Ep. 30: Afognak Ruins Remi's Gut and Everything You Need to Know About Water Purification

What we're talking about is water, So I'm gonna give you everything you need to know on water purification and filtration. For the most part, I like to think that I have a pretty iron gut, but I'm going to share a story of a one time my gut failed me and I drank from the wrong pond. If I were to think of a place that I simultaneously love and hate, the first thing that comes in my mind is a

fog Knack Island. Now, fog Knack Island is off the coast of Alaska in the Kodiak Archipelago, so it's real close to Kodiak Island and it's known for giant brown bears, miserable winds, drastic wet weather, and some really tough hunting, especially for Roosevelt elk and blacktailed deer. Now, you might remember a story that I told with the Meat Eater crew a couple of years back about a brown bear

attack that happened on a fog Nack Island. The story I'm gonna tell today actually transpired a few years prior when my brother Jason and I went on our first hunt on a fog Nack. Jason and I had drawn Roosevelt elk tags and we knew nothing about a fog kac. We knew nothing about the elk hunt. We just decided, hey, let's put in for these tags and sweet maybe we'll draw them. Had never heard about anyone hunting it. There

was very little information on it at the time. We just thought, hey, this will be a sweet adventure if we draw it. Great. So we ended up getting some tags and talking to some friends. We found some a pilot that knew the area and was able to drop us off at a lake. We get dropped off and we set up our base camp right on the edge of the lake. When we knew that the elk were

actually over in the next valley. So there's this big mountain behind where we're camped, and we decided we'd have to climb up and over and down to where the elk are. Now, these elk are just giant behemoth animals. I mean they might weigh as much as as an Alaska Yukon moose. They could be as much as pounds, and the big mature bulls for definitely that. I was actually just self filming the whole thing, kind of documenting it, and so we just thought, hey, this is gonna be

an awesome adventure. We had two weeks to hang out on the island hunt and hopefully both come back with some bulls. So the first day you get dropped off, you can't hunt because you can't hunt the same day airborne. So we set up our camp. We got in early in the morning and decided to just go scout. We climbed to the top, found a good route, made some trail markers, tried to beat a trail in the best we could. Got to the top glass and spotted a herd of elk way out towards the ocean miles away. So,

if you're sweet, we know where they're at. Let's look around. Be awesome if we can find some closer. But if we can't, well we're gonna go after those in the morning. The evening comes around, we didn't see you anywhere, elks. We make our way back to camp is about a two thousand foot climb from the camp to the top, and then you got about a two thousand foot dropped down to the ocean. So shooting a big animal on the other side it's gonna be a major chore now.

Jason and I got back to camp that night, we decided, okay, we can hunt tomorrow morning. Let's get up way before daylight and we're gonna hike out to that point be ready waiting for these elk. We start our morning early. It's a pretty good grind up to the top. I've got my camera equipment, my hunting stuff, we got our

our backpacks, and we're ready. We get over the top, start working our way down the other side, and we start hearing bugles down in the bottom in the in the valley, we spot the elk and they're pretty much right where we left them, but actually further away and a little bit further up the hill on the other side of the valley. So we start working our way down and plan our stock. We stock down, We get into position and we can't really see the elk, but

we can hear them. There's like a creak in the bottom, and some cows start filing up the other side. At first we thought there was you know, the night before we only saw maybe twenty elk. Well, there's a lot of elk in this hurd, maybe double that, maybe maybe even sixty elk, not really sure, just a lot of elk and just bulls everywhere. There must have been some hot cows around and they were just bugling, making noise, going crazy. So they start working up the other side.

Jason and I get set up. I originally wanted Jason to shoot first, then he wanted me to shoot first. So we just decided, all right, well we're gonna try for a double if we can, but we're gonna definitely focus on one elk at a time, especially because they're so big and we knew we were a long ways away. We just figured, well, if it works out and we can get to and we can get them, if they're near a tree, we can get the meat up in the tree, will be fine, and we've got two weeks

to pack it out. Awesome, But what ended up happening was the bulls kind of fed out, so we just kind of gave up on the idea of a double one, just focused on one bull. I was gonna shoot first on this one, and it was a really nice six point, the biggest bull in the group. We figured, hey, we're here, let's shoot the best one we can and then we'll keep hunting. We've got plenty of time. We weren't afraid that Jason wouldn't get one, so kind of waiting and

waiting for an opportunity shot. The brush was really tall, so we had to wait for a while. It felt like forever. We actually repositioned because as the bull kind of he just wouldn't give me a broadside shot or a good shot I felt comfortable with. And then they moved up the hill further. A couple of hundred yards passed where I was comfortable shooting. So we moved up again, repositioned, let out some calls. The bull kind of came out in the open about across the canyon, stood their broadside.

I shot, and these are big animals, man, I hit him good, but he just stood there. Jason was watching through his scope. He knew that it was hit good. He's like, oh, shoot him again. I ended up shooting the bull like two more times, all good shots, and the bull fell over like awesome. Now on the stock. On the way over, we'd already seen just a giant bore brown bear cruising around, so we're like, all right, we need to get over there and start cutting this

thing up, and walked up on the elk. Man, this thing was just huge. Is is one of the biggest animals I'd ever walked up on it. It was as big as everybody had said, as big as any moose I'd ever walked up to. I mean, it was just a giant. So we're looking looking out for that bear. We start cutting up. One guy's cutting the other guys on bare patrol bear lookout. About the time that we get the elk cut up, the brown bear starts coming in.

So what we're doing is it took two of us to kind of even work with some of the quarters. They were so heavy. I don't even know what a hind quarter would weigh, but man, it's like a hundred and seventy pounds maybe like they were really big with that's bone in, just really big hind quarters. But what our plan was is, because we knew that bear was there, we could see this bear just sniffing down wind of us. He could smell that and he was gonna come in.

So Jason and I would take turns hauling meat. So we'd get some meat off. One guy would keep lookout. Then we bring the meat to a tree and then we'd hang the meat, or at least just get the meat away from the carcass to another tree. So we started ferrying meat to this tree that was maybe three a hundred yards away because we figured, well, the bear will go to the carcass, and we kind of had

it set up this way. Then once we got the meat all off the carcass and removed away, then we started hauling the meat up into the tree because we're gonna have to start ferrying this meat as far away from the carcass as possible. And each station, we didn't know how long it would take us between spots. We had a full day's walk back to camp, plus a giant elevation gained. Packing this thing out was going to take a while, So we end up at each station.

Let's say our packing plan was going to go from point A to point B, then to point C, and we just ferry each piece back and forth all the way to camp over the course of however long it took us. So we were estimating multiple days of this and each pack being a hundred pounds or more, just super heavy. So we start faring the meat. Each place we stopped, we hoist the meat up into the tree, and then we take our packs go to the next spot.

We tried to go about half a mile to a mile between each point, and by this point we've put some pretty good distance between ourselves and the bear. Now there's a stream running in the bottom and some side streams coming down everywhere. We were working pretty hard. This is. We shot the bull in the morning. We got them cut up. We're gonna be packing un till dark for day one and it's probably gonna take us two or three days to get this thing back to camp or

pretty close. So we're working pretty hard. We're sweating pretty hard. We'd come across a creek, and in Alaska, for the most part, a lot of the mountain hunts I do or whatever, I don't really worry about water filtration. So this is. We did have a water filter at our base camp because we're gonna be drinking out of a lake, but a lot of the times I'll boil water or I'll do whatever, you know. And on the mountain, if I know there's no beavers or what have you, that

I'm not too concerned about it. So Jason and I are working hiking, filling up our water bottles the creeks. Now, I got to one stream where I was just extremely thirsty. I had my one analogy and I kind of forgot. I drank some and then dumped it out because I don't know why. I just didn't want to carry the extra a little bit of weight for water weight because I've already had hundreds of pounds on my back. Makes

no sense, I know. But it's just you drink some water out and then you just dump it out because there's water everywhere. So it's i think between our third drop off station, we crossed the stream and it's kind of got this like red tinge to it. Now well whatever, you know, it's there's kind of like a little marshy area above it. I'm just gonna grab some water from here. Jason chose not to drink from that stream. I chose to drink from that stream. That probably was my mistake.

It was kind of silky smooth water wasn't the best water I'd had. I kind of immediately regretted drinking that, but I drank a whole bottles worth and we kept going. Little be knowns to me, which I ended up finding out later above this so called stream was a bunch of elk wallows, so I was essentially just drinking elk wallow water. Now, by the end of the day, we had most of the elk up the ridge to the ridge above camp, and we've been able to ferry the

majority of the meat down to camp. So the only thing we had left was two hind quarters and the antlers up at the hill above camp. We get back to camp, we are beat. I mean, these were long days. I think we kept packing till I don't I don't even know, maybe one am, something like that. We're just getting after it. Brutal, brutal day, very physically demanding. So

we get back to camp. Everything's good. We decided all right, the meats hanging in camp, and then we had the rest of the meat hanging in the tree above camp. So it wasn't that far. But we figured out it's because you're gonna hang in a tree at camp, it's just gonna hang in the tree up above camp. It doesn't matter where it's at. It's hanging in the tree. So we figured the next day we're gonna get up

and kind of relocate the herd for Jason's elk. So we get up and we can't relocate the herd, so we decide, well, we spend the entire day looking and then we decide, all right, we're gonna have to maybe move somewhere else or figure out where these animals are because after shooting at him, we probably blew them out of the whole area. So we're gonna have to do try to find some different elk. So the next day a storm hits. We just decide, hey, we're just gonna

have to hunker down. We hunted the morning, it was wet, it was miserable, so we just decide, hey, we're gonna have to hunker down for the rest of the day because we can't see anything. We're just getting beat up by major winds. Gale force winds are coming in. It's not good. So this is that a few days after shot the bull. That night, I don't know what I

got from that wallow water, but it wasn't good. We're jacking gale force winds seventy mile an hour plus wins maybe six, you know, just like constant fifty sixty mile an hour winds gus probably up to eighty miles an hour. It's just miserable out raining sideways. Typical CoDIAK of fog nac weather and the curse of the wallow hits. I mean, I am outside doing what people often called the helicopter where you're throwing up and it's just coming out of

both ends. It was the worst experience of my life. It's freezing cold, it's just horrible weather, and I feel like I'm dying. Luckily, I had a good inclination of what was going on, and I had some antibiotics that I had prescribed just in case of emergencies. Now, whatever I got sick from, I don't know what it was in the water or whatever, but the antibiotics probably saved

my bacon. I ended up having to pretty much spend the next day or two in the tent, and Jason ended up going and packing out the rest of my elk because I was too sick and beat up to get those last two quarters out or whatever else we had hanging in the tree. So on that trip, I made a major mistake, and I paid for the curse of drinking wallow water. I really think that I have pretty much the widest range of experience possible with the

backcountry purification and filtration. I've honestly tried nearly everything out there, from doing nothing two pumps, filters, tablets, boiling like, I've done it all, and every trip is different. So what I really want to talk about in this podcast is just a lot of the different methods and methodologies and options for acquiring and cleaning water in the back country. There's a ton of different pros and cons everything. There's no one perfect solution and every scenario is slightly different.

But I just want to cover the basis of everything so you understand why you might need to filter water, and then just ways to get clean water. So let's just start out with talking about why you need to purify water. Now, if I'm going to be real honest, there's a lot of trips that I go on where

I'm not bringing a filter. I'm not cleaning my water in certain mountain hunts and say backcountry Alaska, where you're very few low animal densities, no people, no contaminants, the water is coming straight off of a glacier filtered through the mountain. Yeah, I readily drink that water without any kind of filtration. Same in New Zealand, almost all the mountain water there. I believe I've never gotten sick off of drinking it, and I cannot think of a time

that I've actually purified it. Now that's not to say, oh, Remy said, yeah, this is the way it is, and then you get sick and keel over it. This is just my personal way that I do things. But the reason that you would purify water is because bacteria protozoa's even viruses if you're in like a real I mean that could be in some crazy countries, just even traveling

and drinking tap water in certain countries. Just like a lot of things to look out for in the back country, though, the main thing you're worried about is going to be bacteria's um and Giardia, salmonilla e. Coal I, stuff like that. Things you get from animal feces in the water, stuff you get from beavers, and just contaminants and bacteria growing in the water. Now, when we talk about filtration purification,

a lot of people use those where it's interchangeably. And we'll first kind of just break up what purification is what filtration is. So filtration is something like a like a pump, and what it does is you run the water through a filter, and that filter is a certain size that prevents certain sized particles from getting through. So filtration is not the same as purification because purification kills or prevents essentially everything, whereas filtration you're still going to

get certain things going through. They're like viruses are too small to be filtered out. So when you use a filter pump, you're running water through water filter, viruses get through that, whereas purification gets rid of the viruses and other things. Now, for most intents and purposes, when you're in the mountains are on a hunting trip, you don't necessarily have to worry about that. The main thing you're gonna worry about is the bacteria. So filtration does work

of the time for all intents and purposes. Now, purification is kind of that next level, and that generally involves boiling. It can involve a chemical agent like chlorine or iodine, and that could also involve UV. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to break down some of the pros and cons of every option for clean water. So let's start with filtration. Now, I'd say, like I've used a bunch of different filters. Catadyne, I think, is some of the ones that I've used a lot. MSR makes

some great filters filters. Let's they're mostly a pump type filter. So what involves It involves a hose that goes into your water source, and then another hose that goes to your bottle or whatever, and then you just pump it. And by pumping it, you're pulling water from the water source, you're running it through most of the time a carbon filter, and then pouring it out in your bottle or whatever

on the other end. Now, the good thing about the filter is when you filter water, it also affects the taste. So it makes the water taste better. If there's a lot of leaves or tannins like leaves sitting in stagnant water, it create creates and leaves like tannins and it's just real bitter flavor, other stuff like grit. There's a lot of places you might hunt where it might be muddy

water after a rain. There might be silty water, glacier water, that's very silty, and some of the other purification methods might not work as well. So the filtration is great because it helps with the taste and it kind of removes that that siltiness some of the bad flavors. But the downside is is it doesn't catch everything. It's not a purification for backpacking, for hunting, for those type of things.

Filtration is generally perfectly fine. If you're worried about viruses and other things, you're probably in some seriously bad water sources and you're gonna wanna probably use multiple methods of of purification and filtration anyways, because the water is gonna taste terrible, so you want to filter, and then you're gonna want to kill whatever else. You probably use some

other method, whether it's a chemical or boiling or UV whatever. Now, the downside to the filtration is they're pretty heavy and they're pretty cumbersome. The upside is if it's a small stagnant water source, it's great because you don't have to like dip your bottle into it. You can suck it out of small pools and other stagnant water sources. It's

great for aiding and making the water taste better. So I choose to use a filter if I'm hunting in places that has very stagnant water, not so much flowing water, places where there's a lot of grit in the water, might be maybe muddy water, marshy type water, stuff that just you wouldn't want to drink, even if if you did a chemical or something else. You're gonna have the grit, You're gonna have the weird flavor, you're gonna have all that.

So I would say a lot of places that I use the pump type filter or prefer it are when I'm say maybe hunting Nevada or the desert, or it might be just getting water out of a little pond or kind of more of a less moving water. I've used it quite a bit in Australia as well, some more stagnant water up in the top end. The filtration works great because it takes out some of the sediments and the flavors. Now let's go on to some other methods. So purification boiling water if you have no other option.

Boiling water is a great way to purify water as long as you boil it. I always go a raging boil for a minute. That should kill everything. If I'm at altitude, though, I will boil it a little longer because the water just never seems to get as hot as it does at sea level or lower elevation. So I kind of think around seven thousand feet or so, I'll add a couple of minutes maybe, So maybe boil it for three minutes if I'm above seven thousand feet, just because it gives it a little bit more time

to kill anything in the water. Now, boiling is great because if you can start a fire, you can purify water. That's great. The downside to it is it takes a long time, and you also have to wait for the water to cool, and you can't get a lot of volume out of it. So you can whatever size pot you've got, you probably already have that for cooking. But if you're going to use your stove to purify water, it depends on the length of the trip, how long

you're going for how well that'll work. There's been many trips, many hunts that I've gone. I just take my jet boil or my I use MSR reactor. I just take that and I just boil my water, and that's how I purify my water. And so each night I boil an extract thing of water, I pour it in my bottles, and I'm set. I'm good to go. I don't worry about it. Now. The downside is if I drink all my water, I need either carry my boiling kit with me, or if I'm gonna go for a long time, I'm

gonna need extra fuel. And so you've got extra weight in the fuel to burn to boil the water. But if you're a place where you can start a fire and you've got a good sized pot, yeah, it's pretty easy. Pretty simple. You don't have to take a lot of extra stuff, and it's a great way to get clean water. But it does take a while and it is kind of a pain in the ass. Now, the next method of purification would be tablets. So the ones that I use most are the iodine tablets. Iodine kills almost everything.

I guess. It doesn't really kill what is a cryptosporidium. It doesn't really get rid of that, which I think is like a protozoa. If I remember right, I just remember reading the packets years ago, so somebody could I probably should have done more research. Somebody can correct me on that. But I like the iodine because I personally just do not like the taste of chlorine. I've used chlorine in some third world countries because it was better

than drinking whatever I was going to be served. There's probably viruses, there was really bad contaminations, especially in some just really remote places in South Central America. But I do like the iodine for a couple of reasons. One is it does a good job. It's light. But there is I use podible Aqua a lot, which is it has like a stabilizer agent. So you do the iodine, you purify the water, and then you drop in a

stabilizer agent which gets rid of the iodine flavor. I used to purely go into the back country with Pottible Aqua, but after prolonged uses of it, I would feel weird. My skin would almost feel like my skin would kind of hurt. I don't know if what the deal was with it. It's just not meant for really long periods of time, so if I'm going on a three day trip. The cool thing about the Pottible Aqua is super lightweight. You don't really have to carry anything else. It's cheap,

like if you aren't, you're maybe just getting into bad country. Hunting. That's a great option because you don't have to invest in a hundred two hundred dollar filter. You can just go get the ten dollar podible Aqua tablets at Walmart and they'll last you a lifetime essentially. Now, the downside is you have to be real careful when you're using it because you have to like purify your water, so you can't like drink half your bottle and then add more water and then you've got the whole weight time

for it to purify. So it might take thirty minutes, it might take longer. You know. When you do it, you put the tablets in the water and then you kind of shake the bottle or turn it upside down so it gets in the threads and everything, and then you have to wait the time and then you can put in the stabilizing agent. And even with that, it still tastes a little off if there's grit or whatever in the water, like you don't get rid of that.

But it is a great lightweight alternative and it does work. Now, the third purification method I'll talk about is like a UV pen or you know they call them UV filters or whatever, like a sterry pen. Now, the UV although it doesn't look like it's doing much. Actually is in my opinion, one of the best ways to purify water because it's pretty easy. Most of the time, you've already got a leader Nalgene bottle or whatever. Most of the pens do a leader to a leader and a half

in a bottle. They kill everything, so you're the water is gonna be safe to drink. Now. The downside to it is they don't work that well with murky water. They don't change the taste in any way, or the look of it in any way. So if they's just weird stuff floating around, you might kill it with the UV light, but it's still in there. It's chunky water. It's just doesn't look right. It feels scary to drink.

So that's where maybe a filter is a little bit better in some instances because it just looks better when it comes out the other end, it tastes better. But as far as just ease of use, I have a couple of different sterry pens, and there's man, I can't even think of it right now, but I've got two different brands. They both work really well. The downside is they take batteries, so that's something to think about. But for the most part, I just throw some lithium batteries

in there. I haven't had one go out when I need it, and I have backup method of purification by just boiling water. Another thing that I like to do is even in my in my first aid kit, I always put a few podible aqua tablets or iodine tablets, and most first aid comes with some iodine anyways, for cuts and other things. You can put that in your water in an emergency. So if you're out there, something happens you need to purify your water. I've got those

that potable aqua or that iodine just in case. A couple of little tips that I kind of find, or just things that I do that maybe you should think about if you're in the back country. Is I always have a bottle that would be my dirty bottle, the bottle that I scoop out water from that I might be pumping from, or if I have if I'm using potable aqua tablets using the tablets, I have a bottle that I'll always have one bottle them drinking out of. Well,

I have another bottle that's being purified. So it's good to have a system. Whatever you decide to use for filtration and purification, have a system with it. So if I'm using a water filter, part of my system includes I never let the clean hose touch the dirty water. Yeah, it's kind of a no brainer. But when you're wrapping

everything up, I always try to dry everything out. I don't like to wrap the dirty hose around the clean hose and then have like a wet bag that could have contaminated water, and then just put that hose into my drinking water bottle. You got to think about all the little things. Another thing I kind of mentioned earlier, but with the water tablets, if you're using the tablets, you've gotta have a system where you've got two bottles, one that's clean and you're gonna drink from, and one

that's always waiting to be purified. Because that downtime it gets kind of difficult to manage everything of like, okay, which battle is my waiting bottle? Which bottles my drinking bottle? And then I'll And one thing you want to remember too is okay, well, if you're dipping out of a contaminated water source, okay, well where's that water? Also at what's on the threads of the bottle, So you gotta turn your bottle upside down and make sure that water

gets around the threads. And then you just want to be very careful of swapping contaminated and uncontaminated things. If you're boiling water, you know you'll have I'll have one bottle that is my bottle that I transfer water in and I don't drink out of, and then I pour into the pot boil that and then that goes into my drinking water bottle. So whatever your method of purification is,

you know, make sure that you have a system. If I have my UV sterry pen, I kind of actually keep my sterry pen on me in somewhere that's super handy. So every time that I stop, I can just fill up if I need to quickly purify the water, and then I'm good to go. But one thing I do with my sterry pen is I make sure to really clean the out side edge of the bottle as well. That way, same with the tablets, you aren't drinking contaminated

water on the threads. There's a ton of different options when it comes to purifying your water, but really just think of what you're doing, how long you're going and the type of water you're likely to encounter, and that'll really depend on which system is best for you. I would say my top two for just most use would be the UV pen because it's really lightweight, it's easy. The downside of the batteries isn't that bad, but if it is cold, the batteries don't last as long. Now.

The other thing to think about two is with a water filter. If you're going late season and it's cold, those water filters, those pump filters do freeze, so you gotta remember, Okay, at night, I've done where I've taken it into my sleeping bag with me to keep it defrosted. I'll take some extra handwarmers to put in the little bag pack with my water filter. Little things you want

to think about, so late season hunts. If all I'm doing is late season, most of the time, I just boil my water because it's nice to have warm water. I'm gonna be boiling a lot of water anyways. I'm probably stopping and making fires. That's going to be my system. It's always nice as well to have a couple options where you've got a little bit of a backup if something goes wrong. You have some maybe tablets in your

first aid kit. You might have some options just in case you need to purify water and your main method fails. I really hope that talking a little bit about water purification and filtration helps some people. You know, I've been getting a lot of questions about it, so that's actually why I decided to talk about it this week. So yes, when you send me a message via Instagram via the Remy Warren Meat Eater, email Remy at the meat Eater

dot com. Although you may not have a direct reply, I try to reply to as many as I can. I say this nearly every week, but it bears repeating. I try to reply to as many of the social media messages as I can. The emails A lot of those get used in our Q and A, which is coming up next week. So if you've got some questions right m in. We've got a ton of great questions on here, and some of the stuff that I recurring themes that we keep seeing. That's why I start talking

about it. So water filtration, purification, water. There's a lot of questions about water. There's even a lot of questions about, well, what if you can't find water, maybe I'll jump on one of those next week. I don't know you're off to tune in, but anyways, I appreciate you guys. Hopefully this this helps. I think that it's one of those daunting things too. If you don't do a lot of back country hunting, but you're deciding, hey, I want to go on. Even if you aren't back country but you're

just camping. You know, that's a great you know, and instead of having to take all your water with you, having some form of system where you can just purify, filter, what have you. It's it's a great idea, a great thing to have, great knowledge to know, and it will just keep you out there long, younger, safer and not be doing the windmial puking in gale force winds outside the tent off of fog Knack Island. You know, just

be smart to do it right. So until next week, this drinks on me, Catch you guys later.