Original subtitles

I'm sick.

Too much shellfish. If my body doesn't do well with the diet here, that'll make

me pull out.

I don't know if I'm done yet.

Weather is the hardest on you psychologically and physically. It's

just relentless.

You would just knock yourself in the head with a rock to escape it.

When the weather's like this, you just get to the point where you just don't

want to be out here anymore.

My gear is growing mold.

It's been wet for so long. That's bad news.

See the mold?

It's not good. The wind's probably blowing like 40, 50 mile an hour through

the trees at least. The temperature's dropping.

The sky looks evil.

There's some visitor intriguing entrance at my chamber door.

This is going to be a bitch.

We have to film it and we're totally alone.

Nobody knows what it's like here except for the 10 guys out here doing it. I

want to get sheltered. There's nobody here but me.

It's so hard doing this.

I feel like I'm starving.

Pretty sure I just saw a cougar at all.

Last man standing wins $500,000.

I don't want to go home. I want to win.

It's the chance in a lifetime, but it's not worth dying for.

I have kind of a story about last night.

It's midnight, and I'm kind of half awake, and I hear this rustle, and I

look over, and there's a mouse just, like, hanging out on my rain jacket.

And it just, like, ran away into the forest.

And I was thinking, hmm, I've been out here for a long time.

I am not above eating mice at the moment.

So, I figure there's a really good trap that I know that is really good for

rodents and such.

I think I'm going to set a few, see if I can get some mice to eat, and it would

be nice to have some meat.

I didn't know how hard it would be just not having enough food.

I've never, ever been so hungry in my life.

What we're going to do, we're going to carve a Paiute deadfall trap.

It's a trap that's used a lot in the southwest United States.

It's really highly effective.

Instant kill.

Very humane as well.

I figure I'm probably better at trapping and hunting than I am at fishing anyhow.

Might as well put this line to good use.

Tie it on here.

Now we make the trigger.

We want to carve a nice little tiny piece.

Almost rectangle-shaped.

A little tab, and it's got to be real nice and flat on both ends.

That's what we tie our string to.

Now we can really see this trap coming to life.

This rests right here.

Stone goes right there.

And this stick pulls around.

Trigger goes like so.

Perfect, actually.

Now we've got our trigger stick.

All the pieces.

Made just right.

Might get us some food tonight.

I take life very seriously and my family very seriously. I take Mother Nature

very seriously, but I don't take myself very seriously.

Mentally, I'm pretty tough as far as my mindset goes.

I kind of view success as stumbling from failure to failure without a loss of

enthusiasm.

I'd be so dead right now if I was an animal.

Bad things can happen to you, but don't let your mindset dwell on that.

Try to stay focused on the good things. Try to kind of ration the good things

that happen to me.

Ah.

Got it. One trap.

Bunch more to go if I want a decent trap line.

I rarely ever lose enthusiasm over something.

It takes a lot of breaking me down before I actually break and before I

actually admit defeat on things.

I can fail and fail and fail over again and just keep on going and keep on

trying my best.

Ha ha, this is perfect.

This is a perfect setup.

Very, very sensitive trigger.

Can't even see him on camera.

I've got all these bloody spots on my hands, all these little nicks

everywhere.

But hopefully it results in food tomorrow.

But we'll keep going and we'll keep pushing through.

Keep pushing.

Today is all about fishing, nothing else. The weather's nice. I'm going to

go down there and throw some lines in.

Probably use the floats that I found yesterday and create some, like, trot

lines. Found a float.

It's never going to wash up.

More things that potentially could yield food.

There has to be some fish out there.

What I'm aiming to do is make a trot line, which is basically a line that

runs along the surface with floats and then hanging off it down into the water.

are lines with more hooks on it. And so that way you have fixed hooks or more

fishing for you while you're not actually present.

I need to find sustainable ways to bring in calories.

And so far, I haven't.

If this starts to pull in food for me, this will mean huge rewards.

This will be a big deal.

Okay.

I do feel like I have a place here.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I feel experienced here or knowledgeable.

I don't know all the secrets to the land and how to obtain food.

So I'm trying to listen. I think the land will teach you.

I have to learn the secrets of the area to make it work for me.

Between each one of these, I'll put one or two lines.

I've got some snails that I gathered for bait and a few other things, and just

let them sit out there and see what happens.

So first things first today, we're going to check the traps just here around

camp. Field mouse traps.

Trap number one, not triggered.

Trap number two, triggered.

Nothing, but the bait wasn't taken, so that's good. Looking around the other

traps, not triggered, but the bait was taken.

Then also not triggered, but the bait was taken.

Hope for better luck tomorrow.

There's no way to explain how tough this is.

You're just hungry all the time. All day, you're just hungry.

You just want a little something.

I've spent my entire adult life living off of pizza and pizza rolls.

A healthy balance of those two foods.

Being out here with no food is really hurting me bad.

Bad.

Lee, that hurts.

Knuckle buster.

Man, this is all really just so draining.

It wears you out so much.

God, Lee.

Whatever.

It's not going today.

Whatever.

I'll set it tomorrow.

The local people we talked to, when we told them what we were going to do, they

actually laughed out loud at us. They were like, oh, you picked the wrong time

of year, you know.

And we did in a sense because in the forest, there's not a whole lot for you.

There's no berries.

There's not the animal movements that you normally have. All the plants and

stuff is not like it's going to be in the spring.

So it pushes you out to the seashore. That's kind of where the resources are

at.

Man, I got some holes in this net that are going to have to be fixed, that's

for sure.

Nothing. Not even a single solitary crab.

So, the shoreline, a bit of a strikeout today.

Nothing in the gill net.

So, I have a couple of plastic bottles that I found on the beach, washed up.

I'm going to build some fish traps.

I'm going to take the cap off.

Take your knives.

and select the space.

This bottle has ridges.

I use those to lock the cap when I turn it back in. There's one, two, three,

four ridges, so I go two in and then put the tip of my knife there gently and

then just cut it all the way around that.

Try to keep it straight.

Just like that.

And then once you get the top off, you just spin it around

and force it back into the opening.

Kind of like that.

And those ridges that are in this bottle will actually help lock that in, I

think.

So now the fish goes in through the neck and gets... as how to get back out.

I've heard of people catching prawns and similar traps.

So I'm not looking for big fish, obviously.

Basically, this is a bait catcher. This is going to catch me bait.

Tide's coming in, so I'm going to go ahead and put these things out in this

tidal pool area, try to lock them down with rocks and see what happens.

Kind of make an artificial cave, a place where a fish would feel safe.

I think I'm going to do these other two. I've got some

kind of green slime growing here that's like teflon.

I think I'm going to do one face in one way and one face in the other.

Push comes to shove. Whatever gets caught in these little traps can also be

food.

That'll work.

My main issue right now is a stable food source.

Because if you can't find food security, then you're done.

On our way to go check my gill net.

Hope I got a fish.

That'd be a great start of the day right there.

I don't know.

Might just be a piece of seaweed hanging.

Check it out.

You know, I'm not messing around. I want food. I want to eat.

It's just all about food. Food every day.

If I can't find food, I have to leave.

I don't want that to happen.

I've got a fish in my net.

It's a good-sized fish, but I don't know if I want to eat this guy.

It might be old, but it's also been freezing out, so he might be okay.

We'll check him out.

This thing reeks.

I haven't even cut it open.

Its eyes are kind of looking weird.

Its skin is just, like, wearing away.

Look at that.

Yeah, the meat's rotten.

That's a bummer, man.

And that's awful.

That's awful. That sucks because I missed out on an incredible meal.

And this fish was killed.

And I didn't, you know, get to harvest it and honor it properly and eat it and

enjoy it.

I just, I don't know, I'm just very troubled today because of all these

things going on in my mind.

This would be a different situation if I had.

Four salmon right now.

I just don't want to be here anymore.

I dropped a trot line with about five or six lines coming off it that are fishing

for me right now.

I'm going to set up my boat.

and go cruise around that rocky point and see what's going on. Time is of the

essence. The currents are shifting as we speak, and if I get caught out in them,

that's danger.

I've got to get them working.

It's all about having food production out here, and if I don't work, then it's

not happening.

Making a beeline towards my fishing line.

No hits or nothing.

There's not even snags or not even bite.

It's one thing when you don't get a fish.

When you're fishing for fun.

It's another thing when you don't get to fish, when you don't have much for food.

It's kind of a downer.

And as much as I'd like to say that I'm always strong or always optimistic, the

reality is that I'm not.

Putting all those lines in the water and not even having a little bite just took

my confidence level and just dropped it.

Just so hard doing this alone.

so much better with a friend.

And nobody knows when we're gonna be done.

I don't wanna spend.

Christmas out here?

I want to spend it with the people I care about.

Thanksgiving.

Eating seaweed.

Stewed up.

There's just no end in sight.

Let us be alone.

The tide has went out enough that I can check my fish traps.

I mean, ideally you want to set a lot of traps, but I didn't make that many. I

just made three different.

And if it doesn't hit, I'll just make more of them and change up the location.

It's just a process.

This is step one.

Check the fish traps and see how they get.

And the first one, that cloudy water there, pour some of

that out.

I'd say that's a success.

Into the pot they go.

And there we have it.

So now I'm going to take this piece of trash that just fed me and put it right

back so it can feed me again.

And here's another piece of trash.

Oh, look at that.

Look at that, ladies and gentlemen.

Yet another success story.

Repurposing of trash for sustenance.

Into the pot they go.

That is starting to look like breakfast brunch, what have you. We still have a

couple more.

Oh, another success story.

Into the pot they go.

Now, that's fish soup right there. One went back to freedom at the bottom.

Okay. Now, that's survival, people. That's payoff right there.

That's payday.

That's life.

That's life-giving nutrients right there.

Vitamins and minerals, eyes, bones.

I'm getting it all.

I'm getting it all.

We have a thing where I come from. You got to make hay while the sun shines. So

I'm getting it right now. And this is the time to act and make a run for some

food. I need to make that happen for myself because I am not done yet.

Hungry face.

Times of the essence. Every day without fish or protein from the sea is a day

that I can't stay out here as long.

So I'm paddling right towards my trot line.

And I want that thing to be full of juicy, juicy, juicy fish.

I only see one fish.

Which means the other one

disappeared?

Something's happened to my line.

There's only one man standing over here.

Oh, there's seaweed powder.

Oh, what in the...

Whoa!

I caught a fish!

I got a fish!

Awesome.

Oh, your breakfast, buddy.

That was the coolest surprise in the world.

And I didn't even catch him by his mouth.

I caught him by his gill.

I'm feeling like those lines out there are actually going to do some good.

And I'm going to put another one out tomorrow.

In fact, I got one fish. This made my day.

I didn't really debone it. I'm just going to eat it as is.

Too hungry.

Too much work.

Oh, man, I've been missing it.

It's easy to be grateful for things here, but things are scary.

But once I go back, I really hope I hang on to my gratitude.

That's good.

I think some part of me will always remember this moment.

I can't really forget stuff like this very easily.

I can't believe this is happening.

This is a very big deal.

My net is gone.

I don't know if it was taken by the tide or if it was taken by an animal.

I can't believe this happened. I was worried about the current taking it

yesterday. That's why I put those rock piles yesterday.

Oh, my God.

It has flowed some weight.

So if the current plus the high tide was enough to lift it high enough, it could

have lifted the stake. Then it would have just floated right out.

My neck could be anywhere right now.

This is very bad.

That cut me off from my food source.

I mean, it's that simple.

Well, I'm going to walk around a little bit.

Pray I got hung up on rocks or something.

This is like my main food source right now.

And I'm really behind all galleries.

Oh, my God.

This is so bad.

The net is massively powerful in this environment.

Able to catch multiple fish and crabs and do it all by itself. You just set it

up and walk away. You come back and there's food.

And that's gone.

It's incredibly crushing.

I can't produce any fish.

I'm done.

The fish traps were hit.

A little bottle, packed full.

I've been thinking since the fish traps on a small scale are so successful, I

think I'm going to try to go for a bigger one.

One thing that I'm really getting from this is the psychology of survival.

It's amazing what you can do.

Things that you didn't think that you could do are things that you actually

can endure.

that in our air-conditioned, climate-controlled, swipe-the-card

lives, we really don't have to.

And I think that's detrimental to a human. I think we're designed and

capable to do way more than what we do.

And the only way to really discover that is to get out there and do it.

The wilderness is a good place to start that.

A whole lot of work for a fish.

Probably my seventh trip of carrying material for that fish basket.

And we're nowhere near done.

The next time you order fish at your local restaurant, remember this lesson.

So I'm going to go ahead and start on the fish trap.

I think some hoops are in order, first thing.

See, that bends up pretty nice.

Need to try to envision that. Okay, here's my hoop.

Got my sticks.

Fish comes in. There's a cone here dropping down to a small opening.

The fish goes in.

And you've got dead space here and can't get out.

But we'll see. Who knows what will show up in this thing.

This is largely...

Experimental for me. I've not done one just like this tight.

So I've got my hoop.

I'm going to run long pieces down, and they're going to join crisscross

together like the top of a teepee. I just made this smaller loop, and I'm

thinking about maybe putting it in here somewhere.

All these other pieces will tie to it.

That will give it some structure between this hoop and that hoop. And then tie

the ends together, just interlock, just lash them together.

And then for filler, come in with some smaller branches and weave over and

under and over and under with the sides. That's what I'll do just like that with

sticks and vines where it'll actually contain fish or whatever.

First couple of weeks after I got here, it was all I could do to just, you know,

just focus on the basics and constantly reassess.

And now I just feel like I've come to a place where it's just life. You know,

I'm just doing it.

Just doing what I have to do to live out here.

Definitely turning more spiritual.

My focus is not so much on the water and the shelter and the fire and the food,

because I know I have those things.

You know, it's becoming more inward looking.

And it's pretty powerful, pretty deep, and it's hard to put into words, too.

Whenever my journey ends, And I don't even know when that's going to be.

I've done, you know, what I came here to do as far as, you

know, there's no doubt in my mind I can survive here.

There'll be a winner, you know, somebody who stays the longest. But I don't feel

like I'm competing against the other guys.

I think we're all competing against ourself.

Winning. It's defined differently for each of us out here.

I think that victory for me would be leaving here at peace with

myself. And I don't know what that is yet.

There have been some awakenings and spiritual things that have happened.

Sometimes you don't always like what you see.

Sometimes you become aware that maybe you need to change some things.

Like every other person out there that's honest with themselves, I have my

regrets.

I've made my mistakes.

And some of them are very painful, very hard to look at, very hard to relive.

But when you come out here in the wild, you have no choice. They will come

bubbling up to the surface.

There's no suppressing them. They will come to the fore, and you have to meet

them. You have to own them.

My relationship with my son is one of my things I wish I could better.

And time's not over with.

God's still merciful. Things might change.

I'd like to have more involvement and time with him. And I've tried a lot, but

can only do so much from one end, you know.

People make mistakes.

I think we're good.

I mean, I look at this thing, and I really don't see anything escaping out

of here that would matter. That thing is pretty solid.

You know, it's got some holes, but it's all small.

And anything that would get through these openings, you know, it's the kind

of stuff that I'm already getting in my little trap, so no loss, really. And I

don't want to trap every little fish out of there. I don't want to do any damage

to the...

to the population of anything here.

So this is where we are on the funneling, channeling structure.

I feel like, I mean, yeah, there's a hole or two in there, but I see no

reason why we couldn't go ahead and try this.

Now we've got the cone in.

There it is in all its glory.

We're starting to see results or a lack of results.

There will be fish or a lack of fish.

Those are the two possible outcomes. So I have a 50-50 shock, which is

statistically pretty good.

One thing you learn when you spend a lot of time with yourself is that no one's

perfect, especially you.

And this is my dead-level best I can do right now with a fish trap. I don't know

what I'm doing with it.

I'm just trying.

That's all you can do is try.

Yeah.

I'm going to take this home with me when it's all over.

Did you see me showing up at the airline with this?

Put that with my checked luggage, please. Thank you.

I wonder if it's ever happened before, if anybody's ever shown up with a fish

trap.

Put your little name tag on it.

I'm going to do that, or try to.

The sun is trying to peek through, actually, a little bit. So I've taken

off a couple layers and I'm going to check out the fish basket that I put out

yesterday.

I've never trapped fish.

So netting them and trapping them is all calculated guesses.

I'm doing this with a view toward food.

More food, different food, variety.

Take what I can get.

Some better than none.

And... Day

one on

the fish basket is a strike. No joy.

No joy on the fish basket.

You know, I've had successes and failures with the gill net. It's been on

and off.

So you can't just, you know, on day one go, well, there's nothing in there. It's

a wrap.

And I've got to give it time. I'm going to give it a week and see if there's any

traffic at all. Let that bait in there get real funky and rotten a little bit.

Let the smell dissipate.

And then, if nothing, I'll shoot for deeper water, you know.

I think the biggest thing that I took away from making this thing, was the

realization that I'm a lot stronger than I give myself credit for.

And I think when you do think you've hit a wall or found a limit, it's usually

just a mental one. So you just examine it, dismiss it, and step over it and go

to the next one. And you just keep doing that over and over.

And there's probably even no such thing as limits.

Oh, madness.

Lots of work went into this.

None of the traps were triggered last night.

Maybe it was just because it was so freaking cold.

It's got a bunch of frost all over everything, including the traps.

Blanketed. Everything's blanketed with frost.

Frost is everywhere.

It's cold.

Nothing positive to report right now at all.

Nothing positive to report.

I mean, other than making it another day.

It just gets depressing after a while.

You think you found something that's working really well, and then it fails.

It's almost like there's no sure way of doing anything out here.

I guess such a big part of survival is luck to an extent. It has a lot to do

with your skills, but then there's a big luck factor involved, and I've got to be

the least lucky person on the planet.

At least in regards to survival.

Anyway, sorry for depressing you.

The more I stay out here, the more the urgency for food kind of increases.

I'm not used to feeling this way. I'm not used to feeling this helpless.

There's nothing I can really do right now for myself.

There's literally no other way to get food out here. There are no wild edibles

out right now. I have no access to any good place to fish at the moment.

I've never, ever been so hungry in my life.

Never.

I'm definitely losing it.

Not good mentally.

I am not good in the head right now.

Morning of day 32.

Another hungry, hungry night.

Pretty hungry.

We're going to go check the traps.

Hopefully we can find a mouse or something in there.

It's freezing cold, so we'll have to do this quick.

Looking around at the traps, I can see that only one of them was triggered.

But this one.

is the one that was triggered. And if we look at it ever so closely, that looks

like a tail.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Whammo!

Mouthy beast coming right up.

A skinning and gutting mite is not a task for the faint of heart.

Kind of nice, the big fat one too. This guy's got a lot of meat on him.

I freaking hate mice though. I like how they taste, but I hate the animals.

Now comes the hard part.

Gutting the beast.

Because I don't want to pierce any of those gross internal things.

I don't want to taint the meat.

It's hard with these big old gloves on to actually get down in there.

But I'm just not tough enough to do it without gloves yet.

When it's all said and done, see that little guy?

Hardly even looks like a mouse.

Just a delicious piece of meat.

We had a few minutes. We'll be good to go. Cooking on the shelter can be really

frustrating.

Smoke gets all in your eyes, and you're like, ah, gross.

Let's see how this mousey's doing.

And the mouse is done.

Let's eat him.

It looks so glorious.

Cooked to perfection.

You eat the mouse all day. It's good.

It's good.

It is deep-fried a mouse. It tastes good.

It tastes like goo.

Mmm.

Dang.

Super skinny now.

Which is a good thing, I guess.

At least my wife will be happy.

Realizing that maybe my camp isn't in the best spot. Food isn't close.

So I'm going to move a camp. But I don't have a roof over my head tonight.

It's so cold.

This environment is so brutal.

And it's just ice cold.

My whole plan has gone out the window.

Started losing it. I've been out here for so long and I'm so sick of it. At

this point, I just want to go home.

It is frigid. It's the coldest it's been.

I'm really thinking to myself, what are you doing here?

I'm so over it.