The Real Reason We Weren't at the Shooting Range | Win the Wilderness: Alaska - Episode 2 Review

If you’re reading this blog post then you’ve more than likely watched Win the Wilderness: Alaska episode 2, and have a couple of questions! If you haven’t read our review on Episode 1 then click here to check it out.

Navigation

We’re incredibly confident with navigation, but that’s not to say we take it lightly. We’ve done a lot of hiking over the years, most notably our 440km 30-day trek through the Arctic in the last largest remaining wilderness in Europe so we feel that we’ve earned our stripes with reading the landscape. Map reading, compasses, living out of a backpack and surviving off the land are all challenges we’re comfortable with, oh and being ‘lifestyle bloggers’ you know we made a full-on documentary about the Kunglseden, watch it here!

Ok, coming back to the navigation task. Being split up into women vs men groups was a lot of fun, but we personally feel that it would have been a much more interesting challenge had it been each individual couple navigating the terrain themselves - after all isn’t that what the show is all about? Figuring out which couple is best suited?

When we were reunited after the task and discussed how it went down we were gobsmacked that we’d both done the exact same thing once we got off the boat; we’d spotted the trail and knew that the path of least resistance was the most logical. Trails don’t always head in the perfect direction but it’s a much more sensible option to follow a trodden path than crashing through the undergrowth and risk an injury, after all if you’re in the alaskan bush the last thing you want is a twisted ankle or worse, a broken bone.

Following the trail and checking our compasses every couple of minutes to make sure we were heading in the correct general direction worked really well, and the women’s group was pretty chill. Theo had the same ideas as me, yet had a much harder time being listened to in his group.

As I’ve previously stated, me and Theo are confident in our abilities in both homesteading and the great outdoors. It’s been 6 years this year since we last lived in a house, so off-grid life (even though a lot of people like to mention the internet as being on the grid, technically off-grid means not being hooked up to mains electricity, gas and water) is second nature to us.

Since 2014 we’ve lived for 18 months in a VWT4 driving around the whole of Europe, before moving into a narrowboat in the Midlands and eventually moving back into a van - this time our self-built LWB Sprinter. We’ve also been carving out our very own homestead in a remote part of Portugal since 2017 where we collect rainwater, built a pretty nifty composting toilet cabin, wood-fired bath and stripped over 30 eucalyptus poles to build a sturdy shelter for our caravan. From doing what we do here in Portugal we knew that doing it on an incredibly isolated homestead in Alaska was right up our street.

Shooting Range

Where the hell were we?! Me and Theo were both notably absent in the second half of the show and weren’t with the rest of the group at the shooting range. We’ve had a fair few comments on all our social media accounts, as well as texts and emails, asking where we were. Do we hate guns?

The truth is the production team had other ideas for us. Firstly we were doing a spot of fishing. Theo had never done fishing in his life before coming out to Alaska and quickly fell in love with it. After fishing, we went to visit a lovely couple called Johnny and Julie who had built their own homestead out here in Alaska. It was great to spend the afternoon with them, Theo helped Johnny build a Moose fence whilst me and Julie fed the chickens, created raised beds and various other tasks.

After spending the better part of an entire afternoon/evening with them it appears the footage was cut from the show, so I’m happy we managed to get a picture of us all outside their cabin before we left. Julie was in one of the interviews on the show but her feature with us didn’t make it. It was fantastic to speak to a couple who’d moved out to Alaska and carved a life for themselves out here!

We didn’t have a choice whether we went to the shooting range or not, and it was brilliant to meet Johnny and Julie and we’re happy we got to spend the afternoon with them outside rather than stuck indoors at the shooting range! We’re looking forward to watching the next episode pan out…