[dramatic music]
♪
- How's that?
No, no, no, no, no.
[bleep].
That was five days of food I just lost.
Holy [bleep], that's a moose.
Oh, I just can't see.
It's really dark.
If he stays in the area, we might be able to draw him out.
- Got two spruce grouse.
I had doubt I would be able to hunt
to be able to feed myself out here.
See if I can get that beaver.
My confidence is starting to build.
Kind of looks badass to me.
I am a fighter.
[dramatic music]
[water splashing]
- Ooh, getting up there on shore.
Yeah!
Securing him for another couple days.
My cache is working good.
Everything moves here is trying to steal your food.
So you've got to protect it very well.
♪
- Coming up to the kill site.
The moose rib cage is gone.
That's all that's left.
Bear has been on the kill.
How long is it before he says, I'm going to go
get whatever that is in camp?"
It's my territory.
My territory.
[dramatic music]
♪
- I'm not tapping out.
I'd rather die.
♪
- [breathing shakily]
Here goes nothing.
Whoa!
Deuce!
Holy [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 I 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.
[bear grunts] - 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.
[yells]
- 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--
- Anything out here ought to be afraid of me.
--whoever can push through--
[groans]
- --wins.
- I hope I made the right choice coming out here.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- It's cold.
It's just a degree or two above freezing
because there's little pieces of ice in the grass
that just won't quite melt.
It's right about at the freezing point.
Winter's closing in.
Got to embrace it.
Let's go check fish lines.
♪
We're going to really work the fish lines.
I need to catch a bunch of fish before the ice happens
on the river because then I won't be able to fish
till I can get out on the ice.
Oh, my goodness.
Check this line first.
There's something on there.
Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish.
Fish.
Yes, fish.
Fish.
Whoo-hoo. Whoo-hoo.
[laughs]
Check that out.
Look at this fish.
That's about a 24--
28 incher, something like that.
All right.
It's-- the hook is down its throat,
so I'm going to have to--
no, the hook is right here at his lip.
Yeah, I could potentially keep this one fresh.
I might do that, put it on a stringer.
Let me see.
Get my pliers out and try to remove the hook.
Yes, he's unhooked.
So what I do, I put this piece of wire
just through the bottom jaw
right where the hook was, basically.
There. There.
Now, I'll tie it closed and just let him shove off.
I want to get him way out there.
So I've got it on a pole to make sure he's OK.
Sometimes when you pinch them behind the head like that,
they go to sleep for a while.
And you've got to wake them up.
Oh, yeah, he's good.
He's all good.
All right, you can go out in the river.
These stringers have been awesome
for me to keep fish fresh.
I put it on poles because then the fish can get out there
in deeper water and go down deep,
because if not, the eagles will see them and get them.
I am going to eat some lunch.
Thank you, God.
You keep putting fish on my lines, I'll keep eating them.
I'm living almost entirely on fish right now.
I have my moose meat smoked.
Really not sure all the nutritional value
of smoked moose meat, especially stuff
that's over smoked, like a lot of mine.
This is my day-30 celebration, fish fried in moose lard.
Oh, am I looking forward to this meal.
I'm living on fish because I'm catching them at the moment.
[twig snaps]
I heard a noise.
But I think it's just a bird in the tree there.
♪
[whispering] I did hear a noise.
I think there's a fish on this other line.
♪
I don't know why I didn't just take the camera down with me
when I heard the noise.
That's so stupid of me.
You gotta come see this.
I've put it on this stringer.
I'm going to pull it in just to show
you what I caught when I got up and said, I heard that noise.
[water splashing]
Look at this.
Whoa, dude.
Look at this fish right here, man.
Look at this fish.
That's awesome. That's awesome.
All right, buddy.
Get out there and live.
Let me put the stringer out there.
♪
Wow, thank you, God, for all this fish I'm getting.
That's enough for days.
He's on a stringer.
If I butcher it and stick it in my box,
everything, mice, weasels, everything is after it.
It's not the big predators that have given me any problems.
It's the small ones.
And there's so many of them.
[bird wings fluttering]
♪
Dang.
Oh, shoot.
You guys, just while I was doing that,
a gray jay swooped down--
I forgot about this.
You can't turn your back for a second--
grabbed a piece of my fish.
Thankfully, I got here just as he was
trying to make off with it.
I'm going to go wash this piece off and throw it in real quick.
That gray jay, gray jay, you are--
you are making yourself an enemy.
♪
- Yeah, it looks pretty bright out there.
[yawns]
It's too cozy here.
I'm going to lie back a little bit longer.
It looks kind of bright out.
Just trying to reduce calorie expenditures now.
[yawns]
So a bit too much.
Can't continue on that trend, for sure.
Anyhow, taking one day at a time.
♪
Well, I must say, that was a cozy sleep.
We got a fine day in the making here.
Look at this.
Look at all the frost on the ground.
Winter's coming.
I'm going to start off with a real good breakfast.
We got fish in the cache.
Let's go see.
Yes, sir.
Well, I got stuff to do, and let's eat.
The sun is nice, real nice.
♪
This is going to be a good breakfast, I tell you that.
- Oh, God, this is good.
Bit of sunshine.
- Look at that deer.
Hey.
Pine marten going for my food.
He's clung on there.
You have gotta be freaking kidding me.
Relentless.
Little Sassy is making my life difficult.
Oh, that was the safest place I had.
Sassy.
My God.
Sassy!
Oh, my God.
[dramatic music]
- God.
Sassy!
Chewing me out.
Oh, my God.
That was close.
This food is too important.
I'll take it over to my kitchen.
Man, oh, man, oh man, unbelievable.
♪
As soon as you let your guard down,
something takes advantage of it here.
- I'm telling you, man, critters, unreal.
Whew.
- Oh, wake-up call again.
Oh, boy.
Bloody murder.
Sassy had it all softened up for me.
Body is going to work to keep warm, burn off calories.
So as food gets scarcer, that kind of stuff
plays an even bigger role.
♪
[tense music]
- Sucking all this fat off, skin, there's some.
♪
- You gotta be kidding me.
Something is in my food cache.
Look how chewed away this half of fish is.
It's all chewed away.
Something's in there.
It's got to be mice.
I can't keep food from stuff for even one night out here.
Crazy.
I have to build a second food cache because the cold storage
one that I made is not good for keeping
stuff in through the winter.
Now, I'm going to saw up pieces from my old cooler box
for my new cache.
I've decided to build a Roland-style food
cache on the ground rather than up in the trees.
[grunts]
It is wet and heavy.
I've concluded that it'll take less work,
possibly offer just as good of protection.
So the less-work option is very good right now.
I've decided to build my ground cache here
underneath a big overhang tree in a spot that's
dry in spite of all the rain.
I'm not sure how far I'll get on it today.
I'm sure I won't get finished.
But here goes.
It has to be totally moisture-proof,
be bear-proof, mouse, weasel, and mink-proof,
everything-proof out here.
Now I'm going to use my fish weir panels
for the floor.
Ice up's not far away.
So food cache just in time to throw food in it
and have it be frozen.
The weather is going to get cold,
and the meat is going to keep.
I'm sure of that.
But I'm trying to figure out, how can I
keep it from these animals?
Now, it's my hope
that I can put this moose hide in my box
like a liner with this flesh side out.
Little critters, mice that have been plaguing me
will come up and chew on this.
But I hope they won't chew holes through it.
But I've got one hole right here.
A mouse could run through there with a truck.
It's the hole the arrow went through.
So I'm going to sew it up with some wire
before I put this over there.
So I'm going to be using this.
You can see that it's a very thin, delicate awl.
And that's what I'm going to use to sew this.
[tense music]
♪
There we go.
That'll be good.
Now I'm going to bind the wire in there.
Mice are doing-- little stuff like that is doing more damage
to my food supply than bears and stuff
you'd typically think about.
You're watching the TV show, you're like,
oh, a bear's going to get his food.
Uh-uh.
Fricking mice are going to get it.
But I've made my cache strong out of logs
so that a bear, if he does happen along,
will also be disappointed.
[grunts]
♪
Now, that's the main box of my food cache.
Now, look down in here.
I'm going to put my food in here, my jerky, on that hair.
The hair should keep the dry jerky nice
and help absorb any moisture.
Now I intend to make the lid.
Back to cutting up trees.
♪
I see it coming together.
I think I'll have a good place to put my food.
[wood cracking]
♪
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a food cache.
Almost ready.
One locking bar across the top into two notches on the trees.
That's what she lacks.
Tired and done for the day.
♪
- Look at that owl right there.
It's so in hunting mode right now.
It's seeing my feet as targets.
[hoots]
That was awesome.
♪
Damn, dude.
How about that?
We're going to check the gill net.
I need to go get some more clothes on, though,
because it's cold.
♪
♪ I'm going to cross my fingers ♪
♪ For a bigger fish in the gill net ♪
'Cause that means, hmm...
We have a lot more food.
And we can just smoke fish without any
of the stress of worrying whether we're going to have it
or not, eh?
If I would have seen that moose an hour earlier in the day,
we would be eating moose backstrap.
Also, had I not lost that fish, I'd probably
be eating pike right now.
That would have made things so freaking easy.
Can't be making mistakes.
This is not the place for that.
[bleep].
The river's looking low.
It's certainly not ideal depth.
There's nothing in that gill net.
All right, we got to start fishing immediately.
♪
There's clearly something up with the water levels.
They're just dropping fast, inches per day.
Hope we get a big one.
Our pike scraps are getting really, really rank, man.
♪
If these pike are gone, we have to adapt to a new strategy.
And I don't know what that is yet.
Please, pike, we need you today.
I don't really want to adapt.
I want pike to keep coming.
Good spot right there.
I want to keep grinding.
And hopefully, I can avoid my food supply dwindling down.
Here we go.
Can't quit today, man.
Everything is on the line here.
No pun intended.
[whispering] I thought I heard something over here.
♪
Oh, it's right there, dude.
♪
There's a [bleep] moose crossing the river
right in front of me.
Look at that moose right there.
♪
Oh, my freaking God.
♪
[dramatic music]
- Oh, my freaking God.
♪
Get another chance, huh?
That is straight across the river from me, too.
I just got to sit still.
As soon as it gets past me, I'm going to try to run up the hill
and then call it across.
♪
I could probably hit it from here,
but let's try to call it across in a second.
♪
Please cross. Please cross.
♪
[bleep].
♪
There we go.
I gotta try to stay with this moose,
to see if he crosses this river.
And when it does, I'm going to haul ass
and try to get into position.
♪
I'm going to call this moose across this river.
♪
[moose call]
♪
[bleep].
That thing does not care, man.
♪
It's going up in.
That's probably it--
for the moose.
♪
That thing is gone, long gone.
Big moose rolls out right across the river from me.
I know I could hit it, but it would not
be the most ethical shot because I don't know how much
penetration I'd get on it.
And to recover that, I would have
to build a raft or a boat or something to cross the river.
I don't have energy to build a boat.
I don't have a free tarp.
I don't have the resources to do that.
So I could never get it.
It's frustrating, watching the meat truck roll in front of me
while I'm here struggling.
♪
Man, that moose was just rubbing it in my face, dude.
It's like, nah, nah, nah.
You can't get fish.
Nah, nah, nah.
Can't get me because I'm on the other side of the river.
Still possible I could have something like that happen
on this side of the river.
Snowing.
Would you look at that?
♪
Would you just look at that?
Day 31, moose crossing,
fish no biting, snow flying,
winter beginning.
♪
[wind howling]
♪
- So winter arrived, obviously,
and it's snowing pretty good still.
And it looks like it could continue all day.
The sky just looks absolutely socked in with snow clouds.
[snow crunching]
Oh, my goodness.
[whispering] Moose right there.
How cool is that?
[laughs] Yes.
Yes, I got it
for Levi and Elliot, some really good moose footage.
♪
- Woke up with the surprise of snow.
And it was a feeling of joy
because there's contestants in this game
who don't live around snow.
Moving to remote Alaska, I'm used to working
in a winter environment.
I know how to handle myself in the cold weather extremes,
so excited about the snow.
- Look at that, first drink of snow for the year.
- Good morning, everybody.
Welcome to winter.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Oh, man, it makes me miss home.
[laughs]
Oh, freeze up in the snow
and wood stove and hot beverages
and donuts and cookies, stew and bread and butter.
Oh, God, this snow makes me miss home.
I hope it makes everybody else miss home
in a different sort of way.
There's snow on the ground.
This is going to complicate, and this is going to help.
So let's go with the positive.
I can now go out, and I can find animal sign.
I've got a bow.
See if we got any new tracks around.
I think I do have an advantage when it comes to weather.
Alaska is the last frontier.
And that's my happy place.
It could be slick.
So slow, steady.
It looks like we got a little ice on the edge of
the lake here.
Oh, what are you doing out, little muskrat?
It's past your bedtime, cutie.
Is that because your beaver's all snared up somewhere,
and you don't know what to do?
That'd be pretty awesome.
The outdoor lifestyle in remote Alaska
is exactly who I was meant to be.
The longer I'm out there, the more
I've been able to become confident in myself.
Well, she's not snared up here.
I credit Alaska for my healing process.
It's a lot easier to be focused on someone
when you take the walls away and you
go sit around a campfire.
It's a lot easier to interact with your kids
when you put a fishing rod in their hand
and you teach them to fly fish.
It gave me an inner peace I'd never found in the city.
I've not seen a sign of any other animal
through these little woods I've walked through.
All righty, let's go check the long line.
♪
Oh, come on.
Please, please, please.
No fish.
[bleep].
But I'm not giving up.
Please, God, guide me on a successful hunt.
My body and my soul needs the nourishment.
♪
[bleep].
I'm going to turn around.
Just don't have the strength like before.
My body's starting to degrade.
You know, I'm not feeding it right.
I may go to bed every night with food in my stomach,
but it's not protein.
A lot of fear of where the next real meal
is going to come from.
So this positive of the snow,
not feeling real positive about it right now.
♪
Oh.
You know, one part of the plan I did follow through on
was forage, forage, forage.
I have a limited time to forage.
Don't waste that time.
So--
I'm glad I-- I'm glad I did that.
I have a food cache for the winter, mushrooms,
berries, root vegetables.
And hopefully, I can just store up the carbs
and keep hunting the protein.
It's going to be OK.
I am going to be OK.
I have faith.
It may not be on my timetable, but I'll be OK.
I know that.
God will watch over me.
God will get me this-- this food source I need.
It'll be OK.
♪
- That was mink.
Guess where he was headed.
To my food cache.
Guess what.
He cannot get in.
[laughs]
Makes me want to laugh.
I have meat stored in there.
So I've been taking the risk for the last couple of days
that a wolverine or a bear won't come.
I'm not taking the risk anymore.
Right now, I'm going to secure this.
So what I have to have
is a log across the top
that goes into a notch in this tree and a notch in this tree.
With the log over it and a wedge down there,
I don't think anything will be able to tear it out.
[footsteps crunching]
♪
The awesome thing about these temperatures dropping
like they are is that I can now start to haul in my fish,
and they'll keep for me.
And that's going to just boost my food cache.
It's going to boost my longevity.
I've got the log I want.
Now we lay it across here and put some marks on the tree.
But at the same time, there's a little anxiety.
The snow is starting to stick.
It feels like I'm on a set of railroad tracks.
And I start to feel a rumble.
And I don't know what's coming around the bend
because I don't know how bad winter is going to be.
But I know I'm staying for it.
It's hard to get it square up in there
without damaging the top lip.
I know my wife is at home praying every day for me
here being well and safe.
All right, let's see if that'll go in.
Probably have to do a little trimming somewhere.
My wife, Kara, is incredible.
She's also a passionate humanitarian worker,
a linguist.
And we work well together.
All right, now, watch this.
I'm going to drive this wedge in.
She's tamed me because I was a feral animal creature.
She's made me much less weird.
[laughs]
She's my interface with what people mean
and what they say with the human species.
She's taught me so much.
Now I've got to wedge this side, over here.
We've had a long-distance relationship
at various times, when I've been
gone to a different country for a long time.
And the most amazing thing about her
is that instead of making her hate me,
we've been drawn closer together.
And I find that when we come back and compare notes
that we went on the same mental journey
across all those miles.
And it's just amazing how cosmically two souls like that
could find each other.
Yeah.
Food cache, done, totally done.
Food can be safe.
We don't have to worry, sleep there at night,
thinking, the world might blow down,
bears might come,
food's unmovable, steadfast.
♪
I need to get my fish cut up and put in there.
♪
Oh, no, it's icing up at the river.
If I catch fish on there, they'll cut my lines
on the edges of the ice.
So I need to clean those fish.
Fat from the moose, that's limited.
So all the fish that I'm catching, that's essential.
♪
Is this string busted?
♪
[bleep].
♪
[dramatic music]
There's an issue here.
My stringer with my biggest fish is gone.
That fish had seven meals on it.
I have no idea what happened.
It's like the whole stick is gone.
Man!
That's a blow.
That was a lot of food.
Oh, man.
The ground is frozen, so there's no tracks of any type.
I don't know if something chewed it off.
I had it fastened on with full paracord.
Maybe an otter came and ripped it loose or something.
♪
That's a real disappointment.
This stringer appears still there.
I'm going to make sure that fish is there.
♪
Wait, I think this one's--
this one's gone too.
No!
♪
No, it's not.
It's still there.
Good, good, good, good.
♪
Well, I've lost one huge fish here, guys.
I've lost one huge fish.
And that's a blow to the food budget there.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm not going to leave that fish
out there on that stringer.
I can guarantee you that.
♪
I'm assuming the other contestants are
catching just as many fish because they've
all got hooks and nets.
Maybe some of them have the whole winter supply.
This competition could last forever.
So I can't afford to get fish and then lose it.
All right, now I'm going to go get this in my food cache
quick before the gray jays get it.
Guys, this is how cold it is.
This fish is frozen,
frozen already.
So grateful for this food cache.
♪
- We're going to go all over the place today.
And if we hunt something, we hunt something.
If we set snares, we set snares, whatever happens.
Let's get moving.
I bet that's really bright for you.
How about that?
Oh, boy, it is cold out.
I've been thinking about Christmas so much.
Maybe it's because that's the time when I hang out
with the most people, usually.
And I kind of want to hang out with people.
♪
All right, let's check our rabbit snares.
I got bullied a lot.
A lot of people can't really understand what it
feels like to go through that.
I've become quite calloused.
And I don't rely on too many people.
- Sure would be a good day to have
a moose swim across the river in front of me.
It's just safer for me to be a hermit and to just say,
[bleep] off, society, I'll do it by myself.
But there's definitely times I do crave
to be around people.
[whispering] Cold as hell out here.
I look at all of my friends and sisters
and stuff, that have kids, and I was like, damn, dude,
when I die, what am I going to have?
Nothing.
Empty.
It's not very easy for people to make it in through my walls
at this point.
Mentally, I trust myself to keep myself happy,
and I know there's no sudden pain coming.
Now, this is some fresh beaver sign.
Look at that beaver slide right there.
So they walk up here
to chew on stuff.
This looks like a damn den to me.
♪
That-- that's enough activity for me to set a trap.
I'm going to use all the wire I have.
I don't have a ton,
but I think I have 15 feet of strong beaver wire.
So I'm going to use every bit of it.
♪
Beavers are big freaking animals full of fat.
Oh, right about there, I'd say.
Having a beaver would be equivalent to having
a huge pot roast in my shelter.
I would love that.
That's going to be a damn strong stake.
I'll tell you what.
That's hard wood right there.
And I'm going to try to take advantage of it.
This is what we needed today to get a little wind
beneath our wings, man.
Holy [bleep].
[dramatic music]
[water splashing]
[grunts]
Well, that's [bleep] stupid.
♪
Oh, dude.
All right, I just [bleep] fell in the water.
I'm really [bleep] close to hypothermia already.
Oh, [bleep].
That's so stupid.
I got to get this thing set.
Swimming in an ice-cold lake in the Arctic
is about the worst thing you could have happen.
All right, that should do it.
I got to [bleep] go.
My boots are full--
[sighs]
--completely full.
My pants are soaked.
Everything is soaked.
I gotta go pretty close to a mile.
And I need to get there really, really fast.
This is so bad.
This is so [bleep] bad.
[breathing heavily]
♪
Try to get my shoes light as I can--
♪
--before I [bleep] haul ass out of here.
I am pretty screwed, dude.
And there's no good way out of here, man.
♪
Damn, I don't have my firesteel on me.
So I can't even start a fire.
♪
[footsteps crunching]
[grunts]
That's what-- that's what the beginning stages
of hypothermia look like.
And after that, you're looking at [bleep] death.
So watch close.
♪
Just [bleep] let me walk through here, man.
♪
Dude, drained.
Now I'm literally lost in an alder thicket.
And I've not made it any place because, like,
right there looks like where I started walking from.
Holy [bleep].
That's the edge of the lake right there, dude.
Frick.
Dude.
♪
Just gotta ease our way out--
♪
--this direction.
♪
How did this happen?
♪
A little bit more this way.
[footsteps crunching]
Damn close to home.
♪
[grunts]
[exhales sharply]
Oh, my God.
Every step is, like, excruciating.
♪
I'm just going to go really slow.
♪
We made it back.
So I'm going to get some--
get indecent in my shelter and get this fire going.
I'll talk to you guys when I get my clothes changed.
♪
We're home.
Home, sweet home.
♪
Get a load of that,
steam coming off my silkness.
You spend your entire life being alone
and being a hermit, and when it's all said
and done and you're on your deathbed,
how are you going to feel if you're all by yourself?
The thought of dying alone is a pretty miserable thought.
[grunts]
Holy crap.
Holy crap, dude.
I love the thought of being home and hanging
out with my family and stuff.
But I probably also love the thought
of a half a million dollars.
So I'm just gonna hang in there.
And then I can have both.
Can't wait till all this clothes is--
dried out.
It's going to be a while.
♪
- Oh, good morning. Good morning.
I said I'm not going to be in no rush today.
I got my-- most of my, like, big work done on beaver
sets yesterday.
So I didn't want to go over and spook
the beavers away from them.
So I said, I'm just going to sleep in a bit longer.
But now I'm going to get up and get on the go.
First order of business, check our rabbit snares.
♪
Beaver is the fattiest, greasiest animal
that I could catch.
Eating fatty food keeps you warm.
And so that fat is what I need as the temperatures drop.
Yeah, half the lake freezing up over there.
Look at this.
The ice is froze.
Oh, my God.
Oh.
Hey! Hey!
♪
[dramatic music]
- Oh, my.
Oh, jeez.
Oh, my.
My worst fear come true, a small beaver.
My strategy was to get a big beaver.
And that's what I was going to use to propel me
forward to these later games.
Ah, jeez.
The beaver, and being a small one,
is a major setback in that strategy.
♪
And here he is, Mr. Beaver.
[laughs]
Yeah, I got some other stuff I'd like to get done today,
super-stoked now, you know.
You know, this is a papoose, 15 pounds or so.
And so this beaver is not going to have the fat on it
like I really need.
But right now, with my food supply running low,
I need, like, a 30-, 40-pound beaver or more.
All right.
I'm going to start just cutting off his feet.
♪
It's a lovely piece of meat there.
My family is everything to me.
Like, whatever I do now is for them.
That's why I would never quit, because I know,
at the end of the day, if I was successful,
their future is going to be brighter.
[crow cawing]
- [imitates crow cawing]
[crow caws]
- See look, fatty meat, right?
Let's do it.
Let's make the move.
♪
- When it gets low on food, and it gets critical
to look after it.
♪
Otherwise, old Sassy gonna get it.
[chuckles]
I probably should--
help take some of the weight.
♪
I think that's safe for now.
♪
- What a fantastic day, boy.
Whoo, whoo.
And I'm not chancing that no more, man.
But as food security goes, it went up a lot today.
There we have one beaver head, Mr. Chiseltoothed.
Oh, looking forward to it.
Huh?
Mmm.
♪
- Check out this pine marten right up here, guys.
It's very curious about me.
Let me see if I can get him-- yeah, right behind me.
See that-- in that tree, right there?
Right behind me.
Thinks he can scare me away by growling.
[pine martin grunting]
There he goes.
Now he's headed over towards my food cache.
♪
See, that's my food cache.
See what he does.
♪
You're not allowed to kill these little guys.
But I'm not going to let them just have a happy time there.
[loud boom]
♪
- There he is again.
♪
[bear banger popping]
♪
Everything's secure.
I don't want animals hanging out around if I can help it.
Now, I better go check the fish lines.
But it's not just below freezing or anything like that.
It's just cold.
Wait.
No.
Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys,
guys, I see my stringer pole that I lost during the night.
And I have no idea if the fish is on it.
But if I can just get it out of the river--
I'll check.
I hope the fish is on it.
I don't know how to get it.
But I'm going to use this long pole and try.
♪
Maybe that stick can hook over.
[ice crunching]
♪
Man.
[water splashing]
♪
Please, be on there, fish.
Please, be on there.
♪
Yes. Yes!
Yes.
My fish is on there.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Wow.
All right, look at my hand.
That's the size of that fish.
I cannot believe that.
I got the fish that got away on the stringer.
Let me see what happened on the end.
The knot came untied.
How'd I do that?
My knot came untied.
And I lost the fish.
But I just got it.
I just got it.
Wow, guys, this is a huge moment for me.
Huge.
Thank you, God.
That was like seven or eight meals
right there that I thought was gone.
Oh!
♪
All right, guys, got to carry this up to my food cache
and get it stashed.
There's mink everywhere.
They want to steal my stuff.
I'm going to get this to the box.
All right, we've got two fish in the box.
Let me go get my big fire stoked up now.
♪
At this point, with the snow, I've decided to move
my fire into my shelter.
Now I'm going to test it.
♪
[fire crackling]
So as you can tell, it's pretty smoky in here.
Like, the smoke is rushing out it,
but it's a little hard to breathe.
Let me close the door here, and see if that helps.
♪
Yeah, this is not letting enough smoke out
to meet my needs.
Oh, oh, oh, my goodness.
♪
It's not safe.
It's definitely enough smoke that
could kill you in your sleep.
I don't know if there's a way to fix this problem.
I may have to have a zero-fire shelter.
And that does not bode well for when the temperature
really drops, you guys.
It's a big problem.
And I don't have any answers at the moment.
None.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Holy cow!
Look at how much that looks like a fricking fish head.
That looks just like a damn burbot head.
That's an omen.
Take me to your leader.
[laughs]
Freaking cold, man.
And my stuff's still not dry.
So about ready to put my down parka on.
We're going to check the gill net,
see what this river's doing.
♪
This is the debut of my winter parka.
♪
Crap, the river's half frozen out here,
fuh-reaking frozen, dude,
except for the middle.
If I fall in today, man, I'm in big trouble.
But there is a pike in the gill net.
Can you believe that?
Yeah, dude.
♪
- That's not a pike.
That's a frickin' coney, dude.
No way, man.
♪
Yeah, we got a freaking coney in the gill net.
♪
Whoo!
Look at that big freaking coney--
coney, dude.
So this is what you call an inconnu or a coney.
The locals call them coneys or sheefish.
They come up here to spawn this time of year.
I'm going to put the gill net back in.
But we got another fricking two days' worth of food, at least,
man, three, probably.
This is amazing.
I hope we can do that just one more time before this thing
is a solid sheet of ice.
♪
Feel a little bit warmer.
I definitely don't want to be sweating.
I'm going to go gut it and scale it.
And then I'm going to hang it up outside my shelter.
I absolutely trust nature more than I trust people.
I relate to animals.
And I see the way animals think.
It's a skill that I've always had.
And it's definitely been a great asset
as far as my wilderness living is concerned.
Let's go check our fishing lines.
Come on, baby.
One more fish today, and I'll be satisfied.
I don't rely on too many people.
What's the Simon and Garfunkel song?
I am a rock.
I am an island.
I feel like that.
- But I'm slowly, I guess, realizing
that nothing means anything when it's all by yourself.
It only means anything worthwhile
when you're experiencing it with another person.
- Beautiful.
You got fish up the freaking wazoo today, man.
But at this point, we definitely don't have
to worry about meat going bad.
So I'm all for storing as many fish as we can possibly get.
Because winter is here.
I would like to find somebody to love and care about.
And you know what would feel frickin' good right now?
Is to have a half million bucks
and to go home and have a wife and start a family.
You guys aren't going to believe this, dude.
So I was down there cleaning my knife
off after scraping this--
that other fish.
And I got another pike.
We are swimming in freaking fish right now.
That's freaking wild.
This is good, dude.
We're doing freaking awesome.
All we got to do now is stay safe and--
and keep warm.
That's it.
And get a few more fish.
But other than that, man,
Mom and Dad and sisters,
Faith, Angel and Bridget,
I'm freaking doing it, dude.
Whoo-hoo!
♪
- That is so cool.
Now, they look kind of gruesome and bad.
But now I can mess around on some projects.
Here we go.
I really wish I hadn't just seen that.
Oh, [bleep] me.
I'm sick to the stomach.
This is the worst state I've been in since I got here.
I'm [bleep] screwed.
- My left kidney is friggin' screaming at me.
Oh, my God. It's horrible.
♪