Beaver. Oh, hell yeah.
Did I get him?
Oh, please, God, let me have gotten him.
Oh, my God, there's nothing. .
Just look what I got here.
That is a beautiful rabbit.
First rabbit, here in the Northland,
200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
Got him.
Knocked him right in the head.
I've come to realize that I'm right where I belong.
Lost my fishing line out of my backpack.
And I can't find it.
I'm worried that my body
will start becoming weaker and weaker.
I got a fish in the net. Look at that.
Check it out, people. I got a monster pike.
This is the hunt of my lifetime.
I want this moose as bad I've wanted any animal in my life.
Oh, my gosh.
Dropped about 10 feet in front of it.
I'm not tappin' out.
I'd rather die.
Here goes nothing.
Whoa!
Yes!
Holy [bleep].
This is the harshest location possible.
We're 125 miles in the Arctic Circle.
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.
Looks like I've 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.
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.
If they out here, ought to be afraid of me.
- Whoever can push through...
Wins.
I hope I've made the right choice coming out here.
Really hate to do it 'cause it's gon' be cold,
but I can't stand dirty hair.
So...
It's hair-washing time.
Oh, my goodness.
All right, this stuff here's a good abrasive stuff.
Man.
Gosh, I'm muddy.
Well, I hope that worked.
'Cause if it didn't, my hair's gon' be a mess now.
Now I'm gonna turn the camera off
and wash my other end, in private.
Feel better.
Let's run down to the fishing spot.
So I would really like to catch some fish.
My goodness.
Hey.
I believe I see that thing shaking.
Please.
There's something yanking on it,
so I'm preparing myself for battle.
All right, guys.
Oh, please.
Please, please.
Feel something.
Oh, my goodness.
Ah, I got me a fish!
Don't--you ain't going nowhere, buddy.
I'll stomp on you. I don't care.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Hey. Hey.
Gotcha.
Ah!
Yes.
That's a good-sized pike.
I'm gon' dispatch this guy.
There now. He's not going nowhere.
Heck yeah.
This'll be good for me.
I hope.
Pike is a really bony fish.
If you ain't careful, you're gonna get some bones.
I raised up eating catfish.
Oh, yeah.
Ain't hardly no bones in a catfish.
Excuse me.
I like catfish a lot better than pike.
Sorry about that, guys.
Hate to say that. It's true, though.
Small, but cozy.
All right.
If you're inland, you gotta be efficient.
I wanted my shelter to be close to resources,
like, I gotta build a stove.
There's a lot of clay and stuff at the edges of the bank
that I can haul down and use to make a stove out of.
But that's the only material that I gotta walk.
Everything else is close by.
So you're not gonna waste as much energy building it.
Also, sizing the shelter is very important
because a large shelter takes more and more energy
to heat that air volume.
I spent a few nights in a igloo.
I know what body heat can do in a small shelter.
One more trip of clay.
OK.
Whoa.
This is a skill not known by many outside of Labrador.
You look for a long, skinny stick.
And then you get a rabbit snare.
And you wind it around on the tip of the stick.
And you put the snare over his head and snare.
Let's go that way.
That's good.
One right there.
When I see a grouse, I watch and see what he's doing first.
The key to getting him is making sure
you get the stick out in front of him
so he can't fly because there's a obstacle in his way.
And then slowly try to get that noose around his neck.
Damn.
Oh!
- Oh! Oh! Oh.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I tell you, persistence-- persistence pays off.
I'll bide my time and wait for when they tame down a bit,
and then just do it again.
Gosh, I was surprised to see so many.
Good sign. Real good sign.
Over here, in my little food cache.
I got a couple different caches.
I don't store everything in one place.
That way, if something comes to one site,
they're not gonna get all of it.
Oh, see, he's going over right there.
This is a skill that a lot of people could benefit.
Maybe there's people out there that don't know how
to shoot a bow like me.
Don't move. Don't move. Don't move. Don't move.
Oh.
To show this skill that others could use
to help them in their adventures...
Yeah, get back and get this cleaned up.
Toss that out there.
Back there on that branch again.
Aah!
Ugh, failing miserably.
I'm going to add layers of debris for insulation.
An owl. Hi.
Oh, my God, you're so beautiful.
What is up with you, owl?
How magical.
Get you on video 'cause this is too frickin' awesome.
I need my glasses.
What a blessing.
What in the world are you doing awake?
I'm sure the Gwich'in have some type of meaning
associated with a visit from an owl.
Hopefully it's good.
Wow.
That was spectacular!
I'm gonna go do some foraging.
Let's go find some vetch.
My mind is blown at how well I'm foraging in the Arctic.
Hmm, there's some right over here.
Sweetvetch is an edible root.
There we go.
I'm gonna be focusing a lot on the roots.
A lot of carbohydrates in roots.
Ha! And I got it that time, the whole thing.
Yay.
The Arctic is similar to my home in Alaska.
And my foraging skills, that's gonna take me far.
Yum. That's a beast.
But I haven't gotten a single source of protein.
All right, good for now.
I am going to go over to the lake,
see if my beaver comes back.
Foraging is keeping me in the game.
But gotta get some meat.
Let's go this way.
I did try some handline fishing.
But I can't catch fish if I don't have real bait.
Sucks I missed that beaver.
But I just have to be ready.
What is that?
There's something rustling around over here.
Oh, my God.
There's grouse up in that tree.
Holy [bleep].
Crap.
Please, God.
Could really use this.
Oh, my God.
Holy crap, I got it.
Oh, my God.
Ptarmigan.
Thank you for giving your life for me
so I could sustain mine.
Wow.
This is a game changer for me.
I just got protein.
It's absolutely amazing,
this feeling of accomplishment.
He's not using his trails.
He might be gone.
I needed this.
And this is a lot of food for me.
I'm looking at this ptarmigan,
and I should have a week's worth of meals.
This is also some bait that I desperately needed for fishing.
With the innards for bait,
I'm going to have no problem getting fish from this lake.
I'm gonna make some ptarmigan soup.
Because of my ownership of a fishing lodge,
I am going to get a lot of grief
if I cannot feed myself via fishing out here.
Sauté up a little bolete and sweetvetch so I get my carbs.
If I can just store up the carbs
and keep hunting the protein, I'm gonna keep going.
Mm, the meat's good.
This bird has changed everything about this game.
Mmm.
My confidence is starting to build.
That is amazing.
I don't know if my belly hurts or if my damn back does.
Hard work, hard work.
I got a few little spots,
I can stack my extra wood in here, keep it dry.
'Cause these boughs will-- will make the water shed.
So they won't let all of it in.
And won't let all the smoke out till it hits the top.
But if not, we can redo it, you know?
I gotta stay busy all the time or...
I start thinking about my family.
And that's not good to do while you're out here.
When I first started into this adventure,
I was afraid that I was gonna have a lot of trouble,
missing home.
Now, I miss my family,
but I haven't missed it like I thought I was going to.
Cut one more stick, and we'll call it good for my crossbars.
My wife, I've been married to her for 13 years.
And I wouldn't change one minute of it.
She's a honest, good woman.
She loves the same things I do, deer hunting, fishing.
But the most important thing to me is
that's the best mama in the world, you know?
She's right up there with my mama.
That'll work.
So I'm pretty settled with everything back home.
And I really don't got nothing to worry about.
I'ma take a little break from that
and catch y'all in a little while.
Boy, I tell you, the--
the [bleep] I don't get on camera.
But...
here's my first grouse I've ever killed in my life.
I ain't gonna lie, I shot at him, like, three, four times.
I was so excited to seen him.
I--
Poom. Miss him.
Ready?
Poom. Miss him.
I snuck around like I was just gonna go around him,
like I wasn't after him.
Well, I closed the distance that way.
And when I did, I just turned back
and went, poom, like that.
And boy, I centered it, rolled him over.
So first grouse.
Now, here's my other gaiter here.
Now I'ma gonna grab ahold of him
and give him a little yank...
Just like that.
Possible to use them as, uh, arrow fletches.
Oh, my belly.
Man, my belly.
I constantly burping too.
I don't know what that's all about.
But I'm sure it's not good.
That's what's gonna happen, though.
When you playing the starving game,
you can watch yourself starve.
But when you got something going on in your belly
and you don't know what's going on,
it's a lot more concerning.
I'm scared to death that I've caught some kind of...
Beaver Fever, or beaver--
God knows what out of that damn creek over there.
I hope and pray to God it's not,
because that could get bad quick.
Right above my belly button.
It started out as a knot.
It's progressed to a burning.
And now it's a sharp pain.
Ah.
I don't really know what's going on.
Oh, I got lightheaded on that one.
All right.
Later, my friends.
I don't have my picture hanging up.
I need to get my picture hanging up.
I didn't want a photo.
Yeah, I know what my loved ones look like. I feel it.
But I didn't want to come without anything cool.
Ta-da!
The grandkids drew this for me.
Elina, age 10, drew this.
James, also known as "Monster," drew my house.
So this is my life in a nutshell; bears and home.
I miss 'em all.
But I'm doing this to better us.
A couple more months.
All righty, back to work.
Now that I have some bait,
I am going to make some gorge hooks.
I'm gonna carve a couple up.
And I'm gonna set them on a long line in the lake,
and get some type of passive protein source going.
Just looking for the right stick.
There we go.
Now that I have ptarmigan innards for bait,
I am going to fish this lake hard
and hopefully catch a bottomfish,
you know, some pike, some burbot.
In case you're not familiar with a gorge hook,
you sharpen both ends.
And a fish doesn't chew; a fish just sucks it in.
And so it goes in, and then it twists,
and it lodges down inside of the fish.
So going primitive.
And primitive is sometimes a little bit more brutal,
but usually a very successful way of fishing passively.
Love them things.
Back home, I have a family of jays
that I've been feeding for years.
I hear ya.
Ooh, that's on there good.
See it?
One of the biggest decisions we made as a family
was moving to Alaska.
OK, gorge hook number one.
We had two children, at the time, living at home,
in Central Oregon.
We had a successful masonry company.
But we had found ourselves
getting caught up in a lifestyle
of money was the most important.
And we were losing the priority of our family.
Living remote, the first couple months,
I can't believe our marriage survived.
I can't believe we physically survived.
We had to learn to-- to do it all on our own.
Just do a couple more.
But everything was about
bringing the family back together.
It's a lot easier to be focused on someone
when you go sit around a campfire
and have a river trickle behind you.
The outdoors just helped unify us.
Everything was together outside.
That's what I have going, gorge hooks.
And that's pretty cool.
I'm gonna get baited up.
In Alaska, I started to become at peace with myself as well,
which has been an ongoing battle my entire life.
Where did I put my bait?
I wrapped my bait in spruce boughs.
Oop, there it is.
Fell down again.
Oh, my God!
Did something come and eat my bait?
You ass[bleep]!
Oh, my God!
How's that even possible?
No.
Did something come and eat my bait?
This [bleep] was secure.
And I hung it.
It had to have been a damn bird.
Canadian jays?
Well, they picked it clean.
You ass[bleep]!
Needed that bait.
This is a bit of a serious setback.
Let me tend to my fire,
calm the [bleep] down.
I'm coming to the end of my bird.
And using some of my meat for bait isn't an option.
I need to eat that meat.
I cannot believe that happened.
That was a lot of bait that I desperately needed for fish.
I'll figure it out.
Stay positive and figure it out.
It's all I can do.
I've spent my life beating myself down.
And it comes to life when I make mistakes--
See if I could flush a grouse or ptarmigan
out of this row of spruce.
Out here, when something goes wrong,
it's going to bring that battle to the forefront.
If I don't improve on it out here, it's gonna break me.
What is that?
Are those boletes?
God, they're huge!
Wow.
I have never in my life
come across a bolete batch like this.
I'm gorging myself on mushrooms.
Unbelievable.
My daughter and my granddaughter,
they have picked up behaviors from me...
Oh, my God, there's another bolete patch.
The insecurity, the inability to make a mistake.
Unbelievable.
I need to show them that it's OK to make mistakes.
It doesn't make you less than.
In fact, it makes you stronger that you could push through.
Just keep trying. Don't give up.
That one's beautiful.
Wow.
Unbelievable!
Large amount of food.
I am focused on making sure my thoughts stay positive.
No luck on the birds.
But we'll figure that out later.
Uh, I'm about to get up.
Been lying around a lot today, not feeling too good.
I've got a burning ball of fire in my belly.
I got some worries on my mind but--
We'll see how they work out, I guess.
You can't plan on everything.
You can't say, "Well, today is a good day to feel bad"
or "Today is a good day to feel good."
happens,
and you just gotta deal with it as you get to it.
All right.
Let's nibble on a little bit of grouse.
I'm not hungry at all.
But I'm not gonna let it waste.
There's so much more to see, to do, to experience here.
So I need to keep pushing through.
I'm just gonna go ahead and force myself to eat.
God.
I will not kill nothing else until this gets settled.
All right.
My stomach feels like [bleep].
We're gonna go for us a little walkabout.
Maybe it'll stretch out or something.
Still burns.
It's got me worried to death...
If this is something serious.
Oh, God.
Makes it hard to walk.
I'm gon' turn this off.
I ain't gon' make y'all watch me suffer.
All right, guys.
I'm gonna reveal...
my worries that I've had
for the last couple days
because they're not getting better.
I've hid it...
and it's embarrassing.
But I haven't used the bathroom in ten days.
The burning pain, it's not getting better.
I mean, what am I gonna get out of it?
Possibly put in the hospital, possibly surgery.
This is one of the hardest things
I've ever done in my life.
I'm throwing something away that I'll never get back.
This is Dusty.
I'm officially tap--
I'm officially tappin' out.
I don't know if it's nerves or what's going on,
if I ate the wrong kind of berries or something,
but I haven't... went to the bathroom in ten days.
And I've got a ball of fire right here.
My wife said she didn't care how long I stayed,
just come home in one piece.
And, uh, I'd rather walk out now
instead of y'all carrying me out.
I'll have to live without the money.
I have for 35 years.
I'm just proud that I've actually
went on the adventure, like, got out.
This is the first time I've ever been...
anywheres in life.
Uh, means a lot to me.
I'm very glad that I come out here to attempt this.
I wish it would have went better for me.
But I don't need the money.
As long as I got my family, I'm happy.
But this place,
it's made me open my eyes to a lot of stuff.
You know, I always said, "Where I was born,
it's just the perfect place for me."
But I was living in my dream world.
This place is beautiful.
It's just true wild.
It shows me that there is a lot more out there
than just my home.
I think, at least once a year,
that me and my family needs to make plans
on going different places,
seeing different things,
and enjoying life a little bit more.
So I may have tapped,
but I didn't lose.
Oh, yeah, look at this.
Do the happy dance this morning.
Whoo-hoo.
Well, oh, down to the bare buff
and enjoy the sun.
Oh, yeah.
I got a nice bit of work done with the stove.
Really happy with that.
Looking forward to grouse.
Oh, yeah.
Right now, I'm sweating more 'cause I'm working harder.
And staying dry out here is gonna be key
for staying here long-term.
You don't wanna get no sores on your feet
or anything, no chafes.
I only got two pairs.
And so I really enjoy taking clothes off
and drying everything out as much as I can.
But it's also a mental thing.
I'm not, like, a overly religious person.
I like to follow certain customs and things
that my grandmother taught me, but...
Oh, my legs is getting cold.
I got a good food cache up there on the hill.
I'll get the grouse in a second,
do my cooking.
Oh.
What the frig?
This, right here, is not
something I was expecting to see.
Look at that.
Feathers...
feathers.
Oh, my God.
.
Empty.
Feathers.
Greedy bugger. Never left a scrap.
Food, out here, I think the only safe place
is in your belly.
It's one thing, getting food.
But looking after it is almost a bigger challenge.
Sometimes I succeed.
And I thought this was one of the safest places I had.
I think about how little I've eaten over the last week.
And I feel hungry.
But I don't feel, like, hunger pains.
But I'm getting sick of berries.
I need some meat.
Nothing, except a big tangle.
I think something got in it and got out.
Pretty big disappointment.
I'm going to move it to another spot.
I've gotta find some deeper water, I think.
My dad used to say, "Life is a series of choices.
"When something doesn't work, you move on to something else.
Never give up trying."
My father was a civil engineer.
When I was a toddler, he would take me to work with him.
He'd be running a survey crew through the woods,
and he'd just turn me loose.
I learned all of the sounds of nature.
I observed animals.
Nice and easy.
I'd come home with a pet...
Like a fox.
And my dad would let me hang on to it for a little while.
And then he'd say, "OK, it's time to put 'em back."
All right, we'll see what happens.
That's what laid the foundation
for pretty much everything I enjoy in life.
So I'm going to leave it in overnight.
It's a little bit deeper there than in other places around me.
All right. On to laundry.
So what I'm gonna do to wash my clothes,
I'm just gonna boil 'em.
I can't fit--
I can't fit a sweater in a two-quart pot.
But I can wash my underwear in there.
I can't believe that I didn't catch anything today.
But you just... go on to the next thing.
My dad had a deep understanding
of the importance
of letting somebody scrape their knee, fall down,
and pick themselves back up.
This'll burn better.
He didn't coddle me
and encouraged me to go out into the unknown.
I forgot to bring gloves.
I learned, in survival,
things are never going to go the way you plan.
All right, now we're finally boiling.
So I think what I'll do
is just drop them in there for a minute.
Aah, [bleep]!
All right, now we're finally boiling.
Aah, [bleep]!
Well, that was smart.
Burned both hands.
It's weird. It, like, took the...
Top layer of skin off.
It's getting swollen.
Kind of numb, actually.
Usually when I take my pot off of the fire,
I use a leather glove.
But I left my glove up at camp.
So I took a handful of grass and wadded it up
and used that as a oven mitt.
When I did that, the handle of my pot scorched
its way through the grass and into my hand.
That made me spill that pot of water straight onto my hand.
All right.
Lesson in... doing laundry in the sticks is
don't burn your frickin' hand.
Stupid.
Quit being such a baby, Jake.
What's the matter, never you--
never had a third-degree burn before?
Oh, man.
This is gonna be a lot of fun out here,
trying to shoot my bow with that.
Pa-chow.
One careless act.
So I need to wrap pretty much the whole half of my hand.
My hand is really starting to ache now.
But I am not going to stop working.
What I learned most from my dad
is that it's OK to be uncomfortable.
And you're capable of doing very difficult things
if you just make the decision that you can grit your teeth
and put up with pain and put yourself aside.
About seven years ago,
he went in for a cataract surgery.
And surgery went fine.
And he was in the recovery room.
And his heart stopped.
And I got a phone call from my mom.
And so I jumped in my car.
And they were doing CPR on him.
And no matter what they did,
they couldn't get him jumpstarted again.
After a half an hour of that, my mom and I had a talk,
and we told the doctors to let him go.
And I held my dad while he passed away.
And I think about this situation that I'm in.
And I want to be my father's son.
And so no matter what, I'm just gonna tough it out.
OK.
Pretty demoralizing.
Making mistakes out here is not sustainable.
But anyway, I'm done thinking about it.
This is my perch.
It's as high as I can get around here.
And I come down and I stand here.
And I survey everything around me,
but especially over there,
where a moose could be likely to be...
Across that waterway, right over there.
The feeling of defeat that settled in was beyond words.
I've never wanted an animal in my life
as much as I wanted that bull moose.
To increase my chances of getting a moose,
I've been getting out into the edges of the meadow,
where I've seen moose tracks cross.
Instinct is just telling me,
get there to where the moose are every morning.
Nothing. All's quiet.
Hm.
All right.
My plan today is to try to get a gill net in the water.
There we go.
I'm really gonna try to harness the power of the river
to bring me food.
I believe that the river could bring me as much meat
as a moose carries on its feet.
So I'm going long on river techniques and tactics
and waiting for opportunities on big game.
Happy birthday, Elliot.
This gill net, which I'm making on your birthday,
will be your part of this adventure.
And it'll be a good part.
I have faith that this'll really help to feed me.
One big reason I want to do this is for my kids.
Levi's the oldest. He's nine years old.
Elliot is six years old. He turned six today.
One stitch at a time.
This, right here, takes a while.
My boys' view of me scares me sometimes
because, unfortunately, they think I'm perfect.
And I want my kids to fully know me.
I want them to be able to see me
in ways that they wouldn't get to otherwise.
We tend to hide our own struggles from our kids
because we're trying to help them with theirs.
And they may lose something because of that.
But I know that I'll struggle out here.
And I want them to see that.
And I want them, at the end of the day,
to be made stronger by it,
and know that they fully know me
and have seen me struggle and fall flat on my face and fail,
but get up and face the next day.
That's enough gillnetting for tonight.
I didn't get it done. A little disappointed.
But I'm gonna go run the fish lines and look around.
Three more rows to tie tomorrow.
I'm just checking some fish lines,
quickly, before night.
And I hope like crazy to have a fish on one of 'em.
But from here, they all look slack.
I didn't have the camera rolling.
Look at this baby!
Yes!
He's huge.
I love it!
All right, let's check these other lines.
Oh, yeah, there's a fish on there.
Come to Papa.
Come, come, come, come, come.
Yes!
Yeah!
Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful fish.
Tonight we feast.
I'm almost overwhelmed by how much food I just got
in the last 30 minutes.
Happy birthday, Elliot.
Oh boy.
I have a big nosebleed.
And I'm trying to collect it all
until it stops so I can throw the leaves in the fire,
and the blood will not be here to attract bears.
It's weird. I haven't had a nosebleed since I was a kid.
Plug that baby up.
The bears will smell it and be like,
"The hunter that lives here,
"if he bleeds, he can be killed.
He's a mere mortal after all."
All right, I think it's stopping.
Yeah, it might be stopped.
OK, to work.
I know what I shall do.
Shelter logs.
I have food security for a couple days.
So my instincts are telling me that
it's time to build a home.
I have to finally select a site
that I'm gonna try to put a shelter in here
because it was a lot colder last night.
And a lot colder weather will be coming soon.
All right, it's time to start cutting trees for my home.
I considered so many different shelter designs for this.
And ultimately, what it's governed by
is the materials that I see.
The materials that I see are huge logs.
So I'm gonna be making a typical lean-to.
That's not good for your back.
You might ask me,
"Timber, why are you using such big trees?
"Use smaller ones.
They're more energy efficient to cut."
Well, you're right. And I'd love to.
There just aren't, but, like, six,
and I've cut them.
It's not the right way to conserve energy.
But it's what I have to do.
I'm basically building the attic of a cabin,
with a wall in the back that's gonna be my fireplace.
As I'm building, I know
that it's not smart to use materials this big.
But I know that my body can build and build
and build things for a long time.
From my upbringing, we survived largely
by what we could grow in gardens.
I remember a couple of years that
we had a seven-acre field of corn.
And two of my brothers and I had to take hoes,
just work that seven-acre field,
the whole seven acres,
several times each summer with a hoe.
We're talking seven-year-old boys,
eight-year-old boys, you know?
That's a daunting task.
That'll teach you fortitude.
Silas...
if God'll let you see what's going on down here...
I wish you were right here with me right now, dude.
'Cause you'd really like this land.
My youngest brother drowned in June 2001.
And that became such a loss for my family.
One of the last things I did with my little brother
was take him deer hunting and he killed his first deer
with a recurve bow. And he was so happy.
We won't make another one of those memories together.
We won't go hunting again.
So I have this struggle going on in my mind.
So I've got you here in my heart, buddy.
Couldn't ask for a better brother than you.
Here in the Arctic, the solitude is different.
And I've spent time in very desolate places
in the mountains in Central Asia, very alone.
But in the brain,
it's different than being here.
Every barrier in your mind, it crashes down.
And you have to face things
that you've never processed fully.
Thoughts out here will tear up your mind
'cause it's so quiet out here.
And so I'm wrestling with those.
And I'm trying to put those thoughts in the background.
But at the end of the day, that's tough.
No one around to hear me...
except God and the wilderness.
Look at my fortress!
Gotta redress my burn.
I can't do 60% of what I was doing.
It's really important
that stuff does not get in there right now.
If bacteria were to get in there and I got infected,
this show'd be over.
Fighting infection out here is pretty unlikely.
OK.
Fresh new mummy hand.
Oh.
All right, let's go see if there's anything in the net.
Having my hand burned, I can't shoot my bow,
which means that I really need to rely on fish.
When you step into nature,
everything else is stripped away
and you are a vulnerable animal.
Having that ego stripped away from me
is how I can start building from ground zero
and become a better person.
OK, fishies.
Are you in here at all?
I don't believe it.
There's a pike in my net.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, there's two!
Oh, my gosh!
Holy crap.
I am on such a high right now.
Got him.
My net finally produced.
Look at that pike.
That is food.
I'm feeling really confident.
That is a big boy.
I'm gonna process these pike
and put the net back in the water
and keep the fish coming in.
All I had to do was move my net to the right spot.
This is awesome.
This is a turning point for me.
Everything is going to be different now.
I'm just gonna do a simple smoker.
I just want to get these fish smoked real quick
'cause I am hungry.
After my dad passed,
I went through a period of confusion,
of stepping into the unknown.
I went through a divorce, a very dark period of my life.
I had to make a decision.
And that decision was, who are you going to be?
Are you going to be your father's son?
Or are you going to let this beat you?
It wasn't an immediate decision.
It took me being able to find my path again.
And of all of my interests, all of my hobbies,
for me, fatherhood is my life's purpose.
Oh, look at the fat in that.
My kids have watched me
go through some very trying times.
This is so good.
The reason that I'm out here is because of how tough it is.
And if they can see me do this
and be successful,
I don't think I could ever ask for anything more valuable
to teach my kids as a father.
Mm, I've never gotten emotional over food before.
Today was a good day.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
Look at that, right there.
That will strengthen me today.
That's a good breakfast.
Thank you, God, for this delicious fish
that you keep on giving me.
Keep 'em coming.
You know, when I take a minute to not be stressed out
about what has to be done or whatever,
I realize that things are going really well.
I've got meat.
My shelter's well on its way to completion.
And I'm still alone in the Arctic.
And I love it.
This is gonna be another gorgeous day.
It's a gift from God... to prepare for winter.
Gonna make the best of it.
Sounded like the gait of a moose.
I heard something walking right out here.
And then the owl tried to chase me away again.
So I threw a few sticks off at it to shoo it off.
And I'ma peek my head out here and see what's out here,
if anything.
I definitely heard something.
Oh, my goodness.
I see a moose, over in the far distance.
There. It's right there.
Yeah, it's just standing there right now.
God, please help me kill this moose now.
I think this smoke's starting to make my head
go a little bit wrong.
- What the heck?
Hey.
Oh, my God.
It's about 60 yards away right now.
Everything for me this season could come down to this.
- They're really close.
I don't want to get my face eaten off.