writbest

None of them, on any season, has even read a survival manual. They ALL say "fish first'. And "netting works 10x as well as hook and line fishing". Take a 2 person cotton rope hammock, unravel it down to its smallest OD strands, and weave netting out of it. Cut/tear the 12x12 tarp into 1/8" wide strips, twist them for strength and make more netting. Ditto half of the 20x20 tarp. You will end up with over 2000 sq ft of 1.5" mesh netting, if you know what you're doing,. Yes, it will take 2 weeks, but every couple of days, you'll have another 300 sq ft in the water, Within a week, you'll be catching 10 lbs of fish a day and soon it will be 20+ lbs per day. This is the ONLY way a non-lardass is ever going to win this show.

It's not "dragging someone down" when you simply point out that they've lied to build up their reputation, dude.

it's just luck when everyone else is just as inept as you are. Anyone who'd made netting and used it properly would have beaten him, quite easily and he could not know that they would not. Ergo, luck.ok, change that to "did nothing useful". which, in the wild means nothing was done. If it doesn't work, it doesn't count.

Every last one of them, all 5 seasons, have just starved. Many "think' that the one day shown of them catching half as much game or fish as they need to eat each day, or cause Dave N had a couple of lbs of preserved fish mean that they were doing OK. NO, the producers were showing you their BEST day, which was not good enough, even on that day. The fish or animal's live weight is twice what's actually edible. Fish, with the exception of salmon, offer only 650 calories per pound! Crabs offer only 400 calories per lb, and only 1/4 lb of the crab is edible flesh. The ONLY time I've seen somebody catch enough food for one day, was Nicole, and she let that salmon go. The salmon were spawning, which means that they die, or at least, the females do, so there was no point at all in letting the salmon go. A small woman, just lying around, in rough conditions like that, needs at least 1500 calories per day, just to maintain her body weight, while a big man, doing the same thing, needs nearly 2500 calories per day. Those needs easily double if you're working hard, long hours, out in the cold, wind and dampness. Just walking a mile, on level, solid ground, carrying nothing, burns 100 calories. Anyone, slow walking, can thus burn 250 calories per hour more than if just lying around. And this is at normal levels of temps and humidity. So if you're busting your butt building a shelter, boat, etc, you can easily burn off an extra 3000 calories that day, beyond your resting needs. Fat is 3500 calories per lb, but normally, when you lose weight, you also lose SOME muscle and when things get really bad, you'll also lose some of your vital-organ tissue. So it's possible to lose 1.5 lbs per day, guys. Starvation swiftly leads to depression, apathy, loneliness, weakness, etc. So they tap out. Quote Edit Report reply writbest 1 Replied: just now If you've got lots of fishheads, salt and guts as bait, you WILL be able to catch game, if you know how. Forget deadfalls, about the only thing slow enough to be caught in a deadfall is a porcupine, and you'll likely hurt yourself setting them. If you make them sensitive enough, a hard gust of wind can set them off. and you really need bladed, fire hardened stakes incorporated into them, to kill the animal quickly enough to recover it. Ditto cordage snares, unless you've got a couple (not just one) seasoned springpoles to lift the critter off of the ground and strangle it quickly. Even then, you sometimes catch them by the paw or they get a leg between the snare and their neck and not only do they suffer for a long time, they can sometimes still gnaw their way free. So use wire for snaring. The kind of wire that they give you is not capable of holding anything much tougher than a squirrel or rabbit, or you'll have to braid it. Quote Edit Report reply writbest 1 Replied: just now treble hooks can catch waterfowl, magpies, possums, weasels, anything that gulps its food. If you suspend the bait at the correct height to encourage gulping, you greatly increase the chances of a catch. If you put the food on a small raft, with a 2 lb rock attached to the line, about a foot from the hook, you can drown the duck, loon, gull, etc. Sometimes, you can rig a snare to slide one way down a wire anchored to the bottom of a body of water and drown a beaver or otter, too. Quote Edit Report reply writbest 1 Replied: just now you have to focus on not only feeding yourself adequately that first 2 months, but also storing 100 lbs of dried, smoked, salted food for the next month. If you mess around making shelters, etc, instead of getting food, you'll just starve out that much sooner than if you'd only laid around. If you starve out in 2 months or less, WHAT need did you ever have for a "winter shelter"? None, that's what, This should be obvious, but i see comment after comment from people who are just locked in, mentally, to the idea that a shelter has to come first. No, it doesnt. You have to have FOOD for the energy to do all that shelter building. They drop you when they do for a reason. The producers want to force you to quit, due to the cold and not having preserved any food. They deliberately pick weak, inept people for this show. Quote Edit Report reply writbest 1 R For this show, primitive fire, primitive shelter, primitive trapping is almost totally a waste of time. They give you the choice of enough modern gear to not need to bother with that stuff, IF you know what to take and do with it. Dave M said he gambled on finding flotsam rope on Vancouver Island. That's stupid. You have a 1 in 10 chance, if you're on the show, of clearing 1/4 million $. So you TAKE the 2-person cotton rope hammock, so as to be able to make that 1000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting out of it. You cut-tear up half of the 20x20 tarp and make 700 sq ft of such netting out of it, too. Actually, this material only makes that much 4" mesh netting, but since you wont be moving the weirs, you can weave splits of shoots, roots, vines, reeds, strips of bark into the larger mesh, creating 2" mesh. Gillnets only catch fish of the size that matches the mesh. Seines and weirs catch ALL fish that are large enough to not fit thru the mesh. For this challenge, you need to catch all possible fish. If you're not on a seashore, you have to take the 3 lb block of salt as one of your 10 items. If you ARE on the sea, salt aint as good a bait, and you can dig a pit, line it with a chunk of tarp, line the tarp with sand or small gravel to protect the tarp and use heated rocks to boil off a lot of water at once, letting you get a lot of salt. Then you boil the gravel/sand to free up the salt and evaporate as much of the water as possible, in the 5 qt skillet with lid, and pour off the water into a tarp container, letting the remaining water just evaporate. On Vancouver Island, you're going to need the clear plastic 12x12 tarp a lot more than you need the block of salt. When you have no other source of salt, those priorities get reversed. sure, nobody who knowns 100x as much as you do can be anything but a whack job, right? Wrong, you just dont know much of anything, that's all the list of acceptable gear is on the net. All you have to do is google for it.

and it's 14 ft of shelter, you only need 9 ft of that length/space and the sides can be trimmed, too. Those trimmed off pieces can be made into chaps, a cover for your seep well, a water filter, a mousetrap-"bucket/basket". A 5x12 chunk of the 20x20 can become a poncho. the "camera" 10x10 is your work awning, and once it's cold, it can become a double wall of your shelter, with debris stuffed in between the layers of tarp. That dead air space really contributes to the warm of your tiny sleeping shelter. Simply use loops and stick toggles to mount the camera tarp on 7 ft tall poles of your work awning, so you can swiftly lower it in case of storms, etc. Use a ball bat sized baton to drive 3 ft long stakes a ft or so into the ground, and then lash the 7 ft poles to the stakes. you want the sleeping shelter to be just big enough for your gear, your raised wooden bed with the debris on it, your body and your sleeping bag. Anything larger is a waste of calories and time and then wont keep you as warm as the smaller shelter.

nobody is catching "a ton of fish". The best day anyone had, you can bet your butt, is Randy catching 9 little half lb fish. That's just 2.5 lbs of edible flesh, at 650 calories per lb, ready to eat. That's nothing, he needs twice that much, and they need it every day. Every last one of these people have averaged losing 1/2-1 full lb per day. They have all just starved. That's why they dont preserve anything. They need to eat it all NOW, just to have enough energy to do anything at all. They're dumb for not being in ketosis before they go, and for not taking the stuff out of which to make netting.

they are weak minded, starving, inept and looking for a way to save face. WTH would they DO if they had to go away for 4 YEARS, like 10's of millions of men had to do for ww2, eh? what you'd like would bankrupt the producers and probably get a lot of people sick, from mosquito and tick bites. It costs a FORTUNE to keep the support crews in place and keep the liability insurance in effect.

some just realize that sooner than others, are not as fat, etc. There ARE ways to feed themselves adequately for 3 months, and then you can get by another month on your body fat, if you're say, 6 ft and 190 lbs. They're just too damned lazy to do the research and find out what those ways ARE.

wasting his time and calories on that cabin cost him a clear 1/4 million $ win, and with it, another clear 1/4 million from people who'd then want to train with him. Nobody wants to train with you if you win by being fat and lucky. You have to get really busy and make the 1500 sq ft of 2" mesh netting in 2 weeks or less. Every day, you knock out 200 sq ft of it, before you do anything else. Every couple of days, you put 400 sq ft of it in the water, as a net-weir, as the wing to the weir (the shoreline being the other wing) or as a seine. thats' no reason to quit. when you have a fire, you can have ashes and charred punk wood, so that you can start more fires with any carbon steel tool and any sharp, hard rock. keep them dry in a bag made of tape and your gaiters. you can also make a McElroy big pump drill in half a day, which easily lets you start friction fires. It features removable spindle head, and you can dove tail in a removable hearth-chunk, so you only have to keep those parts dry. The rest of the spindle set up can be green, wet wood and it wont matter.

actually, they DO have a way to store meat and fish, IF they take the 3 lb block of salt as one of their 10 items. You make a brine and dip the strips of fish or meat in the brine, then kebab the strips and smoke them, but it has to be NON-coniferous wood smoke! and first you have to CATCH more fish or meat than you can eat. Nobody's done so. You CAN eat 5 lbs of fish in a day. That's 10 lbs of live weight fish and nobody's come close to catching that much fish as of yet. you ever TRIED brain-tanning a hide? :-) it takes days of effort. On this show, they dont have the time or calories to waste on such things.

if you take the fishing kit as 4 BIG treblehooks, and 4 smaller ones, you can set the big ones for wolves and big cats. Take the 3 lb block of salt to mongolia or Patagonia. Since youwont be on a beach, it will be good bait and you'll need salt to help you preserve meat and fish. A salted fishhead, hung about 5 ft in the air, encourages the animal to rear up and gulp the treblehook. Wire it to a drag log. The animal wont go far and he'll leave an obvious trail. Take one of Chief Aj's slingbows, with 6 of the 4-tined fishing heads and 3 broadheads. 5 of the fishing arrows should feature flu flu fletching, so as to drastically reduce the range of the arrows. After you remove the tines of 5 arrows, converting each tine into 2 fishhooks with the multitool (2 minutes per hook) the remaining blunt arrow will still be useful vs birds and small animals. The one fishing arrow remaining should feature slip on rubber fletching. Make baked clay balls for use in the slingshot, cause rocks dont fly straight. when you follow the trail of a drag log, keep an arrow nocked in the slingbow and your senses on HIGH alert. Inside your belt in back, have the E tool ready to be drawn and split a skull.

Dave N did NOT have "piles of fish". He's said in other places that he had a couple of dozen little 1/4 lb fillets. Big deal, 6 lbs of fish, 3800 calories. that's ONE day's hard working caloric need. 2 days if he's just laying around. That's nothing . If you go on this challenge, not outweighing everyone by at LEAST 20 lbs, you can't win unless the fattest guy screws up, gets hurt or sick (ie, luck) or you have to do it my way, making a lot of netting, catching 500 lbs of fish in 6 weeks and catching a deer and a wolf, or catching a 10-20 smaller critters,, or catching 600 lbs of fish. The netting can be used to catch birds, crabs, crawfish, small mammals, like rabbits, possums, skunks, If you make such 'box traps" out of green sticks, 3/4" OD, they will hold squirrles and coons, too, at least for a while. You want your traps positioned along a couple of routes between your camp and the water source. Check the traps as you come and go, so that the animals dont get much time in which to gnaw their way free.

every lb of your bodyweight is about 3000 calories that you can burn. Fowler lost 73 lbs in 87 days. That's 200,000 calories, along with the 60 fish, which he claims were about a lb each. with the exception of salmon (during their runs) fish have almost zero fat. They are 650 calories to the lb, ready to eat. Only half of a fish or animal's live weight is edible flesh. So he had say, 20,000 calories of food-gain while he was there. Out in the cold, dampness and wind, working as hard as he did, you can easily burn thru 4000 calories per day. Top swimmers have to eat 10,000 calories per day while they are training, did you know that? :-) The heavy duty shelter was unnecessary, and inferior and way too big. All you need is the 10x 10 tarp as a work awning, with a Siberian fire lay projecting heat 2m in one direction, heating big stones that you then put near you as a heat source. If need be, you can close in the walls around your awning, with piles of brush, debris, and dirt, to keep out the cold wind and somewhat retain the heat of your fire for you. Take at most 2 days, when you can have the long handle on the shovel, piling brush and then debris onto the 10x10 and dragging it where you need it to be. You do NOT want your fire inside of your shelter, killing you in your sleep with CO poisoning, putting your gear, your shelter and your hair at risk of being ruined, and ruining your lungs with all the smoke, rendering you barely able to see, etc.

did anyone NOTICE that Fowler weighed a good 80 lbs more than Carleigh did? Yet she nearly beat him, despite his catching 60 fish and her catching only 6? She just holed up and conserved her bodyfat, while he wasted a ton of calories and time building a fishing dock (instead of a pontoon outrigger raft), handrails and steps (instead of using the raft to find a beach without the steep hillside). And just use a 10x10 chunk of the 20x20 under the 'camera" 10x10 tarp, with dry debris between, as his sleeping shelter. You only want something about 4 ft wide, 3.5 ft tall, tapering to 2.5 ft wide, 2.5 ft wide, about 8 ft long, for sleeping. Just enough for your body, some dry debris, your sleeping bag, your gear, your raised wooden bed, that's it. This lets you use very little of the tarp material, which you also need for making a cover for your seep well, making a water filter, making chaps and a poncho, so you can use the rainsuit as a water holder/carrier and a pontoon. Spray waterproof the pack and one set of outer clothing before you go. Stuff them with dry debris, sew them and tape the seams, and they'll make fine pontoons. The camera case will make another. The life preserver, airhorn and bear spray will all float. More pontoons can be made out of the netting and tarp material, if need be. You need 8 poles, 8 ft long, 4" OD, and 2 poles that are 6" OD, 11 ft long, notched in their centers. They are your diagonal braces for the outriggers.

wooded beardsman has said that Mike told him that he had medical issues that he did not want brought up on the show. he's another one with no judgement, making lots of luxuries when he couldn't even feed himself worth a hoot. There's kelp all OVER the shoreline on Vancouver Island, but it only offers 50 calories to the POUND, so there's too much fiber for the calories gained. In ONE day, however, you can make a big wooden mortar and pestle, embed the mortar nearly flush with the ground, with a hole bored into the bottom of the chamber, at an angle to drain it, into a little basket-tarp cup that you set outside of it, in a little trench that you dig down alongside of the mortar. You make a fulcrum, a long pole and 3 guideposts to ensure that the pestle falls straight into the mortar, when you easily lift it with the lever. In a couple of hours, you can generate 1000 calories worth of kelp juice, beyond what you burned to get it (ie, 20 lbs of kelp) A bit of T shirt material blocks the exit hole, keeping the pulp from flowing into your cup. If you cut a sapling, you can make a long handle for the Cold Steel e-tool, which lets you stand up and move a LOT of dirt, snow, sand, etc. If you cut a sapling with a right angle limb, the shovel becomes an adze/hoe, pick, letting you scrape out the wood that you coal burn down into the mortar. The mortise only has top be a bit deeper than the juices splash up when you drop the pestle on the kelp. Set it up so that you can sit there very comfortably on a padded sling-chair , hunk of log, pile of big stones, etc, and easily move the lever, switch hands as needed, etc. Not much more work than writing with pen and pad, actually.