giant elevation gained. Packing this thing out was going to
Speaker 1: take a while, So we end up at each station.
Speaker 1: Let's say our packing plan was going to go from
Speaker 1: point A to point B, then to point C, and
Speaker 1: we just ferry each piece back and forth all the
Speaker 1: way to camp over the course of however long it
Speaker 1: took us. So we were estimating multiple days of this
Speaker 1: and each pack being a hundred pounds or more, just
Speaker 1: super heavy. So we start faring the meat. Each place
Speaker 1: we stopped, we hoist the meat up into the tree,
Speaker 1: and then we take our packs go to the next spot.
Speaker 1: We tried to go about half a mile to a
Speaker 1: mile between each point, and by this point we've put
Speaker 1: some pretty good distance between ourselves and the bear. Now
Speaker 1: there's a stream running in the bottom and some side
Speaker 1: streams coming down everywhere. We were working pretty hard. This is.
Speaker 1: We shot the bull in the morning. We got them
Speaker 1: cut up. We're gonna be packing un till dark for
Speaker 1: day one and it's probably gonna take us two or
Speaker 1: three days to get this thing back to camp or
Speaker 1: pretty close. So we're working pretty hard. We're sweating pretty hard.
Speaker 1: We'd come across a creek, and in Alaska, for the
Speaker 1: most part, a lot of the mountain hunts I do
Speaker 1: or whatever, I don't really worry about water filtration. So
Speaker 1: this is. We did have a water filter at our
Speaker 1: base camp because we're gonna be drinking out of a lake,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the times I'll boil water or
Speaker 1: I'll do whatever, you know. And on the mountain, if
Speaker 1: I know there's no beavers or what have you, that
Speaker 1: I'm not too concerned about it. So Jason and I
Speaker 1: are working hiking, filling up our water bottles the creeks. Now,
Speaker 1: I got to one stream where I was just extremely thirsty.
Speaker 1: I had my one analogy and I kind of forgot.
Speaker 1: I drank some and then dumped it out because I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I just didn't want to carry the
Speaker 1: extra a little bit of weight for water weight because
Speaker 1: I've already had hundreds of pounds on my back. Makes
Speaker 1: no sense, I know. But it's just you drink some
Speaker 1: water out and then you just dump it out because
Speaker 1: there's water everywhere. So it's i think between our third
Speaker 1: drop off station, we crossed the stream and it's kind
Speaker 1: of got this like red tinge to it. Now well whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, it's there's kind of like a little marshy
Speaker 1: area above it. I'm just gonna grab some water from here.
Speaker 1: Jason chose not to drink from that stream. I chose
Speaker 1: to drink from that stream. That probably was my mistake.
Speaker 1: It was kind of silky smooth water wasn't the best
Speaker 1: water I'd had. I kind of immediately regretted drinking that,
Speaker 1: but I drank a whole bottles worth and we kept going.
Speaker 1: Little be knowns to me, which I ended up finding
Speaker 1: out later above this so called stream was a bunch
Speaker 1: of elk wallows, so I was essentially just drinking elk
Speaker 1: wallow water. Now, by the end of the day, we
Speaker 1: had most of the elk up the ridge to the
Speaker 1: ridge above camp, and we've been able to ferry the
Speaker 1: majority of the meat down to camp. So the only
Speaker 1: thing we had left was two hind quarters and the
Speaker 1: antlers up at the hill above camp. We get back
Speaker 1: to camp, we are beat. I mean, these were long days.
Speaker 1: I think we kept packing till I don't I don't
Speaker 1: even know, maybe one am, something like that. We're just
Speaker 1: getting after it. Brutal, brutal day, very physically demanding. So
Speaker 1: we get back to camp. Everything's good. We decided all right,
Speaker 1: the meats hanging in camp, and then we had the
Speaker 1: rest of the meat hanging in the tree above camp.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that far. But we figured out it's
Speaker 1: because you're gonna hang in a tree at camp, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna hang in the tree up above camp. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter where it's at. It's hanging in the tree.
Speaker 1: So we figured the next day we're gonna get up
Speaker 1: and kind of relocate the herd for Jason's elk. So
Speaker 1: we get up and we can't relocate the herd, so
Speaker 1: we decide, well, we spend the entire day looking and
Speaker 1: then we decide, all right, we're gonna have to maybe
Speaker 1: move somewhere else or figure out where these animals are
Speaker 1: because after shooting at him, we probably blew them out
Speaker 1: of the whole area. So we're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: try to find some different elk. So the next day
Speaker 1: a storm hits. We just decide, hey, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: have to hunker down. We hunted the morning, it was wet,
Speaker 1: it was miserable, so we just decide, hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to hunker down for the rest of the day
Speaker 1: because we can't see anything. We're just getting beat up
Speaker 1: by major winds. Gale force winds are coming in. It's
Speaker 1: not good. So this is that a few days after
Speaker 1: shot the bull. That night, I don't know what I
Speaker 1: got from that wallow water, but it wasn't good. We're
Speaker 1: jacking gale force winds seventy mile an hour plus wins
Speaker 1: maybe six, you know, just like constant fifty sixty mile
Speaker 1: an hour winds gus probably up to eighty miles an hour.
Speaker 1: It's just miserable out raining sideways. Typical CoDIAK of fog
Speaker 1: nac weather and the curse of the wallow hits. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am outside doing what people often called the helicopter
Speaker 1: where you're throwing up and it's just coming out of
Speaker 1: both ends. It was the worst experience of my life.
Speaker 1: It's freezing cold, it's just horrible weather, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm dying. Luckily, I had a good inclination of
Speaker 1: what was going on, and I had some antibiotics that
Speaker 1: I had prescribed just in case of emergencies. Now, whatever
Speaker 1: I got sick from, I don't know what it was
Speaker 1: in the water or whatever, but the antibiotics probably saved
Speaker 1: my bacon. I ended up having to pretty much spend
Speaker 1: the next day or two in the tent, and Jason
Speaker 1: ended up going and packing out the rest of my
Speaker 1: elk because I was too sick and beat up to
Speaker 1: get those last two quarters out or whatever else we
Speaker 1: had hanging in the tree. So on that trip, I
Speaker 1: made a major mistake, and I paid for the curse
Speaker 1: of drinking wallow water. I really think that I have
Speaker 1: pretty much the widest range of experience possible with the
Speaker 1: backcountry purification and filtration. I've honestly tried nearly everything out there,
Speaker 1: from doing nothing two pumps, filters, tablets, boiling like, I've
Speaker 1: done it all, and every trip is different. So what
Speaker 1: I really want to talk about in this podcast is
Speaker 1: just a lot of the different methods and methodologies and
Speaker 1: options for acquiring and cleaning water in the back country.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of different pros and cons everything. There's
Speaker 1: no one perfect solution and every scenario is slightly different.
Speaker 1: But I just want to cover the basis of everything
Speaker 1: so you understand why you might need to filter water,
Speaker 1: and then just ways to get clean water. So let's
Speaker 1: just start out with talking about why you need to
Speaker 1: purify water. Now, if I'm going to be real honest,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of trips that I go on where
Speaker 1: I'm not bringing a filter. I'm not cleaning my water
Speaker 1: in certain mountain hunts and say backcountry Alaska, where you're
Speaker 1: very few low animal densities, no people, no contaminants, the
Speaker 1: water is coming straight off of a glacier filtered through
Speaker 1: the mountain. Yeah, I readily drink that water without any
Speaker 1: kind of filtration. Same in New Zealand, almost all the
Speaker 1: mountain water there. I believe I've never gotten sick off
Speaker 1: of drinking it, and I cannot think of a time
Speaker 1: that I've actually purified it. Now that's not to say, oh,
Speaker 1: Remy said, yeah, this is the way it is, and
Speaker 1: then you get sick and keel over it. This is
Speaker 1: just my personal way that I do things. But the
Speaker 1: reason that you would purify water is because bacteria protozoa's
Speaker 1: even viruses if you're in like a real I mean
Speaker 1: that could be in some crazy countries, just even traveling
Speaker 1: and drinking tap water in certain countries. Just like a
Speaker 1: lot of things to look out for in the back country, though,
Speaker 1: the main thing you're worried about is going to be
Speaker 1: bacteria's um and Giardia, salmonilla e. Coal I, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Things you get from animal feces in the water, stuff
Speaker 1: you get from beavers, and just contaminants and bacteria growing
Speaker 1: in the water. Now, when we talk about filtration purification,
Speaker 1: a lot of people use those where it's interchangeably. And
Speaker 1: we'll first kind of just break up what purification is
Speaker 1: what filtration is. So filtration is something like a like
Speaker 1: a pump, and what it does is you run the
Speaker 1: water through a filter, and that filter is a certain
Speaker 1: size that prevents certain sized particles from getting through. So
Speaker 1: filtration is not the same as purification because purification kills
Speaker 1: or prevents essentially everything, whereas filtration you're still going to
Speaker 1: get certain things going through. They're like viruses are too
Speaker 1: small to be filtered out. So when you use a
Speaker 1: filter pump, you're running water through water filter, viruses get
Speaker 1: through that, whereas purification gets rid of the viruses and
Speaker 1: other things. Now, for most intents and purposes, when you're
Speaker 1: in the mountains are on a hunting trip, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to worry about that. The main thing you're
Speaker 1: gonna worry about is the bacteria. So filtration does work
Speaker 1: of the time for all intents and purposes. Now, purification
Speaker 1: is kind of that next level, and that generally involves boiling.
Speaker 1: It can involve a chemical agent like chlorine or iodine,
Speaker 1: and that could also involve UV. So what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do is I'm going to break down some of the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of every option for clean water. So
Speaker 1: let's start with filtration. Now, I'd say, like I've used
Speaker 1: a bunch of different filters. Catadyne, I think, is some
Speaker 1: of the ones that I've used a lot. MSR makes
Speaker 1: some great filters filters. Let's they're mostly a pump type filter.
Speaker 1: So what involves It involves a hose that goes into
Speaker 1: your water source, and then another hose that goes to
Speaker 1: your bottle or whatever, and then you just pump it.
Speaker 1: And by pumping it, you're pulling water from the water source,
Speaker 1: you're running it through most of the time a carbon filter,
Speaker 1: and then pouring it out in your bottle or whatever
Speaker 1: on the other end. Now, the good thing about the
Speaker 1: filter is when you filter water, it also affects the taste.
Speaker 1: So it makes the water taste better. If there's a
Speaker 1: lot of leaves or tannins like leaves sitting in stagnant water,
Speaker 1: it create creates and leaves like tannins and it's just
Speaker 1: real bitter flavor, other stuff like grit. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of places you might hunt where it might be muddy
Speaker 1: water after a rain. There might be silty water, glacier water,
Speaker 1: that's very silty, and some of the other purification methods
Speaker 1: might not work as well. So the filtration is great
Speaker 1: because it helps with the taste and it kind of
Speaker 1: removes that that siltiness some of the bad flavors. But
Speaker 1: the downside is is it doesn't catch everything. It's not
Speaker 1: a purification for backpacking, for hunting, for those type of things.
Speaker 1: Filtration is generally perfectly fine. If you're worried about viruses
Speaker 1: and other things, you're probably in some seriously bad water
Speaker 1: sources and you're gonna wanna probably use multiple methods of
Speaker 1: of purification and filtration anyways, because the water is gonna
Speaker 1: taste terrible, so you want to filter, and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to kill whatever else. You probably use some
Speaker 1: other method, whether it's a chemical or boiling or UV whatever. Now,
Speaker 1: the downside to the filtration is they're pretty heavy and
Speaker 1: they're pretty cumbersome. The upside is if it's a small
Speaker 1: stagnant water source, it's great because you don't have to
Speaker 1: like dip your bottle into it. You can suck it
Speaker 1: out of small pools and other stagnant water sources. It's
Speaker 1: great for aiding and making the water taste better. So
Speaker 1: I choose to use a filter if I'm hunting in
Speaker 1: places that has very stagnant water, not so much flowing water,
Speaker 1: places where there's a lot of grit in the water,
Speaker 1: might be maybe muddy water, marshy type water, stuff that
Speaker 1: just you wouldn't want to drink, even if if you
Speaker 1: did a chemical or something else. You're gonna have the grit,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have the weird flavor, you're gonna have all that.
Speaker 1: So I would say a lot of places that I
Speaker 1: use the pump type filter or prefer it are when
Speaker 1: I'm say maybe hunting Nevada or the desert, or it
Speaker 1: might be just getting water out of a little pond
Speaker 1: or kind of more of a less moving water. I've
Speaker 1: used it quite a bit in Australia as well, some
Speaker 1: more stagnant water up in the top end. The filtration
Speaker 1: works great because it takes out some of the sediments
Speaker 1: and the flavors. Now let's go on to some other methods.
Speaker 1: So purification boiling water if you have no other option.
Speaker 1: Boiling water is a great way to purify water as
Speaker 1: long as you boil it. I always go a raging
Speaker 1: boil for a minute. That should kill everything. If I'm
Speaker 1: at altitude, though, I will boil it a little longer
Speaker 1: because the water just never seems to get as hot
Speaker 1: as it does at sea level or lower elevation. So
Speaker 1: I kind of think around seven thousand feet or so,
Speaker 1: I'll add a couple of minutes maybe, So maybe boil
Speaker 1: it for three minutes if I'm above seven thousand feet,
Speaker 1: just because it gives it a little bit more time
Speaker 1: to kill anything in the water. Now, boiling is great
Speaker 1: because if you can start a fire, you can purify water.
Speaker 1: That's great. The downside to it is it takes a
Speaker 1: long time, and you also have to wait for the
Speaker 1: water to cool, and you can't get a lot of
Speaker 1: volume out of it. So you can whatever size pot
Speaker 1: you've got, you probably already have that for cooking. But
Speaker 1: if you're going to use your stove to purify water,
Speaker 1: it depends on the length of the trip, how long
Speaker 1: you're going for how well that'll work. There's been many trips,
Speaker 1: many hunts that I've gone. I just take my jet
Speaker 1: boil or my I use MSR reactor. I just take
Speaker 1: that and I just boil my water, and that's how
Speaker 1: I purify my water. And so each night I boil
Speaker 1: an extract thing of water, I pour it in my bottles,
Speaker 1: and I'm set. I'm good to go. I don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Now. The downside is if I drink all
Speaker 1: my water, I need either carry my boiling kit with me,
Speaker 1: or if I'm gonna go for a long time, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna need extra fuel. And so you've got extra weight
Speaker 1: in the fuel to burn to boil the water. But
Speaker 1: if you're a place where you can start a fire
Speaker 1: and you've got a good sized pot, yeah, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1: Pretty simple. You don't have to take a lot of
Speaker 1: extra stuff, and it's a great way to get clean water.
Speaker 1: But it does take a while and it is kind
Speaker 1: of a pain in the ass. Now, the next method
Speaker 1: of purification would be tablets. So the ones that I
Speaker 1: use most are the iodine tablets. Iodine kills almost everything.
Speaker 1: I guess. It doesn't really kill what is a cryptosporidium.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really get rid of that, which I think
Speaker 1: is like a protozoa. If I remember right, I just
Speaker 1: remember reading the packets years ago, so somebody could I
Speaker 1: probably should have done more research. Somebody can correct me
Speaker 1: on that. But I like the iodine because I personally
Speaker 1: just do not like the taste of chlorine. I've used
Speaker 1: chlorine in some third world countries because it was better
Speaker 1: than drinking whatever I was going to be served. There's
Speaker 1: probably viruses, there was really bad contaminations, especially in some
Speaker 1: just really remote places in South Central America. But I
Speaker 1: do like the iodine for a couple of reasons. One
Speaker 1: is it does a good job. It's light. But there
Speaker 1: is I use podible Aqua a lot, which is it
Speaker 1: has like a stabilizer agent. So you do the iodine,
Speaker 1: you purify the water, and then you drop in a
Speaker 1: stabilizer agent which gets rid of the iodine flavor. I
Speaker 1: used to purely go into the back country with Pottible Aqua,
Speaker 1: but after prolonged uses of it, I would feel weird.
Speaker 1: My skin would almost feel like my skin would kind
Speaker 1: of hurt. I don't know if what the deal was
Speaker 1: with it. It's just not meant for really long periods
Speaker 1: of time, so if I'm going on a three day trip.
Speaker 1: The cool thing about the Pottible Aqua is super lightweight.
Speaker 1: You don't really have to carry anything else. It's cheap,
Speaker 1: like if you aren't, you're maybe just getting into bad country. Hunting.
Speaker 1: That's a great option because you don't have to invest
Speaker 1: in a hundred two hundred dollar filter. You can just
Speaker 1: go get the ten dollar podible Aqua tablets at Walmart
Speaker 1: and they'll last you a lifetime essentially. Now, the downside
Speaker 1: is you have to be real careful when you're using
Speaker 1: it because you have to like purify your water, so
Speaker 1: you can't like drink half your bottle and then add
Speaker 1: more water and then you've got the whole weight time
Speaker 1: for it to purify. So it might take thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: it might take longer. You know. When you do it,
Speaker 1: you put the tablets in the water and then you
Speaker 1: kind of shake the bottle or turn it upside down
Speaker 1: so it gets in the threads and everything, and then
Speaker 1: you have to wait the time and then you can
Speaker 1: put in the stabilizing agent. And even with that, it
Speaker 1: still tastes a little off if there's grit or whatever
Speaker 1: in the water, like you don't get rid of that.
Speaker 1: But it is a great lightweight alternative and it does work. Now,
Speaker 1: the third purification method I'll talk about is like a
Speaker 1: UV pen or you know they call them UV filters
Speaker 1: or whatever, like a sterry pen. Now, the UV although
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like it's doing much. Actually is in
Speaker 1: my opinion, one of the best ways to purify water
Speaker 1: because it's pretty easy. Most of the time, you've already
Speaker 1: got a leader Nalgene bottle or whatever. Most of the
Speaker 1: pens do a leader to a leader and a half
Speaker 1: in a bottle. They kill everything, so you're the water
Speaker 1: is gonna be safe to drink. Now. The downside to
Speaker 1: it is they don't work that well with murky water.
Speaker 1: They don't change the taste in any way, or the
Speaker 1: look of it in any way. So if they's just
Speaker 1: weird stuff floating around, you might kill it with the
Speaker 1: UV light, but it's still in there. It's chunky water.
Speaker 1: It's just doesn't look right. It feels scary to drink.
Speaker 1: So that's where maybe a filter is a little bit
Speaker 1: better in some instances because it just looks better when
Speaker 1: it comes out the other end, it tastes better. But
Speaker 1: as far as just ease of use, I have a
Speaker 1: couple of different sterry pens, and there's man, I can't
Speaker 1: even think of it right now, but I've got two
Speaker 1: different brands. They both work really well. The downside is
Speaker 1: they take batteries, so that's something to think about. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, I just throw some lithium batteries
Speaker 1: in there. I haven't had one go out when I
Speaker 1: need it, and I have backup method of purification by
Speaker 1: just boiling water. Another thing that I like to do
Speaker 1: is even in my in my first aid kit, I
Speaker 1: always put a few podible aqua tablets or iodine tablets,
Speaker 1: and most first aid comes with some iodine anyways, for
Speaker 1: cuts and other things. You can put that in your
Speaker 1: water in an emergency. So if you're out there, something
Speaker 1: happens you need to purify your water. I've got those
Speaker 1: that potable aqua or that iodine just in case. A
Speaker 1: couple of little tips that I kind of find, or
Speaker 1: just things that I do that maybe you should think
Speaker 1: about if you're in the back country. Is I always
Speaker 1: have a bottle that would be my dirty bottle, the
Speaker 1: bottle that I scoop out water from that I might
Speaker 1: be pumping from, or if I have if I'm using
Speaker 1: potable aqua tablets using the tablets, I have a bottle
Speaker 1: that I'll always have one bottle them drinking out of. Well,
Speaker 1: I have another bottle that's being purified. So it's good
Speaker 1: to have a system. Whatever you decide to use for
Speaker 1: filtration and purification, have a system with it. So if
Speaker 1: I'm using a water filter, part of my system includes
Speaker 1: I never let the clean hose touch the dirty water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a no brainer. But when you're wrapping
Speaker 1: everything up, I always try to dry everything out. I
Speaker 1: don't like to wrap the dirty hose around the clean
Speaker 1: hose and then have like a wet bag that could
Speaker 1: have contaminated water, and then just put that hose into
Speaker 1: my drinking water bottle. You got to think about all
Speaker 1: the little things. Another thing I kind of mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: but with the water tablets, if you're using the tablets,
Speaker 1: you've gotta have a system where you've got two bottles,
Speaker 1: one that's clean and you're gonna drink from, and one
Speaker 1: that's always waiting to be purified. Because that downtime it
Speaker 1: gets kind of difficult to manage everything of like, okay,
Speaker 1: which battle is my waiting bottle? Which bottles my drinking bottle?
Speaker 1: And then I'll And one thing you want to remember
Speaker 1: too is okay, well, if you're dipping out of a
Speaker 1: contaminated water source, okay, well where's that water? Also at
Speaker 1: what's on the threads of the bottle, So you gotta
Speaker 1: turn your bottle upside down and make sure that water
Speaker 1: gets around the threads. And then you just want to
Speaker 1: be very careful of swapping contaminated and uncontaminated things. If
Speaker 1: you're boiling water, you know you'll have I'll have one
Speaker 1: bottle that is my bottle that I transfer water in
Speaker 1: and I don't drink out of, and then I pour
Speaker 1: into the pot boil that and then that goes into
Speaker 1: my drinking water bottle. So whatever your method of purification is,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that you have a system. If
Speaker 1: I have my UV sterry pen, I kind of actually
Speaker 1: keep my sterry pen on me in somewhere that's super handy.
Speaker 1: So every time that I stop, I can just fill
Speaker 1: up if I need to quickly purify the water, and
Speaker 1: then I'm good to go. But one thing I do
Speaker 1: with my sterry pen is I make sure to really
Speaker 1: clean the out side edge of the bottle as well.
Speaker 1: That way, same with the tablets, you aren't drinking contaminated
Speaker 1: water on the threads. There's a ton of different options
Speaker 1: when it comes to purifying your water, but really just
Speaker 1: think of what you're doing, how long you're going and
Speaker 1: the type of water you're likely to encounter, and that'll
Speaker 1: really depend on which system is best for you. I
Speaker 1: would say my top two for just most use would
Speaker 1: be the UV pen because it's really lightweight, it's easy.
Speaker 1: The downside of the batteries isn't that bad, but if
Speaker 1: it is cold, the batteries don't last as long. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing to think about two is with a
Speaker 1: water filter. If you're going late season and it's cold,
Speaker 1: those water filters, those pump filters do freeze, so you
Speaker 1: gotta remember, Okay, at night, I've done where I've taken
Speaker 1: it into my sleeping bag with me to keep it defrosted.
Speaker 1: I'll take some extra handwarmers to put in the little
Speaker 1: bag pack with my water filter. Little things you want
Speaker 1: to think about, so late season hunts. If all I'm
Speaker 1: doing is late season, most of the time, I just
Speaker 1: boil my water because it's nice to have warm water.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be boiling a lot of water anyways. I'm
Speaker 1: probably stopping and making fires. That's going to be my system.
Speaker 1: It's always nice as well to have a couple options
Speaker 1: where you've got a little bit of a backup if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong. You have some maybe tablets in your
Speaker 1: first aid kit. You might have some options just in
Speaker 1: case you need to purify water and your main method fails.
Speaker 1: I really hope that talking a little bit about water
Speaker 1: purification and filtration helps some people. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: getting a lot of questions about it, so that's actually
Speaker 1: why I decided to talk about it this week. So yes,
Speaker 1: when you send me a message via Instagram via the
Speaker 1: Remy Warren Meat Eater, email Remy at the meat Eater
Speaker 1: dot com. Although you may not have a direct reply,
Speaker 1: I try to reply to as many as I can.
Speaker 1: I say this nearly every week, but it bears repeating.
Speaker 1: I try to reply to as many of the social
Speaker 1: media messages as I can. The emails A lot of
Speaker 1: those get used in our Q and A, which is
Speaker 1: coming up next week. So if you've got some questions
Speaker 1: right m in. We've got a ton of great questions
Speaker 1: on here, and some of the stuff that I recurring
Speaker 1: themes that we keep seeing. That's why I start talking
Speaker 1: about it. So water filtration, purification, water. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of questions about water. There's even a lot of questions about, well,
Speaker 1: what if you can't find water, maybe I'll jump on
Speaker 1: one of those next week. I don't know you're off
Speaker 1: to tune in, but anyways, I appreciate you guys. Hopefully
Speaker 1: this this helps. I think that it's one of those
Speaker 1: daunting things too. If you don't do a lot of
Speaker 1: back country hunting, but you're deciding, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: go on. Even if you aren't back country but you're
Speaker 1: just camping. You know, that's a great you know, and
Speaker 1: instead of having to take all your water with you,
Speaker 1: having some form of system where you can just purify, filter,
Speaker 1: what have you. It's it's a great idea, a great
Speaker 1: thing to have, great knowledge to know, and it will
Speaker 1: just keep you out there long, younger, safer and not
Speaker 1: be doing the windmial puking in gale force winds outside
Speaker 1: the tent off of fog Knack Island. You know, just
Speaker 1: be smart to do it right. So until next week,
Speaker 1: this drinks on me, Catch you guys later.