Green Light with Chris Long - Tom Garstang from History Channel's Alone, Season 9! Life in the Outdoors, & Hunting & Surviving on Alone.

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

(2:06) - Tom Garstang from Alone Season 9! Growing Up in Nature, Becoming an Outdoorsman and Seeing Big Game in the Backcountry. (19:20) - Onboarding, Selection Process and Build Up to Being on Alone Season 9. (43:00) - The Beaver Encounter, Mental Health on Alone and Readjusting to Civilization After the Show Concluded. Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light Tube YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenLightTube1 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. https://www.greenlightpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Download the app, bet big, win bigger. And I got to tell you, I really like the sound of that. And with win bet, it's just that easy. Win bet has what you need to win. So if you're from Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, or right here in Virginia, sign up today to receive this special offer. New users can take advantage of win bets, bet $50 to win $200. Just bet $50 and win $200 in free bets.

Download the win bet. app now or visit WynNBET.com. Download the app, bet big, and win bigger. Let's get after it. Terms and conditions apply must be 21 or older and present in a state where win bet is available. Gambling problem in Arizona, call 1-800 Next Step. In Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia call 1-800-Gambler. And in Michigan, 1-800-2707-1-17. Tennessee, y'all 2,8009-8-9-9. Welcome to the Greenlight podcast. Today we have a very special interview. It's Tom Garsting from History Channel's alone.

Tom was a contestant on the show. Went pretty far and he joined us in studio to tell us some stories about his time. He talked preparation, the items he brought and the reasoning behind each item. His shelter, his successes, his failures, nearly bringing home a beaver. And the fun he had, y'all enjoy. All right, so this is fun, man. We got another in-person guest, me and Cowboy Reader Syke, Matt's psyched, he's a huge fan of Alone. We're all huge fans of

Alone. I haven't seen all the seasons, but it's one of the most binge-worthy shows out there. And in fact, when I meet somebody that hasn't heard of Alone, I'm like, man, you got something coming your way. Go binge all those seasons, enjoy it. Season 9 is exceptional because we got a Charlottesville area dude who competed for 43, 44 hard days in Labrador, which is a place that when I go to Tanzania by way of the Netherlands, we fly right over there. And I'm always like, what the fuck is down there? Well, Tom Garstang from Ehrlichsville, Virginia knows it well.

And he's here with us today. And I'm really excited to have him in. What a streak. Astronaut, survivalist. We're rolling here. Tom, how you doing, man? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me out.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the flight path, because when I saw, you know, when you watch the show and you see him zoom in the Labrador, It's so dark up there and there's no cities around forever. When I saw that on the map and saw how remote where I was going was, I thought, man, this is going to be crazy. The stars are going to be crazy. We got the northern lights and they were.

And it was epic. But I was not prepared for how many airplanes there would be. I guess because so many commercial flights cut the corner off the globe over there, I mean, the first night out there, I'm thinking it's going to be nothing but stars and it's just airplane after airplane after airplane. But they're way up there. You can't hear them or anything. But there's just tons of them all night.

long and I saw Starlink when I was up there and the trippy thing is I didn't know what it was because I'm a caveman like I'm living in a box out here and I'm looking up one night and it showed up like it looked about a half inch long in the sky and my understanding after I came back was that you know depending on how it's rotating you'll see dots but for me it just showed up as like a two dashed lines that were sort of oscillating across the sky and I'm laying in the shelter like what the hell is this. Like I've looked at the sky all. I've never seen anything like this and I didn't get to find out what it was for like 40 some days. That's so good and it's so timely because I just told a story on this pod which is going to be humbling as fuck to tell Tom this story but I took my family camping

north of pole bridge Montana which is up way up there near Canada wolves bears like everything like it was it was you minus the skills plus a family and a camper and we went to playing the river and I made the mistake. I'll take the hit even though we haven't really gotten to the bottom of this thing of losing the keys to the camper with a window open. So not only did we have to

find the keys of the camp for the next day, get in touch with the woman we rented it from, but also deal with the bugs and the possibility of bears coming in looking for casadillas after dinner. And the luck that I had was our neighbor had Starlink.

The only guy in the camp. This is a very remote campsite. And I rolled up to him. I'm holding a 357. I'm wet from waiting through the river to try to find the keys. It's 10 p.m. You know, it's getting dark, that feeling. You probably don't get that feeling. I get that feeling. And I rolled up to this guy. I'm like, can you deliver a message into pole bridge tomorrow? He's like, I have Starlink. I said, what the fuck is that, dude? So thank you Starlink. And I'm glad it's working up in Labrador. So Tom, like, how do you, how do you actually get here? Because we were talking a little bit off the mic about all the different skill sets

that people bring to the table. I mean, you were just talking about Terry. He was a commercial fisherman, which is a whole different kind of skill set. You know, you've got your own skill set. You have like Bushcraft survivalists. What's the difference? And then how did you fit into that fold? Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, the show attracts a lot of survivalists. I'm very passionate and interested in that survival stuff, and I have a lot of those skills under my belt, but it's never just been a direct focus of mine. I'm at my core a hunter, and that is what I felt like my strongest suit was going in. There have been quite a few hunters on the show, but while everyone on the show does hunt,

I don't think very many of them identify, you know, as hunting being, you know, they might have hunting in their skill set for survivalism. For me, you know, back home, I mean, I'm counting the days to every season, you know, and I'm feeling like, you know, we're coming up to both seasons now and I'm like stressed out, like, you know, and I know that first of October, you know, I'm going to be right again, you know, and so I really live and breathe that stuff. And I feel like if you hunt in the right way, it's a lot more than that.

Because in order to achieve the level of success that you want to, it's really just powers of observation, a ton of dirt time, spending a ton of time in the woods. I mean, I go on the terrible days that nobody wants to go. I go before work. I'm not waiting for my day off. You know, if I, if I got 30 minutes, that's 30 more minutes like I'm going, you know. So I feel like that's where my strengths lay. And then, you know, just being fortunate to have traveled and visited and spent time with a lot of indigenous people growing up, following my dad with his projects with the World Wildlife Fund, you know, getting to see those people and how resilient and adaptable they are and just, you know, taking a tiny fraction of that. I've always wished I could spend more time doing that.

But even that little fraction, I feel like really set me aside a little bit from some of the other folks on the show. You made an interesting point earlier. And we both, I mean, you've traveled more than me with your dad's background, but we've spent a lot of time in Tanzania. And, you know, in and out of urban areas and spending time with the Maasai, the resourcefulness is crazy, you know. but it doesn't just stop in the bush. It doesn't just stop out in some Maasai village, you know, in Arusha or something like that. You wander through a market or you just see the resourcefulness that people have. And you made a really interesting point about that resourcefulness.

Can you expound on that? Yeah, you know, my dad always had such an admiration and respect for the people that had adapted their survival skills to live in the urban settings there. You know, one of the huge things is I'm sure you'll remember from going into those cities is, you know, the street crime, little kids, you know. And they're badasses, man. They're really good at it. You know, the slightly football-related story. My dad was teaching for the school for field studies there. It was a satellite campus for an American university.

I forget which one. I think I was about seven or eight years old. And he had all these grad students there with him for the summer. And they went in the Nairobi to get supplies. And my dad always used to tell everybody, like, take all your jewelry off, no earrings, no watches, like put the minimal stuff you have in a fanny pack. Like, I don't want to see purses, anything. I just, you know, I'm bringing 20 white people into the city, and I don't want to attract, I don't want to draw the heat.

Yeah, you guys look like money. Yeah. And so, you know, everybody would do that. Well, there was a girl who fancied herself, and I guess didn't want to take your earrings off. Dad didn't notice. And she's, she's walking down the street with the earrings on. And these two little kids come on either side of her and just rip them right out of her ears and take off up the street. And, but one of the kids was running behind. Well, her boyfriend was walking with her. He was visiting, and he was a linebacker for Texas A&M.

So the story goes. He took off after these kids and flattened one of them on the pavement. He was a big dude, but he caught him real quick, you know, and they weren't expecting that, but he caught one of these kids. And, you know, seeing this thing play out in the street. But those kids are just so adapt. Another thing I remember seeing was a little hustle. This was actually in Cape Town in South Africa,

but a guy pulled up at a stop sign in a nice car with the windows down, and this one kid came up on the side of his car and just, you know, there's kids always at the lights trying to wash your windshield or anything for anything they can do for cash. This kid goes up and just spits right in this guy's face through his window. And you saw the rage, just a reaction. He just throws the door open and jumps out and runs after him. And this other little kid on the other side of the car,

in through the window, cell phone wallet out of the center console. He sees that happening, spins around, looks back at the kid he was chasing. They're both just vaporized, you know. And my dad was watching it, he points out and he's like, that's exactly the way they kill snakes out there. Like the two of them will tag team a big poisonous snake, you know. One of them will get in his face and the other one will go up behind him and grab his tail and whip him, you know. So, you know, that's sort of adaptability. You know, and I think that's in people everywhere, you know.

I was thinking about it. And, you know, in Charlottesville, we've got, you've seen the. rise of like the homeless population and stuff and the people spanish for change and stuff you know like in a way those people frustrate me in a way i feel horrible i know i feel feel feel for them for what they're going through but i crossed my mind the other day after my experience and alone i'm looking at this guy and i'm thinking he's got to have some grit man like he's got to have some skills and some grit just to be who he is you know i mean hacking through life the way he does the truth and it's like finding opportunity Right.

Probably the same thing, you know, when you're out there and you're looking for an opportunity, just a little crack, a little opening to get ahead. And I thought one thing that struck me about you was you're patient. Like, you're patient right from the get-go. There were guys and gals that I've seen on a loan that, you know, I've got to go do something right now or there's a grouse or, you know, like, let me chase this sucker. I'm going to lose two, three arrows or whatever. But, like, you made it a point a couple times.

to note that like it's all about patience and it's all about prep and it's all about even you know figuring out what animals are doing out of season you mentioned that when you were after that beaver like can you talk about patience and what that means to you is it like a core principle for you um it's i'm not a naturally patient person it's one of the one of the things that um one of the gifts that being a hunter is given me yeah i didn't start that way. You know, anybody that starts hunting knows, like, in the beginning, you rush shots, you hurt animals, you blow opportunities, and, you know, whether you want to be a patient person or not, you start to realize that if you're going to succeed, like, you just can't do that

anymore. And, you know, as a younger man, I was pretty impatient, and I also had, like, some anger issues and stuff. And, like, the woods just totally took that out of me, man. And it wasn't intentional. It wasn't something I chose to change about myself. It's something that just happened by spending a ton of time. You know, that beaver, man, I think about that thing all the time like any good hunter does when they know it, because I know I hit that thing. You know, I saw, you can't see it on the camera, but when I, when I dropped the string on that beaver, the, the beaver went underwater and I could see the fletching on my arrow pinwheeling in the water for about maybe three quarters of a second, maybe a second.

And then the arrow kind of came up. And, you know, I just, I know from the way it was moving that it was stuck in something. You know, I've both fish to shoot arrows into the water and the way that they act is different. You know, and so it, I think about that thing all the time. And it, you know, I'm sure it just, I don't think it'll ever leave me, but I, and this is nothing against the show.

they don't have the luxury of showing my full story. I wish they showed how many times I sat for that thing and how many times it was that close and closer that I didn't drop the string on it. I mean, that morning alone, the morning I shot it, it had swung by me seven times at that distance. What had happened, and I learned something about beavers that day that I never knew, because I've trapped beavers before,

and I've hunted them with a rifle when they were being a problem on our pond here in the farm, but I've never hunted them with a bow. Bo hunting bee, it's just not an effective way to hunt an animal that lives in the water, you know. Yeah. I've never seen somebody Bo Hunt and Beaver come to think of it. And they're tough. They're really tough critters. But I was sitting almost on its dam and the previous mornings it had passed me just too far out. And I kept trying to get on its little travel corridor but I was getting as close to the dam as I

could thinking, you know, it'll swim by me close at one point. But the entrance to the dam was kind of out in the deep water. And if I'd shot it there, what ended up happening would have happened. knew that. I was aware of that issue. So that morning I'd cut an alder branch down because I noticed one morning I came out there was an altar branch floating there and he seemed to like come out of the dam and see that thing and just turn right towards it like the real particular. It was in his in the wrong place. He went and grabbed it and he stuffed it and he stuffed it in his dam. So I cut a couple of those and I tied paracord around him and I tied him to the bank and I thought like he's going to come grab this branch and try to swim away and then there'll be a moment where he's like tugging on this

frustrated stuff and i'll shoot him then and it and it worked except at the you know their eyes sit on top of their heads so when they're swimming they can see everything and you know the general rule bow hunting is like if you can see these critters eyes like you can't draw i mean getting the draw is the hardest part of bow hunting it's not making the shot right so there were so many times i'm just seeing these beady little eyes and i'm like there's no way all he has to do is dip you know when he sees me, you know, pull back. And, uh, but he smelled me, you know, like I could see my breath, like floating down under the water. And I never thought about beavers being like deer in the way that they can smell you. So the second he sees me, he starts swimming these circles and sniffing

out of the water, like with his head up. And he's swimming concentric circles and he keeps getting closer and closer to where I am. He was actually coming towards me. So at the point I shoot him on the show, I had seen him, I was watching his body language and he took one close circle right in front of me and he just turned and he was like he was headed out you know like he was about to i wasn't going to see him again and i and i was hungry man i was really hungry yeah this was like peak hunger yeah hear it in your voice that that episode was at six and you were i could tell like some of the you know the strength left you yeah you know just that too in my voice well once you see it's fucking you hear it and then they were like tom's lost 44 pounds

And by the way, Tom's tall. Okay, for anybody who watched alone, he walked up the stairs. We'd never met before. We got some mutual friends. And he's taller than me. So, you know, much like Macon, he's at least a half inch taller than me. So when I saw you lost 44 pounds, I'm thinking, guys, 5'10, I don't know, you know. And I'm wondering what your weight was coming in.

Yeah. So the weight gain for me was really hard. I have a high metabolism, an active lifestyle, and I work on a farm. And, you know, I'm trying to gain weight going into a loan in, you know, July, August, in Virginia, working outside. And, you know, I'm tall, but I'm a real lean build. And so I walk around at about 182, 180 pounds, you know, mostly. I ate everything known demand. I did research.

I was doing like the protein shakes. I was drinking olive oil. I was eating avocados. Like everything I could think of. They tell you you want to put on healthy fats because they stick to you longer. Right. Like, you know, carbs will come on quick, but it'll fall off quick too. Got it.

So like I was really, I did all the diet research. I looked at what some of the other people had done. I did it all. I mean, I pushed myself like, and I was medicating to increase my appetite. Yeah. And like everything else that you can possibly imagine. I think I'm going on alone. And but I managed to gain 20 pounds before I go on the show.

But being that I live somewhat isolated life, so I mean, I'm not a hermit, but 2020 changed everything for everybody. And I live on a farm. We were coming off of that. I'd been really isolated. Hadn't been around but a close few friends. And when I went through the airport on my way up to Labrador, I caught a bug. And I thought it was COVID because it was miserable.

I hadn't been sick in a couple of years. and it just knocked me flat for like two weeks, dude. I lost 14 pounds of the 20 I gained, and I ended up walking in, walking on to the show the day I deployed six pounds over my normal fight and weight. That is brutal. Yeah. They say that on average, the contestants through the history of the show have lost a

pound a day, if you average it out. And I just keep, I always think about that, that the two more weeks that I may have had. I mean, that's not across the board. something else could have happened to you never know you could go out on day three just as easy as you could on day 43 you know but uh yeah i wish i had a little more weight on my bones you know damn do they like how's the onboarding you know like take me from you saying i want to be on alone you know i got a i got a chef up an audition video i got to contact you know x y z to they don't tell you where you're going for a while and you kind of got to wonder like what happens from soup to

that. Yeah, it's a wild ride. I mean, they, I don't remember exactly what the numbers are, but I think it's something like 40,000 applicants for season nine. And you kind of go through heats, you know, they'll call you and say, you know, you're being considered. And, you know, I don't know how big the pool is at that point, maybe 500. I don't know if I'm guessing. They want a little more from you. You, you'll, they'll ask you to, it was a little different for us because of COVID. Typically, they'll, they'll ask you to demonstrate some skills and film some stuff and send it in. They're looking at, you know, not only your skills, but your personality, you know, and whether you're a good fit for the show that way and your camera work, stuff like

that. But then when you, you know, when you're heading into the show, you know, you know that you've been accepted, but you still don't know where you're going. They'll give you, you know, some, some rough information a little bit, enough for you to, uh, to buy your gear because you got to, you know, gear up. So they'll say, you know, like for us, they basically said, you know, you know you're going way at north and it's going to be you know wet you know because you had to make choices between whether you want down or synthetic sleeping bags or like what type of rain gear or anything like that so they give you basic stuff but they don't tell you until very close to before you go exactly where you're going how many days of rainfall in labrador they said it on

the show i can't oh man i don't remember but a couple hundred a year it rains a lot yeah uh were you able to triangulate based on that information where you might be I didn't try too hard. Yeah. I mean, I think we all, we all tried a little bit to figure out, you know, to give us the edge. But for me, I'm sure, I'm sure you're familiar with this as an athlete. Like, it kind of came up on me quick. And there was a point where I was like, you know, we're coming in on this.

It's coming in hot. And I could really stress myself out trying to prepare. Or I could just say, look, whatever I've done up until this point is going to have to be enough. or not be enough. And I'm gonna relax because I'd rather go in relaxed than like, you know, I just didn't wanna burn myself out to the last minute. I took a lot of time going into the show to be like,

you know, I wanted my stress levels right, you know, my mind calm. And regardless of my performance, I got what I wanted out of that. I mean, I didn't have a bad day until the day I fell the first time. I was just having such a good time out there. Yeah, your attitude was great. great i don't know if that was a front like i was like some people i feel like they speak things into existence you know the one guy who got giordia benjy from the beaver he got the beaver fever which i was like i didn't know they called it that that's fucking crazy

different thing but uh this guy he was so like he was so overtly positive and like kind of It almost felt like self-talk, and I know that's a strategy. You have to. Like, that's the company you keep is you. Yeah. You know, it's so unfortunate that the show didn't have enough time for everybody to really get to know Benji. That dude's an incredible guy. Competitive weightlifter, I think he went to Nationals for it or something.

You would never guess looking at him. Just soft-spoken, really knowledgeable in the woods. And he's also like a lunatic. He's out in Idaho. He's a goat pet. and guide and stuff like he takes people elk hunting and packs stuff out on goats and just an incredible dude man he you know i he was in my top three to win it really yeah just meeting everybody at boot camp and everything and seeing seeing how they were like you know you're all kind of

sizing up the competition and you're like man i wonder about this guy and this guy and benjy just like man he he he knew he had the knowledge he had the skills he had the grit for sure and he just got really unlucky man yeah and i don't know who won I like Adam I think you know Like if you sailed across the Pacific Ocean You're kind of fucking crazy And you're fearless and all that stuff

And I loved his shelter So I was like okay Like some things are going well Then he got sick And actually got over it So I was like okay I also love One of my favorite characters

Juan Pablo I mean the guy Is incredible He made a chimney out of cans He made a dock He made and you're very resourceful We'll get to that

but like he was an absolute stud out there and then the funniest part of the show and I was sitting here watching it was he was drinking out of the river and and he was going to take a sip and I don't mean anything by this but I was like he's from Mexico yeah he's not worried about oh he would say that area and he said it five seconds later yeah he was like I'm from Mexico I'm not worried about there's a lot of people boil water but my gut's pretty solid so it was really cool just like there seemed like some really cool people and I wonder how well you got to know them before you go out man the best part about going on the show is I feel like I feel like the history channel sorted through 40,000 people and gave me nine best friends or just like awesome people like you know that that that that I'll that is my huge

prize but yeah J.P man he he's a nut I remember he knew he gained a ton of weight for the show like I saw him virtually we did boot camp virtually were interviewed I see him on the screen you know and I knew he had skills and everything but he looked kind of like me you know and then I see him get off the plane and I'm like good grief man he you're getting like 60 pounds or something well he had one of those camel bag things full of powdered milk he was drinking on that no he did not put milk and he was and he was putting him down and I that's exactly where your head's going I look at him and I'm I don't know him that well at this point I'm like man how in the hell do you clean that thing like and he just looked at me and shook his head he was like it's not

clean see I was like man and that's when I started worrying about him I was like man this dude is like that guy's a legend he walked into the woods and was like this fucking shit sucks he started being all negative and i was like i like i like i'm a little negative and he's like no it's good to be negative because you don't want to disappoint yourself and i was like oh my god this guy's me oh yeah but so you do get to know him like you guys actually like we spent quite a bit time together yeah yeah and who were who else was in your top three people to win it you had benjie i had benjie um well i mean i don't know that i was thinking about it really as rankings i I tried not to focus on, I know this sounds funny, especially to people that are going to be

competitive. I was trying not to think about it like a contest. It's not that I didn't recognize that it was. I just didn't want that to get in my head. I just thought, I'm going to try to imagine it like I'm just out here and this is just life from now on. And I'm not worrying about the position or the number of days. I'm just going to go, I'm going to go hand to mouth. I'm going to one day at a time. And I'm, you know, I knew I need a little bit of luck because of my build. I was really hoping to take a big game animal. And I thought that I had some of the highest odds in the group of doing that.

Benji and I, I think, were the two most experienced bow hunters on the show. And so, you know, I thought bears in season, you know, bears are going to be coming around my house. I was like, I know I'm going to have fish and stuff. But so, you know, to answer your question, that I was, I didn't. I didn't think about who was going to win so much as I was just saw people that stood out to me as... Yeah, who were you impressed by? Yeah, I was very impressed by Juan Pablo just from his background. And I mean, he'd already done 100 days or something.

I can't remember what, solo for no reason. Ice fishing camp or something, some crazy shit. Yeah, Benji really, really impressed me. Carrie Lee seemed really impressive to me from like, I don't know where she went beyond, you know, episode five or six, or maybe I missed that she tapped out and... She goes far. her attitude was like you know when people start singing and like dancing for the camera you're like okay they're getting loopy like i feel like you're starting to like get a little bit like but she was doing

it like the whole time like she was just in her zone she was super happy to be out there so she impressed me too just from a mentality standpoint but everybody was just so like you don't get there by not being impressive no and i vastly underestimated carrie lee you know it wasn't that i did It was clear that she had skills beyond skills. I just, I think I was looking at the wrong things. You know, I was weighing, I wasn't putting enough weight in that positive attitude and that knowledge bank and just that experience, that dirt time. It's almost 60. Yeah, dude, and she's tough.

Which is a whole other level, like the physical toll of that thing is crazy. She's from Sandpoint. Jake the snake. Yeah, Sam Point. Yeah, Sam Point. Jake. Yeah, Sam Point. Yeah, yeah.

shout out to Jake, mushroom farm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I confused her just being really happy

and like, and relaxed as her not taking it seriously. And now, you know, getting to know her before the show and then watching her experience on the show, I'm like,

oh no, that's just her. That's who she is. And she's been doing this for a long time, you know? Yeah. So,

all right, everybody on this show seemed to have hardship, right? You know, like, I don't want to deem anything

that you went through a hardship, but you alluded to you had some stuff, you know, some, you know, stuff growing up that you had to deal with. Do you think that's what drives people to the woods or is it just more a look into that, like you get to know anybody enough, they all have hardship? Because I feel like the woods were therapeutic to certain people throughout their journey. Yeah, the woods have always been like my church, you know, where I go to feel closer to bigger things. But also, you know, something that I don't know if you can relate to, you know, having a big

shadow to stand in. My old man was like Crocodile Dundee, man. He was a badass. And, you know, he wasn't around that much. We spent a lot of time together in the field, but my parents were divorced, and he was always traveling for work. So I didn't get to spend a lot of time around him. And then when I did get to spend time around him, it was in these like survival arenas and like, I just want to make him proud. So I was like, I probably tried way harder, you know, with woodsy outdoorsy stuff. Like, and my old man was kind of a sincere dude. He was very, you know he had a lot of depth but he was just he wasn't much to crack a joke or anything and you know he was very very much perfectionist and you know i felt like he was always looking at me and and that

was a big part of it you know just trying to trying to impress him you know like in that arena i think you'd be impressed i i think so too you know i really do yeah but that was cool it was a cool share because you're like that's vulnerable shit but you were like hey i grew up with xyz challenges and I thought a lot of the people on the show sharing that stuff really like, you know, kind of maybe instructed how they might have gotten into this. You know, it's, I was surprised. Stories are incredible. I was surprised at how many, like, you know, like myself, like Mama's boys there were

on the show. Like everybody always, but like, I mean, I think it makes you tough in a way, like when you're younger, you know, like if your dad isn't around, you got to be the old man of the house or whatever, you know. But, yeah, it was a kind of a running chairman of talking to a couple of the guys. And I'm like, oh, it was very similar sort of upbringings, very similar family situations and things going on. But yeah, everybody on the show, man, all just absolute unicorns, you know.

Yeah. And I can relate to the shadow thing for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough deal. Yeah. Even you with all your accomplishments, you're probably measuring them instead of just being like, I'm on fucking alone. I'm 44 days in the wood.

Like, like, there are less than 100 people in the world that could pull this off. I don't know what the number would be, but like, that's incredible. So the animals, man, okay? Like, do you know going in? Because it felt like everybody started to get a beaver the same time. Was that a time of year thing? Or was that just like, hey, we've gotten our shelter. Now we can go out and look for bigger game.

You know, I can't speak for everybody else's experience, but it does take a little while to sort of get your bearings on your zone. Yeah. So, you know, they drop you off. They give you a rough idea of where your area extends. to and from they don't describe landmarks you don't get a map or anything yeah but they tell you basically for me you know they choppered me in and then drop me off on and i went down river on a boat and then they stop you know they pull over at the bank and they're like look you know that gravel wash we

pass back there is as far upstream as you can go and you got about a half mile downstream and then it goes inland for a ways that's literally you have you have wow they tell you can't go because I was wondering, can you guys run into each other in any capacity? No, no, you're not going to run into another contestant. You're not going to see another contestant. You have your zone. I feel like they're very fair and generous with the zones that, you know. And, you know, we all have to be close because they have to be able to get to you

if something's wrong. Something comes up medically. So, you know. It looks like 45 minutes on this season to get a boat to wherever somebody was. Like somebody tapped at 645 a boats there like 7.4. 45 or something? Is it like kind of an hour away when you tapped as a speed in ahead for a second? You know, I'm sure that's case by case with them. I know, I know a lot of times that, you know, they're looking out for the livelihood of the crew as well. You know, any rescue situation is,

is a risk to the people doing it as well. So I think that they, for the most part, they assess, I know that they would do everything in their power to be there absolutely immediately, if need be. In my situation, I didn't need to be medically extracted immediately. I just knew that I couldn't continue the race. Right. Right. You know, so, um, so, you know, they, they had a couple things to do. They step by and got me, you know, that, and that's, and that's how that worked. Did you, did you like your zone? I didn't have anything to compare it to, man. I mean, honestly, right. That's the weird thing. I do remember, I do remember, um, saying when I got off at, at the sort of the base camp and looking, you know, that there was a, there's basically a dark side of the river and a sunny side of the river based on the exposure. You're so far north. And I do remember, I'm hoping that I would not be on the dark side of the river and I was. Yeah. But, uh, but it's like a triple blind thing that they do to select the zones. And, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of skepticism online about this stuff. Like, it is the fairest affair. Yeah. They do such a great job of like, you know, making it, um, uh, uh,

at the end of the day, there's different luck. But yeah, I like my, I mean, the woods were amazing, man. I mean, it's not at all like what you would think. So it's boreal rainforest, even though it's so far north. And you're somewhat coastal. I mean, we weren't very far from the coast at all. So you're getting, that worked in our favor because it was a little bit warmer than some of the other seasons of alone.

You get those ocean currents coming up bringing, brings the rain, but you're not getting the dry, freezing cold temperatures. But you could tell the area was just mostly evergreen forest, and you could tell it just got catastrophically hammered by ice every year and snow because those trees load up. And so, I mean, it would have been, if you walked from one end of the studio to the other, you'd have climbed over three or four dead trees the entire way.

Right. You know, like everywhere you're going. So it gets really, I mean, you're doing these crazy leg lifts and climbs and everything just to go from point A to point B. You said your legs were getting jacked. Yeah, man. I mean, if you go, you go cut down a 20-foot-tall, you know, skinny tree like this for firewood, then try dragging that thing through all that brush back to your shelter, you know. That's not easy.

I mean, it just wears you out in a different way. So I wasn't prepared for how dense it was. Yeah. That was also kind of cool. I think it gave you a little bit of an advantage hunting, small game at least, because small game tends to kind of just hunker down. A lot of times they wouldn't see you until you were kind of right on top of them. But scary for the big game, right?

I mean, like, I don't know how much they played up the polar bear thing. Is that played up? Or they really kind of... I can't speak to that. Yeah, because you didn't see one, right? Yeah, yeah, I can't speak to that. I know that, you know, it's definitely true that there are polar bears in that area at times of year. You know, I didn't feel looking at the environment.

I didn't feel like there was a chance that I was going to see one. Right. But, I mean, historically, they've been known to be in that area. So what's your what's your stance on black bear in Virginia and in Labrador because we have this thing where I kind of have this bit where I'm like I'm not afraid of black bear like whatever but I know they can fuck me up but they say up in Labrador they act like grizzlies they show a few more tendencies to be like more food aggressive and to be a little bit more predatory you know down here you know they're more apt to be in your your berry patch or your garbage can then you know going after your livestock or you or anything. else they want my dr. ho's pizza yeah absolutely you know I'm fortunate to have a lot of experience dealing with large predators and I feel like every one of those encounters has to be taken seriously but I mean I honestly was more afraid of running into a moose in the really thick brush because we I knew I was going to be up there in the in the season when they

were going to rut and you know down by the river it gets really thick and I know that there can be really aggressive and really dangerous. And, you know, I kind of thought, like, with a predator, you can negotiate. All you have to do is make him think he can't take you. You know what I mean? But a prey animal that gets aggressive is fighting for its life. You know, it's not, you can, all you have to do is convince a bear or something else that there's something out there easier that it can eat.

It's not going to be you. Right. But you startle an animal that thinks you're trying to kill it and it's aggressive, big difference. One of the most deadly animals in Tanzania is, what is it? the buffalo. Yeah, the buffalo and as well. Yeah, but like the corners, you come out of the bush and you don't even see it there.

Yeah. All of a sudden, you're flattened. Yeah, you, I mean, something that's coming after you is like thinking about food. You can scare it. Something you've already freaked out, you know, is, that button's already pushed. Yeah.

So I was really worried about moose. I was banking on Black Bear. I mean, I was doing all the things they tell you not to do. I was storing food in my shelter. I was cooking food in my camp. You want that thing in. Yeah, heck yeah, man. I thought it was my best odds to stick in an arrow in one.

And not too early? Because dudes were talking about if you hit one too early, you got to worry about the meat because it's warmer, harder to harvest that. I was worried about that. And I think I spoke about it too. I can't remember if they aired it. Like, yeah, I was worried because we didn't have the temperature to keep it. But there's a small window because the second you start getting those temps where you can keep them,

that's when they're going to go hibernate. Yeah. and you're not going to see them anymore. So I thought, you know, if one comes around and it's too early, I can scare it off. It'll probably come back if it wants my food, you know. And I saw some sign, but I just never saw, never saw or heard a bear or, you know, anything like that. The Blackbird density up there is super high, so it really surprised me.

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So I would say that it would be, I'd say it'd be, you know, pretty sparsely fished, you know. That's what I was wondering, because when you drop a fly in there, are you thinking these fish have never seen a fly? Man, you know, those fish, I trout fish here and, you know, I'm really happy if I come home with one or two, the 12-inch trout. those i caught a brook trout up there is 30 inches long man like you know they weigh them in pounds up there they don't measure them in inches yeah you know and and those things were not fly shy i mean i don't know if it's just the time of year where i was but you know fishing with a stick and a string and i'm trying to make it work you know wishing i had a reel and up here it's like if you make a couple wrong casts the whole pool shuts down for a little while you know there i'm like

smacking them on the head with the thing over and over again until they just get mad enough to bite it you know like that was incredible it was a totally different experience that's wild that's wild yeah i mean i was wondering because yeah like you had a really really brilliant trick with your hair so tom died his hair green in spots they they so i'm watching alone i might have looked down all of a sudden i see tom on screen and he's showing us his green hair i'm like what fuck's tom got going on his hair and then he's like this is why and uh almost you're 11th item. Yeah. Yeah. So dyes his hair green a little bit, cutting his hair to make a fly out of that thing. And then there was some pink in the back that faded. I had some, yeah, I had some yellow and some pink

that just totally faded out. I'm not great at dying hair. I know it's a shocker. You know, did everything. I was a curveball. I didn't know he had a streak of green in his hair. He didn't seem like a dude from Ehrlichville that lives on a farm. But yeah, no, it worked out, right? No, yeah. Actually, I shouldn't And my, my girlfriend died the hair for me and she did a great job. I think it just, you know, I live in a ball cap and I sweat it out those lighter colors and just going up there, you know. The green did stick around, though. So the colors I'd selected were the colors of the rainbow trout and the brook trout fry that I

thought would be in there. I was like, oh, I'm going to make this like a little streamer, this little minnow lore. It's going to look like this thing. I had some squirrel hair in there and stuff too. Did that just come to you? Did somebody suggest that? Or was that like, what's the process trying to game your? items. Man, you know, that was really hard because we not being quite sure where we're going

exactly. Yeah. And me being a little bit more of a southern boy, I mean, even all my traveling has mostly been in the southern hemisphere. I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be like in the environment, what I was going to need. I got a ton of help. There's a guy called Maddie Clark from Skod Outdoors. He's from Newfoundland. And he lives up. there his content's awesome and and he and I become friends he gave me a lot of advice about about the woods up there and it is so different you know like I wasn't going to bring an axe and he was like dude nobody goes anywhere in Canada without an axe like in my part of the world and I just hadn't thought about the importance of it you know when stuff freezes and you really

need to like break through ice for water or you need to chop stuff down it's just you know the saw became so energy intensive you know like you you're cracking yourself up because you're you're like You're trying to sauce through something the size of your forearm. Right. And you're like, I'm going to take a break. You know, you just never having felt that much drain, that much. And that's one post or like one. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then, you know, a 15 foot tall tree of that spruce, you cut it up. It turns into an armload of firewood. You know, even in that little stove, which was more efficient than a fire pit that I built, you're looking at like, you know, a couple hours of fire, if that. And it's got to go get another one, you know. You try to stockpilot, and I did have some, but, you know, just time management was the

biggest challenge. It took forever to do everything. Right. Because, you know, you might decide, oh, I'm going to go get firewood, and then you see a grouse. And you follow it up a hill, and maybe you get it, maybe you don't. But either way, you take like an hour detour, you know, and then come back. It's an hour back. Yeah, it's an hour back. Or, you know, yeah, time management was definitely a struggle. Was there an 11th item that almost made the list, or you were, afterwards you were like, man, I wish I had that last item? You know, some folks brought a food ration.

I highly considered that. I elected not to. If I could do it again, I could tell you I wouldn't have brought paracord. The spruce roots up there were amazing. I mean, you could take the roots to those spruce trees and time and knots. Like most roots or vines would break. Those things were like zip ties, man. They were like cables.

They were amazing. I barely used my paracord. Okay. So paracord might have been out. So I might have dropped the paracord and picked up either a tarp, an extra tarp, or a food ration. Was there another contestant that had an item that you were like, wow, I didn't even think to bring that? I saw some good ingenuity that. I mean, Juan Pablo was great with some of that stuff.

Like both Juan Pablo and Adam. And Adam, you know, he's become a close friend. He was just here turkey hunting with me. And, you know, he comes through here, shearing alpaca. So he was visiting. but he was incredibly resourceful. I mean, that tarp, he didn't bring cordage. He made it out of the tarp,

strips out of the tarp, and then was able to make windows and things like that. Juan Pablo's waiters that he made himself that were clear and it also had that fire resistant material on it. I mean, I thought that that was really ingenious. As far as items, though,

that folks had that I didn't have, I think, you know, for the most part, I would have stuck with my gear list, you know. You had a mushroom lamp. Yeah. That was the coolest thing the whole show pretty much. That was really cool.

Even though you're living clean out there, you still get stoner ideas if you come from that kind of. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. So that's a good one. What did you miss the most besides people? Man, you know, besides people, there wasn't a lot that I missed, man.

I mean, there really wasn't. Like, I didn't miss. I didn't. And when I say I miss people, what I think I really miss is, even though I love, you know, I don't have any problem being in the woods by myself, like, sharing the experience makes it so much richer. Like, you know, just having somebody to tap on the shoulder and be like, holy crap,

did you just see that? Like one of the days I was down on my beach fishing, the trout were spawning, and all of a sudden there's like this huge commotion in the water. I look over, the water's all frothy and red. It's like a freaking shark attack. And it was these big harbor seals just blowing up these trout right in the shallow water. Like they'd come up river up river from the ocean. and we're just slamming these trout in super shallow water

and making this commotion. And like I put the fishing rod down and just sat down and watched it. And it was just carnage along this bank for maybe seven minutes and then they were gone. And, you know, I didn't get it on camera and nobody else saw it. So, you know, I'm the only one that I, somebody else that you can have a beer with there and talk about it or tell the story like that's really hard. So I missed that.

But I'm sure if I think. They look delicious too. I know you can know the harbor seals. Oh, yeah. If you're 40 days in, yeah, oh, man. You can fuck up a harbor seal if it wasn't for the regulations. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. A ton of fat on those critters, yeah.

But, you know, I miss that, and I miss my dog, you know. I missed my farm, my neck of the woods. Yeah, but, I mean, overall, you know, I could go without the rest. How about mental health the way this plays into it? Like, you said you wanted to be stress-free coming in, you know, like, I'm sure, you know, people talk about drop shock like i know some people struggle being alone even if you have all the survival skills in the world how did that weigh in and like were you able to kind of take inventory of that as it went on i think i'm i think i'm fortunate just to be to really love doing stuff like that

yeah because uh that just a lot of the people that have gone on the show and done and some of them even done really well. I think they have the skills and they're really prepared. But I don't know that they necessarily enjoy it maybe as much as some of the other contestants and myself. Like, you know, Carrie Lee is a great example of that. You can tell she's just having the time of her life out there. It wouldn't rather be anywhere. Yeah. You know, and you go back into some of the shows and you see some people, some people really battling it out. They got a ton of grit, but I don't know if they're having such a great time, you know. And that might just be, you know, what happens to them along the way. But for me, I was in a great place, like mentally. I feel like I'm the type of person

that needs a lot of time to sort of process thoughts and think things through. And that's a hard thing to get in today's day and age. I mean, even if just factoring in the amount of times that your phone interrupts your thought process, you know, every time it dings, you just answer, you come right to it, you know, and I do that all the time and I'm not even a big phone guy. Yeah. Like not having that, when you don't have something that'll interject and interrupt your thought process, you might, you might think about something for two days. Well, change it.

I feel like it's got to change your brain chemistry a little bit, being alone for 43, 44 days or 100 days, you know, because I can tell you, you put the phone down for a day, like a day and just be present. It's like restorative in a way. Yeah. So you're crushing yourself out there, but there's probably also restorative. kind of angle to like being alone for 43, 40 days. Do you feel like you've changed?

100%. Yeah. Yeah, like fundamentally. Big time. And some of it hasn't all been great. Some of it's been hard. I feel like,

you know, and it's hard to explain. It's not like I was out there so long that I forgot how to do anything so much as I think it changed my priorities. Like I've lost a few social skills. I've lost my threshold for bullshit. Yeah. And like when I, especially when I first came back, like, I'd be seen people and talking and, like, they'd start talking about shit.

And I'm like, I'm fighting the urge to be like, I don't care about what you're talking about. Like, I'm going to walk away from you. And then you feel terrible because you feel like a terrible person or like whatever. But you just, it reprioritized things and especially time. And then I'm like, man, you know, I mean, how much time do I really have? Like, I could just stop this conversation. Like, I could just walk away. You get pressured to not do that stuff.

If you get pressured to interact on ways that you're not necessarily agreeing to in normal world. You do it at work. You do it all the time socially. And it's like, no, I don't have to do this. Well, that's the thing. It's like you get exposed to something. You're like, this is actually how maybe not in Labrador with 10 items, but like this is how we're biologically hardwired to be. Yeah, man.

Not like we are now. Yeah, I think that's super important. I think, and I think it's people misdiagnosed that as problems all the time. I mean, people take things like, like, ADHD. Like, ADHD back in the day is a survival skill, dude. Like, if you, like, that, like, you know, oh, look, the mushroom, you know, like that's out of there. Like, that dude's not getting eaten.

You know what I mean? Like, who's not focused in on one thing. Like, you know, like, that dude is not going to get ambushed by by a saber-tooth tiger, you know? Yeah. And so, you know, and I feel the same way about, about depression, you know. Like, I feel like depression is like, your body and mind screaming at you that you need to be doing more shit. And like having a more challenging life, not necessarily fulfilling.

Like, if you just don't encounter challenges, like your brain is hardwired to overcome challenges. Like atrophy. Yeah. It's like the way your body atrophies in the woods where you're not eating enough and you're at a deficit. Same thing if you're just sitting around collecting dust mentally. Yeah, man. That's a great way to put it in atrophy. Yeah, that mental atrophy.

But like, I do think, you know, like if people had the skills to do it, it could be good for them to go do something like this. You know, and I know that like through the frame of like social skills and all this stuff, like, you're like, man, it kind of made me worse because I don't listen to bullshit. I'm like, you just said a, you just said it. Like you don't listen to bullshit. You don't have time to dwell on unimportant stuff. Yeah, it just, it's tough because when you, when you stop,

playing the game you start to feel like you're a little bit selfish and i mean you'd be surprised how fast it fades too like i'm already better at it again you know what i mean i'm already i'm already sliding back in and reconditioning i just felt like immediately coming out like you know it gave you this very liberating feeling where like i was thinking of myself i mean you know because i'm disorganized and everything my backpack from alone with a lot of my gear and it's still sitting by the door in my cabin like i could pick that thing up and just leave you know like one of the most impressive survival in the world is he gets home from alone and he doesn't unpack. This is the same thing that happened to me coming home from the beach.

You know, my bag's still in the hall. So it's like, this is good. This is relatable shit. People are going to be excited to hear this. You don't want to see my truck, dude. I went to the beach three weeks ago. You're a guy with the truck. Yeah.

So we were talking about animals and a little bit of the mental health thing. Like, I thought Jacques was going through some shit, dude, because I know you guys are all prepared to kill. And I know it's also hard because you guys are also like very, very, you guys are also like, very like everybody on the show was like I'm sorry to kill you like thank you like I know that's part of the ethos of being somebody with serious skills right but Jacques kind of struggled when he killed that squirrel and I was like damn he's going to talk himself into tapping yeah and it happened and like I wonder how you felt when you went back and saw that did you empathize with that yeah you know

I mean first of all like Jacques you know has has caught a lot of shit but he was super qualified to be there at for a man as young as he one of the youngest contestants ever on the show i believe and uh 23 or honestly one of the like super qualified the stuff that dude is done and does with his life is amazing um and you just couldn't ask for a nicer dude too but uh you know i don't know what his experience was there um and and where he got mentally but you know at the end of the day i feel like and i haven't had a chance to catch up with him since i feel like he only Honestly, he got what he came for. What he came for.

And, you know, Jacques is somebody who has already had such an incredible life and is very young and is, I'm sure, moving on to do other things. Like, you know, a lot of people look at alone, like, how'd you mess that opportunity up? You know, it's the be all end all ever. For a lot of these people, it's just a chapter of a really rich and incredible life. Yeah. And if he got, if he came out there and got what he wanted and wanted to go, like, whatever, man. Well, you all seem like the types that you realize. because of your experience and what you value,

that you have your values in the right place. And money plays into that factor, right? Like you need to survive. It's an element of survival, right? But if you come away from it, you're like, I don't get the 500th out. That would have been really fucking nice, but I got what I wanted,

which was something impactful, something where I learned something about myself. Yeah. You know, like that was something that if I felt like you heard every time somebody tapped out, for the most part was like, hey, I got what I came for. I'm proud of myself.

You know, for me, my tap out was so interesting because the injuries themselves were relatively minor. You know, it ended up, what it ended up being was like a pinched nerve in my back and a minor muscle tear in my knee. Right. You know, post coming out, that's what it was diagnosed at. You know, unfortunately, when you're playing at that level,

that's all it takes to take you out. But I felt like it was like, I felt like I was playing blackjack, and it's like I could ask him, to hit me again, you know what I mean? But like, if I leave now, I get what I, what I have sitting right here. You know what I mean? And if I push a little bit more, I might leave with a deficit. Like, I might leave with a lifelong injury. I'd fall in three times in 48 hours. Like, yeah. I was imagining what happens if I fall and I can't call for help? And you drop your thing,

you know, or I hit my head, you know, on that rocky beach, man. I felt that the fall that was off camera, was on that rocky beach, and like, you know, it'd just take one of those stones to just dome you, you know, and, you know, you have a morning and evening check-in, sure, but, like, if I was fishing at noon, I'd be bleeding out of my head for six hours before they even came looking. Something could find you. Yeah, and, yeah, man. So I thought about, like, man, I got the rest of deer season.

I'll catch the tail end of rifle season. I'm going to be like, I live an incredible life. I'm lucky to live a really beautiful life. And, you know, there's also the pragmatist in you, the realist that's going, and there's a bunch of badasses out here, and it's day 42, the day I decided, you know, 43 I'm coming in. I come out on 43. Sitting there, I'm like, it's day 43 now.

I bet I could go another 10 days. Historically, that's not going to win me to show. And there's no prize, there's no bigger prize for like, third over fourth or fourth over fifth so to me i was like you know let me take home a really good experience let me let me be able to sit here and tell you boys honestly that i didn't have a bad day until the last day yeah instead of laying in my shelter with these injuries for another five days still not winning yeah and coming home so messed up that i couldn't go hunting i came home i was with i was in a tree stand within 12 hours of being in virginia and i dropped to eight point buck

that morning at sunup and i called my buddy and i was like i had been been back in Virginia for 12 hours. I'm cutting a deer up right now. Boy, you felt good. Like, yeah, absolutely. Everything was good. I felt prime, dude. I was coming in from Labrador. I was like dialed, dude. Yeah, it makes everything seem easy for a while. Yeah, for a while. You know, like, we'll do, and this sounds like child's play to you, but we'll do Kelly and we'll be out for eight days or seven days or whatever. And, you know, like when I get home, I'm very appreciative of everything. You know, I'm very appreciative of a shower. I'm very appreciative of, of shelter. I'm very of like my family you know air conditioning heat like when you when you do something like

you're doing that's a whole other level of appreciation for just the like the the the stuff we're so soft yeah man not you but like we at large we all are though man honestly like we're like from what we started out as as like hunter gatherers like we are just oh I kept thinking that the whole time I was out there I was like man there's like there's some dude with a bone through his knows somewhere they would come out here and crush everybody you know like you just destroy it dude yeah i mean and and that's what we all come from that is every single person's history you know far enough back you know and uh but you know i felt like i got really robbed of i thought that that first shower was going to be amazing and i'd lost so much weight dude it was one of the most terrible experiences

because you go to wash yourself and you're getting grossed out about like you're touching all your bones and like the water felt like really weird that the the amount of heat that you're feeling I mean you haven't felt that amount of heat the entire time you've been out there now it wasn't brutally cold for us while we were out there but you know you also haven't had any like you know proper warmth you sit by those little fires and stuff you don't you're not building a fire it's not energy fishing to build a fire that will warm you right that's that's not the purpose you know building fires for cooking and for boiling water is pretty much it you know How was your calculus on actually building a shelter?

Because you know, you got to build your fireplace in there, which you got to be careful it does because I've seen in other seasons. People had to basically go home because their shelter caught on fire. You picked a hillside. Like what goes into that whole thing and how many days you wait and that whole thing? It was a huge concern of mine burning my shelter down. I felt like it was a very real. It seemed like a very me thing to do.

So a lot of design went into me not doing that. And, you know, I didn't, I hadn't decided on a shelter. I thought I was going to keep my options open, you know, and look for something that was a good advantage. I do think if I could do it again, I'd have put a lot less work into it. Yeah. I'd have built it just about the same way, I mean, the same concept. But I think I would have just thrown stuff on and made like a giant, I would have put as much effort as I did into my chimney. And then the rest of it would have been like a beaver dam that I crawled into.

I didn't need the space and the comfort. And I, you know, the artist in me just made it like, you know, cool. Yeah. It's a very, you grow up building forts as a kid. Like, it's the same thing. Yeah. It was like a second childhood. The next, the coolest thing was waking up and being like, well, I have three things I could do today.

I could go hunting. I could go fishing. I could build a fort. Like, it's going to be one of those. Like, you put that in the context of like back home, that was. would sound like the best day ever absolutely and it was and that's why it's such a good time because like every day i was like man and i remember some of the like not you know not bad days but some of the days being like i really need to build the fort but it seems really grousey out or it seems really

fishy out right now and it was hard to not you know just pick up your bow or go down to the river and just get lost for you know a couple hours yeah um yeah stunningly beautiful place too so yeah i mean you could uh you could spend an hour just looking at the moss and lichen and stuff that's going on It felt very, like, you know, far out and almost trippy to just look. I felt like you're walking on another planet, you know. I wish you could. For me, it was so foreign. I was going to ask if you'd ever go back to your hut there to see it.

Yeah, I would love to. I'm pretty sure they tear them all down on this season. I think there's only one season where they haven't torn them down, and that was at request of the people that lived there. They wanted to keep them up and, you know, check them out. But the shrooms. There were, we were cautioned about the, there were psychedelic mushrooms that grew in that area. I think we were there a little after their normal fruiting time.

But from a very real perspective of like, you know, mushrooms were a source of food for some of us. I found very few, but I did have some that were edible. Some people had quite a few. You know, we were cautioned about these mushrooms. And I remember, you know, the producers get such a great sense of humor. Just saying, you know, don't eat the psychedelic mushrooms. If you do eat the psychedelic mushrooms, please roll camera on that. Yeah, we definitely want to see that.

I want to see somebody tripping on a calorie deficit. Half joking, but yeah, no, I mean, the crazy thing is out there, there were a lot of moments where it felt like you were having an experience like that, you know, completely organically. Yeah. I don't dream a lot here at home out there. Crazy dreams all the time. Like very vivid, lucid dreams. One of the, I had, the only bad dream I had out there was a nightmare. It was super bizarre.

You know, things can be funny in your dream state. In my dream, I was in my shelter in Labber. door on the show. So it was very realistic. I go down to the beach to fish and this guy comes up in a canoe and I'm like, dude, you gotta get the fuck out of here. You're in my shot, you know, and he's like, shaking his head and he's like, no, man, you're the guy from the news. And I was like, what are you talking about?

And he's like, you're missing. He's like, you need to come with me and get in the boat. And I was like, no, I'm on a TV show him and I went half a million dollars, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, I was like, productions camped right down the river. He's like, we'll hop in the canoe and show me. And we get in the canoe, we go down there and it's just an abandoned camp. and I look at my, I got this broken camcorder in my hand and this good dude's like, you've been out here for 40 days and your family is looking for you. Like in my dream I had lost.

I woke up in a cold sweat. Like, and then I had this moment after I woke up where I was like, fuck, it could be real. And how the hell would I know? How would you know? Yeah. I was like, you know. That's crazy. I don't dream either.

Yeah. You know, so like just imagining having a dream sounds trippy at this stage of my life. Yeah. But just being out there and not knowing which which way's up and which way's down. Yeah, I had that thought. I also had the thought of, you know, in the global environment we live in, the thought of like, man, something could happen globally while I'm out here. That was what I was going to ask. What's the biggest news you missed? This is terrible, man. But the thing that shocked me the most, I come back and I'm sitting down with my buddy and I'm having a beer and I'm like, so what's been going on while I've gone? And the first thing out of his mouth, he's like, well, Alec Baldwin shot somebody. Yeah.

And I was just like, you were fucking with me. You were making this shit up. And he's like, no, seriously. like that happened. Well, think about all the stuff you miss over that time period. Like all the things that are even just like, I don't know, sports stuff or whatever, I would just come out and be like, I go camping for two days. I'm like, what happened? And I'm not super plugged in, you know, as a person just because it stresses me out. I mean, I like to be informed.

But, you know, if they did a better job of reporting at least 50-50 positive content, I would tune in more. But I get to the point where I just, I turn it on and I turn it right off because it just, I don't care. It's hard in this line of work. It's one of the toughest strains on you is feeling like you have to keep up with the title wave of information that everybody's addicted to. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why people gravitate so much to following sports,

right? Because like there's more positive news. Every now and then your team's going to lose and it's going to suck or whatever. But like for the most part, you're getting like... I'm with you. That's why we like to have fun here and shit. So when you got out, one of the things I'm not really things I'm going to be a lot of things I'm I asked Jordan, when we interviewed him, was what the refeeding process was like.

Or like the, like, you can't just run and get a hundred cinnibons. Or you can't like fucking eat a bunch of donuts and a steak. And like, is there a process? Yeah, you're definitely not allowed to just go back into eating. There's the possibility depending on what your condition is that you can really hurt yourself. You can have massive organ failure from things like electrolytes and salt. You know, they were really concerned about managing our salt intake because it can do things to your heart, make your heart retain fluid and stuff

if you're deficient in those things. And I really struggled with that because I felt like I had a very different experience than a lot of people on a loan. I had lost weight to the point that I needed to probably be pulled soon if I hadn't been injured. But I was never starving. I never missed a meal. Like I took 47, 47 animals in 43 days. And, you know, I was eating.

I felt full. I don't ever remember feeling empty. I wasn't getting the nutritional needs met, but I was consuming a lot of food. So I didn't feel like I was at risk of having that issue of, like, my stomach not having the asses to handle anything or just like, you know, I knew I had to be careful with certain things. I'm like, okay, I get it.

I can't have a burger and a beer, but like I could have like a bowl of a big bowl of rice or something or like, you know, something easy on you. 44 pounds, but you're not hungry or you? Oh, dude, not hungry at all. Never. I mean, I was eating a lot. So is there a zone in hunger? Like, and this might be a dumb question, but I've never gone 10 days without food or something,

like where you get over the hump and then it's like, okay, I don't need food anymore. And then you get really hungry when you're starving. I guess I should clarify when you you can feel hungry like you're deficient like you need energy the same way that it feels to be dehydrated like you know you need water yeah or you know you need fat like I had cravings and hungers for things I wasn't getting but as far as that empty feeling in your stomach yeah you know what's really weird is it food when you're that deficient hits you like a drug like it hits like an IV like you like I remember like especially the fish and the rabbit that I got, you know.

That was clutch. Having that fat content and like, I'm not a big fan of organ meat, but you eat everything out there. And very quickly, you become a fan of it because you know it's got those things in it that the second you eat them, you just feel it like sweep over your body.

Like I needed that, like that. You feel the energy. And it's really bizarre because, you know, not to be too far out and hippie about it, it's literally a life transfer. You start thinking about that way. you're like, I shot this grouse, I ate it, it's dead, I feel more alive.

Like, it's weird to sort of cycle it that way, but that's, it's good because it makes you more connected to your food that way. Yeah. But yeah, there's just not a, for me, I didn't have the empty feeling. Now, I went through the refeating process. It was a very low amount of calories and they up it gradually and they're very careful about what they give you and what they do not. the part I'm not sure they want me to mention is after some point they're monitoring your condition

after you come out because they have a responsibility to make sure that you're good to go when you go back into society and so then they came and they were concerned about my condition because they weigh you and they take your vitals and I guess mine were all whacked out not where they thought I should have been so they wanted to get me looked at for some you know medevac me out to mokovic and get me looked at or something. something. But I kept hunting and fishing after they pulled after I left in the camp. I was camped down by the river. And I killed a snowshoe hair there and I caught about six trout and I killed a couple squirrels. And I was eating those in my, I was still like feral mode, you know,

because they were good. They bring me like a half piece of toast and a hard boiled egg. And then they'd leave me alone for a couple hours down by the river and had all my shit, you know. So I like, little shock. Went out, like, went out and like smoked a rabbit and like, you know, ate that. And so the doc's like, man, you know, you gained six pounds in the last couple days. And like, because I was getting what they were giving me and whatever I could get still. And they were like, they eventually were like, stop doing that. You're messing.

You're messing up the whole program. Like, we thought you were in trouble. Like you're, and so, yeah, I had to comply. And they take good care of you. The thing is when you come out, you just, you've been surviving on your own. So like somebody's coming in you and then they know what's good for you. And they're like, you need to do this. I'm like, I don't need to listen to you.

I don't know. Learning and stubborn and like old guy. Oh, the first meal I got was so small. I looked at it and I was almost like, man, put me back in the woods. Like, are you kidding? Well, the game, as you said, you said you killed like 40-some animals. Yeah. That's a lot for, you know, a season of alone.

Like, I feel like there was a lot of game on this season. Between me and Adam Riley, I think we may have killed more stuff than most of the seasons combined. We were fortunate in the environment. the arena had a lot of game. Small game that was. You know, like I killed a pile of squirrels. It killed a lot of grouse. And then the trout were plentiful until the river sort of shifted.

And then, you know, there was the odd rabbit and that whiskey jack that I killed. So best and worst tasting is the worst the whiskey jack? Man, that thing was gross. Even when you're starving, that thing was gross. Really? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I've never eaten like a Corvid, like in the Crow family before. I probably never will again.

Yeah. like it just was it wasn't much and what was there was just not good taste like what i can't like like like like almost like um it was really dry and it was really tough but the flavor was like off like it like it it was fresh but it tasted like you know turkey you take a bite out of turkey it's gone south or something you like goat yeah i do i love go experience i like goat yeah because we'll go out to like a messai drive for like a a water project sure and they're like we want to celebrate and we're like looking at this goat that's been sitting out in the sun and you know like some people are like a little skittish about it

i just wonder like if there's something you can compare it to because gamey is kind of gaming i guess but i don't know if you've ever had the experience of like um you know um you know um meat that's been tainted by by gut matter like if you kill a deer or something and maybe you don't realize like a little bit of that got all the meat and you know you then you you know later you go to take that meat out of the freezer or whatever you notice the discoloration or you taste a bite of it. The rest of it's good, but it's very acidic and like just just hard tasting that we had a whiskey jack actually, you know, got to the point where I was like, man, if one of those things lands right in front of me, I'm not, I'm just not going to do it. One was there the day you

taps. You were like, look at this. That thing was, that thing was hilarious. I started trying to catch that thing almost out of like as a game, you know. I was going to eat it if I got it. You know, even though I had said I wasn't, it got to the point where I totally would. And that thing that thing was it was smart man it was funny i'd already i shot his tail feathers off with my bow the arrow went right underneath it that's i knew it was the same one he was missing like three or four feathers out of its fan and his tail and uh yeah that thing totally kicked my ass it was it was kind of but i was rooting for it too you know um but yeah the best tasting thing i mean the best meal i was the rabbit because of the amount of and i and i killed two grouse that day so that was my

most plentiful day. I had two grouse and a rabbit. But I think the grouse tasted the best to me and the rabbit was the most fulfilling meal. Because I like, I'm big into food. I'm big into wild game. I like to do really extravagant things with my wild game. I'm not just like a, like a jerky it or, you know, burger it sort of guy. And that grouse, the first grouse I killed, I mean, I plated it. I garnished it. Like I cooked it with herbs and stuffed it with all the stuff that it eats. And I made a big show of it. They didn't end up showing it. But, you know, that's, I would raise those birds. Like, if I can get them, I'd raise them and butcher them.

They look good. They're delicious. They tasted, like, somewhere closer to, like, duck, like darker meat, you know, richer. And people always use the word gamey to be negative, but, I mean, I really like that sort of flavor. Yeah, man, I mean, it tastes like something that lived, you know? Yeah, you can kind of taste where it's been hanging out. That's right.

That's right. Which is, it's good. You know where it's like. help me, you know. What does a beaver taste like if I could ask that? Beaver's actually really good, you know, one of the things about two contestants getting, you know, supposedly getting sick off of the beaver. I mean, they don't really know.

Good chance with Benji was the beaver, but it could have been anything under his fingernails or something, you know. Beaver sustained people for a long time. It is not a dangerous animal to eat. There's not like, you know, that it's definitely, it's good. The tail too. Yeah, it's fatty, it's fatty, but it's good. Yeah.

similar to bear meat. All right. So Tom Garsting, where's, what's happening next? And if you had like an opportunity to tackle any, any different kind of challenge on a loan, like, you know, they're all like different climates and areas of the world, is there one that you like could wave a magic wand and say, hey, I'd like to tackle that terrain?

Yeah, man. I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is I'm actually going back to Newfoundland here in a month. It'll be about the same time that I was up there. I'm going up there with Adam Riley and to visit Maddie, Maddie Clark from Scote outdoors. And we're just going to go bum around in the woods a little bit and do some stuff on our own time, you know. And so I'm really excited about that. You know, it's not quite the same area we were in, but similar country.

And I want to go check that out. So, you know, I plan to go out and see Benji in the springtime, maybe do a hunt with him out there. I mean, everybody that was on the show, you know, I have plans to visit. And, you know, Temogen will be here within a couple of weeks. He's going to come down and visit. Yeah. That's tight. So, you know, just catching up with all those people and seeing what they do is going to be cool enough.

But other than that, yeah, I'm throwing myself into my work here. I do plan on continuing to create content in this sort of arena. And then if I, if I'm fortunate enough to go back, I mean, if they called me, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Yeah. For sure. no matter what the challenge was, just because it's so cool to play, to be able to play at that level with that type of safety net, too. Like, I was telling my mom, you know, she was like, mom's always supportive of everything I do,

and she does, she tries not to let me know. She worries too much, but she does. And I was like, Mom, this is probably safer than some of the shit I do back home. Yeah. Because I don't have a sap phone when I go in the woods and bow hunt and National Forest, you know, and I don't have a medic team that's going to come crashing in if I hit a button. Yeah. It's like sometimes people don't even know where I am.

Yeah, sometimes I'm doing stupid shit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was like, intentional I'm prepared. So I would totally go again. I'd love to go somewhere else. I mean, you know, they film a lot in Canada, and part of that is because Canada does such a good job of taking care of its public lands.

Oh, God, you know, it's, I mentioned before that it's a shame. They can't film more of that in America. Like, shame on us for not having the space to, I mean, I'm not trying to down anybody. I'm just saying that, you know, we, you know, to find a place, it should be easy to find a place to film a show like this, but you just can't do it with the population densities and the amount of land that we have and the restrictions.

But like the episode in Mongolia, I mean, yeah, Mongolia and the episode in Patagonia, like those ones, man, I was like, God, I'd love to go to that part of the world. So yeah, I mean, if they ask me back, I'll definitely go. And I will gain some, somehow I will gain some weight. I'll quit my job if I have to. I'll lock myself in my house. Yeah, man. Come over here.

We'll smoke up the studio. We've got lots of snacks. Definitely. All right. So make sure you come back. And if you're doing content, where can people find that content? Yeah. So currently I'm on Instagram at Appalachia Outdoors.

That's like a chuck of, Chuck an Appalachia. Yeah. And you can Google my name too as well. And you'll find I'm launching a YouTube channel. I had one up. I pulled everything down because after the show, I just thought it was, some of the stuff was 10 years old,

and I was like, man, I need to revamp this. So I'm in the process of getting that updated. The first episode will be filmed up in Newfoundland here in a couple of weeks. And then, yeah, I hope to appear, you know, on some of these other folks social media channels and what they're doing. I think collaborating, you know, with other loners. I plan to maybe go see Jordan and check out Callie Russell out there too. So, you know, that's where to find me.

Yeah. That's cool, man. Well, we appreciate the time. We love the show alone. And that's a big victory. Forty-four days up in Labrador, man. That's badass. So congratulations. Thanks, man. Yeah, 43, 44, whatever. Yeah, 43. I can't take it. I round up for the local guy, man. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Yeah, it was a dream come true for sure. Good deal, man. This is awesome. So thank you.