Ep. 30: Afognak Ruins Remi's Gut and Everything You Need to Know About Water Purification
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As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance. This week, we're going to talk about one thing on a backcountry hunt you can't go without. Because after a few days without it, you'll die. What we're talking about is water.

So I'm going to 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 to my mind is a Fognac Island.

Now, Fognac 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 black-tailed deer. Now, you might remember a story that I told with the meat-eater crew a couple years back about a brown bear attack that happened on a Fognac Island.

The story I'm going to tell today actually transpired a few years prior when my brother Jason and I went on our first hunt on a Fog Neck.

Jason and I had drawn Roosevelt elk tags and we knew nothing about a Fog and Ack. 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 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. Well, 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 a, is a Alaska Yukon moose. They could be as much as 1400 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 going to 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, glassed, and spotted a herd of elk way out toward the ocean, miles away. So we figured, sweet, we know where they're at. Let's look around. It'd be awesome if we can find some closer. But if we can't, well, we're going to go after those in the morning.

The evening comes around. We didn't see any of our elk, so we make our way back to camp. It's about a 2,000-foot climb from the camp to the top, and then you got about a 2,000-foot drop down to the ocean. So shooting a big animal on the other side, it's going to 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 going to hike out to that point and 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 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 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 Creek 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 20 elk and

Well, there's a lot of elk in this herd, maybe double that, maybe even 60 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 going to try for a double if we can, but we're going to 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 two, we can get them. If they're near a tree, we can get the meat up in the tree. We'll 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 and just focused on one bull. I was going to 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 opportune 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 hundred yards past 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 there 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 stalk on the way over, we'd already seen just a giant bullfrog.

boar, brown bear cruising around. So we're like, all right, we need to get over there and start cutting this thing up. And we walked up on the elk, man. This thing was just huge. It was one of the biggest animals I'd ever walked up on. 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 out for that bear. We start cutting up. One guy's cutting, the other guy's on bear patrol, bear lookout.

About the time that we get the elk cut up, the brown bear starts coming in. So what we were 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 170 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 downwind of us. He could smell that and he was going to 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'd 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 300 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, we

Then we started hauling the meat up into the tree because we're going to have to start ferrying this meat as far away from the carcass as possible. And at 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 gain. 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. We were estimating multiple days of this, and each pack being 100 pounds or more, just super heavy.

So we start faring the meat. Each place we'd stop, we'd hoist the meat up into the tree, and then we'd take our packs, go to the next spot. We tried to go about a 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 him cut up. We're going to be packing till dark for day one. And it's probably going to 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 because

So this is, we did have a water filter at our base camp because we're going to be drinking out of a lake. But a lot of 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, then I'm not too concerned about it. So Jason and I are working, hiking, filling up our water bottles in the creeks.

Now I got to one stream where I was just extremely thirsty. I had my one Nalgene. I kind of forgot to, I drank some and then dumped it out because I don't know why. I just didn't want to carry the extra 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 and then you just dump it out because there's water everywhere. So it's, I think between our third drop-off station and

We cross a stream and it's kind of got this like red tinge to it. Now I thought, ah, well, whatever. You know, it's, there's kind of like a little marshy area above it. I'm just going to 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 bottle's worth and we kept going.

Little be knowns to me, which I ended up finding out later that,

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'd been able to ferry the majority of the meat down to camp. So the only thing we had left was two hindquarters 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 even know, maybe 1 a.m., something like that. We were just getting after it. Brutal, brutal day.

Very physically demanding. So we get back to camp. Everything's good. We decide, all right, the meat's 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, hey, it's because you're going to hang in a tree at camp or it's just going to hang in the tree up above camp. It doesn't matter where it's at. It's hanging in a tree. So we figured the next day we're going to get up and kind of relocate the herd for Jason's elk.

So we get up and we can't relocate there. So we decide, well, we spend the entire day looking and then we decide, all right, we're going to have to maybe move somewhere else or figure out where these animals are because after shooting at them, we probably blew them out of the whole area. So we're going to have to try to find some different elk.

So the next day a storm hits. We just decide, hey, we're just going to have to hunker down. We hunted the morning. It was wet. It was miserable. So we just decide, hey, we're going to 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 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 talking gale force winds, 70 mile an hour plus winds, maybe six, you know, just like constant 50, 60 mile an hour winds, gusts probably up to 80 miles an hour. It's just miserable out. Raining sideways, typical Kodiak of Fognac weather and the curse of the wallow hits.

I mean, I am outside doing what people often call 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

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.

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Go to fishingbooker.com today. That's fishingbooker.com. I really think that I have pretty much the widest range of experience possible with backcountry purification and filtration. I've honestly tried nearly everything out there from doing nothing to...

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 backcountry. 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 in say back country, Alaska, where you very few low animal densities, no people, no contaminants. The water's 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, I

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, protozoas, 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. There's like a lot of things to look out for.

In the backcountry, though, the main thing you're worried about is going to be bacterias and Giardia, Salmonella E. coli, 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 words interchangeably. And we'll first kind of just break up what purification is, what filtration is. So filtration is something 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 size particles from getting through. So

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 a water filter, viruses get through that. Whereas purification is

gets rid of the viruses and other things. Now, for most intents and purposes, when you're in the mountains or on a hunting trip, you don't necessarily have to worry about that. The main thing you're going to worry about is the bacteria. So filtration does work 99.99% 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 it could also involve UV. So what I'm going to 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. Katadyn, 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 it involves is 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 and

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 creates in 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 siltiness, some of the bad flavors, etc.

But the downside is it doesn't catch everything. It's not a purification product.

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 going to want to probably use multiple methods of purification and filtration anyways, because the water is going to taste terrible. So you'll want to filter and then you're going to 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 going to have the grit. You're going to have the weird flavor. You're going to 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 7,000 feet or so. I'll add a couple minutes maybe. So maybe boil it for three minutes if I'm above 7,000 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

There's been many trips, many hunts that I've gone. I just take my jet boil or my, I use an MSR reactor. Um,

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 extra 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 to either carry my boiling kit with me or if I'm going to go for a long time, I'm going to need extra fuel. And so you've got extra weight in the fuel to burn water.

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 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 shouldn't 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 was probably viruses. There was really bad contaminations, especially in some just really remote places in South Central America. Um,

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 potable 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 backcountry with potable 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 it...

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 Potable 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 backcountry hunting, that's a great option because you don't have to invest in a $100, $200 filter. You can just go get the $10 Potable Aqua tablets at Walmart and they'll last you a lifetime essentially. So,

Now, the downside is you have to be real careful when you're using it because you have to purify your water. You can't drink half your bottle and then add more water, and then you've got the whole wait time for it to purify. So it might take 30 minutes. It might take longer.

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. 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, I don't know, they call them UV filters or whatever, like a SteriPen. Now, the UV, although it doesn't look like it's doing much...

actually is a, 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 liter Nalgene bottle or whatever. Most of the pens do a liter to a liter and a half in a bottle. They kill everything. So you're, the water is going to 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 there'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 different SteriPens 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 first aid kit, I always put a few potable 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 that potable aqua or that iodine just in case.

A couple little tips that I kind of find or just things that I do that maybe you should think about if you're in the backcountry 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 or using the tablets, I have a bottle that I'll always have one bottle that I'm drinking out of while 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 got to have a system where you've got two bottles, one that's clean and you're going to 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 bottle is my waiting bottle, which bottle is 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? Well, it's on the threads of the bottle. So you got to 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're

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,

make sure that you have a system. If I have my UV SteriPen, I kind of actually keep my SteriPen 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 SteriPen is I make sure to really clean the outside 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 too, 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 got to remember, okay, at night I've done where I've taken it in my sleeping bag with me to keep it defrosted. I'll take some extra hand warmers 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 going to 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.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&A, which is coming up next week. So if you've got some questions...

write them 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'll have to tune in. But anyways, I appreciate you guys. Hopefully this helps. I think that

It's one of those daunting things too. If you don't do a lot of backcountry hunting, but you're deciding, Hey, I want to go on, even if you aren't backcountry, but you're just camping, you know, that's a great, you know, instead of having to take all your water, uh, we

with you having some form of system where you can just purify, filter, what have you. It's a great idea, great thing to have, great knowledge to know. And it'll just keep you out there longer, safer, and not be doing the windmill puking in gale force winds outside the tent off of Fognac Island. You know, just be smart. Do it right. So until next week, this drink's on me. Catch you guys later.

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