3 Things No Matter What

When caught out in the elements, what is the biggest cause of death when it comes to exposure? Think about this for a few minutes before you read on. We all know you can survive for some time without food and even less time without water. There is one thing that is nearly essential to have both of these safely. Now for the answer to the question. the single biggest killer via exposure is the cold. Even if you are not caught out in the middle of winter you can develop hypothermia. Hypothermia begins to set in when the body's core temperature falls to 95 degrees or below, at 90 degrees or below hypothermia can become life threatening. If you are an outdoors man of any kind you should always carry some sort of fire ignition source. There are so many different things on the market for making fire from flint and steel to just a plain old lighter. I have made fire from many different methods but by far the easiest is just a plain old store bought cheap lighter. Can these get wet, well sure they can. Will they run out of gas to fuel them, absolutely. You might be asking yourself, why fire. to me the biggest reason for a fire if you get caught in a survival situation is peace of mind. Fire does so many things, keeps you warm, give you light, cooks your food and purifies your water.
Picture yourself, like me, out for a day of spring fishing. I normally go to a secluded part of the local river and either wade or walk the river bank and fish for the whole day. I travel as light as possible carrying what I need in a backpack that isn't packed to the gills so to speak. Inside of my pack no matter where I am going are at LEAST 3 things. A knife, a lighter and a water bottle. My knife is always sharp, it isn't anything that is high priced, it is a plain fishing fillet knife. A plain bic style lighter that I keep in a watertight zip lock bag. The last thing that is always, no matter what in my bag is my metal reusable water bottle.

Since this is my first blog post, I will not go into depth on more things, I would like you to get a sense of who I am and why these things are important to me.