The man who lasted on Alone knows something most hunters don't
Most people think survival starts with shelter. Timber Cleghorn starts somewhere else.
Timber competed on Alone Season 11. He was dropped into unfamiliar wilderness with basic gear, a small pack, and a limited set of tools. What kept him alive longer than most wasn't shelter building or food gathering. It was three decisions he made in the first 72 hours — in the right order, before anything else.
Get those three decisions right and survival becomes manageable. Get them wrong and the hole gets deeper every day.
"That first 72 hours, your decisions there set the tone for everything," Timber explains. "For how easy or how successful everything is."
Instead of rushing into big projects or chasing food immediately, Timber focuses on three decisions. Get those right, and survival gets easier. Get them wrong, and the hole only gets deeper.
Decision 1: Secure your current position
The first thing Timber focuses on after entering a new wilderness is surprisingly simple. Protect what you already have.
Your gear and current condition are your starting point. Even if it is minimal, losing it — or allowing it to deteriorate — can drastically reduce your chances of success.
When Timber was dropped during Alone, he started with basic clothing, a small pack, and a limited set of survival tools. That may not sound like much, but he understood something critical. If those items became soaked, lost, or damaged, everything downstream gets harder.
"I don't want my capabilities to drop from that first low level," he explains.
Wet clothing leads to hypothermia. Lost gear eliminates critical tools. Compromised equipment forces a survivor to spend energy replacing what was lost rather than building forward. If you chase decision number two and leave your pack behind — and the rain comes — your ability to survive takes more than one step down. Several steps, all at once.
So before building a shelter or searching for food, Timber's first move is making sure his current position is secure. Keep the gear dry. Keep it away from animals. Store it where it cannot be lost or soaked.
"How do I make it so that if it starts a torrential downpour in fifteen minutes, my ability to survive will not degrade?"
This does not require hours of work. It simply means that whatever resources a survivor arrived with stay intact. Once that baseline is secure, the next decision becomes much clearer.
Decision 2: Determine where to spend your energy
Energy is one of the most valuable resources in a survival situation. When someone first arrives, they usually have their highest energy levels. That energy declines quickly if it is spent poorly.
The second critical decision is figuring out where to invest it wisely. Choose the wrong task in the early hours and the strongest reserves a survivor will have for days are gone.
"If you choose to start expending your energy on the wrong thing," Timber says, "that initial energy — the most power that you're gonna have — it's just wasted and lost. Tomorrow's a worse day than today."
Rather than wandering for miles, Timber studies a manageable area — roughly a one-mile circle around his drop location. He moves quickly and methodically, looking under every log, along every foot of riverbank, poking into every natural feature. He is not building anything yet. He is gathering information.
Where is water? Are there signs of animals? Is there food nearby? Is the current location even worth staying in, or is it worth spending the energy to relocate?
Timber draws a direct parallel here to his work in conflict zones. The thought process is exactly the same, just with different ingredients. In a survival situation, you flip logs to find fishing worms. In a conflict zone, you talk to people to find whoever knows what is happening. Both are the same thing: situational awareness, gathered as quickly as possible, before committing energy to anything else.
That early survey turns guesswork into informed decisions. And informed decisions stretch energy much further.
Decision 3: Prioritize food, calories, and clean water
Once gear is secured and the terrain is understood, the third decision becomes straightforward. Focus on the resources that keep the body running.
Survival ultimately comes down to sustaining the body over time. Calories. Hydration. Basic physical needs.
The earlier exploration already pointed the way. If a river is nearby, it may offer water and fishing. If small game signs are visible, trapping or hunting efforts can begin. If edible plants are present, gathering becomes part of the strategy. The difference is that Timber is not searching blindly — he already knows where to look.
"The third decision is to dial that in more to get food, calories, good clean water for those needs for your body."
Once calories and hydration are coming in consistently, the body stops falling behind. The mind stays sharper. Everything else becomes more manageable.
Short-term shelter: the one thing that matters
Timber's approach to shelter in those first hours cuts against what most people assume.
For a short-term survival shelter, he says there is really only one thing it needs to do: keep you and your gear dry. That means accounting for precipitation falling from above, water pooling on the ground, and condensation. Those are the three ways moisture gets into a setup, and the only job of an early shelter is to stop them.
"I don't think about insulation, warmth, or protection from a bear attack," Timber says. "I only think about dryness."
The reasoning is simple. Cold, wind, discomfort — you can push through all of those by gritting your teeth and grinding. Moisture is different. Moisture can kill you. Moisture degrades gear. And wet gear at the start of a survival situation is one of those problems that compounds fast.
His one additional note on a short-term shelter: if possible, build it in a way that the materials can be reused later. Don't waste effort on something you'll have to tear apart and rebuild when a better long-term plan comes together.
Why the first 72 hours matter so much
Mistakes made in the first 72 hours compound. A poorly chosen camp exposes a survivor to constant wind and rain. Wasted energy early leads to exhaustion and poor decision-making later. Failing to locate reliable food or water quickly creates a physical deficit that gets harder to close with each passing day.
But when the early decisions are made correctly, survival becomes far more manageable.
"If you choose that well in the first 72 hours, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna make it easily to the next step."
That next step is long-term strategy — a permanent shelter, reliable food systems, expanded exploration. None of it matters if the early foundation was shaky. These three decisions are what make it solid.
The hunt has already begun
Timber brings something into this conversation that applies just as much to hunters as it does to survivalists.
Most of us wait to hunt until we think the hunt has actually started. We switch off mentally during the long pack-in, the approach, the miles between the truck and camp. And Timber says some of his most costly mistakes have come from exactly that.
"Many times, before we imagine the hunt has begun, we've already ruined a possible hunt."
Animals are engaged in the game of survival at all times. Their senses are running constantly. They are aware of what you are doing long before you think you are close enough to matter.
Timber's answer is to begin hunting the moment he picks up his weapon. From the second he enters the zone, he moves quietly, stays present, and treats everything like the animal could be watching. On Alone, he whispered to the camera the entire time, even while catching fish. Not because he had to. Because he was hunting.
"When you enter the zone at all, you're already hunting."
It is the same principle as the 72-hour framework. Start right. Establish the right habits immediately. Because the cost of starting wrong — in survival or in hunting — usually does not show up until it is too late to fix.
Survival insights in this article are drawn from field experience and discussion shared by Timber Cleghorn, competitor on Alone Season 11.