ALONE Season 11, Episode 2 Recap!

[@QuesttogetontheAloneShow-qq3cz]

Awesome review and could not agree more with all the skills they have and I'm rooting for the WV Hillbilly.

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@@QuesttogetontheAloneShow-qq3cz he's a good old boy, I think he will do just fine.

[@brendahowrey4819]

Great job….appreciate your insight. Hope you are feeling better. Such a cool episode - the fire box, quiver, successful fishing and hunting, and the dramatic hunt. I wanted the episode to continue on …. Not end!

[@mikeyheltonjr]

It was one of the best episodes of Alone this far, in my opinion at least.

[@maryharpley294]

Hey Mikey! Greetings again from NH! Thanks for these recaps!!!!!! Dusty is my fav!!!

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@maryharpley294 Dusty is awesome hahaha. He definitely has the "good ol boy" working for him. And I think he will be the one to surprise us with what he eats this season.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

When you've got 8 layers of clothing on, along with 7 layers of insulation between those clothing layers, you're inside of the reflective tyvek bivy, with 6-12" of loose dry debris between your bivy and the inside layer of your winterized tarp and tape pole tent, and it's COLD, man there aint much mosture to deal with. This is IF you're not in and out of the tent a lot, which shouldn't happen anyway. Once it's that cold, there's almost nothing productive to be done. You need to get it 90% done the first month and all of it done by day 60. When you've got a basket and dirt "chamber pot" and done have a fire inside of the shelter, there's almost no reason to leave your tent once it gets below about 20 F Your body has warmed the air inside of the tent, so DONT lose what warm air by going outside, if you can possibly help it.

[@peteralbano]

I was dropped last so I didn't have much time to do stuff after setting up my shelter and scouting a bit. I had a rainwater catchment system set up on day one, so I had good amount of water first thing in the morning day 2. Admittedly, early day 2 I was still out of it mentally and forgot how to light a fire! :)

[@mikeyheltonjr]

No sir, you did a great job. Thank you for reaching out my friend. Were you trying to light grandfathers beard? That stuff can be a pain to light with a ferro rod, but at the same time, it's everywhere and super easy to gather. And was that your first fire, or did you have one the night before?

[@brendahowrey4819]

I was so impressed you walked away to do something else and then came back to it. Letting yourself get frustrated never is helpful.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

Mike, do you know what a jungle whip is? A spring pole is rigged to a trigger and when it's released, the pole drives a stake or two into the animal. It's best used vertically, intended to strke the animal in the back of the head/neck. Use bait, of course and a staked down "v" of brush to funnel the animal in right where you want it to be. Make the stakes 3 sided, barbed, sharp eedged, serrated, scalloped, fire-hardened and secured to 200 lbs of drag log(s) by 10 strands of the snare wire, which you've twisted into a cable. When you put your 100 lbs of rotting fish inside of a stake and log box, and create 'a 'v" of logs leading up to the bait-hole, you CAN get the bear to be right where you want him and you can "aim" several jungle whips at his head-neck, as well as one from each side, into his rib cage, all activated by the same trigger. He cetainly aint going far with all of those wounds and the drag log(s) and there's an excellent chance that you will fine him brained on the spot.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

in a couple of hours, you can make a work pavilion out of the producers tarp, with room to stand up and a Siberian fire lay out in front of the plow point. Use a few poles to make the paviilion more substantial. Use loops and toggles to create the shelter, so you can assemble or disassemble it in a couple of minutes. Dont ever turn your back on it, or the wind will have that tarp, or at least, tear it up. If they will let you do so, reinforce the grommets on their tarp with the gorilla tape. Use bent, green, springy fire-hardened 'hair pit' twigs to make "shock absorbers' " for your tie outs. Use brush-weights (padded with grass/mud/mosses) and or tie outs to stop all flopping of the tarp in the wind, or it will be worn/torn in short order. If it's not raining, you dont need the work pavilion, so leave it tied/weighted down over your pile of dry debris/dirt. When you have to use the producer's tarp to winterize your sleeping shelter, cover the plow-point frame with boughs/long grasses. At least that way, you dont have to make that shelter-type for the first month and the tarp assures complete protection from wind and rain. Think of such things in advance and dont LOCATE your shelter where you dont have all such materials handy. The tyvek bivy and the tarp and tape pants (3 pairs) make it handy to carry debris. Just see to it that grasses/mosses pad any hard materials from rubbing holes in your carry-tools.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I am retired old guy.. These comments are mosty to entertain myself, BUT, I also have a lot of knowledge and experience to pass on. I lived out of a backpack for 6 weeks and in a van for 4 years, 3 years at a stretch, I slept under my work- truck one entire summer and fall. I worked cattle and hogs as a kid, sometimes well below 0F and all damned day out in that crap Most of what i know about this stuffI learned 30+ years ago. i want to teach enough people that at least ONE season lasts 4-5 years. The producers have changed things several times because of me. They removed the option of having a bear-vault, fishing arrowheads, and they'll probably one day remove the rope hammock option. There's been a couple more changes due to my comments, but memory fails me at the moment.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

when you only need 10% as much firewood as normal, which IS the case for my tactics and you make the shelter out of a very few poles, ditto the raised bed, you dont need the axe or the saw. My plan calls for quite a bit of digging, for stone boiling pits, clay refining pits, hot rock holding pits under the bed, A forked stick and the shovel offer a pretty secure way to handle hot rocks, too. Neither axe nor saw help with such things.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

yt has vids about the Siberian fire lay and the alternative Swedish fire-torch. Knowing how to use those ideas makes a huge difference, especially when you get a lot of rain or snow. Ditto knowing to heat rocks outside of the shelter and put them into a row of pits under your raised- pole-bed, Surround each stone with a 2" thick layer of ashes and it will heat your sealed, reflective, small, insulated shelter by 20F degrees for 5+ ours. Snuff the flames with ashes or dirt and bury some coals in the ashes. This saves a tremendous amount of firewood, hassle, calories, worries. You KNOW you will be warm, you can easily have another fire, and you can adjust the heat by removing or adding clothing, removing ashes from the stones. You KNOW that you wont burn-down the shelter with the rocks. Test each stone with a dry grass stem. Tough the stem to the stone in several places. if the stem smokes, cool down the rock a bit with time, snow, water, before taking it into the tent. You also wont be killing yourself with smoke inhalation/emphysema some day, or dying in your sleep of CO poisoning

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

two keel logs, set about 2 ft apart on centers, 10 ft long, 2 outrigger logs, 6 ft long, 2 cross-logs, to assemble the raft, 6 ft long, all 4-5" OD. The diagonal brace-logs need to be 7 ft long and 6" plus OD. they cross each other in the center of the raft, so they have to be notched, so that they can "lay flat" on the other logs For them to have some strength, they have to be larger OD than the others These logs total 80 lbs, so you can stand between the keel logs, pick up the raft and walk with it. This is specially true if you put the debris stuffed coveralls and backpack on a pole and bring them to the shore later, making another trip.

[@shevek8]

Great insights

[@mikeyheltonjr]

Thank you. I hope you enjoy the season and I will keep posting these as it gets on

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

when you can build a winterized tarp and tape tent in one day (3-4 times of 3-4 hours each, a month apart) and you know to make tarp and tape pants and use dry debris between your layers of clothing, you dont need to cut a lot of wood. So the saw and axe are superfluous. You need to DIG quite a bit. which the axe is not much help with.and you might shatter your axe edge on a rock while digging. The stone-boiling pit and ceramic pots are a huge savings of time and hassle compared to that little piss-ant cookpot. Once you make the long handle and the pick/adze handle for the shovel, you can move a lot of dirt quickly and easily. If need be, you can make a full-length, two handed axe-handle for the shovel-head and weight it with a lashed on stone, The shovel, with no handle, is a prybar, trowel, "big knife" and SKILLET.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

if you need a ferrorod, paracord, gillnet, axe, saw, belt-knife, snarewire, bow, fishing kit, cookpot, sleeping bag for this challenge, you just havent done your homework adequately, guys. The saw-edged shovel, given some handles made on-site is more useful than the axe and saw put together. The cotton rope hammock replaces the paracord, snarewire, gillnet and fishing kit. You can make containers out of tarp and baskets. and stone-boil water and food in tarp lined pits. Several guys have proven that the mulitool is FAR more what you need than any belt knife. the slingbow is MUCH better than a normal bow, IF you know to take the 3 piece take down arrows and make the ceramic balls as "ammo". The reflective tyvek bivy is much more useful than any sleeping bag, cause it is unaffected by its getting wet. You can always add enough dry debris for the bivy/shelter to be WARMER than the debris hut and fireplace, without the need of firewood or the risk of burning down your shelter. 5 peope have done that, a much higher percentage than got a big animal with a bow, eh? What's it take to get you to learn something?

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

yes, it takes a few seconds to assemble the 3 piece arrows, but not having them cost Kielyn $500,000. (twice). Lugging around a full-sized bow and arrows is a completely unnecessary pita. and the slingbow gives you the option to make and use ceramic balls. Everything to like vs a bow and nothing to dislike, so why not do it? The slingbow is also a LOT easier to use when inside of (or just emerging-from) your little sleeping tent or tree blind

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

even after the winterization stuff, the sleeping tent is still somewhat portable. Once you add the three lays of wet debris (each one 2" thick) it's not as portable, but you CAN still tear it down and move it. Its just going to take all day. You're not going to move these cabins, etc, that take a week or more to construct.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

one of those dummies asked me (hautially) on his forum, where he was supposed to get liquid water, after it got really cold. My answer was BEFORE the ground freezes, Dig a pit, When you need water, fill the pit with snow/ice and add some hot rocks. If the ground is not yet hard frozen enough to prevent the water soaking away into the ground, line the pit with a chunk of tarp or your reflective tyvek bivy. Use some grass, gravel, etc, to protect the membrane from the hot rocks.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

the salt block, being sea salt, will naturally also have potassium, iodine, and magnesium in it. So it keeps you properly hydrated and prevents muscle cramps. It's also great bait for porcupine traps and helps you choke down bland food.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

you CAN use green wood as a spring engine for snares, etc, IF you fire harden that split, tapered, spring pole over a low trench fire for 24 hours. A 200 lb bear offers you 200,000 caliories if he's fat for hibernation. With 25% of his bodyweight being fat, you can also mix in 300 calories of cambium per day, along with some fish if you've caught enough of them. Also have a tree blind 10m from the bait box and be making netting as you lie in wait with your slingbow. If you'll put out some tried berries, boiled, fried cambium, as bait, you'll get some shots at small game with the ceramic balls and the sling bow. Netting can be wrapped around a stick box frame and used to catch birds, crabs, rabbits. such a trap will hold weasels for a little while and the ruckus is likely to cause you to notice and go klll the damned thing. They aint much for food, but each one of them is eating one of YOUR hares every couple of days. Ditto owls and hauks, of course.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

it's actually very easy to make room in the gear list for the tarp, cotton rope hammock, duct tape, the salt and the rations of gorp and pemmican. You dont need the saw, cookpot, ferrrod, gillnet, fishing kit, snarewire. paaracord. Just by knowing to take and use the cotton rope hammock, the last 4 items on the above list can be not just done without, but done MUCH better. 4000 sq ft of 4" mesh netting, or 2000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting is going to catch you a LOT more fish than hook and line, a small net made of paracord guts, the gillnet combined. If you know how to make fire-hardened springpoes for lifting snares, you dont need the snarewire Animals can't gnaw thru cordage that is holding them in midair. and snaring has never made any difference at all

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

doesn't take much of your 2" mesh netting, with grass/debris woven into the meshes, to create some wind-blocks Set each one up on a couple of T stands, staked down, so you can move it according to the wind. Keep them about 6" from your tent. This will help a LOT vs wind.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

Know what a father and son bow is, Mike? Could you make a 3 piece composite bow, using string, tape, and 3 pieces of wood, each just 3 ft long? Could you increase the pull-weightof that bow with a couple of 2' long dowels and a couple of springy sticks? Could you make a green wood broadhead that would reliably, humanely kill, say, a 200 lb bear that was snared to some drag-logs?

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

you need two pits on a hillside to make the refinery for removing gravel, loam, debris and sand from the shoreline mud, so you have workable clay, It takes a few days for the stirred-up clay to sediment-out into the lower pit. So you need to get going on those pits the first few days. You have to make the long, bent handle for the shove, (1 hour) as well as the adze/pick handle for the shovel, 1 hour) then you can dig those pits in an hour each. If the earth is sandy or rocky, you might have to tie up the producer's tarp for 2 weeks while you get your workable clay for making pottery You CAN do without the pottery, but it's a BIG help if you can make it and doing so wil get you a lot of face-time on tv. that face-time equals money, later, if you write a book, start a yt channel and teach classes.

[@rdnkrfnk]

pioneers used to wear a blanket pin that they would use like he did his belt buckle im actually watching your recap before i watch the show

[@mikeyheltonjr]

Well, I'm sorry for any give-a-ways, lol. But thank you for watching. I will look into that as well. I will hopefully be getting my forge set back up again soon, and when I do, I may make myself one.

[@rdnkrfnk]

@@mikeyheltonjr dave cantebury is a good info source on the blanket pin he sells alot of stuff but i watch for info

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

Each pontoon will float a big man, so it wont matter if the logs float or not. You're not crossing the Bering Straits with this craft, just tending your netting or maby getting across the lake/river to access some resource. I'd try really hard to never be in water deeper than 6 ft. If you use the life vest as one pontoon, youll need to make a set of tarp and tape, debris stuffed "water wings". I'd not float the raft without a big rock and rope anchor and be ready to deploy the tyvek bivy as a "sea anchor, vs rogue waves. I"d also not go out on the water in bad weather or more than small waves. I get sea sick, and it's dangerous to do such things. There's little likelihood that you'll need to do them, Bring your nets in before storms hit and dont leave more than half of them set overnight, or you'll regret it. I"d not not leave more than 1/4 of them set if I was on a river. One big log catches your net and it's GONE.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

what does not having a group have to do with not having netting wrapped around a box-frame made of sticks? Enough wraps and this trap will hold birds, crabs, rabbits and make it harder for predators to get at your catch, too. The "ladder trap" (youtube vids) doesn't have to be reset when one bird drops into it. A bit of netting on some woven withes, set up on 1" sticks or stones, lets the birds peck at the bait thru this netting-floor inside of the trap, but they can get little or none of the bait. Use boiled then fried cambium, bits of fish, berries, maybe a tiny bit of your gorp.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

google for the R value of the coldest-temp rated sleeping pad. it's 7 or so. A straw bale is 12-20 R value, depending upon how tightly it is packed. What insulates you from the cold is trapped AIR. 6" of dry, loose debris,sealed between two tarps, is at LEAST as "warm" as a 2 ft thick layer of loose debris, even if the latter does NOT get wet. if the debris is exposed of course, it WILL get wet. Even if it's too cold to rain, your body heat and especialy a fire inside of your shelter, will cause any snow(that is on your shelter) to melt . It might not actually drip into your shelter, but i't'll lose a lot of its insulating quality when it gets damp. yes, the inside tarp will develope condensation, but it will be MUCH less condensation than if there was no debris between that inside tarp and the cold outer air The condensation that forms on the inside of the outside layer of tarp will not be much, because the debris will have absorbed the small amount of moisture that got thru the inside tarp-ayer

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

since a fireplaces means you need vent holes in your shelter, it can never be warm inside of your shelter, unless you huddle the fire. then you're so hot that you have to remove some of your layers of clothing. which means you gotta put those clothes back on, in order to go outside and answer nature's call. , or like one slob just pee inside of your shelter, like a wild hog when your shelter is a sealed, reflective, small insulated tent, with 8 layers of clothing and 7 layers of dry debris on your body, 28" of compressed dry debris and 6+" of frozen debris around you, 3 layers of tarp and 1 layer of tyvek bivy around you, at a mere 0F, you dont need a fire. but you DO need a chamber pot. Leave all of your clothing on your body and eliminate wastes into a dirt-filled basket

[@richardhowarth7758]

I could have sworn he hit that moose on the first shot the way it reacted.

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@@richardhowarth7758 me too! I've never seen an animal act like that over an arrow going under it.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

What does not having a group have to do with not making some lifting snares? Animals can't gnaw thru cordage that is holding them 6 ft in the air and weasels can't steal your catch either. Probably neither can the smaller hawks. Split and taper a springy sapling, as you would to make a bow, but on just one end. Harden the splits over a trench fire for 24 hours, and the splits will not lose their 'springiness" as they will when green. Drive two long stakes and lash the bigger end of the split between them. Presto, lifting snare wherever you want one

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I see lots of comments about how they are doing well with the fishing. No they are not. those shallow rivers freeze solid, so the fish MUST migrate to deeper lakes. You have to catch 40 lbs of fish per day, during the first months, cause when they are all in the lakes, you're DONE catching any fish. It'll take a week to make enough netting to start feeding yourself adequately and another week to be fin full swing, so you'll only catch at most 400 lbs of fish, which is just 120,00 calories. You'll have to be fairly active out in the cold to do so, so you'll need to eat 40000 calories per day. you can't choke down much more than 2000 calories per day of cambium and fish. So you'll still lose half a lb per day, but that's a lot better than 1.3 lbs per day, (on average)

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@user-ci2mn1oy3w at first, I thought this might be Mr. Kevin Hart, but he would have been more in-depth. But at the same time, that is a conundrum. How to get enough fish to last the winter when you have to eat the fish you catch to maintain body weight. There are limits to this game as well. You can only have 1 gill net, and it has to meet certain dimensions. You can't build a net that crosses the whole river. If you could, every fish would be caught, and there would be nothing to worry about. The fish that are in the surrounding lakes will be in much deeper water for sure, but we have seen big fish caught by ice fishing more than once on this show. So, I still say they have caught a good amount of fish for the first week with all of the regs set in place. It's a lot more than I caught my first week, lol.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

my error, you have 2-3 weeks in which to catch the fish and you'll be burning 4000 calories per day, not 40,000

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

@@mikeyheltonjr mike, you can make 3000 sq ft of netting in 2 weeks. Nobody knows how much netting you made out of the cotton rope hammock, or what the mesh size was, or how you used it. They ait ON a lake, this time, right? So what people did on a lake is irrelevant, bro. You can make a pontoon outrigger raft in a day. you can't choke down enough lean meat or fish to keep from losing weight, but you can reduce it from 1.3 lbs of lost bodyweight per day, to 1/2 lb per day , or a bit less. BIG difference, yes? Being able to stay 80 days instead of 40 days makes all of the difference.in the world.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

@@mikeyheltonjr the gill net is a wasted pick. it's just 60 sq ft. I can make more netting than that in one day, just by unraveling the rope hammock, unraveling the rope, unraveling the strands, spinning 5 of the 44 threads into string and weaving the string into netting.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

if you launch late in the day, it might be all you can to to get the tarp spread out over some brush, if it's raining hard. If the ground is muddy, it might not be feaible to dig the stone boiling pit or even gather up some debris as bedding, cause it's all soaked, you mighthave to use the hammokc as a hammock that first night and pad it with your unnneded clotthing, rolling up in the folded producer's tarp. or vice versa, laying on folds of that tarp, while wearng many ayers of clothing I"d not bother with a fire that first night if all is wet, You'lll have potabe water just from rain runoff from your tent.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I see guys having a horrible time, trying to work a gillnet from shore, in cold temps, wind, etc. Man, with the raft, and the shovel fitted with the paddle handle (lanyarded to the raft, so that you can't lose it) would make things SO much easier and you can have this advantage with just one day's work. A raft cant be sunk or swamped and overturning it is very difficult. Lanyard all of your gear to the raft. A few small logs across the keel logs keep your feet up out of the water, Lash the camera case to those logs and sit on it. You COULD make some oars, sith 6" long splits of 6" OD logs, dovetailed into some long poles, OD reduced where you have to hold them. Rig some rope "oarlocks' and you can travel twice as fast, with much less strain on your back, as with a paddle.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

it's a big mistake to not take the salt and the rations of pemmican and gorp. If you put yourself into ketosis 2+ weeks before you launch and you're practiced fasting and being in ketosis for the 2 months or more that you KNOW you're going to boot camp/the show, you can easily tolerate fasting the first 2 days. Be sure to pig out on proteins and fat for 2 days before you launch. The 10,000 calories of rations are so high in fat that you can add 2000 calories of cambium to the mix. 12,000 calories lets you have 1700 calories per day for a week. and then you can go one more day fasting before you really start to weaken. That gives you 10 days of enough food to work pretty hard. After 3-4 days, the only work is is making/using netting, which can all be done as you sit in the plow point pavilion, or in the tree blind near the bait box, waiting to arrow a bear. You could bump up the calories for the first 3-4 really intense days, and have enough fish to eat, sooner, if need-be. Water stays warm longer than air does in the fall. So you might not have to have the pontoon outrigger raft for the first week, Wade into the 18" deep water for setting the baited net weirs. You might not need the raft, at first, for setting the gillnets, or even using the seine. You might not ever need the 400m chum-line, if you have plenty of fish in your area. If you can save a couple of days in this manner, it'll give you the netting/food that much sooner. If you need more food/intake to hustle as you should, well, eat more per day. My way is going to (reliably) feed you a lot sooner than hounting grouse with a bow, that' much is certain.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

you have to REALLY hustle that first week and get things done. Due to the weather and other unknowns, you have to have plants A, B, C, maybe even D, and know the priorities for each one. Sinc e you can't take a pen and ink, you have to memorize those things, until you can scratch them into pieces of birch or cedar bark. it's very, very much of a handicap to take a week to build a shelter tha's full of holes and then need 2 weeks of hauling and processing firewood. Ditto wasting a week boiling 2 qts of water at a time, 3x per day. Just cause mud-dauber can't think of a way to not need the cookpot does not mean that it can't be done.

[@luckylarry5112]

Once it's done, can you get a copy all of your raw footage?

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@luckylarry5112 no, sadly, it would be so awesome if we could. I know there was a lot that I did that didn't get shown and I would love to share it. But it is what it is.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

bow drill sucks. All you have to do, guys, is keep dry your shovel, your shemagh, and either have dry, flat rock or split open a small dry log,, Use rust from your shovel as an accellerant on the little roll of shemagh, and youll easily have a fire,, even if it's pouring down rain. Just cover up with the producer's tarp over some bushes. In order to fire roll, you only need a log split that's 4" wide and a foot long, and the shovel handle, with the blade removed. A chunk of your 12x12 tarp will give you a dry spot to work on After you get fire with the fire-roll, you'll have charcoal /ashes, charred punk wood to put into a tarp and tape dry bag, for future fire starts. Any hard sharp rock will produce sparks from the spine of your carbon steel replacement knife blade in the Crunch multi-tool Charred punk-wood will catch those sparks. So will a bird's next of 1/8" wide gorilla tape strips., Bury your coals in an ashes-pit and cover it with a primitive A frame, or at first, a hunk of your tarp. If you have no such stones, you can make a big pump-drill, with removable spindle tip.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

what does not having a group have to do with not making lots of netting out of the rope hammock? not making a pontoon outrigger raft out of 8 small logs and the 3 sets of coveralls? not keeping the fire alive by burying coals in the ashes, not making ceramic pots? not knowing how to stone boil food and water in a pit lined with the bivy or the tarp? Mud Dauber also said that it was necessary to boil food and catch every bit of fat, well, first you have to HAVE some food and I bet the 400 lbs of fish you can catch with 2000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting will have lots more fat on them (8% as live weight) than the 40 lbs or less that he might somehow catch.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

you dont need a net that crosses an entire river, just one that creates a big "v" between the net and one shoreline. Then you need a seine to sweep the areat between the net and the shoreline, or you move the end of the net upstream and around to the bank, trapping all the fish that were in that area. repeat. Bait that net, and perform thise movements several times per day. Catching 40 lbs of fish per day, when they are migrating, is not hard to do. Put 100 lbs of fish into a stake and log box, baiting it for bears. The bear's worth 10x as many calories as the fish are.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I dont agree with a single item that people normally take, unless they take the pemmican. They dont even know what multitool to take. You REALLY need the vise grip of the crunch and you need to make that tool able to be assembled and disassembled without tools. The very ends of the visegrip jaws need to be ground down to needle nose configuration, so that you can use them to convert the cross wires of the judohead blunts into fishhooks.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

8 baited, barbed treblehooks can be arranged-for in one day, fols and are pretty likely to produce food every day. They can be used to catch birds, too. vicous/brotal? not nearly as much as torturing an ox or 5 hours, out of being too dumb/cowardly to make a bola and a spear.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

what does not having a group have to do with not making a basket, lining it with a hunk of tarp, stone boiling 5 gallons of water in a pit, and storing the water in the basket, all in one hour, twice per week? See how much of the struggle comes from ignorance and taking the wrong gear on this challenge? The netting can replace the snarewire, paracord, gillnet and fishing kit, That's how you can take the rations of gorp and pemmican, and the salt block

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

what does not having a group have to do with elimating wastes right inside of your shelter, o all around your camp area, like some of these dummies have admitted-to, on Reddit or yt? Why can't they dig a latrine trench? why can't they make a basket, fill it halfway with dirt and use it as a chamber pot? When you HAVE to leave your shelter for some other reason, empty the basket and dirt into the latrine, cover it up with the dirt removed from the trench, and refill the basket with dry, loose dirt from the pile inside of your shelter?

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

only 2-3 people have ever seen 0F while on this challenge and that was on the millon $ season. All this -20F talk is the bunk. It doesn't get that cold until lat January and you'll never see mid December. Only 2 of you, at most, will ever see Dec1. season 10, they were gone by Thanksgiving day. They never saw PLUS 20f, much less minus 20F

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@@user-ci2mn1oy3w I was on season 10. I saw -5f myself.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

do you know what a laddertrap is? it's a box-frame with netting around it, it's rectangular, maybe 3 ft long, 1 ft square for jays, starlings, etc, put bait down under some small mesh netting, where the birdss can't really get it, under the net-trap. Leave some say, 4" square holes in the top of the box trap. The birds fold their wings to drop in on the bait but then can't fly out. For magpies and crows, scale up the size of the net-trap., maybe 2 ft square, 6 ft long, 6" holes in the crow trap such traps doint have to be reset or rebaited, yt vids about such traps.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

when you dont waste a month of time and calories on a shelter, firewood, and boiling water, you'll have plenty of time to do the netting, etc, that FEEDS you and will bait in a bear. The shelter, fire and water can't feed you, and are complete wastes.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

you cant offer solutions when you dont fully understand the question. When you take 1-2 weeks to make a shelter that you'll never need, cause you starve out in 1-2 months, well, you didn't understand the question. ditto having a fire place in the shelter. You're gone before you see 20F degrees. You had no need of a heat source in your shelter. 20F is nothing inside of a decent tent, with the tyvek bivy, lots of debris/insulation, and many layers of clothing. The reason your shelter needs a fire is that it's too big, not reflective, not SEALED and not adequately-insulated. The Innuit has no warming fires inside of their igloos, at MUCH lower temps, for MUCH longer periods of time and often went naked inside of their igloos, too! You CANNOT seal a shelter that has a fire inside of it, or you'll choke on the smoke. You'll have to go out to your wood pile often and spend a lot of time and caoriies creating that woodpile, while it get soaked by rain. You eliminate all of that bs just by taking the reflective tarp and tape. and knowing to keep the tent not much bigger than a coffin. you can't cut up the producer's tarp, so you need a tarp that you CAN cut up. Understand? The producer's tarp, set up as QD plow point pavilion, gives you the room to work and a place to sheter your (much smaller) pile of firewood and dry debris, dry dirt,, ashes., etc.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

the mud dauber on this season says it's not possible to survive even the 60 days of this show, in the fall, without the saw, axe, bow, paracord, fishing kit, cookpot, ferrrorod, sleeping bag, snarewire, . Well, tell that to the Innuit, because 200 years ago, they had none of those things, and they'd survived 10,000 years and did so al winter, obviousy, in MUCH colder temps. How can anyone be that damned ignorant of history and this survival stuff? Any 13 yo boy ought to know better. They all did when I was that age, altho I grew up in a very rural area.

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@user-ci2mn1oy3w yes, sir, they did. But the big thing is they did it together. They had rope, axes, fishing equipment, and spears. They also had various furs to replace the sleeping bags. I'm not sure if the inuit of 10000 years ago had bows. I know bows existed then and probably for far longer than that, but I do know they had spears and other means of hunting big game and protection from wild animals. But let's not forget, they had a tribe of people to help make and manage all of this equipment. Someone to fish, someone to hunt, someone to forage, someone to gather wood, someone to cook, and someone to keep a fire going and hot. It wasn't done in 60 days, either. It was perfected over 10000 years. I have a lot of respect for any native tribe. Especially those from our distant and not so distant pasts. But this game is a little different than what they did. They followed food supplies, and they were able to split task so that food was still being procured while food was being processed and stored. It's a lot for one person to do all of this and not be exhausted and broken in that first 60 days. Just remember, this is Alone, not Alone with a tribe of people to help me survive.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

@@mikeyheltonjr You CAN have much better gear and tactics than the Innuit had. but you have to KNOW about them. When you create a much warmer shelter in 1 day, not 1-3 weeks, and then waste 2 more weeks of staying power on firewood, and a week on boiling 2 lousy qts of water 3x per day, and you dont even know to take the salt, so stay hydrated, yeah, life is tougher. John Wayne had a quote about that. what would an Innuie have given for a Cold Steel shovel modified to have 8" of real deal saw-teet, a mutitool? or a slingbow?

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I dont even recognize that there IS a box, much less have to think "outside" of it. This Campfire Girl stuff with axe, saw, ferrorod, cookpot paracord, sleeping bag, etc is not worthy of anything like a 500k prize. Its not worth 50k.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

8 years ago, everyone was SURE that they wanted a belt knife. Now, almost nobody does without a multitool and doesnt bother with a belt knife at all. they dont know WHICH multitool they SHOULD take, or how they shoudd modifiy it or why, but they DiD (finally) learn to value one above a dumb Rambo/Tarzan short-sword. They stil have not learned to not have a fire inside of their shelters, tho, in spite of having 5 dummies burn their shelters down with one. That hasen't happened, so maybe somebody read my idea of keeping the debris WET around the fireplace? LOL

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

how much do you think the Innuit LOVED lugging around all of their furs, hides etc, all summer when they could not use their sleds on snow, or having to feedig useless dogs noisy dogs for 7 months, hmm? Think that they wanted to have to replace all those the first month of winter? I bet not. So they probably used pits dug into the permafrost to store such items for the summer.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

just because THEY haven't thought of things, they "think" that EYE have not. Wrong. :-)

[@TheSQDoctor]

Have you watched any of Alone Australia season 2?

[@mikeyheltonjr]

No, actually I haven't watched any of it. I really don't watch a whole lot of television, but Alone holds a special place in my heart lol. Is it any good so far? I thought about applying for the show hahaha. At least in Australia there are lizards and bugs to eat lol. I'm just playing I don't know anything about the fauna and flora there. I would probably just get bit by the world's most deadly inch worm and die a horrible death on national t.v. lol.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

leaving your kill out there for 2 days and a night is just ASKING to have wolf piss and saliva all over all of it before you can get it moved. You can move my shelter-camp a mile in half a day. Move the gutpile a ways from the kill siit, Carry the blood to your camp in the hide,, and cover the rest of the meat with the bivy. Stash the meat up in a tree until you can move your camp and properly deal with the food. Depending upon how warm it is, you might need to salt, cook and eat the blood and brains right away. The organs wont tolerate much more time, either, if it's warm. If you can get the meat cut into strips and dipped into salt brine, having done so will "buy" you several more hours in which to make the drying racks, gather the hardwood for the smoking/-fire. If it's been sub 40F for several nights in the row, the strips of meat can be "refrigerated' in the tarp and tape bags, even in the bivy, ad buried under your tent, where you can secure it. while you sleep and finsh smoke/dryhing it the next day.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

I make no claim to be brilliant. I"ve just put 100x as much thought, study and practice into this as anyone else has.and 1000x as much as the average viewer/commentator. It'd be pretty shameful if all that effort and time had NOT resulted in superior insight, preps and performances, true?

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

this hammock has 1500 ft of rope in it. 3 strands in the rope. www.yellowleafhammocks.com/products/double-hammock-khaki-big-sur-california?variant=18230137477&nbt=nb%3Aadwords%3Ag%3A19416198137%3A144818232196%3A643080046318&nb_adtype=pla&nb_kwd=&nb_ti=pla-485069866740&nb_mi=9096184&nb_pc=online&nb_pi=shopify_US_169169668_18230137477&nb_ppi=485069866740&nb_placement=&nb_li_ms=&nb_lp_ms=&nb_fii=&nb_ap=&nb_mt=&Std-Shopping-Hammocks-Sol8&adgroupid=144818232196&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjws560BhCuARIsAHMqE0HJQ6uq7r5c4nq4Xh0E3kygRWF5YnhCI4xDUXQeFhSarQCozkMPtLAaArl9EALw_wcB

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

SS and the IRS take 150k of your half million. Unless you REALLY know investing, you wont be able to live even 10 years on 350k. The inflation rate, the REAL one, is over 10% per year. To CLEAR 10%, you'd have to make over 12%. Show me the passive investment that AVERAGES 12% per year! That's trying to live on 35k per year, which one man can do, in OK, but a family cant.

[@mikeyheltonjr]

@user-ci2mn1oy3w alright, I had a big rant about this comment but I'm not gonna do it. I raised my family with 36k a year and a lot of hard work on top of that. It will be OK if you don't comment here anymore. You don't know the rules of the game or how the crew manages it and that's OK. But do your homework then comment. Ask me a question about the show and I will answer it if I can but let's leave the family out of it.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

@@mikeyheltonjr that dont mean you can KEEP doing it, given the inflation rate. I did a lot of things 10 years ago that are impossible now. Investing and living off of it is about the FUTURE, not what used to be. I could say something about a certain guy and thing, but I wont.. But it DOES show that 35k a year doesn't cut it when things go-bad.

[@user-ci2mn1oy3w]

if you can't make fire 5 ways, not counting bow drill or ferrorod, you shouldnt be on this show. Flint and steel, fire-rolling, big pump drill, fire thong, and fire saw. All work better than bow drill. Yt has vids about all of this stuff. Just 200 years ago, SOME of the Innuit had never seen a metal cookpot, axe, saw, flint and steel. Sleeping bags did not exist 150 years ago. I realize (almost no other non-contestant does) how SCREWED you are to be stuck on 2.5 sq miles of land (and 2.5 sq miles of water) BUT, you didn't have to walk with all of your bulky, heavy stuff, either, nor protect it from bugs, rot, etc, all summer, nor deal with the permafrost/puddles-skeeters.