[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
I'm not tapping out.
I'd rather die.
[eerie howling]
[exhales]
Here goes nothing.
Whoa.
Yes!
[bleep].
♪
This is the harshest location possible.
We're 125 miles in the Arctic Circle.
Ahh!
Never had an environment make me
feel like a complete amateur before.
Everything is against us out here.
Mother Nature went and bitch-slapped me.
It looks like got grizzlies and wolves as my neighbors.
Holy crap.
They're just hunting the shoreline.
Mother Nature is about to dim the lights on us.
We're heading into total darkness.
Hey, bear.
The cold and the dark is going to sap people's souls.
Really makes you wonder if it's worth it.
There is no camera crew.
There's no support system.
I'm completely alone.
Yes!
People go in one way--
Stop bleeding.
and they come out entirely different.
Ahh!
This is the most difficult survival
challenge in the world.
Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!
$500,000, that's completely life-changing money.
It's beautiful.
Whoever can thrive the longest.
Stay out here, ought to be afraid of me.
Whoever can push through it wins.
I hope I made the right choice coming out here.
♪ ♪
[eerie music]
♪ ♪
Sounds like I can hear wolves howling.
That is definitely wolves.
[sighs] Damn it.
I never really trusted wolves that much.
They are killers.
My energy level is really low.
I need every little calorie I can get.
Whoo-hoo, another one.
Got these two with a stick, shockwaves, you know?
I think my nose is bleeding.
I wonder if has something to do with my berry diet.
Everything at ate looked pretty familiar.
Stop bleeding.
I just heard something move.
♪ ♪
Hey, bear.
Every step is difficult.
You can't see 5 feet into the thicket.
You wouldn't know if a grizzly was 10 feet away from you.
♪ ♪
[shouts]
Arrow in the leg.
It slipped out of my quiver.
And just stepped right into it.
Ohh.
The realization that my chance of winning this is over
is absolutely devastating.
♪
[helicopter blades whirring]
I told myself I wasn't gonna cry.
Oh man, but what an overwhelming--
wow, wow.
Oh, my God.
I'm here.
I'm finally here.
♪ ♪
This is crazy.
This is amazing.
Day one, minute one, I've got a long, long road ahead.
♪ ♪
[laughs]
Oh, wow.
I'm so excited.
This is the real deal.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
I am now truly alone.
Wish I could just spend more time
just living in this moment.
But, you know, there's work to be done.
♪
[laughs]
All right, so there goes my ride.
And I won't see them boys for a while.
But this is exactly what I've been waiting for.
[helicopter blades whirring]
Firstly, I'm gonna get my safety kit going.
I hope I don't have to use any of this stuff,
because that would mean that a grizzly bear is
up in my business.
But I'm gonna have it with me all the time just in case.
Because more than winning, I promised I'd
bring myself home to my wife.
♪
My legal name is Timothy.
But I just never liked the sound of it.
When I got my first paying job, it was cutting timber.
And then some people started to call me Timber,
and I just went with that because I like it.
I remember as a kid, an old Kentucky old-timer came over
and showed me this method.
I grew up connected to a group that
was really anti-government.
The whole group tried not to exist
on paper or anywhere else.
So we all grew up completely off grid.
Here is my passive water filtration system.
During the days, we would train for emergencies
and combat situations, asymmetrical warfare
and insurgency tactics...
Whoo, baby.
And to survive and to react in a harsh environment.
Now I have achieved luxury.
Me and my wife and our two little boys,
we work in humanitarian aid. - Hey.
So we're in many countries the bulk of the year.
For the past few years, it's been almost
strictly conflict zones, meaning evacuations, medical.
Excellent.
My family and I really love it.
But it's taking a toll on my kids, on my wife,
on our health.
And so the money could do a lot for us.
"Alone" is a huge opportunity to leave
some inspiration some legacy that my sons will be proud of.
I love you. - Bye.
I'll tell you one thing, it's hard to do a good approach...
[arrows rattling]
Like that. Hear that noise from my arrows?
This brush is pretty thick, practicing stealth
in this terrain, a real challenge.
Hopefully the game here is not very wary.
Experience in conflict zones taught me
that tension zone between life and death
can make you much more alert and aware.
Awareness is key in survival.
So you want those instincts tuned, tuned really sharp.
You know, you don't want to miss opportunities.
♪ ♪
I see some big old tracks.
I see moose tracks right off the bat
and grizzly bear tracks.
♪ ♪
Look at this, plenty of grizzly bear here.
I'm seeing more moose sign than I expected.
And these tracks indicate how frequently they come through.
♪ ♪
[squirrel chittering]
Oh, squirrel right there.
♪ ♪
I think I got him.
Yeah, I got him.
This is excellent, excellent.
I've got this squirrel already.
And that means that I'm not gonna go hungry tonight
or probably tomorrow because I'm gonna use this guy
mostly for bait for pike.
Now we have to feed the beast.
Don't worry.
♪ ♪
This is my tradition.
I have to feed the teeth every time I draw blood.
♪ ♪
This is good.
This is my first day.
This is my beginning.
[exhales] Thank you, God.
♪
OK.
♪ Doo-doo
Ooh, maybe I'll keep this.
I could hang my pot.
Can you see me?
Yep, I think I'm in it.
And how about you?
You, I can't tell, because the screen is off.
♪ ♪
Hmm, I'll get a hang of this
video thing sooner or later,
I swear.
Battery low.
Rookie mistake.
This whole self-filming thing, it's one more challenge
to meet and beat, I guess.
[camera beeps] Get that rolling, yep.
I think we're ready to go.
Thanks, Bud.
My name is Sarah Pointer.
I live in remote Alaska.
And I own and operate a fishing lodge with my husband.
There you go.
I am originally from St. Petersburg, Florida.
And I met my husband,
and we decided that to be happy,
we needed to get into the woods.
Here's my house hiding behind those trees.
We walked away as a family.
And we've been broke and happy ever since.
Whoo. - Whoo.
But just to live is a full-time job.
Probably about minus 22-ish.
Bear prints.
Out my door, I face risks every day.
Gotta stay on my toes.
I can hunt and feed myself.
I can fish and feed myself.
Fence for my fish trap.
My foraging skills are fantastic.
Finding myself a little morel delicacy.
♪ ♪
To win this money would allow my husband and I to retire.
[laughs]
In the past few years, my husband
has gone through some serious health issues.
And so I had to step up,
or we would have lost our livelihood.
Rainwater brought it up.
Had to go check the boats.
I think it's my mental strength that
takes me above and beyond.
Wamp-wamp, I think this will work fine for tonight.
Let's go explore a bit, huh?
See if I can find some berries and boletes.
I'm not gonna take my bow.
I don't think I want to weave through these woods with it.
I think because I live around the bears and the wolves,
I'm not afraid of them.
I'm concerned about how I'm going
to be able to sustain my body.
Quick shelter was a priority.
Now, my primary focus is foraging.
Where are the berries?
I need to gather the carbohydrates and sugars that
I can before the snow falls.
[gasps] I found berries.
Oh, hell yeah.
As soon as it freezes, I'm gonna lose access to a lot
of those carbohydrates.
That's a bolete.
And that's the fuel that's gonna keep me going.
It makes me very, very happy.
♪ ♪
My plan is to graze like a moose.
♪ ♪
Here we go, a little bit further,
and then I'm gonna have to cut back towards camp.
♪
Huh. It's a lake.
♪
This looks promising for fishing over here.
[water splashes]
Holy [bleep], it's a beaver.
Oh, hell, yeah, badass.
I have a limited amount of weight I can lose.
Harvesting a beaver would be protein and fat that can
carry me for weeks out here.
God, I just regret not bringing my bow.
I need this.
It would relieve so much stress and anxiety
on how to feed myself.
Look at you, all protective and territorial.
[water splashes]
[chuckles]
Yep, I'm totally intimidated, dude.
I'll head on.
Don't you worry.
You did it.
I'm scared [bleep].
♪ ♪
But I am gonna find where you're working,
and then I'm gonna shoot you,
and then I'm gonna eat you.
[water splashes]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
I have to be really, really careful about not
getting lost out here.
A person could get lost out here easy.
Sometimes you can't even see the sun,
so you can't use it as a way to get back.
Get back, get lost out here, and lose all your stuff.
♪
Bunch of berries...
♪
Rose hips.
♪ ♪
I'm being picky about where I'm putting my shelter.
Man, walking through this horse tail,
this makes me think.
When I get back home,
I'ma mow the hell out of my yard.
[laughs]
Got a little rubber worm.
My name is Dusty.
I live in Arkansas,
and I'm a welder.
Gonna have frog legs tonight.
I grew up rough.
My town, we really don't got much.
Just a couple houses.
And this is about it.
You had to make your own fun,
and my fun was the outdoors.
All right.
The difference that I'm gonna bring is my hillbilliness.
I've been a hunter ever since I could walk.
I killed my first deer when I was eight years old.
Deer track there.
Fishing-wise, if there's a mud hole with a fish in it,
I'll catch it.
Nice little rainbow.
I'm a big-time trapper.
I hit this, and there you have it.
The Arctic Circle is a whole new environment.
I've never been in negative 40,
but I've always been a really quick learner.
And got a lot of skill.
I don't give up.
I got a lot of fire in me, a lot of push and go.
You can put that on an arrow shaft and use it.
♪ ♪
There's some of the squash.
My wife and kids, they're my everything.
If I won the $500,000, I could better my family's life.
I'd get a better place.
Be a big thing to me.
Here we go.
Never really had opportunities to go
on an adventure like this.
So this is an opportunity that I've
always wanted all my life.
I'm here to stay.
Y'all's gonna have to come get me.
[laughs]
All right, I'm going for it right here.
I found me a spot.
♪
Right off the bat, I'm gonna try
to get my shelter.
Because it just gives you a good, safe feeling.
♪ ♪
Ho, ho, ho.
On the design, I really don't got a name for it.
But it's kind of a lean-to log cabin.
Small, but it's put up in a very fast, efficient way.
[whistles]
Close that time.
One log at a time.
♪ ♪
You need to get your hardest labor done quick as possible.
And that way, the only thing you have to worry about
is catching fish, mice, squirrels,
rabbits, picking berries.
♪
We're 125 miles in the Arctic Circle.
We're gonna be dealing with some extreme colds,
extreme weathers.
And the cold kind of got me on edge.
That's a big thing too.
Especially when the freeze out comes,
you get wet, that could be death to you.
♪ ♪
Couple more logs the roof will be done.
This is an opportunity that I've always wanted
all my life.
And I can't give it up.
Yeah.
Ha-ha. [chuckles]
pretty sturdy.
Proud of it so far.
But I got gaps.
But I'm gonna fill them in, put a tarp on it.
♪
That's a squirrel.
♪ ♪
Got squirrel guts.
♪ ♪
All right, I'm gonna get to work on a temporary shelter,
which will keep me for a few nights.
All right.
♪ ♪
For my temporary shelter, I have very
few critical requirements.
I need some good spacing between the trees
so that I can fix things how I have in mind.
But ultimately, I just find a spot that looks homey.
I follow my instinct there.
Good, good, good.
I grew up in the woods.
And I learned, if your instincts are properly tuned,
nature actually guides and drives you
to the right things.
I have to get this work done because opportunities are
gonna present themselves.
♪ ♪
Yeah.
All right, let's go check those fish lines.
[panpipe music]
♪
Fish, fish, fish, I've got a fish right here.
♪ ♪
Ooh, might be a nice one.
♪ ♪
Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, yeah.
♪ ♪
Wow.
Good Lord, it is a nice one.
Look at that. Look at that.
Yeah!
I need to start cooking.
♪
Now, I've got a problem.
Here's my squirrel.
And I've got my big old fish.
I simply will not have time to start doing meat preservation
while it's daylight.
So I'm gonna cook it all up,
and I'm just gonna eat like a hunter.
♪
Fishy, you are amazing.
♪ ♪
One of the biggest reasons I want to do this is my family
has reached a point in our work that I don't
know if we can continue it.
The stress levels have become almost debilitating.
We're always in different places,
sleeping in different beds, different countries.
Now for the pike.
With that money, I could build a house in the States
and provide my family with the baseline security
for when my boys are wondering where home is in their hearts.
I'm gonna eat my red squirrel
while this is cooking.
♪ ♪
Oh, finally, yes.
I think about that money, and I think
I'll do just about anything.
I'll injure myself.
I'll wear myself to the bone.
My wife keeps assuring me
we'll be fine without the money.
But I know what I want to set them up with.
I'd like to get that money.
Look at that big white, fluffy, flaky fish.
♪ ♪
Mmm, now there's a real supper.
There's a real supper.
Mmm.
Pike on day one, very pleased with that.
♪
Mmm.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Oh, good morning.
First night in the books.
I slept-- I got a good night's sleep.
That's for sure.
The first full day, I was a little confused.
So I was exhausted yesterday.
The priorities for today, priority one,
enjoy the sunrise.
Look at that; that is absolutely amazing.
Priority two, I got to get some water,
get a fire going, so I can boil it.
Continue the search for a permanent shelter location.
All right, let's get started, a lot of work to do.
One more sunrise.
♪
Boil some water.
Don't want to get sick.
Oh, there goes.
Nope.
The ground here is wet, soggy, sandy.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of dry firewood.
And I know that's gonna make getting a fire hard.
It keeps-- it lights up for like a second,
and then it just goes out.
I'm really concerned about dehydration.
Well, there goes-- no, going out again.
I've never had so much trouble getting
a fire going in my life.
♪ ♪
Damn it.
♪ ♪
OK, I'm gonna pause this, take a step back.
I'm gonna pack up this tinder, keep it in pocket.
Maybe that'll dry it out, try again in a bit.
All right, let's go explore.
My name is Peter Albano,
and I am a librarian.
I love the idea of being this keeper of knowledge.
Being a librarian makes me well-suited
for this challenge.
You have to be creative and learn really quickly
to make the most out of very little resources.
There we go, super-easy foraging basket.
I don't fit the typical mold of a survivalist.
I volunteer with the local search and rescue group,
and I also do Alpine rescue stuff.
Look at the size of these tracks.
I have a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
It's as much a mental game as a physical game.
It's a great way to learn how to deal
with stressful situations and keep your cool.
We're out in the woods, best place to be.
Most of the skills I have, I've taken from books.
When I was 12 years old, I discovered
the "SAS Survival Guide."
And there was how to build shelters
and how to build traps.
That sort of really set me off on this path.
Fully functional bushcraft door.
♪ ♪
My family means everything to me.
That's the whole reason for existing.
I've come here to prove to my kids that you set a goal,
you can achieve it.
I tell my kids all the time, every problem has a solution.
You just have to approach it logically.
And you'll find it.
And don't give up.
First try, score.
My perseverance and my outright stubbornness
are what's gonna take me to the end.
♪ ♪
Cool, these are all kettle lakes,
technically, not ponds, but they're called kettle lakes
because of the way they're formed.
I bet on the bottom of your screen
right now there's a definition of a kettle lake,
which is cool.
I was telling my son there was kettle lakes in the area.
He suggested I name one teapot lake
because he has an amazing sense of humor.
So ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you
to Teapot Pond.
♪
Hope you like it, Ethan.
All right, I'm heading back, feeling dehydrated.
But my wife made me promise never
to drink untreated water.
What I always planned was to find a location
for my permanent shelter as quickly as possible
so I can start on it right away,
and then after that, look for opportunities for food.
But yesterday was tough.
It was just me second-guessing myself.
All the things to do can get overwhelming.
Even this morning, it's still there.
♪
Look at this beautiful game trail.
Oh, what's this here?
♪
That is a big bear.
♪ ♪
They're old.
But still, I'm definitely not going
to be building my permanent shelter
very close to this trail.
♪ ♪
I feel like I need to focus.
There's a sign of grizzly bears in my area.
More bear tracks.
And I'm really concerned about how
fast winter is gonna come.
And you know, in a fight,
you don't really have a lot of time to second-guess yourself.
If you hesitate, then you get hit,
and then you're gonna lose the fight.
All right, I've had this in my pocket for a while now.
Let's see if we can light it on fire.
In a fight, you need to move quickly,
and if you're gonna adapt to something
that's not going your way, you have to do it fast.
Oh, there it goes--
nope.
I know that once I start building my permanent shelter
and getting a fishing line in the water,
then I'll be able to refocus and just
get to the mission of winning.
♪ ♪
Ooh, it's going.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Oh, yes, fire.
As you can see, I'm not a complete amateur,
even though it may have looked like it.
[chuckles]
I got to gather a bunch of this tinder,
keep it in the shelter.
♪ ♪
Here I am eating rose hips.
Well, it ain't too bad.
Man, I was really hoping blueberries would be around.
I haven't seen ones yet.
[smacking lips]
[laughs]
[munching]
Let me get a bag out here.
I'm gonna gather some of these up.
Pretty good little patch of them here.
Since I've come here, I'm focusing on the terrain.
It's all new to me, all of it.
Just the berries alone here, there are so many varieties.
Ooh, that toothpaste.
A lot of these trees, I've never even seen, you know?
That's the big thing to me is seeing new stuff.
You live in a spot and stay there as long as I have,
you kind of get bored of everything.
Just watching the ground leave like that,
and then when you get up so high,
you get above the clouds, and it just looks like
cotton candy, you can walk on it.
So a whole new environment.
It's like a whole new me kind of.
All right, we got rose hips for supper.
Like to have some meat to go with it.
I am a meat eater.
[squirrel chittering]
I keep hearing squirrels over that way too,
so get my snares out.
♪ ♪
♪
Well, one squirrel pole's set.
I'm not gonna play a starving game.
One way or the other, we'll get something.
All right, I'm gonna boil us up some water.
I'm gonna cut some firewood real quick.
[squirrel chittering]
Man, look at that.
I'm gonna go for it.
I gotcha now.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
There he is.
♪ ♪
[laughs]
Gotcha.
All right, thank you, little buddy,
for your giving me yourself.
I appreciate you, you don't know how much.
Thank goodness.
All right, I'll skin him down.
What we do here, punch it through his back.
Pull his a little britches off here.
When I want to draw my bow back,
it was just like I was aiming at a big buck.
I got so excited.
There we go.
It's kind of hard to breathe, my heart
just boom, boom, boom, over a freaking squirrel.
But I guess that squirrel means a lot to me out here.
Man's got eat, you know?
I don't need to be a-thinkin' about it,
but it sure does
remind me of my little girl.
She's just now getting into squirrel hunting.
♪
I grew up in a hunting world.
I'm gonna get him ready to cook up.
My mama, my grandpa,
[bleep] I squirrel hunted since I was
seven, eight years old.
And I mean, that was our lives.
Made the person that I am today.
I think Sir Fuzzytail's ready to eat.
It's a different ballgame out here.
But I was raised for this type of situation.
[blowing]
Mmm, squirrel.
[laughs]
Oh man, oh man.
It's good.
♪ ♪
Ouch.
Ow, yeah, that's brutal.
Pretty much trying every object I brought
to see if it brushes hair.
So far, no.
It just rips it out, everything.
One of the past contestants mentioned losing hair.
And I thought it was because of malnutrition.
But I'm starting to suspect it was from lack of hairbrush.
This is a game for short hair.
All right, back to work.
♪
Spending a lot of energy today building up a shelter.
For my permanent shelter, I'm building a wickiup.
A wickiup is a winter version of a teepee.
Instead of an animal hide as the walls,
it's debris to help hold the heat in.
♪
I picked this spot for its proximity to the lake.
And I'm protected from the winds
with this massive alder bush forest around me.
♪ ♪
[exhales]
It's coming along, slowly but surely.
All right, let's take a break.
Trek over to the lake.
Got a date with a beaver.
♪
Maybe he'll come close again.
The last time I came over here without archery equipment--
There's a good chance I could have eaten him.
[exhales]
Nobody to blame but myself.
Where'd you go, little feller?
That beaver would carry me a long ways.
Protein, fat,
it'd be a game changer.
♪ ♪
Nothing.
That's what I get.
Got to be prepared for anything, always.
♪
[bleep].
♪
See if he comes over here.
♪ ♪
See how close he'll swim.
♪ ♪
Oh, that's pretty close.
♪
Oh, my God, did I get him?
Oh please God, let me have gotten him.
♪ ♪
Oh, my God.
My heart is [bleep] pounding.
♪
From my vantage point, it looks like I hit him.
Oh, my God, arrow hasn't moved at all.
Kind of tells me it's probably impaled to a sunken body.
Am I gonna have to go swimming?
[exhales]
I'm gonna risk it.
♪
You got to be smart about this.
I can't go hypothermic and die.
♪
Today would have been a good day to wear underwear, huh?
Holy cow, it's really cold.
I don't have any of my fire-making stuff here.
I haven't gotten any other source of protein,
so I need the beaver.
I can't believe I'm about to do this.
♪ ♪
Mind over matter.
There are so many traps in the bottom of this lake.
I know I'm gonna trip.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Ooh, ouch, oh man, I hope I get a beaver.
Did I get him?
Oh.
I missed him entirely.
[bleep].
I thought for sure I had him.
♪ ♪
Woo, woo, woo.
Got to get out of my wet clothes.
♪ ♪
[sighs]
It's disheartening.
I can't believe I flung that arrow at that beaver.
I know better, know better than shooting into the water.
See if I could see him.
Desperation makes you do dumb things.
♪
No disturbance anywhere on the lake.
Nothing in the nearby vicinity.
♪
All right, back to my shelter.
♪ ♪
I think I just got excited.
I thought I hit him,
but I obviously didn't.
I'm trying not to let it get me down.
I'm not doing super great at it right now.
I'll get there.
♪ ♪
I want to win this so bad,
but I need to make sure that I don't make mistakes.
Another opportunity lost at eating that I did to myself.
♪ ♪
[exhales]
♪
Just before I-- turning the camera back on,
I saw a gyrfalcon buzz.
It looked like an adult male.
[bird squawking]
Well...
It's amazing to think three weeks from now,
they're gonna be 4,000 miles away in Central America.
And I'll still be here.
[laughs]
For 15 years,
I've been a professional falconer.
I specialize in falconry-based
bird abatement, which is hunting predating
birds to protect crops.
I'm gonna add a guide to my fly rod.
My dad taught me everything he knew about wilderness skills.
And so I've been a hunter literally since the time
I could walk.
Pretty good group.
I'm a fourth-generation fly fisherman.
And I've never been on a river that I couldn't fish.
It's a great big sucker. [laughs]
I've never been in an environment
where I couldn't find food.
Oh, he's so fatty.
And I've never been in a situation
where I could not make a fire.
I don't think anybody has the skill set
and the desire to do whatever
is required the way that I am.
Wait, what is it?
Oh! It's a--
[laughter]
I'm the father of three children.
And my number one responsibility in life
is being their dad.
I went through a divorce.
And in order for me to maintain shared custody,
I had to dissolve my business and seek employment locally.
But I lost about 3/4 of my income doing that.
So for the better part of a decade,
my kids have watched me struggle.
And I think it's important for them
to see what I'm capable of doing.
[exhales]
I lost my fishing line out of my backpack.
A side zipper came open
while I was busting through the brush.
I have spent the last three days looking
everywhere for that line.
Walked, I don't know, several miles.
And I don't know if I'm ever gonna find it again.
I don't have a net, so I've been tying one.
♪
Losing my fishing line is embarrassing.
This was the tool that I was going to rely on the most
to provide food for myself.
But the thing that I've learned over the years
is that the less time that I spend wallowing in my shame,
the better, because then I can throw myself
into solving the problem.
That's the thing about survival.
It's not survival of the fittest.
It's survival of the most adaptable.
♪ ♪
All right, I'll go and get this in the water.
♪ ♪
All right, so I'm gonna lay it in here.
♪ ♪
Water's really shallow,
but it's the only water I've got.
♪ ♪
If I can get something here, that would be incredible.
♪
Well, that was graceful. [laughs]
[dramatic music]
♪
I don't know if you all at home are ready for this.
Check out this hunk of man right here.
My kids are lucky they look like their mom,
I'm telling you. [laughs]
♪
I'm just working on my shelter,
my permanent shelter.
Gonna be very small.
Kind of like a dome-type structure,
not much bigger than me.
So I think I'll build my bed first
and then build the shelter around it.
Here we go, last post for the bed.
♪
This is the spot that I've picked.
These spruce trees will give me
some shelter from the snow,
the wind, the rain.
♪ ♪
There.
[claps hands]
So 8 feet long, 6 feet wide is what I was going for.
That'll give me enough space for a workspace,
the bed, the fireplace.
Anyway, I'm gonna keep going.
Most of this area is covered in moss.
And I don't want to build a shelter on the moss.
These first two down here.
The permanent shelter location has
a harder packed, muddier ground
that's better to walk on.
It's gonna be drier when I get a fire going inside of it,
and I'm gonna be able to dig into it.
Into the muck.
♪ ♪
Oh, yes, oh, yeah.
I wanted to build a shelter where I can
put stakes into the ground.
And it's just easier to do that there.
You kind of see how the dome is forming.
That looks perfect.
♪ ♪
It's starting to cool off.
♪ ♪
Well, I'm so happy to be starting on this.
It's gonna be a huge stress-reliever.
♪ ♪
I'm basing my shelter off of a qaluurvik.
It's a traditional shelter of people in this region.
It's made with green alders and willows.
It's built in a way where you stick one end of the alder
into the ground and you bend it over.
And then you do the same thing on the other side.
And you tie them together, and you end up with a dome shape.
♪ ♪
It's super simple.
Wish you could feel how much stronger
this is just from doing this.
I chose this kind of shelter because we're in a place where
next week, there could be snow,
and it's going to be efficient to heat up in the winter.
First batch, spruce boughs.
It's easy to make in terms of calories used.
I don't have to fell any big trees.
At the end of the day, this is a game of calories.
I put on a bunch of weight before coming out here
to have some reserves,
and I have to budget them wisely.
When I put my green tarp on here,
it's gonna look like a turtle shell.
I might have to call this the turtle lair.
It's not in the sewers,
but you know, it's still pretty cool.
Oh, what a good feeling.
It's coming together.
♪ ♪
Oh! [laughs]
Typical.
I just busted out a fire.
And it took me about a half an hour, but I finally got it.
I decided to not bring a ferro rod,
because I knew that there were other ways
that I can make fire.
And I wanted to free up an item.
Now that I've lost my fishing line--
[laughs]
I'd say hell yes, give me a ferro rod.
But what I want to be able to do now
is not have to do a friction fire every day.
Takes too many calories.
And it takes too much time.
So in my pot here, what I am processing
is dry rot wood.
And what I'll have left is pure charcoal
that I can use to catch a spark from my belt buckle.
♪ ♪
That is exactly what we were going for.
And this is gonna help tremendously
in fire starting for me.
It's gonna be really important to keep humidity
out of all that charcoal.
So I'm gonna make a container.
So I've got some birch bark now.
And this is what I'm gonna make my container out of.
♪ ♪
So I'm taking my spruce root,
and I'm stitching this whole thing together.
♪
There-- oh, there we go.
♪ ♪
So I've cut two plugs,
a bottom and a top.
On the bottom one, what I'm going to do
is drill a series of holes
and then drive pins in those.
♪ ♪
There will still be a little bit of gap in there,
but I'm gonna do enough to make it pretty tight.
And all I want to do with this is make a handle.
This method for making a tinder box
has been used for thousands of years.
In fact, when they found Otzi the Iceman,
he was carrying one of these.
It was a really good window into the past.
♪
I think that'll work.
Turned out pretty good.
Here's my belt buckle.
[laughs]
I'll give you a close-up view of it.
This belt buckle is made out of carbon steel,
and I think I can start a fire with it.
Here's our nice little piece of quartzite that I found.
And then all we got to do is throw a spark into that.
Ooh, there, done.
Can you see the orange starting to spread in there?
♪ ♪
There we go, finally.
♪ ♪
And this is gonna make life a lot easier going forward.
♪ ♪
It's perfect.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
I'm hungry,
so I'm gonna go check the net.
Putting a net out in the water,
there's a lot of luck involved.
And so it was kind of a blow to lose
my fishing line on day one.
♪ ♪
But I need to provide food for myself,
and I know that there's going to be a period of time
when the river starts to freeze
that fishing is gonna be off the table.
Empty net.
[sighs]
No fish in it.
I'm gonna put my energy elsewhere.
♪
Oh, that's a beaver.
♪
The way we're gonna get him into bow range
is by making a bait.
And all you need to do that is a young willow full of leaves
and drop it right off the bank.
♪
He's cruising around, and he'll see it,
and he'll come to it.
♪
I see him way up there.
He's about...
Just waiting for him to make his rounds back up here.
♪
That beaver would be a great source of food right now.
He's got a lot of protein on his body,
and he's got a lot of fat.
And I'm worried that my body will
start fatiguing and becoming weaker and weaker.
♪
Still waiting for this beaver.
So I honestly don't know if he's coming back,
and I really may have messed up
by not shooting him right off the get-go.
[exhales deeply]
Boy, what a fail.
♪
I've got something I want to show you.
It is pretty cool.
Being able to store water, so I don't have to boil it
every time, is real critical,
so I've made this quiver to help me with that.
I'm gonna take my arrows out,
and they won't be carried in there anymore.
I've got another solution for carrying my arrows.
♪
I've sealed this with beeswax.
This is a brand-new quiver.
Now I'll take the rest of this water that I've boiled,
and I'll store it in here
so I can cook or boil a second batch of water.
♪ ♪
Still perfectly waterproof.
So I like that.
This is gonna be my canteen.
I think it's gonna be a great help to me.
♪ ♪
So my big thing right now is to get a bow quiver made.
♪ ♪
Every time I carry these arrows around with my bow
without them being secured, I run the risk of cutting
the string of the bow,
so I can't have that.
So I'm gonna construct a bow quiver out of my arm guard.
I've got two little sections of holes punched,
and I'm gonna cut out each of those sections
into a rectangle.
♪ ♪
Now, here's the idea--
fold this leather, make a couple of cuts,
so that the arrow clicks into the hole
through the groove made by those cuts.
The holes align.
And there's a little slit to go into each one.
It's gonna be four arrows carried in this.
I have to affix them here and here.
So to do that, I need a T-shaped branch.
I'm gonna use this wire to sew it on.
♪
Throughout my childhood, every moment
that I wasn't chopping wood, hauling water,
doing the things that off-grid living requires,
I would get away and bushcraft and dream
about being a frontiersman.
That's two.
My frontiersman adventures would take me all
over the northland, this land.
And that's where I lived in my mind.
So for me to be here in reality right now,
my mind is just tearing it up out here.
And that's why I don't want to mess it up.
♪
All right, so there's my bow quiver.
That'll make it a lot easier for me.
When I need to pull one off, it's fairly easy.
I think that'll shoot just fine.
All right.
♪
Look at that shadow.
That's the shadow of a warrior hunter.
♪ ♪
Here I go.
♪ ♪
There's still a lot of bear tracks here on the shore,
mostly a little old.
The most sign I've seen of anything,
of any animal out here besides the red squirrels,
is predators.
So wherever there's that many predators, there's big prey.
Oh cool, cool, fresh moose tracks.
Check this out.
That's a good sign.
♪
My hunting strategy is very simple.
Be opportunistic.
I really want big game.
Because if I get big game, I can relax about food.
I can do all the other stuff that this
survival life requires.
And I'm thinking, you get big game,
you win the show.
♪ ♪
Oh my gosh, far across my swamp,
I see a moose, a bull moose laying down.
It's way, way, way out there where a tip of my bow is.
If I could make a play on this moose,
oh my goodness, I'd be silly not to.
So the wind is kind of coming on to my left ear.
So I'm gonna go down the river that way,
or through the willows that way,
and keep an eye on it.
♪ ♪
I want to see if I can call out to him once I get
into a good position.
♪
I'm gonna approach it from a different side,
where the brush is thicker near it.
Just circle around it.
♪
I've got a little screen of willows between me
and it at the moment.
I'm gonna-- I think I'm gonna try
calling to it from right here.
[moose call]
And the moose just stood up.
He's looking in this direction.
♪ ♪
I think it's coming.
♪
There it is. There it is.
♪ ♪
I can't believe it. I can't believe it.
[tense music]
And the moose just stood up.
♪ ♪
There it is. There it is.
♪
I can't believe it. I can't believe it.
Oh, it's trying to go away.
♪
It's steadily walking away.
♪
[moose call]
He's just standing there.
He's unsure of what to do.
So am I.
♪ ♪
[moose call]
♪
I can tell you one thing, I'm burning up
all my calories just with my heart beating
and watching this play out.
♪ ♪
This is the hunt of my lifetime.
But it's hard to be still and not call a lot.
Maybe I'm not calling enough.
But I have a tendency to overdo things,
so I'm taking it slow.
He's stepping this way. He's stepping this way.
I would say 500 yards.
♪
Please, come to papa.
♪
[silently]
♪ ♪
♪
[moose groans]
Oh, my gosh.
It's standing there in the brush.
OK, I got another chance.
I want this moose as bad as I wanted any animal in my life.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
I can't even-- because one arrow
dropped right under its chest,
disappeared into the grass.
And my next arrow was looking perfect,
and a twig I didn't see,
about 10 feet in front of it, caught my arrow,
and I just saw it dart off to the right.
And he booked it out of there.
I've never had that much riding on an arrow shot,
never even close.
♪ ♪
I cannot describe how much I wanted that moose.
♪ ♪
That was my golden ticket right there.
That was a golden ticket.
♪ ♪
And I mucked it so bad.
♪ ♪
The feeling of defeat is deeper than I can tell you.
♪
This failure has me numb.
I mean, I've hunted enough to know
the odds and probabilities.
So I'm smart enough to know that that
was a special chance,
and it's gone.
Probably the biggest opportunity
I'll have all winter.
♪
I've got no words.
No words for today.
♪
[bleep].
Oh, there's ducks coming.
♪ ♪
Oh, ooh.
Oh, my God.
Oh no, he got off.
No, no, no, no, no, no, you're not going anywhere.
[grunts]
[coughs]
I feel kind of sick.
♪ ♪