Wetting your whistle; 3 reasons to never die of thirst in the wilderness

September 7, 2018

I have studied wilderness survival for a lot of years and one of the most important aspects of survival is being able to gather water to drink. One thing that has always struck me as strange is the fact that while water is the most plentiful resource on the planet, many people die in the woods because they don't know just a few rules to follow when it comes to gathering water.

While the experts mostly agree that you need two liters of water everyday, I'm here to tell you that you can survive on less than half of that for a good while, providing that you aren't sweating a lot and burning energy. And water in most environments is plentiful; however, just because it's available doesn't necessarily mean that it's potable. Here are three ways to make sure you have water to drink in the wilderness.

1. Gather DEW. Water falls from the sky every night in the form of dew and it is lying on top of the foliage until the sun comes out and burns it off. Who hasn't had incident to run in the tall grass early in the morning only to find that your pants were soaked at the end of the foray? This is from the dew on the ground and you COULD wring that water out of those pants and drink it.

2. GRAPEVINES.Whether you're aware or not, grapevines are excellent sources of fresh, potable water in the wilderness. Acting as a barometer, grapevines will receive bountiful water early in the morning as the sun rises and heats the earth. Therefore, cutting a grapevine a few inches above where it emerges from the ground will allow for lots of water for the day if you set a receptacle out to capture it.

3. Boil creek or pond water Boiling tainted water for fifteen minutes will result in killing all of the bacteria and will make it potable. It won't make it taste very good necessarily but it should at least be safe to drink.

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