[ominous music]
- Yeah, there's snow in the mountains.
[laughs]
The cold is gonna destroy people.
Like, it's coming.
If you're not set up for winter,
you're not gonna last.
It's just the way it is.
♪
- [grunts]
Yes!
I'm really, really fortunate enough
to get a full-size adult beaver.
This gives me food security.
- Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.
Now more than ever, I can say I'm a hunter.
- We're gonna get moved in to this ivrulik.
I'm most afraid of never seeing my family again.
I know there are dangers on this land
and that I may never return home.
Beautiful in here.
- Things were feeling really good,
and then I decided to build this tepee.
I just feel like I've got nothing,
nothing in the tank.
I'm officially tapping out.
♪
[howling]
♪
[soft music]
♪
[tense music]
♪
[Will] We're going to be working on the wood stove.
♪
The chimney's looking good.
There's just a cool, old Iñupiat song
that has a story to it too.
It puts my two younger babies to sleep every time I sing it,
so it's a really special song.
And the story is of a old man
who looks outside of his window,
and he sees a rabbit being hunted.
The rabbit comes to the old man's door and knocks.
The old man lets the rabbit inside and takes care of him.
And the song goes...
[singing in Iñupiaq]
And that's a-- that's a Iñupiat song.
So yeah, we'll get to work on the wood stove.
♪
I think I spent as much time working on the chimney
as the entire shelter, to be honest.
Okay.
We lost about half the mud just walking up here.
Try to fill these holes best we can.
[tense music]
My shelter is working just the way as I had hoped.
It's keeping me dry, keeping me warm.
But winter is coming fast,
and the cold will come with that.
And I realize, without having a fire in my shelter,
it's not going to be warm enough
going into the cold season.
Looking great, man.
I know that, with those cold temperatures,
I need to get a way to have fire in my shelter,
to have heat.
Just have the back portion to do,
and I gotta mud that outside wall
and then put mud patties on the bottom, and it's done,
and I could get a fire going.
♪
This is one of the first things
that makes me realize I'm really alone out here.
I can't just send a photo of my shelter to my wife.
And this can be a difficult thing to do,
living out here alone, not being able to show
the ones you love your accomplishments.
♪
My wife, the love of my life.
I think about her every day.
♪
So if I'm standing on the mountaintop,
and I've won this thing,
the person that is going to reveal that
I've won this "Alone" experience is her.
♪
Looking forward to it.
♪
[footsteps crunching]
We have fire.
Oh, that's warm.
[fire crackling]
Oh, that feels good.
Look at that draft, right out the roof,
right out the chimney.
Man, look at that go.
[whistles]
[singing in Iñupiaq]
Oh.
I don't want to get the camera all hot,
but let's check this draft out.
Look at that.
That's right out the chimney.
Yeah.
Nice.
Oh, that feels good.
Nice.
Sleeping good now, ready for winter.
Let's go!
[dramatic music]
♪
[Jacks] I have to collect some moss.
Here's a good patch.
Well, until I have a pack basket...
This'll do.
[tense music]
I'll tell you what, though,
it's definitely insulating.
[laughs]
♪
[sighs]
♪
Making progress on the shelter.
I finished weaving the roof.
Then I put on a layer of earth.
I built the bed inside.
I need to insulate the walls
because there's a lot of holes still.
Hey.
Anybody need moss?
Moss for sale! Moss!
Oh.
♪
I didn't think that, going into this,
this build would take that long.
Time management has been a really big issue.
Let's do the bed. Okay.
There's a lot more that still has to be done,
and it's definitely getting colder.
♪
You know, I really kind of like being in here,
so I guess that's a good thing, eh?
♪
The most important thing that you need
to take care of is your core temperature.
If I cannot stay warm out here,
I am seriously gambling.
I am rolling the dice.
I want to make sure that I get this right.
♪
I still have to chink the walls,
but my shelter is in an okay enough place
that I could walk away from it for a while.
Cool.
So that's good.
Fat is really what's gonna allow you to thrive out here.
I really need fish, and I need fish now.
I need fat now.
And so recently, I made a gill net.
♪
[sighs] It's a marathon, not a sprint.
♪
All righty.
I want to deploy the gill net.
♪
It's taken me a while to get to this point
where I'm getting all my food systems in place.
Up to this point, I've only had hare,
but now I have to catch fish.
So if my gill net is a success
and I can get the fat from these fish,
that's what's going to allow me
to stay here for the long run.
Nature has always helped me in times of need.
Nature has always been there for me.
And right now, I know that nature
is going to have my back.
♪
All right, feeling very accomplished.
Whoo-whoo!
♪ We deployed a gill net, gill net ♪
Catch many fishies.
Go forth and prosper, gill net.
[vocalizing]
[tense music]
♪
[Aaron mimicking moose call]
[tense music]
♪
Seeing the snow in the mountains,
that's a pretty good awakening.
Cold is coming.
I need to be ready.
We still have fish hanging in the trees.
But I'm trying to space it out.
Right now, it should be prime time moose hunting.
[mimicking moose call]
And I'm just hoping for an opportunity at a moose.
The amount of food on these moose,
I can stay out here for hundreds of days.
Like, I'm feeling emotionally good.
Physically, I'll feel better with all that food.
Mentally, I'm locked in.
I'm ready to go.
If we get a moose, we win this competition.
There's not a doubt in my mind.
♪
There's nothing this way.
We'll go back to my shelter.
[suspenseful music]
♪
This weather, like, fluctuates so much.
It's crazy.
Go home, Mr. Winter.
You're drunk.
[bleep] Murphy.
It's only September.
Welcome to Canada, eh?
We're gonna go check the fish lines,
and then I want to walk around a little bit
and see if there's any tracks, fresh prints,
anything on the ground to give me some kind of hope.
♪
I'm bringing the bow, just in case.
This will definitely get the moose moving.
Bears are probably like, what the hell?
I'm getting worried about the food.
I'm not gonna lie.
♪
Nothing on that one.
Canada needs to feed its only baby boy in the competition.
♪
Please, Lord.
Come on, Travy.
I need your help.
One of the reasons why I'm here is my friend Travis.
He was my mixed martial arts coach early on,
and then we became really good buddies
because of hunting and the outdoors.
He was like a demigod with how gritty he was
and how mentally strong he was.
He was a Canadian mixed martial arts legend--
fought Georges St-Pierre and just, like, the strongest,
toughest person I've ever met.
There's nothing on it.
[bleep].
He passed away about a year and a half ago.
We had gone on a hunting trip together.
He was rafting into one of our hunting spots
and tragically lost his life.
♪
Losing him was unexpected.
It was tough. It still is.
I need Travis to help me out.
Put some fish on my lines.
Put a moose in front of me.
I need help here.
This is getting ridiculous.
♪
This one looks a little bit different.
Deep water, prime bait.
Everything in the making for a fish.
Because there's a big log, it was going like this
like it was swimming.
What a greasy move, Mother Nature.
What a greasy move.
[tense music]
Time to go for a hike,
see if there's any tracks that way.
Ah, that was dirty.
♪
Holy [bleep].
Good thing I left that running, eh?
Damn.
He's a lynx.
I gotta trap this bugger.
♪
[sighs]
If I can get him, you know, that's actual meat.
A pound a day, that's 20, 30 days.
♪
And he followed my tracks.
Here's my track.
There's his track.
My track, his track.
This little bugger.
♪
There's his tracks there again, probably.
♪
See?
This mother gunner-- he runs my fish line.
Man, I need to kill that [bleep] thing and eat him.
Operation snares are coming.
For the lynx, you have to use five-strand snares.
So we got to make a couple.
♪
Pull 'em tight, wrap 'em around your pliers.
♪
It's like everything is against me right now.
I'm gonna hopefully snare this lynx so I can eat him.
It's looking grim, but I'll have to make this work.
This is all I have.
I just want to win so damn bad.
♪
Man.
He's got another thing coming.
♪
You can see there's a little bit of a trail here,
and I've seen his tracks walk right through here.
I don't like failing.
There's lots of things I've quit
and failed in my life, and I don't like it.
But right now, I don't think I'm failing.
I think there's setbacks.
I knew there was gonna be issues out here.
I just need to find the solutions.
I won't quit, but I don't want to starve, either.
And now I'm starting to think about Travis.
He made me promise him that if I got on the show,
that I would not quit.
He says, anything that's worth doing has got to be hard.
So I want to fulfill that promise I made to him.
And it gives me the extra leg I need to keep going.
We've got a couple of those out.
So if I was Mr. Lynx, I'd be walking
right through this path
and right into the net--kaboom!
♪
We gon' get you.
♪
[suspenseful music]
♪
- It's finally winter!
It is snowing.
And it's not just a light snow.
It is snow-snow.
So I can see the animal trails, potentially.
I'm gonna go check the gill net.
On our way, I'll check out the trails.
I just did not think that I'd be getting out
my winter gear this early.
♪
Oh, I really thought I had more time.
♪
Wow.
A lot of activity through here right now.
Okay, we have beaver slide.
Hmm.
It's a beaver.
Interesting.
It looks like I'm sharing my shoreline with a beaver.
I hope that's not going to be a problem.
Check my gill net.
♪
Nope, nothing.
[sighs]
[bleep].
Damn beaver--it's scaring the fish in this river.
[tense music]
[sighs]
♪
Okay, just gotta keep trying.
♪
I'm open to the wisdom and the answers that she has.
♪
I really thought the net was gonna work.
It still might.
♪
Fish was my biggest resource of fat.
♪
But there's also beaver.
♪
Maybe my obstacle isn't fish.
My obstacle is fat.
♪
Maybe it doesn't matter if I catch fish or not,
as long as I catch fat.
♪
All right, we got to shift gears.
♪
I'm going for the beaver.
♪
[ominous music]
♪
[Will] Uvlaalluataq.
Good morning.
I moved my head down to this side,
next to the fire pit,
and slept really well last night, really warm.
So this morning, I'm going out hunting for moose and tuttu.
I don't want to wind down to not having any food
and be like, crap, what do I do?
So hopefully I can add to that food cache this morning.
[tense music]
It snowed, but the snowfall has melted.
♪
I'm disappointed because
tracks are more visible in the snow.
♪
It's important for me to explore this land
because I need to find moose.
I need to find tuttu, caribou, so I can harvest them,
and that can help me through the long winter ahead.
♪
My long-term food source is going to be big game.
So I need to try and be quiet.
♪
My hunting strategy on this hike
is to find an animal walking, eating,
and be able to have a chance to harvest it.
♪
It's been weeks that I haven't seen my family.
That's a big deal to me.
Every day missed is
a day of their childhood that I'm missing.
They're only gonna be kids once.
I find myself out in nature alone a lot,
but sometimes that's just because
I need to provide meat for my family.
♪
I enjoy it, but I enjoy it more
when I'm able to teach my kids those things.
When they're out there with me,
it's, like, an amazing difference.
It's so much fun.
I'm tired.
Man, I'm tired.
I feel like I'm out there doing those things
for more than just survival because we need meat.
I'm out there to pass all this knowledge on to my children.
♪
No signs of any animals yet.
Gassed out and tired, so gonna be heading back.
Check the ukalliatchiaq snares on the way back.
Maybe there's something in there.
[tense music]
♪
No signs of any rabbit.
♪
Maybe I'll come from the top down,
and I'll take four of these strands of paracord.
What I like to do is make a loop.
♪
A lot of energy used with--
you know, didn't get anything out of it.
Yeah, that ain't going nowhere.
[bleep].
Whoa!
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[Will groaning]
Man.
♪
Oh.
That was a bad faint.
Maybe high blood pressure, low blood pressure.
I don't know.
Man, not good.
It's a good thing I wasn't on the other side
of that steep river bank here.
Not good.
You gotta eat meat and drink water.
[tense music]
♪
Don't know what's going on.
♪
My body might be hungry
and possibly a little dehydrated,
but I've never experienced either.
Got our whitefish stomach here.
We're gonna put it in the pot of boiling water,
which has a grouse in it.
But we'll just leave it in for a few minutes.
Really looking forward to this.
This is a taste of home right here.
♪
Totally lost consciousness.
Felt like I was dead, I guess.
I mean, felt like I didn't exist.
Once I could see where I was, I was like, okay, I'm here.
But I didn't know where I was until I had to think about it.
It was crazy.
♪
What scares me most about that
is my children not having a father,
missing out on events of their lives,
not being there for them.
That's important to me because I didn't have
a lot of those things, so I know how it feels.
♪
I know that I said that
I'm willing to die to win this,
but this experience has given me a different mindset.
Winning this competition means I can spend time
with my family, as much time as I can,
by paying that mortgage off.
I might not have to work a full-time job.
Maybe I could do a part-time job
and have more time with my kids.
I just need to take care of myself better,
because I know if I do, I can win this thing.
♪
Okay, here we go.
Whitefish stomach-- look at that.
Piping hot, baby.
Let's see how it tastes.
Mmm, my God.
Give me 100 more of those, please.
[tense music]
♪
[thud]
[Ziga] I got it.
Sorry, buddy, for this, and thank you for your meat.
I appreciate it.
[tense music]
Actually, I never really bow-hunted before,
but at least, for small game,
working quite well so far.
I caught, so far, five squirrels with a bow,
which is actually quite good.
But I wish I would be getting something bigger,
and then I wouldn't have to take so many small lives.
That's how it is.
I think about, for example, animals that eat zooplankton.
They eat, like, thousands and millions of them,
taking so many lives of small animals...
♪
While, yeah, hunting something big, you take only one life.
But...
I don't know if you can measure stuff in this way.
♪
[sighs]
Anyway, enough of philosophy.
It's time for shelter, finally.
[tense music]
♪
I'm going to cut small spruce to build the frame
and dig the hole here and make A-frame over it,
so where this smoke is coming here, approximately.
♪
[sawing]
My focus was just food,
and so I think I'm the last participant
who started making permanent shelter.
But now I think I'm in quite good position,
so I know I need to start working very hard
and get this done before winter really starts to come.
♪
I'm going to make dugout type of shelter.
♪
It's actually a traditional Slavic shelter
called zemlyanka.
♪
This is A-frame, and walls are actually excavated.
So it's in the ground, pretty much.
♪
That's perfect.
In the ground, covered with tarp--
and that's one of the best protections against wind.
♪
Comparingly to digging in the soil,
you can never make walls airtight.
Especially for so cold environment,
I think this is the best way to go.
♪
What the [bleep] is this?
Permafrost.
♪
Crap.
♪
I thought it would be deeper here.
♪
Ah, [bleep].
♪
I'm starting to think if I should move
and look for another location.
♪
Damn it.
Damn it, damn it.
Permafrost, it's really difficult to dig,
and it's basically like digging in ice.
It's getting cold.
I will put my jacket on.
So you have to use a lot of force.
And another problem is, it's always frozen,
so that will keep my shelter cold.
But on the other hand,
this location is one of the best locations.
[tense music]
Despite permafrost, I think I'm staying here
♪ ♪
and rather putting more effort to make it work.
♪
[tense music]
♪
[Nero] Getting this smoker going,
start rendering the beaver fat as well.
♪
That fat's gonna need a fair while to render down.
♪
I think my pot is ready...
I'm sure you see that.
Maybe not.
But that is liquid gold.
You'll see it when I pour it.
[tense music]
That took a long time to render down.
♪
I was up till God knows what time
this morning just trying to render
and get that first batch done.
I got a container that I fortunately found.
I got a second container that I also found.
So the fat's gonna go into those.
They're the best and safest long-term storage that I have.
Oh, yeah.
Kind of looks like rust.
I have enough fat still to render
to fill this whole entire thing up.
Anyway, I'm gonna go check trap lines.
[tense music]
♪
There's a lot of meat on that beaver,
but the biggest thing was the fat.
No time for fancy shots for trap line.
It's just get out, see what she got,
get back.
♪
I'm trying really hard to be able
to dry as much as possible,
just to try and make it last as long as I can.
But just with the fat alone,
there's probably 15,000 to 20,000 calories there.
There's a lot of fat.
Supplement that with the other foods that I got coming in--
yeah, there's a lot of food.
♪
Got myself a snowshoe hare.
Whoa.
I got another one, and it's still alive.
♪
Hey, hey, chill, chill.
Chill, chill, chill, chill, chill, chill,
chill, chill, chill, chill.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Shh.
Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.
You're trapped up around.
You know what?
I do not need two snowshoe hares right now.
So if you can chill...
I will let you go.
Shh, shh.
[tense music]
Shh.
Hey, hey, hey.
Don't die on me.
Come on.
I just gotta get this off you.
♪
Got you around the neck.
Shh.
There you go.
♪
Come on.
That's it.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.
Come on.
Come on, come on, come on.
Get your breath back.
That's it.
♪
That's it.
You're all right.
♪
Come on.
There we go.
Good.
Get your breath back.
♪
I've got another dead snowshoe hare.
I can see it down in my snare.
I have more than enough food.
You can live, little dude.
Come on.
That's it.
You good?
That's it.
Get your consciousness back.
There we go.
You okay?
Come on.
You good, dude?
And he's off.
Nice little guy.
[soft music]
♪
Live free, little one.
Yep, he's good.
I got another one right here, which...
both successful around the neck.
This one just struggled more and died.
There's this feeling in my body of just, like,
I don't need this snowshoe hare right now.
♪
And regardless of whether, all of a sudden,
I don't get any food for the rest of my time out here,
I won't regret letting that snowshoe hare go.
My intention isn't to come to the land
and just take as much as I can.
I really want to have
this respectful relationship with it.
The right thing was to not take that snowshoe hare.
The right thing was to let it go.
I feel really good about that.
Thank you, big guy.
I am grateful.
That little snowshoe hare is just hanging out over there,
just recovering.
It looks fine.
I'll save that guy for another day.
[tense music]
♪
- Right here is good.
♪ Gonna catch a beaver, yeah
♪ Gonna catch some beaver
♪
Over there, Mr. Beaver,
right where my gill net is.
The bane of my existence.
I'm gonna follow it.
[tense music]
Nothing in the gill net.
[bleep].
I want to find his lodge,
because if I can find his lodge
and set traps there,
the potential to trap the beaver
is a lot higher.
♪
I lost the beaver.
♪
Oh, there he is.
Oh, my God.
♪
Uh...
♪
I just found a dead beaver right here.
Whoa. What do I do?
There's a live beaver there and a dead beaver there--
live, dead.
Well, how dead is he?
I think he's been there for a while.
♪
Oh!
Oh, he smells pretty bad.
Yeah.
♪
There could be a lot of fat on him still,
but he's too far gone.
The risk of infection is way too high.
♪
Buddy.
Well, I asked for a beaver.
♪
I got this dead one.
Not what I was asking for specifically.
Whoa.
There Mr. Beaver goes.
♪
Maybe he was just leading me to his friend,
or maybe he's saying, look at this tragedy.
Is this what's gonna happen to me?
I don't know.
It's kind of sad.
♪
I am starting to realize that nature may not
always provide when you need it.
And there's going to be times where things get dark,
and there's going to be times
when things aren't going to be easy.
♪
These decisions and choices that I have to make in hunting
is a part of our shared heritage as humans.
♪
I don't want to remove this beaver from his home.
But at the same time, I know that
fat is an invaluable resource out here.
I have to try.
I'm not ready to give up.
♪
But is my life worth more than his?
I don't know.
But if I can honor him and respect his life,
then I believe that he is worth taking.
I'm gonna set up a few more snares.
I have to try and get this beaver.
[tense music]
♪
[Ziga] Today's plan:
finishing to build this frame,
make a bed, putting tarp over,
and move in.
It's nice and cozy inside.
Oh!
♪
I love it.
Let's have breakfast.
Every evening, put the meat in a pot--or fish--
and cook it overnight.
I mean, it's nice.
It's enough food for almost entire day.
♪
So today we have burbot head,
some fish organs,
and fish backbone.
♪
So not a fillet.
♪
It's gonna be quite fatty...
♪
So a lot of energy for today.
♪
So these chopsticks are meant to be broken this way...
♪
So they hang together.
♪
Life here is really in abundance right now--
so much meat, so much berries.
♪
Everything is kind of good.
Mmm. Amazing.
♪
[twigs snapping]
[suspenseful music]
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[cracking]
[Ziga] I shot it.
[bleep].
[sighs] Crazy.
[suspenseful music]
♪
[tense music]
♪
Waiting is definitely the best strategy.
If I would try to run after it and put another shot
and finish it, I'm risking to scare it.
Then this animal could run very, very far away,
and probably I wouldn't have a second chance to shoot it.
But if you let it be and it bleeds out,
it's slowly losing energy, and there are higher chances
that it would die or become so weak that
you could approach it and finish it.
♪
[sighs]
[dramatic music]
♪
So if I harvest this moose, that would definitely be
a game changer for me, because my plan was
not to shoot a moose and still last very long.
If I harvest this moose, I wouldn't have excuse
not to last very, very, very long.
That's, of course, very high potential for winning.
But of course, things can always go wrong.
♪
I think it is either dead
or not on this peninsula anymore.
Ravens, show me where this huge animal is.
[ravens cawing]
[wind whistling]
I decide to go back to the shelter.
I have no experience with moose,
because I live in a country with only red deer.
This is totally different category.
It's not a big deer.
It's huge animal.
I'm definitely not confident it won't go anywhere.
Maybe it would be dead.
Maybe it would be gone.
Maybe it would be still there.
But I want keep on checking every hour
if it's still there because it won't bring me anything.
I have to check if it's still there in the morning
and then decide what to do.
♪
[tense music]
♪
It's day 18, and yesterday,
I shot this moose.
♪
I'm quite mad at myself.
♪
[bleep].
♪
I'm nervous to scare moose away,
so I should try to approach this site
as quietly as possible.
♪
So take off my shoes and even my pants,
because they're making noise.
♪
[bleep]!
♪
[bleep]!
♪
[breathing heavily]
Okay.
[sighs]
I was so [bleep] close.
[tense music]
♪
Seriously, how can I get--
I have only one arrow left.
♪
How can you be so stupid?
♪
[sighs]
♪
[sighs]
♪
I have spent pretty much majority of the day
trying to slowly approach this moose,
and I have failed.
I, of course, don't want it to die
somewhere random with all this meat going to spoil.
I feel like [bleep].
I really feel bad, think about crying.
But Ziga, you can feel sorry later.
Now still try to do anything that you can do.
I really, really want this saga to finish.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[solemn music]
♪
Thank you.
♪
I'm sorry for this, buddy.
♪
[howling]
♪
It's gonna be a long night.
I know that I will face predators.
Do we have any bear here?
So I will have to protect my meat.
[Pedrosa] This is a lot of energy.
Why did I do so much big shelter?
♪
[Will speaking Iñupiaq]
Snow.
Overnight, the land has changed.
[Nero] This place is gonna get harder.
You can just feel it.
[Medic] How are you doing?
♪
If this was a patient of mine,
they'd be staying in the hospital.
♪