and may contain mature subject matter.
Viewer discretion is advised.
and may contain mat [dramatic music]r.
♪ ♪
male narrator: In one of the most brutal
survival challenges ever,
three strangers will try to endure 30 days
in the wild...
with only one resource-- a fresh kill...
♪ ♪
Its location marked by a single flare.
- I see that flare, and it's time to go
because that animal's gonna start spoiling fast
out in this heat and this moisture.
♪ ♪
Scavengers are gonna be on that thing real quick.
narrator: They have no tools...
- It's very intimidating living in the swamps
without a knife.
narrator: Just the clothes on their backs.
- We really get to feel what it must have been like
for early man to make it through day-to-day living
in an environment like this.
Let's get there, but don't break a leg doing it.
narrator: Do they have the stamina
and ingenuity to survive?
♪ ♪
[insects buzzing]
- It's over here, guys. - Oh, yeah, there it is.
- We got one big boy. That's for sure.
♪ ♪
[whistles] - Wild boar.
- Yeah, nice.
♪ ♪
- This is going to be incredibly difficult
using nothing but natural materials.
Boars have very, very thick, tough hides,
and they also have 3 to 4 inches
of a super-thick, hard fat.
- All right, we need to get him out of this water.
He ain't gonna last long in this.
- There's got to be a higher point somewhere nearby.
- See if we can lift him out of there.
♪ ♪
- We want to get it out of the water quickly
so it doesn't bloat, and we want to keep
the other predators away from it.
We don't want to get any blood in that water.
♪ ♪
My background in surviving off the land
pretty much began when I graduated high school.
I decided to travel the country
for about ten years finding what nature had to provide
and researching the native plants
of the areas I'm in.
I've been living this my whole life pretty much.
- Matt, why don't you scout ahead a bit
and see if you can locate,
and we'll drag him in your direction?
- Okay.
I lost my wife, and in the past couple years,
it's just been working hard so I can feed my son.
So I'm hoping to come out of this
with some mental strength that I can be proud of again.
- What do you see, man?
- We're getting dry right up here.
- Swamp water is extremely nasty.
♪ ♪
You don't know what's lurking underneath it.
Gators, cottonmouths, anything can be sitting in that swamp
just waiting for you to put your foot into its mouth.
You got to be careful.
♪ ♪
Yeah, right here. - Yep.
So what's your strategy for getting him open?
- I'm looking for some sort of cutting tool.
We don't have a knife.
We don't have an axe, a hatchet, a saw,
anything to that extent.
Not a [bleep]damn stone, of course.
Swamps.
I have a background in wilderness self-reliance
and primitive skills.
I was on "Alone" season six up in the Arctic
and got extremely sick,
couldn't hold anything inside my body.
As a guy who suffered a heart attack
at the age of 37, one of the key things
was simply just staying hydrated.
I couldn't keep any liquids inside my body,
so I didn't last as long as I would like to have,
but I actually gained quite a bit from it--
resiliency, perspective.
But I was definitely disappointed
in my performance in "Alone,"
so no chance I'm tapping out on this one.
It's all mud and silt.
When you're out in a swampland,
there's not a lot of hard materials.
There's no stones. There's no rocks.
So you have to find the next hardest thing,
and that's shells.
♪ ♪
It's so damn dark, you can't even see.
You got to feel.
♪ ♪
Raccoons and other critters will munch on clams
and then hide 'em and cache 'em and stage 'em in these areas.
♪ ♪
I got two.
These are gonna be a primary cutting implement out here
for the insides of that boar and start processing 'em out.
Give a pop and just start working an edge.
It's not stone, but you got to adapt and overcome.
♪ ♪
- So butchering the hog--
the first step is to cut the hide and make an opening
down the belly, but there are multiple layers
that you need to cut through.
I don't want to cut into the internal organs just yet
because the longer they're exposed to the air,
the quicker they'll spoil.
My survival-skills training started
when I was in the Marine Corps.
The mind-set I learned was really simple.
You just don't quit.
There's always the struggle, and you have to have
the mental fortitude to push through
and make it to the other end.
There are very few goals in my life
that I have not attained,
and this is one of those goals--
for me to make it to the end of this challenge.
♪ ♪
- On our way, I passed some river cane.
I'm gonna go back and grab a few stalks,
and I'll be back. [insects buzzes]
♪ ♪
And there's a big one.
♪ ♪
Just look at that.
You got to be looking down for snakes, alligators.
You got to be looking up for spiders.
It's up and down, and you got to watch out
for the predators, for the insects.
[breathing heavily]
♪ ♪
River cane has some silica in it.
It's like glass, so if we can break that thin enough,
we should be able to cut the animal open.
Oh, here we go. - Yeah.
- That piece might already be set for us.
- Hit him up. - Which one's the edge side?
- Right there.
♪ ♪
- Is that thing working? - Yeah.
- Nice.
♪ ♪
We got to get this hog over some smoke--
make some meat.
All right, I'm gonna go break out--
find some fire-making materials.
The fire's gonna be a very important product.
A friction fire in a wet environment
is difficult-- it's absolutely difficult.
There's a lot of moisture in the air.
♪ ♪
That's a big-ass willow tree.
I'm gonna find the dry sides of the tree,
peel some of that bark off.
I'm gonna use some of this cypress bark,
hopefully as a tinder source.
The cypress bark is a very fibrous material.
It's very similar to a juniper. That's what this is.
It's dry. Wind's coming from this side.
This little spot right here's a little bit drier.
The cypress tree is actually kind of
the convenience store of the swamp.
It actually grows up out of the water
Not only can you get dry tinder from it,
you can also get some really dry materials
on the inside portion of it.
All right, I got to find a spindle and a hearth.
♪ ♪
Out here, there's so much water around,
but you can't drink any of it.
The water out here is alive with insect's "larvaes,"
and if you drink that, you're gonna get sick,
and we don't have any vessels yet to boil water in.
♪ ♪
So over here, we're gonna build a seep or a ground well.
I'm gonna dig down until I reach water,
and the clay that's in the soil here
should filter out a lot of the impurities in the water,
so we'll be able to drink it.
Oh, and I'm so happy.
Besides fire, this is the next most important thing.
♪ ♪
[thunder rumbles]
♪ ♪
- I've got the gut of the animal exposed.
I'm gonna harvest the organs first.
I'm gonna start pulling the organs out.
Do you have something for me to set them on?
- Sure.
♪ ♪
- See, on the organs, this cane works much better.
♪ ♪
- [groans] Something is smelling a little ripe to me.
- Huh?
- Something's smelling a little strong.
Swamps are generally smelly, and this animal
just intensified it by ten times.
Tell you what, though, this stuff smells
100% better than that hog.
- It's not so bad once you get used to it.
Smells like dinner.
♪ ♪
I've noticed that Matt's a little bit of a character.
One of the first things that he does
is stick some cypress needles up his nose
because of the smell.
I guess maybe I'm used to it, but I don't know these guys,
and I thought that was kind of an odd thing.
♪ ♪
- Found some of this red bush over in that far swamp area.
This is gonna be a great cordage material.
It's got a real fibrous outer bark,
and wrapping it upon itself, I'm gonna use
that for the cordage for my bow drill.
♪ ♪
This swamp is completely saturated with water,
and there's rain falling, you know, constantly.
[thunder booms]
I got to get this fire going.
♪ ♪
I'm trusting Donny right now--
that he's gonna make us a fire.
If we don't get this animal started on the fire
as soon as we get it cut, we're gonna lose it,
and we're gonna go hungry.
♪ ♪
- It's wet as [bleep] out here.
Air's wet. Ground's wet.
I'm wet. There's nowhere to escape.
We need to get a fire and get this boar over the smoke,
but right now making fire is damn near impossible.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
♪ ♪
- I believe you eat the eyeballs
so you can see where the animal has come from.
♪ ♪
- There's a possum right there
- He's coming out your way.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- It just keeps coming down and down and down and down.
♪ ♪
The beast is only gonna last us so long.
We're not gonna get freezing temps at night,
and that meat's not gonna freeze.
It's gonna be hot.
It's gonna be humid, so we need this fire.
♪ ♪
This pig is gonna wind up spoiling pretty damn quick.
♪ ♪
The sun coming out and the rain parting ways
for a bit is the life source-- it really is.
It's gonna give us a little opportunity
to find some drier materials
and eliminate one of those threats,
which is just straight moisture falling
from the skies above on your fire kit.
♪ ♪
- All right, you want to just take the meat
that you've got on the tray, and I'll take
the head and the hide, and we'll head over to Donny.
- Sounds good.
- The weather here seems like it can change on a dime.
That might create a problem for us later
because meat will spoil faster if the temps come up.
- Yeah, I'll follow you. [grunts]
- If we get to the campsite and Donny doesn't have fire,
this is gonna be a problem.
We absolutely have to get that meat smoked.
♪ ♪
- I've been trying with a bow drill--
kept breaking, so...
I switched it up to hand drill
and as you keep doing a hand drill again and again,
and, you know, failing each time,
you start to expel all your energy.
Your muscles get sore. Everything tightens up.
[sighs] Can't lift my arms.
And you will tire out. It's definitely taken its toll.
- How's it going, brother?
Matt's right behind me with a bunch of that cane
and the last of the meat.
- I can't do this individually anymore.
♪ ♪
- Three-man team here. - Yeah, I'm getting tired.
So I'll start. I'll say go.
♪ ♪
- Go.
- So we're gonna attempt a three-man hand drill.
- Go.
- If that works out, then we should be able
to get a fire, and it's desperately needed.
♪ ♪
Go.
♪ ♪
- Go.
[grunts] Almost.
- Go.
♪ ♪
- All right, chill--chill out. We got it.
♪ ♪
This is real fine stuff.
♪ ♪
- There we go. - Whoa, it's--good going.
- Right here. Let's put it--
- Right here so it doesn't steam out.
- Yeah, get some wood.
♪ ♪
- Save the...
♪ ♪
Whoo!
- Good stuff.
- Yeah. - Good stuff.
To create a fire in this environment is surreal.
In these conditions, with this rain falling,
with the moisture on the ground,
it has now just shaped our very existence.
♪ ♪
We cannot let this thing go out.
[laughter]
♪ ♪
- If we get some of those little green vines,
we can do multiple layers...
- Yeah. - To hang the meat on.
- We're gonna be up here for a good number of days.
That meat from that hog is gonna be
kind of our life source, so time is of the essence.
- I think all we should think about now
is just getting the meat and smoking it.
- Get smoking.
- Out in this environment, animals--
especially fresh kills-- start to spoil
between 40 and 140 degrees,
so smoke is gonna be our first preservation method.
Boom! Good smoke.
Hot smoking is gonna be the key.
Hot smoking is-- we're gonna fall
just below that 165 temperature range,
and it's gonna allow us to not cook the meat
but ultimately dry it out.
Like a fire below,
and the heat and the smoke rises up above,
and what it will do is it will dry the meat out.
Smoke gives it flavor.
It's all coming together. That's it.
- That's dinner. - Yeah.
♪ ♪
- It's good.
It tastes like pork.
- I'm completely spent, but right now
it's extremely important to get this meal.
♪ ♪
- Today's been a rough day.
Didn't get to build a shelter, and the temps here at night
are going to get down in the 40s--
maybe even more cold than that,
so that's gonna have to become the next priority on our list.
♪ ♪
[snoring loudly]
♪ ♪
[snoring loudly]
[insects chirping]
- Hey, Shawn!
- [snoring loudly]
[snoring loudly]
♪ ♪
- Today I'm feeling a little crappy.
I'm tired very fast.
I'm a little dizzy when I stand up too quick.
I didn't sleep at all, and, for me,
when you're out here surviving,
you really need to take care of your body and your mind,
and sleep is a huge portion of that.
- Shawn has a set of pipes on him
when it comes to snoring.
He, uh... [laughs]
My goodness.
♪ ♪
You know, we woke up this morning.
Everyone was cold and hungry.
Nights here are definitely rough.
Temps are dropping, which is surprising.
I wasn't expecting this in a swamp.
♪ ♪
Time is of the essence here.
Get a good, working shelter-- something that we can live in
before the rain comes, you know?
♪ ♪
We believe some rain is coming.
So, once the rain comes through here,
everything just stays saturated.
[insects buzzing]
Red rover, red rover, let's build our shelter
right over here.
If we do tepee style--
Another one, another one, another one,
- And we'll grab the vines, and we'll just start weaving
like we talked about. - Yeah.
- So we've settled on a tepee shelter,
which would be about 6 feet tall
and I think enough room for the three of us
and, if needed, a fire in the middle.
♪ ♪
- That piece right there might work.
♪ ♪
- The first step is gonna be
finding six or seven support poles
that need to be strong enough to support the tepee frame.
Around here, that's difficult
because there's not a lot of straight wood
just laying on the ground that's not rotten.
- This one's good! [grunts]
- So we're gonna have to find some straight, young trees
that are still alive and green and burn-cut them,
which means we're gonna set the bases on fire
and then knock them over, because we don't have axes,
and we can't just push them over.
They're too strong for that.
- That'll work.
- We chose a shorter, modified tepee
because we don't have as much volume inside the shelter,
therefore the fire that's burning in there
will have less air to heat,
and it should keep us all warmer at night.
♪ ♪
Just so you know, Matt's working on the head...
♪ ♪
- I feel, when I harvest an animal,
that I need to pay homage to him and respect him.
I believe that you eat the eyeballs
so you can see where the animal has come from.
And I feel, if you're taking a life,
you owe that much to the life you're taking.
♪ ♪
So, with this eyeball, I hope to see the journey
the hog made before it got to us
and where it is headed after.
♪ ♪
And that's what you do.
As it goes in...
♪ ♪
I feel that hog had a great life--
very free.
[sniffles]
♪ ♪
- If you want to not be [bleep] around
with the pig's head or anything,
like, right this second--
I'm all about it, but maybe get cracking on this shelter.
♪ ♪
If he wants to [bleep] eat the eyeball, that's fine.
That's fine. Whatever.
♪ ♪
Seriously, there's, like, priorities here.
No one else is sleeping on palm fronds tonight.
♪ ♪
You hear that sound?
The sound of a gator.
[water splashes]
Walking very carefully.
♪ ♪
Yeah, he's gone. Just like that.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Donny and I are putting palm fronds up on the shelter.
We have a limited amount of time before nightfall,
so we're just throwing 'em up really quick.
It should be relatively windproof and waterproof.
♪ ♪
- Matt has different priorities
compared to Shawn and I.
We're focusing more on smoking the meat,
making sure that our shelter is warm, safe, and dry.
And this is extremely important.
Right now a few of us aren't on the same page
♪ ♪
- Today's been a rough day, and I'm really tired,
but we finished the shelter, so should help
keep the mosquitoes off us at night,
which will mean we get a lot more sleep.
♪ ♪
I have a lot of work to do with the hog's meat,
but I know the head is a valuable resource,
but, more importantly,
we're gonna need hard tools out here,
and the hardest bones on this animal
are gonna come from the skull.
We want to use as many parts of the skull as we can,
but in order to do that, we need to have it defleshed.
This hog has really good cutters,
and these are good scraping and cutting, scoring tools,
but getting them out is just gonna be
a little bit of a challenge.
♪ ♪
Coming into this challenge, I really knew
that it was going to be difficult,
but I thought for sure there's got to be
something here with an edge on it,
and there's just nothing here.
The sinew and the fat on these animals is so tough.
This is taking way longer than I had hoped.
We just don't really have the tools to get this scraped
in the time before it's gonna start to spoil,
so we're gonna try and let nature do it for us.
♪ ♪
Limited resources here as far as making tools
are just extremely hard to find,
and it must have been very difficult
for the native folks that lived here.
Whew.
I'm kind of hoping that by submerging the skull
in the swamp here, the crawfish,
the small turtles, maybe even the fish
will pick at it and be able to pull some of the meat
off the skull over the next couple of days.
I can already see some fish in here.
I just tucked it up underneath a branch there.
And that ought to do it.
♪ ♪
[insects buzzing]
♪ ♪
- So morning come about. I didn't sleep at all.
I feel a little bit drunk. I'm stumbling, sweating.
I can't think straight.
I'm kind of nervous,
and I don't know what to do, really.
♪ ♪
- I know that those bones
are the hardest thing in the swamp.
Right now a chopping tool is very, very key out here,
and a bone chopping tool is gonna be our go-to.
So one of the tools in particular
I'm gonna make is called a socket adze
or hand adze, which is a chopping tool,
and it requires a leg bone of that hog--
all the bits and pieces removed--
and a cut at an angle that gives me
a chopping advantage.
♪ ♪
Almost there, man.
We don't have the ability to use any stone tools
to really cut 'em out, so we have to score 'em
and try to snap-break them
in the most desirable way possible.
This experience truly puts a person
to the test, 'cause we have nothing.
We absolutely have no knives, no cutting implements,
and you have to leverage
all of your knowledge, skills, and abilities
and put those to the test.
So I might be able to snap it in my hands
and get two working pieces.
This piece right here will be the actual socket adze.
This piece right here will be a little hand scraper
when we start to process out the hide.
Let's see.
[grunts] Like that.
♪ ♪
Perfect.
A little marrow on the inside--
I don't want to eat this marrow.
It's been exposed to the water
through this little portion of the bone.
♪ ♪
But, look-it--perfect hand axe.
♪ ♪
So we got two tools right here.
Two little choppers.
♪ ♪
- So this hog skull has been sunk here in the swamp.
♪ ♪
We're gonna go in and take a look.
We really don't want to lose any of the bone in this skull,
and we really want to make sure we save the teeth,
particularly the cutters, because we think
we can use them around camp.
Well, I can see from here there's a crawdad
sitting on top of it, so I know that they're working
and doing what they're supposed to do.
♪ ♪
So it's definitely starting to decompose.
♪ ♪
[owl hooting]
♪ ♪
- [retching]
♪ ♪
- This morning I was a little bit worried about Matt.
He got a little bit sick and ended up vomiting
and then needed to lay down for a while,
so I'm concerned there might be something going on.
So Matt's just grasping at his heart,
and he just looks sick, and I'm really worried for him.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Matt just had some chest pains.
He wasn't doing well.
You don't want to mess around with that stuff.
I've been in that situation.
I had a heart attack at the age of 37,
and some of the signs and symptoms
that he was displaying--
pain in the chest
and just kind of feeling, like, nauseous--
those are the same signs and symptoms that I had.
♪ ♪
- The swamp water from the seep well--
it's really nasty, and I think, in Matt's case,
it's a really good example of how dirty water
can culminate in a big problem, and at the end of the day,
I think it's catching up with him,
and that's what's making him sick.
- Yeah, he's gone, just like that.
It leaves us just some of those chores and tasks
like collecting firewood and watching the fire.
We're just gonna have to find a new way to adapt
to this situation.
♪ ♪
Matt built a seep well, which is a method
for acquiring clean water through the ground.
And he was drinking out of it,
and we've also been drinking out of it,
and he wasn't doing well, so we need to get
clean, drinkable water.
We've had this log that we found on day one
that was just kind of split and kind of had
a little hollowed-out section,
so I kind of propped it up on these sticks,
put a clay wall and a clay wall,
and kind of just built a general trough right there,
and, you know, as the rain falls,
we'll have clean water.
How we'll get it out is some of the cane around here--
we, you know, score-cut around a couple pieces of cane,
and these are just essentially little drinking straws.
So you can come up and... [sucking]
Drink the water straight from the trough
once it's full.
Now we got a water catchment.
♪ ♪
- I'd almost forgotten how time-consuming it is
to eat this stuff.
♪ ♪
- The meat is extremely rough.
After being smoked and dried and hit with the cool weather,
it's like chewing on leather.
♪ ♪
Actually, it's probably smart to kind of get a jerky count.
- Yeah.
- Kind of get a--kind of a management plan,
I think, would be the best thing to say.
- Let me do some math.
We have a couple of weeks left,
and we've got to make sure we have enough meat
to make it to at least the last day or two
before we get to leave the challenge.
♪ ♪
All right, so, if we start rationing today--
two a day each--
that'll get us all the way... - Couple days.
- Five days? - Yeah.
- 4 1/2, 5 days before we pull out.
- Okay.
The beast is only gonna last us so long.
Eventually we're gonna have to find other food.
♪ ♪
- Donny and I are both gonna start working on a fish trap.
I'm hoping we can catch not only some crawfish,
but some small catfish.
I have to admit that the weight loss
is starting to get to my head a little bit.
We are hungry, truthfully.
♪ ♪
I'm building a different version
of a crawfish/fish trap.
Mine's gonna have a little bit bigger basket
and a little bit bigger hole on the end.
So the large loop is the body of the basket,
and there'll be a small hole on either end
instead of just one entry.
♪ ♪
- Ideally, this is gonna be used for shallow waters.
Shawn's gonna try and target his trap
in some deeper areas, and I'm gonna try
and target my trap into some more shallow areas,
so just got to play to the environment.
♪ ♪
- The whole basis for this challenge
is to try and utilize a lot of what ancient peoples
likely would have used to capture the same animals.
A fish trap made out of vine is something very similar,
and it just makes a lot of sense.
Once it's in the water, it does all the work for you,
and you can focus on other tasks.
♪ ♪
Let's hope it works out. Fingers crossed.
♪ ♪
- So, before we check the fish traps,
we are going to hunt.
And in order to hunt, got to have a weapon.
- There's a lot of valuable bones in the head.
We can try and pop the jaw loose.
Then I can get into the head a little bit more.
So it should come off pretty easy.
I would really like to get into that skull
and take the tusks out...
♪ ♪
And start using 'em for tools around camp.
- Look at this.
♪ ♪
- These are the upper cutters. These are the lower cutters.
Some of the biggest, meanest teeth
in North America right there.
- So, unfortunately, you just can't pull
the cutters out of a boar's lower jaw,
so I'm gonna have to smash these guys open
with some sort of mallet.
♪ ♪
- Notoriously tough. - Yeah.
♪ ♪
There we go. [bones crack]
- There--there's one. - There it is.
♪ ♪
Knives--here we go.
♪ ♪
On the back of the skull here,
that's one big thrusting spearpoint.
- We have to burn the skull...
- Let's do it.
- And then inside of the skull,
there's some very fine, sharp-edged bones.
- There you go.
- They'll make great arrowheads, dart points,
and things like that.
♪ ♪
- I think these might be the best bet so far.
♪ ♪
- So I was able to pull a few of the thinner pieces
of hog hide off, and then I'm gonna take
some of those bone tools and scrape all of the meat
and leftover bits of fat off of this hide,
and then we'll stretch it out and dry it.
We're thinking of maybe using it
for wrapping spearheads on to spears, things like that.
♪ ♪
- I can feel that my body is losing calories every second.
When you're hungry and your one focus
is getting more food, get that food becomes a priority.
This is a foreshaft for the atlatl dart.
And an atlatl is an ancient hunting tool
used by many, many cultures all throughout the world
♪ ♪
Once I reinforce it with that rawhide,
it will keep the point into the foreshaft.
♪ ♪
- So we have the pieces of rawhide,
but they're still hard, so what we need to do
is soak them, and they'll swell a little bit
and get pliable again and then sort of
shrink up when they dry and almost act like a glue
upon themselves, and it's just a really good way
to secure that dart tip to Donny's darts.
♪ ♪
- If you could tie a knot right over the top...
♪ ♪
You just cinch the knots,
so that will kind of keep it dry and in place.
♪ ♪
Let that one dry.
Set them, I guess, over there.
♪ ♪
When I take a look, I can start to see
a few of my rib bones.
Finding another source of protein is essential.
We ate the last of our jerky,
so we kind of need to start finding
some other food sources, and the only way to do it
is to get out and actively hunt,
so that's what we're doing.
- [whispering] The trick with hunting
like this when you're stalking is you're waiting
to see if something gets up and moves,
and then you can move towards it.
♪ ♪
- The dangers of this environment can go anywhere
from something as simple as the cypress knees
that stick out of the ground-- you can walk
through a hilly, grassy area and take a tumble.
I'm walking very cautiously, very carefully.
Alligator territory over here.
That water's extremely dark and murky.
Could be a gator underneath there or any potential hazard.
[alligator bellows]
Hear that sound?
♪ ♪
Over there--it's the sound of a gator.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Hear that sound?
[alligator bellows]
Over there--it's the sound of a gator.
♪ ♪
- We've been out here about an hour
without a whole lot of success.
So, at some point, we're gonna have
to start doing the math here.
Is the hunt worth the calorie expenditure?
And the mosquitoes are bad--
I mean, really bad, if you can't see 'em.
And at some point, we're gonna have to call it
and get back to camp and get in the smoke
and make these mosquitoes go away.
Couple of rat nests, but they seemed like they were empty.
- Shawn and I really haven't seen much activity
out here as far as physical animals
or even any of their ground spore, as far as feces
or tracks or even scrapes.
If it's not early in the morning,
it's got to be later in the evening--
almost at night. - Oh.
- All those little nighttime critters--
they're denning up--I mean...
We need more food.
You want to head back or...?
- All right. - All right.
♪ ♪
[thunder rumbles, booms]
♪ ♪
We have ample amounts of fresh water,
but we need some other means of food acquisition as well.
I don't think we can sustain this level of, you know,
kind of ebb and flow of fatigue and activity,
fatigue and activity.
Before you know it, it's just gonna be
ten minutes of activity and six hours of fatigue.
♪ ♪
- We still got the crawfish traps working.
- Let's do it.
Crawdads, crawdads, here we go.
Shawn and I are about to go check some crawdad traps
that we put in the water a couple days ago.
Hopefully it's full of crawdads,
which would definitely represent
some great and most-needed calories.
♪ ♪
- Oh, God!
Oh, man.
♪ ♪
- I'm in the swamp up to my thighs
freezing my ass off.
I really hope this is gonna work,
and I'm about to find out.
- Thank you. [grunts]
♪ ♪
Nothing.
There was nothing on the inside,
which was kind of disappointing.
Set it there, and I'll trade you.
Yeah.
♪ ♪
There's nothing.
♪ ♪
Zero.
Yep.
We have no crawdads.
♪ ♪
Got it?
This sucks.
Yeah, if it's zero, man, then we got to find somewhere else.
♪ ♪
So we're gonna have to look to another option.
Time's get tough out here, and you can't come out here
with a playbook and say, "This is what I'm gonna do."
That's not gonna work.
You have to come out here and be flexible
and ready to adapt, improvise, and overcome.
It's the same thing, you know,
our ancestors had to go through.
Ugh.
Shawn and I are gonna walk
back to the camp, get him dried out.
That's pretty important,
especially with these cold temps.
Him being wet, we got to make sure he stays dry.
- Oh, there's a possum. - Oh, [bleep].
- There's a possum right there. - Let me go get my [bleep].
♪ ♪
- You don't have a shot from that side.
- Huh?
- You don't have a shot from that side, I don't think.
He's coming out your way.
♪ ♪
- Got him. [grunts]
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- He's coming out your way.
♪ ♪
- Got him. [grunts]
♪ ♪
[grunting]
- That'll do it.
♪ ♪
Nice work, dude.
♪ ♪
- We eat. - That rocks, man.
- It's the same thing, you know,
our ancestors had to go through.
They had to live hand to mouth,
and that's kind of what we're doing out here.
We're living hand to mouth.
If we see it, we take it, we eat it.
Nicely done.
- Lookee there. - Phew.
♪ ♪
Well, get a good coal bed and roast him up, right?
- Yeah, or we could make a spit--
put him on a spit. - That's what I mean.
A little rotisserie possum?
♪ ♪
We're gonna use the hog's lower jaw
and his cutters
as that perfect little incision tool
to get inside this possum...
That edge is super sharp right there.
We can hook and slice and go for it.
Process him out and then put him over the fire to eat.
♪ ♪
- There you go.
♪ ♪
At this point, I'm gonna make incisions
along the inside of each leg so that we can pull
the hide off of the possum like a sock
so that we don't have to strip it cut by cut.
- That's food, man.
Shawn and I are super pumped, and we are super honored
to be able to have this possum.
- I'm hungry already.
- I think it'll be good.
It's been a while since we've had fresh meat.
We've been eating nothing but dry jerky
and some wild greens, but we're really excited
to have some good, fresh protein
with some delicious fats
and a little barbecue over our little fire.
♪ ♪
Fresh meat, my friend. Left or right?
- Doesn't matter.
♪ ♪
Is it too hot? - Yeah.
- Ooh, cheers.
- It's hot. - Yeah.
♪ ♪
Oh, you can taste the fat on it.
- So much better than the dried meat.
- [laughs] - Oh, my God.
I take a bite into this thing, and it is the juiciest,
most tasty thing I've had in months.
- Oh, man.
- I'm gonna gnaw every little, soft piece
of meat off this bone.
It's, like, the best thing ever.
♪ ♪
If we don't freeze our butt off,
we should sleep pretty good with a full belly.
- Yeah, finally.
♪ ♪
- It's the last day. One month, man, just like that.
- I know.
- Today's the day I've been waiting for
for such a long time.
We have finally reached the end,
and I am ready to head back home,
get a shower, get a good meal.
♪ ♪
- I'm super excited to get out of here.
No offense to this swamp, but I'm sick of this place.
I've had enough of the swamp trying to kill me,
and I'm ready to go home.
♪ ♪
- Not having any sort of tools--
only the tools that you can create from the hog
or from the land-- you really had to be creative.
You had to think.
♪ ♪
- I think about the primitive people
that must have lived here--
staying out of the weather, trying to keep warm,
the production of food for ourselves.
I can't help but feel closer to them
and have respect for the amount of work
that it must have taken.
♪ ♪
- Teamwork is very important when it comes
to any sort of survival situation,
and I was fortunate enough to have Shawn
who is a great guy, a team player,
and we both got along exceptionally well.
♪ ♪
- So my time in the military, I saw quite a few things.
I've dealt with plenty of hardship in my life,
but this environment is tough,
and a lot of survival is mental.
Even with the creativity, even with the skills,
there's always the struggle, and you have to have
the mental fortitude to push through
and make it to the other end.
♪ ♪
Well, I did this, and I think I did it well,
and I hope my family sees
that if you're willing to do the work,
you can do anything you set your mind to.
♪ ♪
- Having a heart attack,
having been sick in the bush before,
my experiences on "Alone" were definitely short-lived.
This is a hard environment to live in,
but I prefer to be in this wild place.
And this was an opportunity for me
to see if I could achieve it, and I did,
and I feel completely ecstatic and enthralled
that I stepped up to the challenge.
♪ ♪