Episode 4 of History Channel’s Alone, Season 9, takes place over days 17 – 21. Nine contestants remain at the start of the episode.
This is a recap and review of episode 4. At the end, I’ll provide some guesses as to who will last until the end and who might successfully hunt a bear.
Spoilers to follow!
Benji
Picking up where the last episode ended, we begin by checking in on Benji. After a good night’s sleep, he wakes early to try and find the beaver that got away from him the night before. After a bit of searching, he does find it dead. I’m all for hunting, but eating a corpse from the night before seems a bit gross. I guess you do what you have to, though!
The beaver gives Benji an edge. They provide 960 calories per pound of meat, and given how much meat and fat is on it, he makes a smoker to preserve it longer. We also get a demonstration of field dressing.
After all this, Benji also uses the gut pile and stink bag (the bag he used to carry the guts) to lure some bears to his wildlife cameras, so we get to see some of the bears he hopes to hunt.
Tiemojin
Despite having a relatively spacious, camouflaged shelter, Tiemojin wasn’t doing as well at the start of the episode as some of the other contestants. He hadn’t eaten meat in two weeks, so he spent most of the segment setting up snares to catch squirrels. Luckily, he heard a grouse at one point and managed to shoot it – only to have it get stuck in the tree! Nevertheless, he got it down, so hopefully, this is a turning point for him. Like Benji, he does have a good outlook on the situation, which should help.
Terry
Poor Terry, a lot of his segment deals with certain bodily issues that can occur when you aren’t getting enough food. Namely, constipation (which can get someone kicked out of the competition). To try and remedy this, he also goes beaver hunting, and while he finds the critters, he doesn’t take a shot. But, as he says, “the mark of a true hunter is restraint,” so he heads back to his camp.
He seemed to take a turn for the worse, having cramps and feeling faint – I thought he would call it upon waking – but the morning cleared everything up. With renewed vigor, he hunts the beavers again, deciding this time to shoot one in the water. He succeeds but has to wade out into the freezing water to get his kill.
My theory is that next episode, he’s going to have hypothermia.
Tom
We only see Tom for a few minutes, consisting of hunting a whiskeyjack bird and a brook trout. It seems like Tom is doing fine!
Igor, The Grouse Cropper
In the last episode, Igor was the one who impressed me by catching a grouse with his saw. However, he was also the one who taking forever to build his cabin. This continues in this segment, as he’s using massive logs to build his shelter, but he’s surviving off seaweed (so not a lot of calories are consumed to offset this energy use).
He doesn’t make a lot of progress fishing (as he doesn’t know how to fly fish), and despite how many trees he chops down, the shelter looks nearly the same. It’s also clear he’s not feeling well because he looks tired and is constantly doing stretches for back pain.
It’s no surprise when Igor bows out due to health concerns (he’s having heart palpitations and the back pain). In truth, from my highly subjective viewpoint, I think Igor was plagued by decision paralysis the entire time. He was the one who wandered around for three days before selecting a spot, and he didn’t seem able to swap out his original shelter design for a new one. This can happen to anyone, so I think it was good for his health that he called it when he did. 
My Assessment
I’m changing my top three prediction to Jessie, Adam, and Benji.
I also think Benji is the most likely to nab a bear, though I’m not taking Juan Pablo out of the running just yet!
The next episode airs on June 23, on History Channel.
