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.

Ugh.

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.

I've been wet for so long--

That's bad news.

See the mold? That's not good.

The wind's probably blowing,

like, 40, 50 miles an hour through the trees, at least.

The temperature's dropping.

The sky looks evil.

'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.

This is gonna be a bitch.

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

Nobody knows what it's like here

except for the ten guys out here doing it.

Time to get shelter.

There's nobody here but me.

This is so hard doing this alone.

I'm scared to death right now.

I feel like I'm starving.

Pretty sure I just saw a cougar.

Oh,.

The last man standing wins $500,000.

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

This is the chance in a lifetime,

but it's not worth dying over.

♪ ♪

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 gonna set a few, see if I can get some mice to eat,

and--it'd 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 gonna do,

is we're gonna 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, so...

might as well put this line to good use.

Just tie it on here.

Now we make the trigger.

You 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 the 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 mind-set goes, I kind of view success

as stumbling from failure to failure

without a loss in enthusiasm.

I would be so dead right now if I was an animal.

Bad things can happen to you,

but don't let your mind-set dwell on that.

Try to stay focused on the good things.

Try to kind of ration

the good things that happen to me, and--

Aha.

Got it. One trap.

Bunch more to go if I want a decent trapline.

I rarely ever lose enthusiasm over something.

It takes a lot of breaking me down for me to--

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 them on camera.

I've got all these bloody spots in my hands,

all these little nicks everywhere.

But hopefully, it results in food tomorrow.

But we'll keep going, you know, we'll keep pushing through.

Keep pushing.

♪ ♪

Today is all about fishing,

nothing else.

The weather's nice.

I'm gonna go down there and throw some lines in.

Probably use the floats that I found yesterday,

and create some, like, trotline.

Found a float.

You just never know what's gonna 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 trotline,

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 six 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'll mean huge rewards.

This'll be a big deal.

Okay.

I do feel like I have a place here.

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 this area

to make it work for me.

And 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 gonna 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.

Ow.

Golly, that hurts.

Knuckle buster.

Man, this is all really just so draining.

It wears you out so much.

♪ ♪

The local people we talked to,

when we told them what we were gonna 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.

It's not like it's gonna be in the spring.

So it pushes you out to the seashore.

That's kind of where the resources are at.

Oh, let's see.

Man, I got some holes in this net

that are gonna 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 just found on the beach,

washed up, and I'm gonna build some fish traps.

So I take the cap off,

take your knife,

and select a space.

Since 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 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.

Then those ridges that are in this bottle

will actually help lock that in, I think.

See?

So now the fish goes in through the neck,

and gets confused as how to get back out.

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

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

Basically, this is a bait catcher.

This is gonna catch me bait.

Tide's coming in, so I'm gonna 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.

Think I'm gonna do these other two in this tidal pool.

Very slippy.

They got some kind of green slime growing here

that's like Teflon.

I think I'm gonna do one facing one way

and one facing the other.

Push comes to shove,

whatever gets caught in these little traps

can also be food.

Yeah.

I think that'll work.

♪ ♪

My main issue right now

is a stable food source,

'cause if you can't find food security,

then you're done.

On my way to go check my gill net.

I hope I got a fish in it.

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

I don't know.

Might just be a piece of seaweed hanging.

I'll 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 size 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. Yep.

The meat's rotten.

That's a bummer, man.

That's--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 trotline

with about five or six lines coming off it

that are fishing for me right now,

so I'm gonna 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, it's dangerous.

Just get them working.

It's all about having food production out here.

And if I don't work, then it's not happening.

Let's go for a ride.

Oh, yeah.

Boy, that's different.

I'm making a beeline towards my--

towards my fishing lines.

How's it going, buoys?

No hits or nothing.

There's not even snags or not even a bite.

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

when you're fishing for fun,

and it's another thing when you don't get a fish

when you don't have much for food.

It's kind of--

it's kind of a downer.

And as much as I'd like to say that, like, 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, like, a little bite,

just took my confidence level and just--

Ugh.

It's just so hard doing this alone.

This would be so much better with a friend.

And nobody knows when we're gonna be done.

I don't want to spend--

Christmas out here.

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

Or even Thanksgiving.

Eating seaweed stewed up.

There's just no end in sight.

I just feel so alone.

♪ ♪

I think now's the time.

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. So this is step one.

Check the fish traps and see how they did.

Let's see what we have in the first one.

Kind of cloudy water there.

Pour some of that out.

I'd say--

I'd say that's a success.

Into the pot they go,

and there we have it.

So now I'm gonna 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.

The 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.

That's fine. That's 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 saying 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,

'cause I am not done yet.

Hungry for fishies.

Time is 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 trotline,

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

I only see one buoy system right now...

Which means...

The other one...

Disappeared?

So something's happened to my lines,

because there's only one man standing over here.

Oh, there's seaweed on it.

Oh, what a mess.

Whoa.

I got a fish.

I got a fish.

Awesome.

I'm gonna get 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

gonna do some good,

and I'm gonna put another one out tomorrow.

The fact that I got one fish just made my day.

I didn't really debone it, I'm just gonna eat it as is.

Too hungry, too much work.

Oh man, I've been missing this.

It's easy to be grateful for things here,

'cause things are scarce.

But once I go back,

I really hope I hang on to my gratitude.

Mm, that's good.

I think some part of me

will always remember this moment.

You can't really forget stuff like this very easy.

That's perfect.

♪ ♪

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 floats and weights, so if the current

plus the high tide was enough to lift it high enough,

it could have lifted the stakes.

Then it would have just floated right out.

My net could be anywhere right now.

This is very bad.

That cut me off from my food source.

I mean, it's that simple.

I'm gonna walk around a little bit,

pray it got hung up on rocks or something.

It's, like, my main food source right now,

and I'm really behind on calories.

Oh, my god.

This is so bad.

A 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.

If I can't produce any fish

I'm done.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The fish traps were a hit.

The little bottles packed full of stuff.

I've been thinking, since the fish traps

on a small scale are so successful,

I think I'm gonna 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

or 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.

This is probably my seventh trip

of carrying materials for that fish basket,

and we're nowhere near done.

So the next time you order fish

at your local restaurant,

remember this lesson.

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

I think some hoops are in order, first thing.

See, that bends up pretty nice.

I 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,

then he's got dead space here, and he can't get out.

But we'll see.

Who knows what'll show up in this thing?

This is largely experimental for me.

I have not done one just like this type.

♪ ♪

So I got my hoop.

I'm gonna run long pieces down,

and they're gonna join crisscrossed together

like the top of a teepee.

I just made the 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 interlocked, 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.

♪ ♪

You know, 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,

I 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,

'cause 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 gonna 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 is 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've 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 want--you know, I don't want to do any damage

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 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'll start to see results or a lack of result.

There will be fish or a lack of fish.

Those are the two possible outcomes.

So I have a 50/50 shot, 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 gonna take this home with me when it's all over.

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

Just put that with my checked luggage, please.

Thank you.

I wonder if it's ever happened before,

if anybody's every shown up with a fish trap.

Put your little name tag on it.

I'm gonna do that, or try to.

♪ ♪

All righty.

The sun is trying to peek through, actually, a little bit,

so I've taken off a couple layers,

and gonna 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.

Yeah, 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,

"Oh, well, there's nothing in there.

It's a wrap."

You know, I've got to give it time.

I'ma 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.

I've got 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 know.

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.

♪ ♪

I am not good in the head right now.

♪ ♪

Morning of day 32.

Another hungry, hungry night.

Pretty hungry.

We're gonna 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 just 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.

Mousy feast coming right up.

Now, skinning and gutting mice is not a task

for the faint of heart.

Kind of nice, it's a big fat one, too.

This guy's got a lot 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 you don't want to pierce any

of those gross internal things.

You 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.

In a few minutes, we'll be good to go.

Cooking in the shelter can be really frustrating.

Smoke gets all in your eyes,

and you're like, "Ah, gross."

Let's see how this mousy's doing.

And the mouse is...

Done.

Let's eat him.

It looks so glorious.

Cooked to perfection.

♪ ♪

Mmm.

You could eat the mouse

all day, you see.

It's good. It's good.

The deep-fried mouse, it tastes good.

It tastes very good.

Mmm. Dang.

♪ ♪

I'm super skinny now,

which is a good thing, I guess.

At least my wife will be happy.

♪ ♪

I'm realizing that maybe my camp isn't in the best spot.

Food isn't close.

So I'm gonna move the camp,

but I don't have a roof over my head tonight.

It's so cold.

This environment is so brutal.

It's just ice cold.

My whole plan has gone out the window.

I 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,

and I'm really thinking to myself,

"What are you doing here?"

I am so over it.

♪ ♪