The Fowler Origin Story -1979 to Winning $500k On History's Survival Show Alone Season 3

[Music] [Music] um [Music] great honor to welcome you to this our second presentation of this spring series and we'll be featuring the gentleman with the walking stick down here zach fowler i'm sure you're all looking forward to hearing from him i actually stole this off his website i hope he doesn't mind but i thought it set it set the stage in a way that that i really uh i really thought it was good and it's actually a quote from one of our i would say probably more rugged presidents teddy roosevelt who said courage is not having the strength to go on it is going on when you don't have the strength very apt quote i think for our speaker today it is my pleasure and my honor to introduce fowler to the ali sage audience today give them all good morning good morning it's like pretty much covered at all so i think we can go home now um yeah i'm zachary fowler i was born and raised in vermont and uh if you have read the articles on it they say maynor zachary fowler one alone i kind of got adopted somehow even though you're supposed to be three generations here in maine before you are considered a mainer so i i don't know we're not disappointing anybody but new england anyway so born and raised in vermont uh right there in rutland vermont near killington i grew up wonderful parents uh they took us outdoors all the time my dad you know that's that's where my sense of adventure came from i think is my parents because at a very young age they take us to the golf course late at night you know it was dark snowstorm we're out there with flashlights and they're sending us down the hill towards the river and uh in sleds you know things that parents wouldn't do that there they said that they actually sent me once down the hill in a sled in a car seat and had to chase down because i was so so little they strapped me into the toboggan or something in the car seat they had to run down the hill and dad had to grab it before it went into the river um obviously i was the first child and uh you know so my parents were just figuring out how to do this you know at a young age and uh so as i grew up that was our life was i mean my dad worked as a carpenter and he then on the weekends we would spend time as a family going places he loved to drag us off to like fort ticonderoga looking for some plaque where a battle was fought supposedly by benedict arnold or something we'd spend all day looking for the battlefield or or like the spot where our ships went down and we'd get there and it's hot and this old volvo and and there'd be nothing but a little teeny plaque and that was that was the adventure but we never knew what we're going to find always garage sailing and having adventures every weekend he'd take us we'd go somewhere do something go on big hikes up to deer's leap and just i just grew up in the most beautiful place new england you know going new hampshire and hiking and adventures and my parents they just instilled that in me at a young age as well as being christians and uh and taking me a church on sundays like uh the sense of adventure just continued to build and i never never forgot that and then after high school i spent all my time during high school getting bad grades but my gym grade and my art grade brought my other grades up enough i was able to pass i had dyslexia i found out in first grade after the teacher standing me up in front of the classroom and making fun of me in front of the other kids that uh my mom had had dyslexia and she fought for me to be tested and they brought me and had me tested and sure enough i had dyslexia and it was it was the reason i couldn't stand up in front of the classroom and read in front of everybody so i was able to be enrolled in a program that allowed for me to read be taught at a slower rate even to this day i still struggle it never broke for me my mom did a lot of reading practice when my grandfather was an eye doctor and it broke for her but for me it never broke and right on through high school i was unable to keep up with the reading assignments and things like that and i ended up finding audio books and falling in love with audio books and it gave me the ability to do the reading assignments by listening to them i found that during that love for audiobooks that i really loved books even though they were one of the hardest things in the world for me to tackle i never gave up at it i kept reading and or listening to books all that i could it became a thing for me to find books that had pictures because it was the easiest way for me to read them is if there was something like an achievement each page you turn over as you read it the audiobooks became something that i would listen to like two or three a week i'd get them from the state they would send them to me whatever book i wanted sit in my room and i'd build stuff so from a very young age i started building everything and everything my parents broken calculator with a solar panel and i turned that into like an electric lego car you know that was able to drive across the table so i was always getting in trouble as well for disassembling things that weren't broken yet and then might not work after they were reassembled but i um like the car stereo they still hold that against me like i'm not allowed to take things apart and put them back together even though i have a good success rate they still remember that beautiful car stereo that never worked because the one screw that i didn't put back and shorted it out so so i grew up making stuff i was in my senior year in high school i spent a lot of time in my room my dad built me a sewing table and i was skateboarding a lot so i found that i like to make my own so skateboarding clothes i took a um home at class and it just like it took off for me so that those homec classes and the art grades and gym grades were the ones that kept me floating through high school to be able to pass so i started sewing and i thought after high school i would go and be maybe sew and design my own snowboard clothes i went and applied to fashion school and uh i just didn't like the the crowd so much of being i wanted to snowboard and skateboard and be outdoors and have adventures and i was there was sticking in yourself in an office and just working away at things and having to do like the college curriculum these days where you have to do what they want you to do so you can do what you want to do after just didn't make any sense to me i didn't want to be locked up for two or three years and then get a chance later to do what i wanted to do and my dad suggested at that point i was actually making i made three prom dresses for girls that year too i saw it not for myself i made dresses for other people and skateboard clothes for myself and it i even had some of my stuff in an art show and it was uh but it just wasn't as hands-on and as real as i want it to be and so randomly my dad had been to a woodworking show in saratoga and met the landings boat building school was up there from kennebunkport maine and they kind of hit it off and spent like an hour talking there at the show and he was like hey let's skip out on school and this is my senior year i'm supposed to be preparing to go to college and not really feeling it and we went up there to kennebunkport maine and we went in and we saw the boats and the smell of the cedar coming off those shavings as they were building a uh harris off 12 and a half a buzzard bay boys boat and you see them all over the place here during the summer time beautiful boats and i just i i just fell in love with the crafting and they're like you realize that you've never built boats before and when we started talking about me coming there seriously and i was like right now it just seems like the coolest thing you could make with your hands these beautiful pieces of curved wood i know carpentry a bit from my father teaching me stuff it was so amazing the outdoors and the sailing and the the open sky and the smell of the ocean i was just i was in love i i that year i graduated high school and the next year i went up there as a 19 year old on his own for the first time and that was trouble so i ended up having an apartment with a couple other people from the school and uh going to boat building school i took a small boat building course there at the landing school which you build a uh pea pod i believe it's called lap strake and it was out of plywood and you build them in groups of four and then we built a harrish off 12 and a half and i think in a group of five i spent all my time there building the boat and then after work just making all kinds of crazy things i was known for building the weird stuff after work like a wooden shoe and uh i i was sure that it was going to take off it was my million dollar idea a beautiful lap straight wooden shoe that looked like a boat but uh you know it it didn't it kind of blew apart and didn't work out so well um as much as i had a difficulty with reading god gave me that much more of a gift when it came to working with my hands and when i recognized that early on i just i did everything i could to possibly learn from books new and creative things that i could get my hands on and build and the boats gave me such an uh an outlet for that that i ended up doing that right up until i went on alone it was just so much fun making boats they were the unique lines to them and and then seeing something you built out there sailing and somebody having fun with it and enjoying it and the look on their face as the wind and the smell of the ocean it was just it was like that uh all those romantic moments and books that i i loved so much as i listened to them so i did that and after i finished school and graduated i headed down to i think it was connecticut for a job at pilots point marine and worked there doing not as much of the wooden boat stuff as i would have liked so it was uh there was a good guy there i started to learn from for a little while and i managed to learn some more skills but then i started getting into like they wanted me to do fiberglass work and it really wasn't something i wanted to do moved back to vermont for a little bit helped my parents do an addition on their house and then found a job up here in maine at 21 at rockport marine they were building the schooner links i don't know if you guys have heard of it but it's a uh teaching ship that's been up and down the coast here and out in california if you see the movie blackbeard it is the the ship that's in the movie and you can see my woodwork actually getting blown apart i'm hoping that was cgi because i but i moved up here to be work on that when i was 21 and it was the coolest thing that was an amazing year working on that boat there first thing i got to work on was the spires when we got here i got put with a crew up in an upper shed while the boat was being built and i built about i glued up at least half of the masts and spars on that boat and shaped several of them spars are like one of my favorite things to build is the most unique thing you you turn it to four sides and eight sides following the design and then you have to sand it round and as it comes out and it's all finished and you put that first coat of varnish on it and that grain from that douglas fir just pops out of it nothing more beautiful than that first coat of varnish on something beautiful that you've made and seeing it just look so clean without any sanding scratches and then i got to do the inside of the boat and i did the cabinetry down in the galley doing the drawers and matching the period and style of the boat turning custom knobs my dad had taught me lathe work so i used to rough out all of his spindles for him on his the porches that he did and uh and i actually i think i in the end i was even finishing them for him and doing the full finish thing so i turned some knobs to match the period there on an old lathe they had in the corner they hadn't been using did some of the decking on the boat and we launched the boat and that pretty much ended my job there at rockport marine because i was 21 and at the same time as i was working there i was also learned how to play pool when i first moved to maine and that uh i was actually making more money playing pool than i was going to work but the hours don't line up because you go to play pool and you get home at one o'clock in the morning and you find that your employer doesn't like you too much when you're dragging through the door like this and they they want you to be awake and aware so my first year being 21 was a tired one and in the end taylor allen of rockport marine said i think this isn't going to be a good fit continuing on we appreciate everything he did and so i learned a hard lesson that way that uh need to grow up a little more i ended up working around all the different boat yards in rockland and thomas denton right up into belfast there for a number of years about two and a half years at each boatyard until like the big project or two projects were done and then i go and find another project at another boat yard and that was the best way to be able to follow the more beautiful boats to is to finish a project and then i have to move on to somewhere else to a better project so that kept me busy but as the years went on i found that building boats was really fun and the only reason i loved it was because of making it and making them and i actually enjoyed my time after work more because i had access to all the tools in the shop to building the things that i wanted to make after the hours and i made all kinds of crazy stuff from turning my dodge minivan into after watching that show pimp my ride i i made all kinds of woodwork in the inside the car and fancy and installed a tv in there and stuff like that back in the day and had it all modified out and trimmed out and stuff with woodwork and it's like a multiple other little uh projects like that you know whatever i whatever suited my fancy and i found that i wasn't too into the sailing sailing was beautiful and it was fun to be out there for a little while but after doing some some long trips that as you're sailing along and you watch the guy go out on a lobster boat to go lobstering and you're sailing into rockport harbor and then he comes back in at the end of the day and you're still sailing towards rockport harbor i was awful antsy to get off the ship and i had already been on it for three days and i'm like this is this really wasn't what i loved i love making stuff and being stuck at sea wasn't my thing and so it became a little bit of a bane of my existence in some ways you know i loved making things i love the creativity of it i love the smell of wood when you're shaping a board and you run that plane across it and your tools are sharp and the shaving comes off in this beautiful curl and the smell of that cedar or or working with the mahogany and you varnish it and that grain just pops in at you and so as time went on it became a little harder and harder to go to work i found a better job where it was more traditional boats i started a job at northeast boat working for josh howard up in north port if you ever up there heading towards belfast from from camden and you go past this boat yard that says northeast boat and you see all these in the springtime you see like six or seven of these beautiful harish off twelve and a half's out there all rigged up and ready to go in the water for the year and a beautiful presentation of boats there people are you can hardly get any work done in the spring because so many people are stopping in just want to pet the boats all the time it's a blast um i get to spend more time visiting in the springtime than we did actually working so that kind of revitalized my like oh this is more creative stuff i got to work on these smaller boats somewhere along the way while working there i ran i i was feeling a little in my personal life i was just me living out in the woods i had bought my land 10 years almost 10 years ago at that point and i bought a piece of land in appleton maine and it was way out in the woods almost a mile out into the woods it was just two and a half acres it was a right away through somebody else's property that i had to like it was an old skitter trail i had to hack it out of the woods to clean it up so i could get out there i dragged the camper out you see the camper in the video there we actually attached that to the yurt and i started living out in the woods in a camper and i built a complete building over top of the camper and it was all out of logs and then we got these shrink wrap plastic from the boat yards and we i shrunk wrap it completely over so there was like this door you go in and this giant like half the size of a chicken barn you get in there it's all gravel and it was set up kind of like the way people set up their campers at um campsites and stuff all pretty with a little fire pit in front and a wood stove and you know cooking area outside and then inside was the camper and i i lived there for like 10 years and i didn't i was like had all these every year i was like i'm going to build a home but it was so convenient and i was able to spend all that time extra time that i wasn't bound to a bigger house or or bills i'd go out on saturdays and i'd buy these books at garage sales these old books i'd be like oh this is great there are thrift stores and i just kept nurturing that love for books so half of my camper was rebuilt into shelves that held all my books i spend every saturday hunting books and then sunday morning i get up and i'd sit there all morning drink my coffee and read these books and and study the different plants and the floor and the fauna and traps and go out and then try to apply that stuff to like homesteading on my land i built all kinds of little wild gardens i tried to incorporate plants that were already native and uh and then i'd use the stuff that i learned in the books like primitive traps to catch the woodchuck that was trying to eat my cabbage that i was trying to grow stuff like that so i kept experimenting with these primitive things to only to be a homesteader not to not to i wanted to learn about appropriate mushrooms to eat so i could put them on my pizza not because i was like trying to like harvest enough food to survive on or anything like that i never wanted to be a survivalist necessarily i just wanted to be prepared and i figured that that was my best way to prep so as the years went on i worked less and less as it was okay with the boss that was one nice thing is they let me work like 30 hours a week so that i could spend as much time as i wanted playing outdoors and i just kept nurturing that love of the outdoors and my my my area of love shifted from boats to making bows and making all this stuff out on the land uh you saw in the picture there uh when it showed my place there was a hurdle waddle fences i build raised beds that i made like compost beds dug them down and and made all these hugo culture hills they call it which is like a layering system of debris and so i hacked all of that out of the woods by my hand my own hands dragging almost everything i had up at my house up there on my back because during the winter time it was a there were you couldn't drive into the driveway it was a skitter trail so mud season you couldn't drive in winter time you couldn't drive in the only time you could drive in is when it all dried out in the summer time the rest of time everything came up to the house on my back and that made me pretty strong after 10 years of dragging sleds and carrying 5 gallons of propane and 5 gallons of water with me up there i made a well but it kept always drying out and it was so easy to live a minimal life that's we we thought of it as a minimalist we didn't need much so we didn't bother to kind of do more we just had fun and stuff and then along the way i uh it got kind of lonely as time went on and i was in home in vermont and i put an ad on craigslist that said woodsy woman wanted pictureless applicants need not apply thank you very much but then there was this beautiful woman jamie and i was like and she's like i love being outdoors i can start a fire i can i can kill and cook a chicken and um you know i and i knit and i'm uh i'm like i'm like i think this is my buddies messing with me you know because they were the one that said that they read craigslist all the time i think they sent me and so i faced bookstopped her and uh to see if she was real and she was real i couldn't believe it so i sent her a message and i said um yeah i'm interested and uh and you're being interested and so we started talking and i drove home from vermont after like spending some time with my family and she had me over like a week later and it was my birthday and so she uh killed and cooked a chicken that she had there and finished the winning of my heart there with that delicious cooking she can cook a chicken like nobody's business she is an amazing cook and i met her daughter abigail and abby was uh one years old at the time and her birthday was like a couple days later and we we just hit it off we spent three months dating and uh and ended up moving up to the land together we found a yurt that needed to be rebuilt and we built it rebuilt it up there at the land put it all together and lived in it for an entire summer and got married and uh and then the first winter we attached the camper to it because the all we had to start with it was the camper across the yard which we kind of retired and thought we were going to be done with and when we moved into the yurt but it was only a 12 foot yurt and it was the three of us and so i built a rustic bed for abby and we kind of were had a really difficult summer it was so hot that summer and this tiny 12-foot yurt with the sun baking down on it because i had cleared a space for it right in the middle of a sunny main spot so that it it would be nice but it kind of backfired it was so hot but we ended up attaching the camper and figuring the whole system out after and ended up living there uh for four years until the alone show and my daughter sparrow was born in the meantime four of us living there for a year when i went out on the show and it it was it was amazing we had so many adventures we kept up with uh going out on garage sales on saturday we started getting goats and doing more homesteading we we bought uh canning systems and we cooked at the end before we before i went on the show we were able to have each year we were canning enough tomato sauce that we could have two meals a week one pizza and then one pasta dinner with the tomato sauce we had dried food that we had made from all the extra stuff in the garden that we would put into stews and we had enough goat meat that we had a year's worth of goat meat that we had raised ourselves and processed and we would can it so we'd have two meals a week with either stir-fried goat meat which is it's so good and like i i still i love goat meat it's it's really it's amazing i never thought it would be like that but it's a really tender good meat and uh in the sense of achievement that comes from processing your own food in the how clean it is and how how it's just uh it just makes it taste so much better anything you do for yourself like that so we had built up to maybe a i don't know 15 maybe sometimes 20 percent efficiency of providing food for ourselves for the year that we didn't have to buy from the grocery store we were shooting for a 70 at some point and during the summer time we were probably at uh for maybe a month and a half or so we were at about 70 or 80 percent providing all of our own food for ourselves and then down to about 15 for the rest of the year of um not having to buy stuff from the store so that was a pretty neat achievement um but then during that time you know the yurt started to get tinier even though it was still the same size you know we and um and we were watching shows like naked and afraid on our tv because we had a tv on every wall because it's a yurt you know only one wall um a little yurt joke and uh we we watch shows like naked and afraid and i was like man i i could do better than that i've learned so much from these books i like i could do better than that and and jamie got sick of hearing it and then i was like i just don't want to do it naked you know and it's like this i was like i was starting to gain weight i had off they thought i had lyme disease at one point and so i they gave me the medicine it messed my stomach up about four years ago and my stomach was all from the antibiotics it like killed everything that's good in your stomach and i really i was having a hard time all i wasn't able to have dairy carbs made me sick and i started to balloon up over the last two years before i went out on loan i weighed 223 going into that and so it was like i was it was just it was really a hassle you know i tried to not eat but i was always hungry and so i like a cutting myself off on food wasn't a diet that worked for me and i didn't know what to do except for just continue to work hard and i worked so hard i couldn't understand why i was continuing to gain weight like that and i felt tired all day until noon and it was something i'd actually even struggled with a bit more leading up ever since high school kind of i always felt uh i had a bit of tiredness and like i never woke up until after dark and it was like that's when i felt like the most awake and then i had a hard time falling asleep at night a lot of the time and so leading up to the show it was it became an aggravation i mean i walk out into the woods when we're living out there during the winter i had built a sled out of a pallet and i bring home two more pallets for the goats so we could increase increase our goat pens and i have two pallets with another pallet underneath that had skis on it and it handles a wooden handles that i could pull abby would sit on top of that with all of our groceries five pounds of gas for the generator and about five gallons of water and that seemed like every other day i had to bring that home or at least that amount of weight not the gas that was like once a week but like every day i had to bring home five gallons of water because when it went from just me having five gallons every two weeks to jamie who likes to watch dishes for some reason they the water went like that it kept going so i'm dragging this stuff up i'm like i who can pull like a mule like that almost a mile out of the woods dragging a child and then when sparrow came along two kids on a sled like that out into the woods every day plus being out there and you know late into the you know seven o'clock during the winter time splitting wood every night preparing wood and doing all this stuff and i'm still gaining weight and feeling feeling like tired and weak at times and and didn't matter how much i ate and i ate well too because jamie cooked like the most wonderful foods we were always having just beautiful healthy you know organic foods she she really an amazing cook and so it was like it didn't make any sense i wasn't eating like tons of sweets all the time well sometimes in the morning with my coffee on the way to work i always had like a little danish or something um but uh it's like it didn't make any sense but my stomach got even worse over the last two years and i couldn't eat certain foods it got to the point where my favorite food being pizza i couldn't eat it and and then alone came on tv season one and we watched alan win after 56 days i believe it was and it was like i was like that's awesome you get 10 items you get to go out there you get to survive and you have to film yourself you're all alone i was like that i could do i could probably even do better than that and jamie goes i dare you and so that that's where it began right there i i i i i when if somebody challenges me i have to eat that's something i've always i got in trouble with my dad all the time that was the one thing we always butted heads with if you said you couldn't do it or dared me to do it i would i would always have to do it to prove somebody wrong and which is a strong suit and also annoying to people that love you but so i i sent in a message to the show and i said i thought to myself before i sent the messages like that i looked at their page and there's this big long application process and it required they wanted you to send in a video and they wanted like all this information and i'm like i don't like all that reading and all that paperwork i'm just going to send them an email that says like my selling points and i knew that to sell it to them i need to highlight all the things that are important to them when they do a show like this and when they're doing a show like this they always you always notice like on naked and afraid they put two people that clash together right they'll put like you know the marine and like a hardened feminist you know and they'll put the two together and just so they can create drama and then i figured out from watching alone that they choose kind of like the village people they got the firemen the teacher the you know they they have all of the different uh aspects you know you want your your scientists your botanists whatever you know each of those different categories you know and so i said all right what do i have to sell myself to them i go i got it all i got i'm a ginger bearded wooden boat builder that lives in a yurt in maine and likes shooting slingshots and i just took on shooting slingshots just before i sent this message because watching naked afraid in all the shows i was like why doesn't everybody bring a slingshot i think that would do so much better i could get all the small game and stuff so i started shooting slingshots just before i applied i sent that message in and i said check out my facebook i've been putting up pictures of all the little gardens we built in the yard and uh different things like that and our family out in the woods having adventures and starting fires and the they were like we'll take you i get a message like we'll take you just for the preliminaries fill out the application we're going to send you a video camera we want you to film yourself uh out in the yard doing an overnight or out in the woods doing an overnight or so that we have some footage to just show on the show leading up to it and so they sent me a camera and i did the whole application process and i went out there i took my snowmobile and at that point finally the last year we were out there i had gotten a snowmobile and i drove it out into the woods and i took the camera and i set it up and i go like home alone oh no my snowmobile is broke i'm stuck in the woods all i seem to have with me is my axe and my flint and steel and this empty water bottle and uh the allen key for taking out the spark plugs and so i kind of like set the story up to to like tell the story and i've always been a storyteller as you can probably tell and so so like i was like i'm gonna tell a story to the camera and that's what and i'm gonna mimic what they do on the show so i took all that gear i got out and i said well i need to get something to drink i don't know how long i'll be stuck out here so i should think about necessities first at some point i'm gonna need something to drink so i'm gonna need fire shelter and water and uh at least if i'm gonna be overnight and something to eat would be good too so i took it was that weird warm spring we had three years ago when i made this before the show and i took and cut a tree branch and used the the tap from the to take the wrench off of the spark plug wrench the chainsaw i think it was actually a chainsaw wrench and i turned it into a sap tap and put a hole in the tree put the sap tap in and i hung that empty water bottle on it so it could collect water i found a big rock that i had out there that i always imagined like making a little home under it and uh i made this like shelter in between these two big rocks and a fireplace that was in there and the heat could go out and i made some hurdle waddle fencing i hung up a string in there and i said oh this is where i'm gonna hang up my knickers at night so they can dry out and they loved that and they love the sap tap they still talk about that to this day when they like tell people about how to make your casting video they're like we want to see creative things like this and i made made some pine needle tea and sat there and i i spent the night with the fire going and hot rocks underneath my um pine needle bed so i could be warm in there and i then i talked to the camera a little bit and i found some grubs under some bark and showed them that i have the uh strength and fortitude to do whatever it takes to survive by like this is all i got for dinner eating some some bark grubs from underneath the hemlock and uh bark and they get all close to the camera like they do and get emotional like if i was out there i would never give up for my family's sake pretty much the exact same thing i said at the end of the show there and sent them the footage and they're like awesome awesome boot camp is in three weeks i was like are you okay with this jamie you know it's like you kind of started me on this path and she's like go go he's like yes win us win a site win us a new home so that or so we can build a house up here so we can afford to build a nice place up here she's like i want an upgrade mama wants a new house and so at that point sparrow is not even one yet she's just about to turn one so it was like it was kind of hard to lead them but i felt like i needed to do what i needed to do with it like everything all this rough living out there had been building me up to be able to uh achieve in a challenge like this that i could do well at because it it didn't seem to me in my mind it seemed like it was pretty much the same thing i was doing at home just you know i'd just be going out there and doing i had 10 items i don't even use 10 items to build half the stuff i do around the yard today just go out there and i'd homestead and then when it was all over a year later because i thought that for sure maybe it would might take as long as a year and that's what i would do and she would just she would wait for me and um so i went and went to the boot camp and we get to the boot camp and i was so bummed i got there and these guys are there there's 20 people that were picked from the boot camp out of like 50 000 people that sent in inquiries 5 000 people fully applied to the show going through the same process that i did the filming themselves and pulling out this phil giant application and of like three pages long and uh i was like oh my goodness these guys were all like some just like dan wallace that was on the show he was he was like the green giant he was huge i just pictured him going out there and he's just going to grab a boar and just twist its head off like ozzy and he just like you know he's like you know and and just he he'd eat the thing whole and then he'd be good for like another month you know i mean the guy was huge and and then there's dave who's like yeah i survive you know for a month at a time out in the desert all the time i have two sticks i rub them together when i want a fire and i throw a stick at something else when i want to eat it you know and i'm like how do i compete with this and other guys that are i i've been going to survival camp i spent five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars a year spending all my summer at survival camps learning how to escape and evade as well as like survive off of nothing and and like another person's like have you even ever been to the edge of hunger and i'm like no like it does does 5 30 and my meals not ready yet count because because i did that once um you know and they're like have you ever been alone and i'm like uh for like a week once because that was the most i'd ever been alone i was before i met my wife i was out there in the camper and i went like three days and i was like i don't have any work building boats at the time it was like a mid-summer break and i was like i haven't heard if my phone hasn't rung for three days and i i talked and i was like well i don't think i've talked for three days i was like you know what i'm just going to shut the phone off i know to check it in a week on i heard i would be hearing back from the boss if we'd be doing something and so i went a whole week without talking to anybody and it was or or anything else but i still had food and it was in my camper and i was you know spending my days playing out in the woods and and stuff and and i you know it's like watching tv at night so i wasn't even all that like super secluded or anything so that was the most i could go on what it was like to be alone and i was like oh that was fun you know i was like i could do that a little bit longer if i had to and so i had and then for the last four years i've been living with my family in less than oh man the yurt is 12 feet right and then the camper so it's like this whole thing maybe only had this many square feet of actual walkable space in the entire place that we lived right here and and the rest so it was like it was tiny you know where's the alone time when you have that and you got two kids if i'm out in the yard abby would be with me following me around talking to me you know while i'm doing stuff telling me all her little you know the fairies that she found and different things and we'd be playing together as a family so i had no experience on being alone and i just knew that this was something i wanted to do so the boot camp thing was like getting there and meeting these other guys that all have these amazing stories already of adventure and uh discipline in the in the in knowing the plants like carly and callie and megan new plants like as we were there you know we went outside they're telling us about camera equipment and these they're like oh this is something genus species uh apogata and and like i can't with my dyslexia i can remember things visually you know but i cannot even to this day i don't do videos on my youtube channel about plants and things because i always get the name wrong i don't i don't know you know i know what plantain is and i know what the other ones are by sight and how to and how to use them but to to name them is like i almost always get it wrong and it was it was a little discouraging that first day i called jamie and i was like i don't know if i can do this these guys are so skilled they have so much going on and she's like you're tired you've been traveling all day go to bed when you wake up in the morning you'll remember that you're you're really good at this and that you'll do just fine i was like all right so we go to the boot camp and the first four days of the boot camp was just uh tests doctors things like that to make sure that we're going to be okay they're not going to get out there and die and during the testing i made i hid from them that my stomach issues like i i literally i was i had such a hard time with it i i was trying to be very careful i had done a cleanse before heading to the boot camp in hopes that it would kind of fix my stomach some and it made me feel good for two days and then i was kind of back feeling sick again after you know a little bit each day i'd eat and then like four or five hours later i feel like a little just dumpy and just like late slow and sluggish and then as the evening on i'd start to get more energy and stuff and then i'd have a hard time sleeping and i figured that none of the questions directly asked if you you know your frequency to the bathroom you know so i could just leave that out they don't need to know that and so i passed the medical test i almost failed the psyc test because they asked me if if there was anybody that's out to get you and i had said yeah on there and and they're like um we got one problem here you said you believe there's people out to your neighbor oh i was do you believe your neighbors are out to get you and i said yeah you know and they're like they're like ah there's one in indiscrepancy here and i was like well no you don't understand they really are out to get me like i had bought a right away and the guy that i bought it from died and the neighbors that inherited it have made it their purpose to like make everything miserable by bringing in all this garbage and placing it all down the driveway on the either side and i'd come home sometimes there'd even be piles of junk in the middle of my driveway and they don't even live there and like piles of two by fours that they were gonna salvage and build a home out there they every year they say they're going to build out there and they never do and i was hoping to one of the reasons they're going to win so hard was so i could buy the rest of the land and not have to deal with them again and so they're like oh well now they explained it you don't sound quite so crazy so so okay we'll give you a pass on this one and we'll believe you and then came the the the physical and outdoorsy test to the side of the boat camp they take us out there into we were in new york and they take us out to a park that we were going to be able to like a national park that we they had permission to um operate in and film and test us with uh starting a fire and things and they they let us eat the morning that they brought us out there and then we were to spend 24 hours without food and they when we got there they had us do shelters so we all made shelters and then we went around and evaluated each other's shelters and that's when i my confidence you know really started to come back a bit you know everybody did shelters and they were all pretty nice but i made mine with bark shingles and uh i thought it was pretty fancy and i did lose one point because there was a dead fall above that uh it was oak though because oak branches you know if you ever tried to break off an oak branch even if they are dead they're they're still miserable strong and and so i knew that and i'm like it's not a deadfall like you you guys from the evaluators are from england and uh they're british sas or something like that and these guys are i mean just you know they they're tough looking guys and i said they're like there's a dead fall i'm like yeah i was gonna get that down after you know i was done with building my shelter because you guys gave a certain amount of time and so i i got it down with throwing a string over it pulling it down it took forever because it didn't want to break it was oak and uh so i kind of lost the point there and i was like darn it i know that i was safe and so we spent the night in our little um in our little shelters and the next day they had us do a fire they wanted us to do everybody to do a bow drill fire and they were going to evaluate us and it was it was spring in new york it was damp there there wasn't a lot of good dry materials and nobody oh not nobody one person got a fire young zach if you watch the show you see he leaves in the septuagint episode because he cut his hand on his axe because he tripped and cut his hand and it wasn't even that bad of a cut but because of the previous season somebody had cut themselves really bad they called the medic and they needed to actually have stitches because their like tendons were torn or something and so he cut he we were told to call the medics if you and then they would evaluate you if you were allowed to stay and he made the mistake i think and he does too now of calling the medics and letting them look at it and they were like we can't clean this really well out here and they they're like we're gonna have to pull you and if you just wrapped it up maybe they would have come a couple weeks later they came every couple weeks or so to check on us and give it a medical evaluation he would have been able to show it was clean and not infected and he could have kept going but he called himself out and he was the only one though that was able to start a bow drill fire it was wet and he got just the right combination of woods and he was very good at it already and managed to get a fire going the rest of us all did our best and we all got smoke and came pretty close and and so the whole point with all was that they wanted to they didn't care that we didn't get a fire going they wanted to evaluate how we behaved how we went about it how we built what we were going to build and how our behavior was as we were hungry because we hadn't eaten since the other morning and so now it's been 24 hours noon rolls around and we were supposed to get food and they're like i'm sorry there's been a mistake the food hasn't come i still think that's part of a test and there was actually they just were hiding the food until they were ready to reveal it they wanted to see how we behave and i i felt like and i was watching other people and how they were behaving they didn't think about it like that and i felt like right from the beginning everything we did was a test and an opportunity to show them that you have what it takes to be on the show so when we got there to the boot camp right from the beginning they had some cameras that were in our face here and there and i made sure i always played it up for the camera you know i was always i was always willing to be like hey yeah they're in front of the camera it's like i was like you know because i figured the more i'm on camera the other people in the higher ups that are back in the office checking this footage out are going to be like man that guy is always he's right there on the spot so i like you know and he's not afraid of the camera so uh we then they sent us out to do one more project we all had to make two traps so they could evaluate us and the traps i made were ones that i had seen in books and actually never tried but i wanted to do something that looked as spectacular as possible because i didn't know they're going to ask us to do this so i'm like i'm going to do these so i did the two traps and they turned out to be it was i call now my upside down figure four i've done a youtube video on in my 87 days series and i made this cool figure four trap that they hadn't seen before the way it comes apart and it worked really well they tested it and boom it went right off and my second trap was another complicated trap as well that was a snare trap so that had like a funnel system so the animal comes in and puts his head and bites the bait stick and the snare grabs on to him and it would like catch a rabbit or something like that that came and stuck its head in it and it worked perfectly when i was showing it to them and so i like got big points there they were very impressed they had said they hadn't seen that one before and they had hadn't seen the other one and applied in that manner so i was like yeah i'm nailing it and then when we went around looked at everybody else's traps only like one other person had done two traps with complication like the rest of the people had done like just a snare loop on a stick and they're like if a squirrel runs up he might fall into this you know and that was like all they had done and the other one was like just a regular regular um very nice but they put everything into that one trap to show off their skills and so i was like good i feel like i nailed it there and then it became time to eat and they're like there's one complication it is rabbits and they're still alive i'm like yes this is so easy we raise rabbits for meat like there's this is like this is a cake walk and so like in preparation for that i started walking around picking up acorns everybody's like what is he doing i'm picking up fill my pockets all these acorns there's beautiful large acorns there and and uh i'm getting ready to do my rabbit and they give us our rabbits and some people were a little squeamish i had to help one of the girls dispatch her rabbit but i just grabbed mine and did it up and uh skinned it and prepared it and i got him over by the fire and mine's still hanging up and i i skinned it so i still have the skin on it and people like that's a weird way to do it but that's kind of neat it protects it from the flies and i'm over there by the fire and i'm boiling these acorns i boiled and rinsed them four times because you got to get the tannins out it's like they're super bitter unless you get white oak and these are red oak and so i boil them and then i take and i start mashing them up and every meanwhile everybody else is taking their rabbits and they're hungry because it's been over a day and a half now since we ate and they're burning them over the fire and like some people are already starting to eat and i'm i'm like doing these acorns and i made a paste out of them and i took my rabbit and i took the legs off and i rubbed it with an acorn paste and the camera comes over and i'm like today on backwoods iron chef we have hair with an acorn paste and i'm gonna pan sear this really quickly to lock in the flavor that's the best way to do it and then we take and put a little water in there and we're going to let this slow simmer over the fire for about two to three hours so two hours later everybody's still picking rabbit out of their teeth because they cooked it right out of the fire and they're like trying to get the like you got something a little yeah a half a leg rabbit leg stuck in your teeth there and then i open my pot for the camera and the steam comes out and the smell and everybody's like oh that smells so good and i take a pair of chopsticks i made well and i just with the chopsticks i just grabbed the rabbit meat and it just falls off the bone i'm like oh that's so good you know it's like it was so delicious you know i took the time to cook it and it was so good so we finished up the boot camp and i was like i think i nailed it i think i did a good job you know one of the people even was like don't film me doing my bow drill i'm not it's not working i don't want anybody to see me doing this the wrong way and i'm like he just voted himself off the island you know like the whole point is like you're gonna be on camera all that time if you're not gonna film yourself doing stuff wrong you know they that's what they want to see is the suspenders and making mistakes they want to see you crying in front of the camera you just gotta you know they want to see the emotions and you can't be self-editing and hiding that stuff and i knew that and i was willing to do that when i came into it so i left the boot camp and they said a week later we will be able to tell you if you're on the show or not and we'll leave it there for a minute take a break they call me a week later i'm building boats that day i go out into the yard my heart starts racing like a hundred miles an hour and they go like all a big sigh on the other end and i'm like oh great they're gonna tell me and she goes how'd you like to go patagonia i'm like ah i did it she's like you got you're in you're in if you wanna go you're in i'm like yeah yeah of course i'll go so we had about three and a half weeks to get ready and we knew that that was going to be the schedule so i had already just mentally tried to prepare made giant lists of all of the the possible 10 items that i would take and i had a final list even of the 10 items that i was going to put together to take with me and then i said i could go and i had to start all over again like second guessing myself and figuring it all out my family and everybody was not supposed to know where i was going we weren't supposed to talk about it to anybody so of course uh my family knew and and they were and even the aunts and uncles that weren't supposed to know didn't know but they knew i was having an adventure and a bunch of them put some money together and donated some money so i could buy 10 items that i i needed to to be out there instead of just taking the stuff i some older stuff that i had they wanted to see that i had fresh gear fresh clothes good equipment of course my first stop was ll bean i got myself my jacket my vest which is now like my signature vest that i wear all the time the orange vest that i wear in my youtube videos and everywhere else and that i had on the show and i took all my gear that i purchased and i i hacked it all everything had some sort of a modification to make it better we weren't allowed to take a vest so i cut the liner out of the inside of my jacket and stitched in an old zipper from the a previous vest and zipped the vest into the jacket as the liner of the jacket because we were allowed to jack it with a liner i added tassels to all the zippers that could be turned into fishing lures i added i took my multi-tool which was a swiss army knife multi-tool modified it so i had a spoon gouge a gut hook a sewing awl needle that would uh had a thin a little hole through it so i could stitch leather with it and then i sharpened another tool that was on there was a chisel ended wire stripper and i turned that into another knife a slingshot uh was my one of my 10 items and we were only allowed to take two slingshot bands and 30 pieces of ammo so i painted all my ammo hot pink so if i had a chance to shoot something maybe i could even reclaim it and get more than 30 shots out of it i took since we only had to have two bands i brought two six foot long bands [Laughter] and so when they're evaluating our equipment they're like i'm like this is my slingshot my two bands you know and they're like really and like yeah really this is how i use it all the time you know and they're like all right if you say so i mean we don't shoot slingshots so we don't know and i go right on you know and then i made like a a saw sheath that protected my saw and if you could roll the clip uh i made a saw sheet that protected the saw that had leather on it and uh that's before right there i weighed 223 going in and there's me after i lost 72 pounds my bmi coming out i look a little bit like a concentration camp victim but i still had a little bit of i was like the day they came i was ready to be like i thought they were there to pull me because they were so do-faced and they were like i thought for sure they were going to pull me and i was like i still have a little bit on me i could still go and uh there's my ten items there my my saw my axe my i call this my slingshot uh quiver so they let me bring it you know because they were very fastidious about everything my my orange hats that jamie had made me uh my that was everything i took that whole pile there that's all i had with me for 80 days that was that was all my clothes everything because even the clothes that were you see in there was i wasn't uh wearing at the time it was wearing the other clothes the next day we put on that stuff that was there that's all the stuff i made when i was out there 87 days of whittling i made 200 sets of spoons and chopsticks um those are actually what was left after christmas this is a bird that's a little bird i made for sparrow and a rabbit for abby um a wand i made for abby and a one for sparrow and a little whirly gig thing slingshots you can see all this stuff when you come up here this is now i have even given more away second christmas and stuff that was my shelter out there that was uh we went out and visited two days or three days after i had won when the snow had lifted and i got to collect a couple more things from my shelter that i left behind it was just some little uh i left my boots there i think that was the only thing i really left and uh it was such a snowstorm the day they came and got me you can't really see it on the footage because it let up for a little bit and um it was a a long time so we go i pack i get all my gear all my gear hacks in order we go to go to the airport jamie's bringing me to the airport i bought her a car they with the last of our money so that she would have a new car she'd something dependable and uh oh that's the duck hunter i don't have a good slide presentation so we're stuck with getting it as it comes out that's the duck 3000 the mark ii i'll get into that i had a propeller system right there that was a propeller and it motored out into the water and did my fishing for me it had a fishing rig on it you saw in the video that would pop up and snare fish when they when they bit and i made a new one on my youtube channel that's the first version which had a paddle wheel on it and that's what i used some of my extra elastic bands for the water bottle that i made out there so i could have water a wood water bottle and carry it up over the hill because my shelter was way up and over this hill and then the little sparrow bird that i carved and rabbit so we drive to the airport and the car breaks down of all the times you know i got 25 minutes to spare because we were stopped at l bean i bought like one last piece of clothing that i i was hesitant to buy before and we are there on the side of the road jamie jumps out with sparrow in her arms and puts her thumb out to thumb you know thumb a car down some of course somebody in a subaru pulls over beautiful people and they give me a ride they're down the road they're like oh we can bring you the next exit and then they're like you know what we'll skip our son's basketball game because this is too important you know jamie's shoving sparrow through the window so i can kiss her goodbye one last time i had to leave my family right there on the side of the road waiting for aaa to bring a tow truck it turned out to be just a leaf in the air filter it was that was all it was they they had somebody had not taken the air filter out and a leaf got in and it was just shutting off the air i was like uh it was it was a weird way to start the whole thing and very hard you know when like i spent all this time with my family and this is like this rushed goodbye i had to give them so i get to the airport three planes later i'm in patagonia two days and three planes and we arrived there and they bring us to this ranch and i'm like my slingshot is burning a hole in my back pocket i thought i picked one of the best 10 items that had ever been picked there's birds the size of chickens flying by in the tens of thousands now we left here in the spring uh like a month from now uh two years ago and it is just late fall there you go out into the field and you can't help but kick up a rabbit every 10 feet they're just everywhere just flying all around these rabbit trails that are like this thick i'm like i'm going to get out there my slingshot is going to like feed me so well everybody else is like oh you're going to eat so well out there i wish do you have another slingshot you know i want to change out one of my items after a week of orientation and telling us what's what because at every hill you go over in patagonia it's a different climate completely because of all the evasive species that have been introduced in stuff so we had to figure out what was what they fly us in over the glaciers and we're up in this giant glacial lake and they take me on a motorboat from the helicopter to this spot that i'm looking all around these beautiful mountains and the snow peaked and they pull into this dark cove of darkness and just dark and i couldn't even i couldn't even see for like the first minute and it's so dark there and it's cloudy a little bit that day and i'm there and they say hi here you are toss your bags out toss you out and say good luck no they're they're a little nicer than that all of a sudden they're pulling away and they're driving off and i'm just like all alone you know and and it's it's as you can barely see into the woods it was so dark took so long for my eyes to adjust it was unreal but i just stood there and i was like i didn't know what to do i was like so overwhelming to be that alone all of a sudden the weight that settles on to your shoulders and the burden was not i was not expecting that and then i just remembered something my mom said you know when you find yourself with where you don't know where to go from there you just do the next thing i was like i don't have to survive 87 days or a year right now all i have to do is do the next thing and do it as to the best of my ability so i turned around i brought my pack into the woods a little bit i started looking around and i cleared a spot there was only like one spot the land went up at like 45 degrees behind me about 10 feet in the water and the driftwood and we're up onto that hillside even up to about four or five feet so i knew that this wasn't instantly i knew that this is not a sustainable location i remember from books that i had read um jules verne or something like that um there you know water and patagonia can rise really fast and you could find yourself because of the water melting and just i could be swamped so i was like i got to do something about this set up a quick just a little a-frame of the plastic that they issued us which is like a 10 by 10 tarp and i headed up into the woods to explore real quick just hop around make sure there wasn't something better and i found that giant log that was like that was about this high and i was like this is going to be where my shelter goes it was the only place that's felt a little brighter and wasn't as closed in there's plenty of bamboo and i i instantly knew what i wanted to do i had planned it out beforehand drawn tons of drawings of how i build my shelter with the hurdle waddle like fence double thick walls insulated with the material and i'd be warm i headed back down over the hill and i started on my life there i got up my feral rod son i'd start a fire i wasn't able to get a fire going i didn't get a fire going until the next morning i had never used my ferro rod that was one of the things that i kind of felt was a little bit of a failing i had used flint and steel before but i had never used a ferrowind i watched everybody do it and there's giant piles of sparks i'm like that's easy enough you know and i knew about prepping up materials but everything was so damp there the dark place that they put me and never really dried out all that often and it was just damp and jungly so i was like oh i went to bed that first night after setting one fish line out and hoping to catch a fish uh that thinking what did i get myself into i'm like already it's just like the boot camp i get there i'm like you know what i'm gonna do the next thing and right now that's getting some rest so that uh i will be able to think about it more clearly and i started a routine that night that i carried all through it through my 87 days i laid there and i said i thought to myself what did i do wrong today what can i do tomorrow to make it better how can i better how can i better prep up my materials so i can get a fire how can i catch more catch some fish and how where else can i now that i walked up and around how can i build that shelter and i started walking myself through everything that i needed to do the immediate and the in the far future i woke up that next morning to a splat sound of splashing fish i had caught a fish on that that sometime in the night and i got up and it was still dark out because it didn't get light until 10 o'clock in the morning there it was it was getting darker it was still getting darker at that point and uh and because of where i was which i didn't find out until 12 days later that it was like the dark side of the moon i was in south america and 12 days in i went out and i looked and there was the sun i could see like a brightness coming from way above and behind me up on the mountain top and i could see it like coming through over the clouds that were blocking me from ever seeing it and it was landing on the other side i was on the dark side of the moon and there would be no light for me the entire time i was there i thought and i just started crying and i was like it's like a pizza on the other side of a crevasse that's my favorite thing in the world and i can't get to it and and like meanwhile if there's somebody over there they're like sunning themselves and i'm gonna be here in the dark and i just i started crying and i was just like so broken for that day and meanwhile i've been feeling sick that first 12 days i used up all the moss on all the trees for toilet paper i was so sick that stomach thing i thought i hid that one thing from the camera because i didn't want to be the guy that had to go home because he was sick you know and um and then day 13 came it was just a day later after having that bad day and i looked i felt better all of a sudden i started feeling like i had all this energy and my body had cleansed somehow from just being out there and now only having at that point i was eating about a fish a day and i i was i had become cleansed and i started kicking my mind and everything started kicking into a new gear that i had never experienced before i looked up and i saw the sun up on the hillside towards where i was going to build my shelter there was a one ray of sunshine i hiked up there and i stood in that one raya sun and i was just about it was about 100 feet up on this hillside and i just like oh thank you god thank you god i don't have to be in the dark the entire time and so i started out like almost on the second chapter of my time being there and i started hiking up after that after feeling better i had more energy i started building stuff like the water bottle i started hiking up over the hill every day to where the new shelter would be digging steps into this hillside thinking that as winter comes more it gets more wintry i need steps to get over this hillside that was like 45 degrees up and so i carved over 150 steps into the mountainside and switchbacks so that i could get zigzag up and over this hill safely to where my shelter was and i built my shelter up there and i made that crazy like yurt thing with this giant log incorporated in the back which worked as a thermal mass so once the place was up to heat it would be able it would stay warm all through the night and everything and so i started you know i got all of my fish lines out we were allowed 25 fishing hooks i brought 24 and a sewing needle that was one of my hacks that i bent a sewing needle in the shape of a fishing hook and they said that that was acceptable because the sewing kit was another item my 10 items were paracord a shovel the fishing line hooks the slingshot axe saw multi-tool ferro rod sleeping bag pot with a pan lid and three of those items were very like nobody had ever taken a multi-tool on a survival show i don't think and people talked about the shovel a lot like why is this guy bringing a shovel it's a cold steel shovel so it worked as a small machete basically as well as digging and digging all those steps provided me with because i believe in one of my principles of being out in the woods was useful useful useful so i was able to dig these steps and every day i was digging steps i found lots of grubs and worms i bait all 24 of my hooks three times a day i'd have all of them or two times a day i'd rebate them in the morning and in the evening and i'd catch fish and if i caught a fish i could rebait them with gills and catch more fish and so he was catching these trout that were like this big or i mean maybe this big and [Music] a real good main fish story right now they were big they were some i mean the smallest ones i think there were like two or three that were you know 10 inches there are some were like 10 to you know 14 inch size trout with fish eggs so good every time there was these pink ones that was this pink muted like a shard i think they call it and they they were like the duck trap salmon that you can get at the grocery store they were so juicy i'd smoke them just like out with the rabbit i'd smoke them for four to six hours until i had a recipe down four to six hours of smoking put them on the coals and sear them so the skin was crispy and just melt in your mouth and and i chew every single bite until it like disappeared without even swallowing because you just chewed it so much you accidentally swallowed it because that was all i had and up to day 70 day 72 or so i had 60 fish and that was almost a fish a day with the fish head soup that i made everything else into i drink that three times a day boil it mash it drink it down three times a day i drink every piece of sludge that melted every piece of cartilage i boil it till it was gone so there's nothing left and then i mash up the bones and i drink it some more i felt so strong i hadn't felt that strong in years and meanwhile i'm hiking up and down that eight stories every day to check on my situation and bring that fish up process it smoke it and then and then put the fish head soup on the days that i didn't have another fish i put a fresh fish head into the fish head soup and and enrich that so i had a lot of nutrients and i came out of there after doing that feeling strong you know feeling really good so as time went on i you know i had to continue to figure out ways to keep uh keep fed and i tried building one trap almost i think it was about one trap a week for boar and things like that i heard them at the beginning once in the night and then there was no sign of them whatsoever the rest of the time were there turns out all the big animals all the rabbits everything leaves the upper mountains during the winter time so the only thing i had was fish grubs and dandelions and let me tell you grubs are no good that you know they're they're you know they're half full you know what like politicians they just yeah you know it's just no good you know and uh so i i did what i had to do i baited with the some of the grubs the other ones i ate and uh so i could keep going and at the end at one point i had collected up all these dandelion roots and i only ate them at the beginning before and my taste buds had changed so much i started crying because they taste just like carrots they were so sweet after not eating anything sugary for so long it was unreal and one of my one of my things that i did to survive was uh i built the duck hunter 3000 i called it and you saw that in the video there it was a paddle boat with fishing hooks and fish heads on it i tried to send it out to catch this one cormorant that was swimming by he didn't he didn't take the bait he didn't go for it he didn't want it and then like a two days later i modified it and i turned it into a fishing boat with a spring-loaded rig on it built that dock so i could launch it up further and i got it out into the sweet spot and that thing actually ended up catching me more fish than anything else that i had set out there because i had it out there in the sweet spot and but it kept blowing in so for the amount of days it was out there it was only out there maybe 14 days altogether and then at one point during a stormy period i actually remodeled it and that was that other picture you saw up there where i had a propeller system which i had couplings and i'm out there and they didn't show it i had footage of the propeller firing up from underneath the water the gopro and the prop wash coming off the propeller as it motored by and and trailing its fishing hook with a little worm on it underwater and had to uh wax the couplings with bushwacks i call it earwax because they were they froze up from the friction and so i was just having so much fun out there and it shows me i'm having a little bit of a bad day with the fire and everything and that was just my one bad day because around day 72 i had you know i started running out of fish because it had been storming the first month i was there it was frosty at night and then it melted during the day the second month was frozen all the time the whole it was below 32 the entire month and the last month was it would snow all night and then rain all day and then it got really stormy for those last 14 days that i was there and i only had three fish and so that beginning of that time i had like one bad day and it was in my one bed very terrible day it was it was tough and at the end of the day i got back up to my shelter after all that stuff you saw there and the crying and i i'm i'm sitting there and i smell this burning smell and i can't figure out what it is like plastic i'm like there's no plastic out in the woods i couldn't have thrown a log in with some plastic on it you know it's not like i'm burning pallets or something and i can't figure out and i look over and my boot insert had fallen in the fire because i got my boots wet while losing that fish and i'm like oh my goodness this is awful and i pull it out and i had to use that leather for my saw sheath which was one of my hacks that i knew i was never going to use the saw sheath again it was just so i'd have materials and i sewed that back into my boot and i still wear that boot with that leather toe repeat replacing the plastic because i learned i realized that night when i laid down i started doing my thing and thinking about what was going on i'd even said it on the show i i just want everybody else to quit so i can go home i was waiting for it to be over i wasn't putting in my full effort i realized that i needed to change my mindset the next day i got up and i said i'm going to put my full effort in i'm not going to put off till tomorrow what i could do today i'm consistent persistent effort i came up with a that was my strategy you know if i could bait my lines with with grubs i get down there i do it i do the next thing i always do the next thing consistent persistent effort even though i wasn't catching many fish for the last 14 days because it was snowing i still keep going never give up and i just kept telling myself never give up never surrender as long as i still have strength in me and so i'd hike down over the hill back up i'd go out i had to go about a football field away to do firewood every day i did two days worth of firewood so that if i broke my ankle or twisted my ankle i could stay in my shelter and just continue to use that firewood i had a firewood shed built outside next to my shelter that held the extra firewood and i managed to keep my fire going for 50 days at one point and this is my story stick which has the entire thing here every fish i caught every day for the day of the week and each day i carve six symbols into it what i achieved for the day my physical state my emotional state the fish that i caught the day of the week that it was and i even had how many times i went to the bathroom on here because after the 12th day it was eight days 14 days and 26 days without going to the bathroom because it's just like you're eating such little and your body kicks into high gear of digestion it's digesting your body for it and your energy and i just felt so mentally crisp out there i started remembering things from all those books that i had read and it's just like it was amazing jamie shows up and i'm standing there i'm thinking they're pulling me i don't hear her coming up behind me they got me like well how do you miss your family i'm like stop asking me these questions like as long as i still have strength in me i'll never quit i'll never quit and i'm thinking they're going to pull me because they're all like these sad faces on and i hear the two motorboats pull up and they would come every two weeks or so and to metal medical check you and i thought this is it they had come the day before it's over in in one way or another i'm being pulled and it's i've lost too much weight and i'm ready to protest to be like i still have a little bit of weight don't pull me i don't know like what their rules are for how they're going to yank me or what's going on and then she sneaks up behind me she says it's over you've out stubborned them all you can go home and oh man that was the best day i didn't sleep for 24 hours after that i was so jazzed just thinking about laying there we just lay there all night and they're just talking about like what we're going to do with the money how we're going to build a family home and and the adventures that we'd have and all the stuff that we do with the kids and now i had my whole story you know every day of it chronological doubt so i could i'd never be able to forget it and i put the fish head at the top because that was what kept me alive is a fish head soup and god given me a fish every day when i needed it i was able to eat 63 fish and two birds one i got my bird trap and one i got with my slingshot i came home and uh the adventure kind of hasn't ended because since the show aired i've been pretty busy with coming around speaking to people i put the we bought a mansion and of course anything feels like a mansion after a 12-foot yard so we bought a place in union and we kept the land i go up there and i use that for my filming we've been cleaning that all up so the camper and all that's going to be gone soon and we're turning that into like a primitive place where i can build like a big old viking house for a youtube video and host uh boy scout events and stuff like that up there and be able to uh pass on what i've learned to other people and uh made the youtube channel and i've been doing that full time i invested in all the cameras drones and all that stuff to make beautiful filming i figured that was the natural step after 87 days of filming myself out there as like everybody else thinks it's so funny all the other guys are like i don't want to see another camera ever again except for dan the rest of them haven't i don't think they've touched the camera because they're like that's enough and i filmed every minute too 12 hours a day i was awake and 12 hours a day i slept because i was i was just like hibernate because i didn't have enough calories so now i film myself doing a reenactment series about the what i did out there which is uh which is really it turned out really great it's uh very friendly to like everybody i'm not so technical you don't understand it it's like like a discovery channel show almost or i should say a history channel show and uh and then we filmed about what it's like to win a half a million dollars so you can see my uh new lamborghini on youtube [Laughter] maybe i think it's that big you know and uh and then my passion has been for slingshots ever since i went out there even though i only got one bird i felt kind of vindicated because there was only one two birds out there and the whole time which was the sparrow and um and trying to beat the guinness world record now and just keeping the ball rolling and waiting for the next time i have to go out and defend the all-star title right now i hold the title of 87 days the other shows have only gone up to 72 days i believe it was so i'm gonna have to go out and defend my title against alan and dave and the other winners in a couple years they asked me after the show i said would you go do it again i go yeah in 10 years i'll come back and go against the other guys and they go but alan and dave will be so old then i go yeah i know they didn't quit either i need every advantage i can get you know so uh yeah that's my adventure if you got any questions for me um and this is all the stuff that i built [Applause] we drew lots we all had cookies right that they gave us around this campfire and the show because they never knew it was going to go 87 days they just didn't have time to put that on the show we all got cookies and inside the cookies was a little card that told us our site number a letter and i took mine and the cookies were really gross and i was like you know it's bad luck to not eat your fortune cookie right so i ate my whole cookie and then they're like trying to film us holding up our letter i'm like site d and i ate my letter and and they're like they're like like okay whatever maybe that's why they didn't use that segment but i was the only one everybody else took a bite of their cookie and threw their letter and and their cookie into the fire and i was like i see told you guys you should have eaten your cookie one person uh said that their spot was as bad but he didn't up until the time he quit was slaying the fish and stuff and so i i don't i i mean i don't feel bad for him he he had like a river and and i didn't have a river and stuff and i just was in the dark i i managed to stay in the sun like three more times the whole time i was there and find a spot to like where it would come peeking through because it was just the mountain just blocked it then the clouds and it would shine up all over me onto the other side i could hear somebody on the other side i didn't know who it was and i tried to zoom in with the camera and they're out there in the sun singing you know so i would do my part to go down into my dock and i'd be out there i'm slaying the fish oh i got another fish you know every time i was down i don't know if she she didn't she said she never heard it but um it was megan down there and on the other side i found out later so yeah yes how many days did the runner pop in your group uh it was carly and she made it 86 days she they they ended up having to pull her dave and carly both reached a bmi of uh down in below 16. and they were very very skinny and when you get down that low your your fat that insulates your organs doesn't protect you and your body can literally just start shutting down cardiac arrest just bad stuff happens and that's where they decided to draw the dividing line it never happened before it was patagonia was such a sparse land and and the the amount of stuff to catch and eat during that time of the year was just really low yes my bmi at the end was 21. and i figured that at the rate that i was losing weight um after they told me at the medcheck and things like that that i i had somewhere between three weeks and a month before my bmi dropped 16 but i also went in with a lot more weight um but i did eat well like three times to five times as many fish as everybody else i did not choose a i didn't choose a food ration i chose only tools and everybody else chose at least one food ration as part of their 10 items and so i didn't want to eat my food ration when i was hungry and then just have not be short one of my tools i couldn't imagine one of the things i would live without next time if i do it again i'll bring all the same tools minus i'm not bringing slingshot ammo and bringing arrows to go with the slingshot and i can shoot rocks because the one bird that i got was with a rock yes i studied it after i've done a um if you guys know jimmy moore who wrote keto clarity about the ketogenic diet and that's what i've been doing since i got back because when i got out of there my stomach was really sick again after eating carbs and i had a hard time readjusting i started gaining weight really quickly and i'm feeling dumpy and tired again and i studied it up and so now i do the ketogenic diet which is like a 60 fat diet and you do and like minimal carbs of just from vegetables and things and no pastas no carbs at all no sugars at all and um i i feel so much more healthy and strong i sleep better at night i wake up crisp i've never been able to get up early in the morning and now i i get up at like four and work in my studio for a while until my kids wake up um it's made all the difference i have so much more energy it fixes so many things and it's like the best way to be balanced i feel yes did you have a way to contact them yes we had uh three pieces of radio and satellites phone and and satellite texting machine so we had like three different things that we could call in at any point we're like required by our contract to have this in on us at all times so if we're even you know tree falls on you you're still pinned you can still as long as you can you're alive you can send a message so yeah yes she uh she ended up going to stay with her mom for a while in seattle and stuff with with the kids and and just playing with them at the uh at the pool and at the lake and things like that the whole time that's how she we ended up she ended up just to the goats and things were too much to deal with all on her own without me there to to help and so sold off all that stuff and we left all that behind and uh even more now that we've bought a house and we're probably going to get back into it at some point a little bit up on the land because i have an apprentice to take care of it what did you use for a container to make your fish to eat your fish that was my that my uh pot there i had a pot with a pan lid for uh just a cheap really cheap coleman thing actually and it's with a handle that could be put onto the lid and you flip it over and so i'd wake up in the morning i put my fish head soup on like an hour or so before i would eat and put it on the cold warm back up and simmer away until i had it good to go and i used on one of my other hacks was a waterproof bag that i kept my sleeping bag in so when i got there i just became a water carrying bucket for that it was that would be able to bring the water up from down below to my shelter dip into that and boil it and stuff yes did you bring a string yes uh one of my ten items was the paracord so i made a net and the duck hunter and used it for lashing so hp paracord has seven strands inside and i break that all apart and to its smaller components and wind it onto these little winding spools or net needles and i could use them from there to lash my shelter together or lash some weird creation that i came up with at the time yes we put together one of the fans put together a thing for carly and people donated so she got um a small lump sum i can't remember what was like more than five and less than ten so that was cool and and she's like i i talked to her i'm like just promote yourself i mean you're the longest lasting woman survivor and you never quit you know and so some magazines have reached out to her and stuff i mean that's an amazing story all the people that were at the end was dave me and up up into the day 70s and the three women you know yeah a lot of the other people that quit or thought would go further and uh they just ran out of steam and weren't catching fish so with large yes uh you hear that in the first clip there it's like that's a big cat right there at the beginning like day three i had a big cat and the mountain lions there are the biggest mountain lions in the world and it came through my area and i'm backing towards the water with my camera stand standing in an inch of water and i'm like whoa and it went around my campfire and my shelter and then off and i'm like ugh it just the vibe i felt from it wasn't that it wanted to eat me it was just like it was passing through its normal territory if you watch any of these other shows that's what happens at the beginning all the time bears all these things show up and then you never see them for the whole rest of the season because they you interrupting their normal habits and then they go around you that you know that rarely ends up in an attack yes 38 i think 38 yes 38 i actually gained i i lost 73 pounds in patagonia and a year because when i went there and i applied for the show i thought i was 30 uh i thought it was 37 when i came out my wife told me i was 36 and that was going to be my 37th birthday or whatever and i like gained i gained i was a year younger so i was like yeah that's probably a good place to wrap it up thanks so much zach well that's about it for us but like i alluded to earlier and if you're wondering this was filmed two years ago jamie is no longer with us no she's still alive she just took off uh and we share and have two wonderful beautiful daughters thanks for watching guys i'll see you in the next one her out

Channel: Fowler's Makery and Mischief

Views: 179,379

Keywords: fowlers makery and mischief, fowler survival, fowler, survival, fowler survival challenge, survival challenge, catch n cook, catch and cook, catch clean cook

Id: 3L-bn9jDXYQ

Length: 84min 2sec (5042 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020