Original subtitles

[ Wind gusting ]

[ Bird caws ]

♪♪

[ Gunshot ]

Get out!

Narrator: Deep in the American wilderness...

-Yeah! -Look out!

Ouch!

Narrator: ...a new generation of mountain men

answers the call of the wild...

Whoo-hoo! Come on!

There's nothing like being out here, living free.

This is something that I could never give up.

Narrator: ...to live by their own hands, on their own terms.

Eustace: Surviving here means never letting your guard down.

Narrator: But time takes a toll on even the strongest.

Eustace: I don't know how well I'm gonna to be able

to keep this place going.

Tom: There probably aren't many 75-year-old people

that are still out working like I am.

I've thought a lot about it, and that's the decision I made.

Narrator: And when one mountain man steps away forever...

Almost there.

Narrator: ...the new breed must stand their ground...

Kidd: Ah-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!

...or die trying.

Jake: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!

[ Wolf howls ]

Captioning Provided by A&E Networks

♪♪

Narrator: In southwest Montana,

the king of the mountains isn't man.

It's beast.

Mountain lions can take down big game in a matter of seconds.

[ Roars ]

And with winter on the way,

the threat heats up as food gets scarce,

pushing predators down from the mountains

and closer to humans.

Hunt 'em up. Hunt 'em up.

29-year-old Jake Herak and his dog team

are hired by local ranchers to protect the valley's livestock

by chasing cats into the high country

before they have a chance to strike.

Jake: The cat's heading straight for the valley below,

and that's definitely a big problem.

Narrator: It's a nonstop job that's more than a paycheck.

It's a calling.

Jake: To me, there's really nothing better

than running lions.

This is definitely my passion,

and I'm out here doing what I love to do,

tracking down the baddest predator in the woods.

Oh, hold up, hold up.

Narrator: Today, he's tracking a cat

that's been stalking a ranch less than two miles away.

What we got here is elk or deer hair.

If I was a betting man, a lion made a kill right here

and is actually dragging this animal.

♪♪

Um...that's not a deer. That's an elk horn right there.

That's the tip of an elk tine, and I'm gonna guess

if we follow this draw down a little bit,

we're gonna find an elk kill here somewhere.

Narrator: A full-grown elk can outweigh an adult lion four-to-one.

Yeah, right here you can see it.

You can see that one lion is dragging

an elk down this mountain like it's nothing.

Pretty crazy to see how far this sucker's going.

Here I've got some blood in the snow, here.

This sucker's just been dragging it and dragging it,

and it just goes to show how badass these predators are.

Holy [bleep]. Here we are, right here.

This is actually a bull elk.

It's incredible the way these animals do this.

That lion took around and pawed all this snow

and dirt onto this elk, all the way off this bank.

Narrator: A lion will eat its fill and try to hide the rest

until it can return to feed again,

which means the lion could still be in the area,

ready to defend its hard-earned meal.

Jake: So what she's done here is she's created her own freezer,

stored this elk, and she's camping --

camping right here.

This chunk of horn that I found back there

at the original kill site

actually lines up with this spike.

So this is definitely the same elk.

This cat has made multiple days worth of tracks here.

If you actually look closely here,

that cat's actually just been sleeping right here.

There's little chunks of fur, where you can see this lion's

been bedded right here in this spot.

Narrator: It's unusual to find a lion's den

this far down the mountain and this close to humans.

Jake's job now is to chase it off.

Uh-oh.

Son of a bitch.

I've been patrolling a female here.

I've got a female track right here.

I've got a second lion track right here,

and guess what it leads to.

We got us a big tom-lion scrape right here.

We have two cats here instead of one.

And this is one -- how he marked his territory.

And number two -- it's how he gets a mate.

Narrator: Male lions are most aggressive at this time of year,

the peak of mating season, and if left unchecked,

two hungry cats can do a lot of damage.

Jake: I guarantee that we got a breeding pair

going on right now.

A breeding pair of two well-established killers,

and we're only about a mile and a half

from the closest herd of cows, so that's a big, big problem.

I'm gonna get the dogs caught up,

and we're gonna push these cats up the mountain.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: High in the Blue Ridge Mountains,

there's new blood hard at work on Turtle Island.

19-year-old North Carolina native Raleigh Avery

has come on-board to help keep the preserve running.

I've always been one to love nature,

get out in the woods, use my hands.

Narrator: Raleigh's bringing some mountain skills

to the table.

I know it's gonna be different and a whole lot of work,

but I'm looking forward to learning and growing

and having Eustace as a mentor.

Narrator: But he's got big shoes to fill here on Eustace Conway's turf.

Good boys.

My good friend Preston has helped me out here

for over 30 years, and after he died,

it's been really hard to find good help.

I'm gonna need some help taking care of the horses,

sawmilling,

just a million little things always needing to be done.

Raleigh pays attention.

He's motivated, and hopefully he can do it.

So he knows blacksmithing,

and he's helped me do a little sawmilling.

Raleigh knows a lot of stuff,

but he's got a whole lot more to learn,

and I'm excited about teaching him.

Narrator: And Raleigh couldn't have arrived at a better time.

Last winter, Eustace put a down payment on an expansion --

90 acres of forest right next door.

We've got a lot of land we need to cover.

I've got a new piece of land up here.

Now he needs Raleigh's muscle to make the land productive

and pull enough logs to raise the loan payment

that's due in the spring, or risk losing the investment.

Eustace: Right now, I need some cash,

and we're gonna go look at some timber,

look at the new tract of land and sort of assess

what we've got here that we can use.

Narrator: The goal is to get the new land to pay for itself,

and so far the prospects are good.

It looks great.

They make good timber. Now, see.

See how that forks right at the base there?

-I see it. -Now, that's leaning.

Someday, in some ice storm, that's gonna get so heavy

it's gonna split and fall.

We harvest it now, we harvest it on our terms.

You see what I mean? -Yeah.

I believe we could pay our debt

just by taking the cull trees off of this land right here...

Raleigh: Wow.

...just the low-quality trees, and we can harvest all this.

But at the same time, we know we got this preserved.

We can keep it natural and healthy.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

I'm glad you get this stuff.

Well, let's head on up the holler and see what we got.

There's some nice hemlocks around.

Yeah, some of them are dead already,

but there's a few still living.

Hey.

What?

Look at that.

My gosh.

Is that a moonshine still?

Yeah, I can't have this.

♪♪

♪♪

God did all right when he built this country.

Narrator: Far north, in Alaska, trapper Marty Meierotto

has returned to the rugged landscape

he calls home every winter.

Marty: You see things nobody else has ever seen.

That's why I do this.

Narrator: He's spent three decades in this epic wilderness...

Marty: Every year is different.

It never gets old.

Narrator: ...building on a trap line he began carving

from the bush as a young man.

Nature has a way of humbling a man pretty quick.

Whenever you think you got something figured out or made,

she comes up and gets you.

Narrator: After two weeks, he's reopened more than 140 miles of line,

and now there's just 10 miles of traps still to set

before he can start hauling fur.

Man, this is work.

It's tough breaking trail that first time.

These traps sit out here from year to year.

Sometimes they can get pretty rusty and stiff.

So beginning of every year,

I always snap 'em a couple times

to make sure they're gonna work for me.

Narrator: He's got high hopes for the season ahead.

After last year's backbreaking work,

recutting his old line led to record-breaking profits.

16 marten -- whew!

[ Laughs ] This is a red-letter day.

Narrator: Now, with the longest line he's ever blazed

clear and open for business,

there's no limit to what he can earn,

as long as Mother Nature cooperates.

♪♪

Marty: Son of a...

Oh, I got a lake I got to cross.

I got to go to the far end.

I'm gonna test it to make sure

it doesn't have overflow on it.

Narrator: Overflow occurs naturally at the start of every winter.

As lakes begin to freeze, they solidify from top and bottom.

The water sandwiched in between

creates pressure cracks in the ice,

and the fresh blanket of snow

makes it impossible to tell where the danger lies.

So you never know where there's an open hole, or...

There's been too many times

I've just drove out on this thing

and ended up out there in knee-deep water, stuck.

I'm on overflow right now, but it's frozen.

Well, it seems to be okay.

Only one way to find out.

♪♪

Narrator: In Alaska, the temperature's already well below freezing.

Ha!

Are you kidding me?

Narrator: But in the early days of winter,

there's no way to know how thick the ice is until it's too late.

Ah!

Narrator: Every new crossing is risky.

Marty: Bingo! [ Laughs ]

Narrator: But this time, Marty's gamble pays off.

Marty: I'm okay. I'm safe.

It's a huge relief.

Narrator: The Alaskan wilderness is as dangerous

as it is unpredictable,

and though Marty spent decades learning this land,

it's never the same two seasons in a row.

Marty: So, this gully wasn't here last year.

So what happens is the land's always changing,

and these gullies just show up.

Narrator: The Alaskan terrain transforms every spring

when the snow melt comes down the mountains as runoff.

The force of the water can reshape the landscape

in a matter of months.

When that happens, you just, you know --

you got to reroute your line.

I can't drive through there.

Narrator: Though Marty cleared this path last season,

it's been reclaimed by nature.

So I'm gonna grab the chainsaw,

and I'll reroute around this a little bit.

I'm using this bigger saw just 'cause

it's a little bigger sweep on the bar.

I can reach out and carve a little better.

I'll go right through there.

I just got to take a few of these spruce out.

[ Chainsaw starts ]

You put in a trail, nature's gonna take it back

and make it just the way it used to be.

It's constant work.

In the old days, them boys -- not only were they on foot

with their dog team, they did this by hand.

This would be all day cutting with an axe and a saw,

and this is never-ending.

That's the way it is --

making you work for it all the time.

There. There's my new trail.

[ Exhales ]

I'm off.

Burning daylight, precious little of it.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: Further north, in Alaska,

on the edge of the Arctic Circle,

across miles of inhospitable terrain,

the caribou are storming south.

Their annual 1,500-mile race against the Alaskan winter

is one of nature's greatest spectacles,

and for the seasoned hunter,

an opportunity to stock up on meat

before the deep freeze sets in.

♪♪

With dwindling reserves back at the homestead,

it's a prospect that Morgan Beasley

and Margaret Stern can't afford to pass up.

They need to secure a fresh source of protein soon,

or else face a critical shortage

during the winter's darkest months ahead.

Morgan: I'm hoping we can get in there and then time it right

and take home one or two of them for the freezer.

Narrator: But timing is everything.

There's no way to know for sure what the exact route of the herd

will be or when it will arrive.

To have the best chance of finding them,

Morgan and Margaret are working on advice and instinct.

And there's another curveball, too --

the law.

Even if they find the herd from the air,

they can't take a shot until daybreak.

Morgan: You can't fly and hunt on the same day,

which keeps things sporting

so you can't just see an animal from the air

and land right next to it and shoot it.

Narrator: Make the wrong choice, and their winter meat could pass them by.

Morgan: The plan is to try to land as close as we can

to what looks like the caribou trails

and to see if we can track them down.

Narrator: But before they can get on the hunt,

they first have to touch down on unfamiliar ground --

a maneuver the first-year pilot Morgan

is still learning to master.

The last time Morgan attempted a blind touchdown...

he nearly slid off the side of a cliff.

Margaret: You want to make 100% sure before you land

that it's a good spot because there's no going back.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: Back in Montana...

Jake: The dogs finally took off hauling ass.

Narrator: Jake Herak and his three-dog team

are pushing not one,

but two rogue mountain lions away from the valley's cattle.

Jake: It's up to me to kick it in high gear

and get caught up with these hounds.

Narrator: The dogs have tracked a scent more than 10 miles up

into the mountains.

Jake: I can hear them treeing up ahead of me here.

[ Dogs barking ]

Oh, we're about to catch a kitty!

Holy [bleep].

[ Barking continues ]

I can see the cat in the tree about 100 yards from me,

dead across, eye-level.

The dogs are treeing just below it.

Now I just got to try to pick my way off of this mess

and see if I can't get down to the dogs.

Narrator: Approaching a cornered cat

is the most dangerous part of the hunt.

Jake: These are very smart predators.

A mountain lion will jump tree-to-tree.

They can clear 15 to 20 feet, and they're born to kill.

That's what they do.

All right. Here we go.

We've got a cat up the tree.

[ Barking continues ]

♪♪

Good dogs! Good dogs!

That's definitely a young tom.

It's probably the cat that made those scrapes.

Narrator: Jake's already pushed this cat 10 miles,

far enough to safely buffer the vulnerable livestock below.

But the question now is, where's the other?

Jake: I'd say we pushed this cat far enough,

and I'm gonna go ahead and pull the dogs off,

and on to the next one.

Come on, dogs! Whoo-hoo!

Leave him alone!

Let's go.

♪♪

Here it is.

I've got a fresh lion track going up here.

Come on, dogs.

Here it is.

Let's go!

And they go on.

♪♪

[ Dogs barking ]

Wow. I can hear those dogs just going crazy.

They definitely have a cat in a tree.

Ah.

[ Barking continues ]

I've got the cat spotted just through the trees here.

I'm gonna go ahead and slide in there real stealthy-like.

Holy crap. Look at that.

[ Barking continues ]

That cat right there is nervous.

This tree is completely dead.

It's probably 100 years old.

There's not a branch left on it.

It's almost petrified.

Oh, that cat's getting a little nervous.

It's gonna jump.

That'd be a mistake, buddy!

Ah!

[ Frantic barking ]

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!

Get out!

O0 C1

Stay back! Oh, let it go. Let it go.

[ Panting ]

Now, that's what you call [bleep] hitting the fan.

Holy [bleep].

That's, uh, not what I want to happen.

Um, they've got this cat way in a tree now,

and when a cat hits the ground like that,

these dogs -- they're gonna protect me.

Ah!

That cat came right at me.

First thing the dogs did -- jumped on him,

and that's why I'll never leave one of these guys

on the mountain, is that right there.

That cat could have easily jumped on me,

and I would have had a hell of a time

scrambling around to get my pistol out on him.

That was about a bad deal.

Good dogs!

[ Dogs barking ]

Everybody here looks all right.

Marlene got one little scratch on her ear,

but that's not a big problem.

I'm just gonna go ahead and pull these dogs in,

to try to make it back to my truck before dark.

Hey, good dogs! Let's go!

Narrator: With both cats pushed away from the cattle ranch

and far up into the mountains, it's time to call it a day.

Jake: These dogs always have my back,

and no matter what, I'll have their back.

I mean, three seconds of the mountain lion on top of you,

and you're done.

It was a nice fast catch and really successful,

for the amount of chaos we had.

Pretty awesome day, to say the least.

Set out for one cat, got two, and just heading home safely.

You know, it's gonna be one hell of a season.

Come on, dogs.

♪♪

Narrator: Far north, in Alaska...

...it's a bumpy touchdown...

...where Morgan and Margaret are placing their bets

that they're within range of a massive caribou migration.

Well, I guess we'll have a little bit of a hike.

With just three days to spare away from their homestead,

the clock is ticking the moment they hit gravel.

There's that.

And by law, they can't hunt on the same day that they fly.

The trick is to get close to the herd by nightfall

so they're within range to make a kill in the morning.

Margaret: Yeah, we want to make it to camp

and be able to scout out the territory today.

We only have a few days that we can really hunt

before we have to get back to the homestead

and take care of all the animals.

So with the remaining daylight,

we're gonna go check out the territory.

All right.

Well, first big adventure in the plane.

Yeah, cool.

Let's go. Bye, little plane.

Yeah, stay safe there, buddy.

♪♪

Narrator: Back in the lower 48, in Idaho's Rockies

stands a mountain range so steep and jagged,

it's earned the name the Sawtooths --

glacier-carved peaks 11,000 feet high.

Lewis and Clark once deemed this land

too dangerous to explore,

but for the Youren brothers,

the mountains are in their blood.

Harry: We're the sixth generation to be in Idaho,

and our family's been here since the 1860s.

We grew up on either the back of a horse

or walking through the woods, one or the other.

Those were about your only two options,

or, well, we go to school, but we never picked that one.

Kidd: I'm sure Harry and I are mountain men,

but like Jim Bridger, John Colter,

Jedediah Smith -- frontiersmen.

We like to get out and see

what's over the next mountain ridge.

Narrator: 29-year-old Harry is a skilled horseman...

Harry: I cowboy all spring.

I break colts all summer.

That's my forte.

Narrator: ...while 32-year-old Kidd is an expert farrier.

Kidd: Essentially what we're trying to do

is make a cleat out the back right there

so a horse's foot steps down in the snow, it'll dig in.

It can't slide.

Narrator: But to hold onto a true mountain-man lifestyle

that's fast disappearing, it takes a Jack-of-all-trades.

Kidd: The two of us together do all kinds of different odd jobs.

It's anything from clearing trail to delivering supplies,

running a boat, doing a little bit of hunting,

selling some hides.

Just about anything you can think of outdoors,

I've done it to make money.

Narrator: But today, they're gearing up for a job

that's about more than making a dollar.

CiCi, put your head down.

It's about defending their turf

against the greatest threat to their food supply.

Kidd: Wolves are the top of the food chain out here.

They've been killing way too many deer, way too many elk.

That's our food source.

So if the wolves are killing all of our food source,

it makes it harder and harder for us to hunt,

so just protecting the resources that we have left.

Well, let's get out of here.

Narrator: The Yourens hunt wolves at this time of year

to cull the population before winter sets in.

If a pack gets too large as food gets scarce,

they become indiscriminate killers,

preying on anything and everything,

including ranch animals.

Harry: Where we're going's pretty steep and nasty.

Them icy hillsides -- they get real slick.

Come on, keep climbing. Yeah.

Look out!

-Oh, oh. -Hang on. Nope. Let go.

[ Laughs ]

Get right up on top of that bluff right there, Harry.

We'll be able to see a little bit better.

Yeah.

I'm looking for birds that might be flying up in a bunch.

That means something's dead.

Oh, there's a couple just flew up right there.

Oh, yeah, there might be something

down in there.

If I can find some fresh kills, that's the quickest way for me

to find some wolves.

Looks like a couple of wolf tracks in there.

Yeah, look at that.

Definitely at least two or three wolves right here.

Kidd: I think it was made in the night

'cause they're not sinking in super hard.

Like, they're walking on a little bit of that crust.

Yeah, Mort found something right down in there.

He's chewing on whatever it is.

Holy crap, Harry.

It's a dead horse.

[Bleep]

[ Wolf howls ]

Wow. That thing is gutted.

Definitely a wolf kill, though.

...a grizzly discovery is a sure sign that Kidd and Harry Youren

are on the trail of a wolf pack.

Wouldn't be the first horse they've killed.

But wolves rarely prey on horses

and livestock this early in the winter,

when wild game is still plentiful.

I'll be damned.

The kill is a bad sign

that the pack is already out of control.

Kidd: That's not good, to have wolves killing horses,

especially at this time of year.

That means they probably chased it off from somewhere.

They kind of know what horses taste like.

If they get used to killing horses,

there's nothing stopping them from coming down

and killing our horses or our neighbors' horses.

Narrator: While the kill appears to be a few days old,

it's hardly picked over,

which means the wolves will be back to finish it off.

Let's ride on up that other side,

see what we can't see.

Kidd: Yeah.

Wolves -- they don't regulate their own population well.

So lots of times there will be more wolves than there is food.

And once wolves start eating livestock, they don't stop.

So we're gonna go back and see if we can't get some found

before they cause even a bigger problem.

♪♪

♪♪

Raleigh: Is that a moonshine still?

Eustace: You got it -- on my land.

Narrator: Hidden in the hollers of the Blue Ridge...

Yeah, I can't have this.

...the discovery of an illegal still puts Eustace in a bind.

Eustace: I don't mind a man moonshining

if he wants to do it on his own land.

But it's pretty alarming to have somebody, like,

working on my land that's not invited.

Narrator: Moonshining is an Appalachian tradition

dating back more than 200 years.

Today, it still thrives in the mountains,

but distillers have to go deep off the grid to evade the law.

That's not terribly old.

That hasn't even been rained on.

Who could have been doing this?

I have no idea.

I just need to make sure they don't come back

and do it again, and they need to know

they can't just come over here and make liquor.

Raleigh: I got an idea to send them a message.

What's that?

Blowing up this moonshine still.

[ Laughs ]

Eustace: My nature it to salvage it,

but I believe Raleigh's idea of blowing up the still

will certainly send a message to whoever brought it down here.

He's having fun with the idea of, like,

let's just run with it.

Let's do it.

Yeah, I guess that would send the message out.

Hey, I can't have somebody just coming

and trespassing like this.

The main thing is just to tell these folks

that this is not okay.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: Back in Idaho, the fight against wolves

takes Kidd and Harry to 3,000 feet.

Snowing hard enough.

It's kind of hard to see very hard.

Ridgetops provide the best vantage for glassing,

but today's low clouds make spotting anything a challenge.

I know it's pretty damn foggy,

but see that finger ridge coming down?

-Yeah. -Can you tell what that is?

It could be a wolf.

Yeah.There -- it's definitely something.

When I'm glassing, I look for movement,

as the first thing I look for,

but it gets really tough with the snow blowing

and fog kind of settling in.

God. It's getting so damn fogged up over there.

-It looks big. -What the hell is that?

I say we go check it out and see what it is.

I think we're gonna have to.

♪♪

Narrator: In Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains,

predators are on the prowl,

and mountain men Kidd and Harry Youren

are fighting back.

Right there.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I see where you're looking.

But the wolves they thought they were chasing

turn out to be horses,

and 20 miles from the nearest homestead,

they're extremely vulnerable.

Best guess is they got chased off by wolves

from someone that had them out here probably elk hunting

or maybe even a neighboring ranch.

They could have been chased all the way up here from that.

Well, where they're at right there,

if they drop over that back side,

that a nasty, nasty little crick bottom over there.

I think we're best off kind of riding around them

and making them come this way, walk that crick off.

Now, let's get up there. [ Smooches ]

Harry: Only thing we can do is get these horses out of here

before they get killed by wolves, too.

I'd hate to see good horses like that just die for no reason.

Hopefully we can catch them. That's gonna be the hard part.

Narrator: As an expert, Harry knows how dangerous it can be

to rope a horse in the wild.

One wrong move on this treacherous terrain,

and it's easy to break a leg.

Ha! Get out of here!

Turn around, horse!

Ha! Ah-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!

Ha!

♪♪

Ha!

-Ooh. Ooh. -Whoa!

Ooh, now. Ooh, now.

They kind of act like they've been roped before.

Oh, they've definitely been roped before.

Maybe it's just been a while.

Did you see where my hat fell off?

You were behind me.Yeah, it's right there.

I stepped on it. Don't worry.

-You squished it for me? -I squished it good.

Yeah. Hey, now.

-They're pretty friendly. -Huh, buddy?

Hey, big guy.

The best thing we could do is to make a few phone calls,

see if we know anyone missing any horses.

Giving up on our wolf hunt to rescue a couple horses --

it's a good thing to do,

so we'll get these horses back home.

Harry: Tomorrow we get back out there.

Predators, right now -- they've been causing a lot of problems,

but we're not gonna give up.

Harry: Come on.

Kidd: We just take it every day as it comes.

You never know what's around the next corner,

and if it's not one thing, it's another.

This is hard country, and you got to be tough,

but we wouldn't give it up for anything.

♪♪

♪♪

All right! Looks like I got her.

Narrator: It's 12 degrees in Alaska's White Mountains,

where Marty's just set and baited the last trap

on his super-size 150-mile-long trap line.

All told, he's got 400 traps ready to pull in a payday.

Marty: I'm all finished breaking trail.

Now I just got to start catching furs.

Narrator: He's right on schedule because tomorrow,

Marty's heading home to pick up an assistant who will help him

run the line this season --

his 13-year-old daughter, Noah.

Noah's coming out, and I'm excited to have her out.

Narrator: Noah's no stranger to the trap line.

Did I do it?

[ Laughs ]

Let's see how you're doing there.

You're looking good.

But this is the first winter she's old enough

to learn the family business hands-on.

I want it to be a really good experience

just between me and her, full-time trapping.

The next order of business

I want to accomplish here is to get an antenna set up.

Narrator: Marty's got some work to do

to make his one-man trapper's cabin more family-friendly --

first, a critical safety measure.

So, I just need a pole.

Narrator: The antenna will boost the signal of his A.M. radio,

their lifeline in an emergency.

Marty: I bet you that'll break.

[ Laughs ]

Ugh!

So, I'm just gonna lean it like that.

I'm just gonna tie it up there.

Be enough.

Narrator: And finally, a steady supply of firewood.

It's important to me to show Noah this lifestyle,

and for her to feel this, to experience this,

and me and her to be together out here.

This is my church.

That ought to do her.

What she does with that later in life is totally up to her.

Narrator: In the Blue Ridge Mountains...

How's this thing work?

...Eustace and Raleigh are protecting Turtle Island

against an invasion of illegal moonshiners.

Well, we've got to mix these compounds together,

and once we got it mixed up, we're ready to place it in

and then take our shot from up on that ridge.

And the apprentice has a new plan of attack for the master.

Eustace: I don't have the time to make a whole bunch of black powder,

but Raleigh says this ammonium nitrate

and powdered aluminum will blow the place up.

So I'm gonna trust this young man.

The bullet explodes it?

Right. We use a high-powered rifle to set this thing off.

Think we'll be able to make that shot

from the ridge up there?

You're shooting. [ Laughs ]

What do you think?I got it.

All right. [ Laughs ]

Oh, my goodness.

Well, let's get up there and do it.

Goodbye, still.

There it is, right there.

Let's grab that stump.

We can roll it up here, too.

That's a good plan.

One, two, three, four.

Well, there you go.

Thank you.

♪♪

[ Gunshot ]

-[ Laughs ] -How about it?

Yeah!

[ Laughing ] Oh, my gosh.

You weren't kidding. That's a bomb!

That's amazing. Ah!

Well, let's hope we can keep people away

that are just tearing up the land or causing us trouble.

Eustace: Raleigh had a pretty good idea,

sending out a message.

So whoever is coming back to it is gonna get the point.

I've had so much trouble with trespassers for so many years,

I just got to get a message out to them --

"Stay off my land."

But some people are so bold or crazy, it doesn't matter.

We'll see what happens.

Well, it's starting to get dark,

and it's starting to snow,

and we've got quite a few miles to go.

Let's head on back.

Now that we got these trespassers

hopefully under control, tomorrow we're gonna get back

to harvesting timber, see if we can't pull out

a little money off this mountainside.

Let's hit the trail.

Yeah.

♪♪

♪♪

Wow.

Narrator: Three miles up,

in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska...

You see any caribou out there.

...Morgan and Margaret are on the lookout

for any signs of an oncoming herd.

Morgan: The caribou are supposedly coming from the east,

so if we go to a high spot to the east,

it's more likely we'll something up there.

Narrator: There's no way to be sure when they'll arrive,

but with luck, from this vantage,

they'll get pointed in the right direction.

Margaret: On top of the mountain,

you can see in all sorts of different directions,

and it actually is more efficient.

It's a little bit better for our scouting mission.

♪♪

Morgan: That's great.

Morgan: Seeing some caribou -- it's a really good sign.

I'm hoping we can get in there

and take home one or two of them for the freezer.

Narrator: The sighting is confirmation

that Morgan and Margaret haven't missed the herd.

Morgan: If the caribou are migrating,

they'll be coming through all day long.

Yeah.

Hopefully the herd will still be here at daybreak,

when they can take their first shot

because with just three days to make a kill,

there's no time to spare,

and if they miss this opportunity,

the winter ahead could become the toughest they've ever faced.

Morgan: Tomorrow we're gonna get up early and hike up and get one.

That's kind of a gamble 'cause they could easily move away,

but they're the only caribou we've seen,

so that's what we have to do.

Hope we see some animals tomorrow.

Narrator: This season on "Mountain Men"...

[ Dog barks ]

Jake: Once the dogs line out on a cat,

there's no calling them off of that track.

Ah, [bleep].

Narrator: ...there is new blood...

If a bear crossed downwind of where this deer is,

they'll follow it right in like a bloodhound.

[ Dogs barking ]

Narrator: ...and new lands to conquer.

If I get hurt in a cave like this,

it's a good place to wind up missing for a long time.

♪♪

Narrator: In the battle to be free,

they are ready to risk it all.

Jake: Going into winter is a stressful time.

If you're not prepared, you might not survive.

Narrator: And one veteran breaks from tradition

to bid a final farewell.

Marty: Well, me -- I'm just a trapper,

and I want to get back to doing my full-time trapping.

Eustace: At my age, to manage the whole of Turtle Island by myself --

[Laughs] oh, my gosh.

There's no telling what the future will bring.