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Season 14 of MeatEater with Steven Rinella premieres Saturday, November 14, at 6 p.m. Eastern on Outdoor Channel and airs Saturdays at that time, the network announced Monday. The opener, "Texas Hogs and 'Cats," follows Rinella, Seth Morris and houndsman Kevin Murphy hunting hogs and trapping bobcats on South Texas' Yturria Ranch. The second episode is a Great Lakes walleye contest of spearguns against rods, and the third begins a four-part "Nunavut" series in the Canadian Arctic, with Rinella hunting beluga and seals and Clay Newcomb joining a dog-sled polar bear hunt. Past seasons stream on MyOutdoorTV.

Cold-weather camping dominated the week. Joe Robinet cooked grouse over an open fire, spent a solo night in a new hot tent with a woodstove and built a bushcraft shelter in the rain. The Outdoor Gear Review went minimal with a hammock night in a remote forest, TA Outdoors tried a cozy woodstove setup in a hobbit-style tent, and Justin Outdoors reviewed a lightweight 40-liter pack.

If you try a hot tent, follow the stove maker's spacing and ventilation guidance and bring a carbon monoxide alarm. Our watch lists feature videos we think readers will enjoy; creators don't pay to be featured, videos play from each creator's own channel, and we point out sponsored segments and affiliate links when a video has them. We leave out videos that promote gambling.

Joe Robinet spent a solo night in a new hot tent with a woodstove in a forest he hadn't camped in before, cooking steak on the stove; the video is sponsored. In a shorter clip, he takes a break from building his bushcraft shelter to cook a grouse over the fire. TA Outdoors took a small canvas tent he calls his hobbit tent and a woodstove into the woods for an autumn trip, cooking on the stove and settling in for a cozy night.

If you're trying a hot tent this season, follow the tent and stove makers' instructions, use a stove jack rated for your stove, keep a carbon monoxide alarm inside, and never run a stove or heater in a tent that isn't designed for one.

Screen & channel features videos we think outdoor readers will enjoy. Videos play from the creator's own channel; Outdoor Unc is not paid to feature them, and featuring a video is not an endorsement of the products in it.

Rain was the theme this week. Joe Robinet, the Canadian bushcraft and canoe-camping channel, built a bushcraft shelter in an autumn rain with his dog, Wolf. The Outdoor Gear Review spent a night in a cot tent as a thunderstorm rolled through, and TA Outdoors set up a cabin tent in non-stop rain and walked through a full rain-camping setup: tent, tarp, sleep system, cooking and fire.

On the gear side, Justin Outdoors, a backpacker from Calgary, reviewed the 3F UL Lanshan 1 Pro, a budget ultralight tent; he discloses that it was sent to him free for review. And Kendall Gray, on his vlog channel, tried out a see-through hunting blind, a sponsored product with a discount code in the video's description.

Screen & channel features videos and shows we think outdoor readers will enjoy. Videos play from each creator's own channel; Outdoor Unc is not paid to feature them, and featuring a video is not an endorsement of the products in it. We note when a creator's video includes sponsored, gifted or affiliate products.

Outdoor Tom, a YouTube channel with about 2.25 million subscribers that follows a young angler's fishing, camping and ATV trips with his family, posted its latest Alaska adventure on October 24. According to the video's description, Tom, his dad, his cousin and his grandfather flew to a lodge in the Katmai area on the Alaska Peninsula for four days of salmon fishing, caught close to 200 salmon, filmed 103 of them, and got close to seven grizzly bears.

Katmai is known for its brown bears, which gather along salmon streams in summer and fall; anyone planning a trip there should follow the National Park Service's bear-safety rules and fish with a guide or lodge that knows them. The channel's recent videos have stayed in Alaska, including surf fishing for cod and halibut from the Homer Spit and a float-plane trip to the remote Innoko River.

Screen & channel features videos and shows we think outdoor readers will enjoy. Videos play from the creator's own channel; Outdoor Unc is not paid to feature them, and featuring a video is not an endorsement of the products or outfitters in it.

Young Camping, a camping and backpacking channel based in California with about 100,000 subscribers, posted three new solo trips this week. The newest, from October 25, is a night in the California mountains with new gear; its description includes sponsored and affiliate links for some of the products shown, which the creator discloses. A shorter clip from October 24 follows a camp near a summit, and one from October 21 is set in the forest.

The channel's videos are mostly solo camping and backpacking trips that often feature the creator's setup and gear, including a first look at Snow Peak's Landlock X earlier this month. You can follow the channel on YouTube, and on Instagram at young2_camping.

Screen & channel features videos and shows we think outdoor readers will enjoy. Videos play from the creator's own channel; Outdoor Unc is not paid to feature them, and featuring a video is not an endorsement of the products in it.

Buck Commander is back for its 17th season on Outdoor Channel, Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, Outdoor Sportsman Group said October 7. The cast is unchanged: Willie Robertson, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Tyler Farr, former major leaguers Adam LaRoche, Ryan Langerhans and Tombo Marin, and Surge Outdoors CEO Ryan Busbice.

The season moves from invasive iguanas and pythons in Florida with former heavyweight boxer King Pedford, to Louisiana swamp whitetails, Luke Bryan's family elk hunt in New Mexico, early-season Nebraska bucks and Mississippi River bottom deer in Arkansas, before heading to South Texas.

If you do not get Outdoor Channel, the free preview on DISH, Sling and several cable systems runs through October 31.

Outdoor Channel and Sportsman Channel are free to watch through October 31 on a long list of cable and satellite providers, Outdoor Sportsman Group said. Participating operators include Armstrong, Astound, Blue Ridge Cable, DISH, Service Electric Cable, Sling and TDS, and the company says the preview reaches about 10 million households that do not normally get the channels. The full provider list is on the two networks' websites.

The preview lines up with the fall season. Outdoor Channel's Premiere Week ran September 28 to October 4 and brought back Farming the Wild, Cast Iron Cowboy, Ranch America, Jason the Butcher, American Archer in its 30th season, Reel in the Outdoors and Buck Commander, among others. Steven Rinella's new show, Rinella's Field Notes, premiered October 3, followed by the MeatEater special 12 in '26.

If you do not have cable at all, the same company launched a free ad-supported streaming channel, GAME & FISH TV, which carries a Monday-night block of its cooking and ranching shows.

Spoilers follow for both seasons.

History's Alone season 13, billed as the first World Championship, ended September 9. Žiga Ogorelec, a 35-year-old biologist from Slovenia, won the $500,000 prize after 90 days in the Richardson Mountains of the Northwest Territories, near Aklavik. He made fire by friction all season, becoming the first winner in the show's history to finish without a ferro rod. Aaron Barnard finished second at 87 days and Nero Buys third at 85. The ten participants came from the United States, Canada, Wales, Australia, Slovenia, Portugal and New Zealand.

The same night in Australia, SBS closed Alone Australia season 4. Trent Fenton, a 40-year-old former Navy chef from Sandford, Tasmania, won the A$250,000 prize after 52 days in Sápmi, in Finland's Arctic. New Zealand farmer Clint Waghorn withdrew at 47 days after nearly seven weeks without protein, and Jasper Harvey was medically removed at 48 days with a spreading hand infection. SBS says the season reached 3.41 million viewers and calls the show the most successful original series in its history.

What comes next is less settled. History has not announced a premiere date or location for season 14. Casting for it opened in April, and the U.S. series has premiered in late May or June every year since 2017, but neither History nor the producers have confirmed 2027 timing. SBS has confirmed a fifth Alone Australia season for 2027, returning to the Arctic Circle, and is already casting season 6, with applications closing March 7, 2027.

Both seasons are streaming: the U.S. season on the History app and with TV providers, and Alone Australia free on SBS On Demand in Australia. We will update the Alone tracker when either network names a date.

Most televised barbecue is a tasting show with a clock bolted on. Pitmasters, which premiered on Food Network in July, is built around the logistics instead: nine two-person teams breaking down a whole hog and then cooking and serving four essential proteins on a nonstop rolling schedule, for up to $50,000.

That format choice is the interesting one. Breaking down a hog is the skill that separates people who cook barbecue from people who buy barbecue cuts, and a rolling schedule reproduces the real problem of a competition weekend, which is not any single cook but managing four of them at different stages with one fire and no sleep.

The judging panel is unusually credentialed for the genre, with Andrew Zimmern alongside Jess Pryles, Moe Cason and Ernest Servantes. Competition pitmasters judging competition pitmasters produces different notes than a celebrity palate does, and the criticism lands harder for it.

It sits in a small field. Barbecue television has mostly been travelogue, with a host driving between joints being impressed. A show that makes people cook under the conditions the sport actually imposes is closer to what the audience for this section already watches survival shows for: competence under pressure, filmed honestly.

History's thirteenth season of Alone put ten survivalists from seven countries into the Beaufort Delta and crowned a world champion. Discovery's answer, Naked and Afraid: Global Showdown, premiered April 1 and paired survivalists from Brazil, Australia, Mexico and the United States in a forty-day primitive bushcraft competition for what the network called the largest cash prize in franchise history.

Two networks arriving at the same format idea in the same year is usually a sign that the domestic version has run out of room. Both franchises have spent a decade generating variants — solo, extra-long, last-one-standing, apocalypse-themed — and nationality is the last untried axis.

Discovery's nineteenth regular season of Naked and Afraid ran from February with its own escalations, including two expert survivalists spending fourteen days on a remote island with no tools at all, and a challenge putting five social media influencers into the field to test their online personas against actual conditions. That last one tells you something about where the audience is thought to be.

The criticism levelled at Alone's world championship applies here too, and it is worth stating plainly: none of the competitors had won a prior season in their own country, so the title is a marketing frame rather than a tournament of champions. A genuine version would require national editions first and a final between their winners.

What actually improved is the country. Whatever you think of the framing, filming above the Arctic Circle through shrinking daylight produced harder television than another temperate season would have.

The Australian edition premiered its fourth season on SBS on July 15 and is still running weekly. For the first time the show left the Southern Hemisphere entirely, trading Tasmania and Fiordland for the far north of Sapmi, the Indigenous Sami homeland in Finland, and a Northern Hemisphere winter of deep snow, frozen lakes and subzero cold.

Ten participants compete for $250,000 on the same last-person-standing format. Producers billed it as the hardest season the Australian version has attempted, and noted before the premiere that some of the cast had never seen snow. The predator list changes accordingly: bears and moose rather than anything native to home.

Cold has done most of the eliminating. One competitor with an existing frostbite injury was pulled by medical staff after 28 days when symptoms returned. Another, a hiking guide originally from Sweden with real Arctic experience, tapped out after failing to get fish, which had been her entire food plan.

The show took the AACTA award for best factual entertainment programme in February, before this season aired, which is a reasonable measure of how far the format has travelled since the first Tasmanian season in 2023.

For anyone who has just finished the History Channel's world championship season, it is the same experiment run by a different production, in colder country, for a smaller purse.

The thirteenth season of History's Alone closed on September 9 with a title the series had never handed out before. Ziga Ogorelec of Slovenia lasted 90 days by himself above the Arctic Circle, outlasted every other competitor, and walked away with $500,000 and the first world champion designation in the franchise.

The season, billed as Alone: World Championship, premiered June 17 and dropped ten survivalists from seven countries into Canada's Beaufort Delta, in the Inuvik region of the Northwest Territories near the Richardson Mountains. The site sits roughly 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle and about 150 kilometres from where season eleven was filmed. Competitors came from the United States, Canada, Wales, Australia, Slovenia, Portugal and New Zealand.

The rules did not change. Ten items, film everything yourself, tap out whenever you decide you have had enough, and the last person still out there takes the money. What changed was the calendar. The field pushed deep into the shoulder of polar night, with daylight shrinking week by week, temperatures well below zero, and grizzlies, wolves and moose working the same valleys.

Not everyone accepted the framing. Viewers pointed out that none of the ten had won a previous season of Alone in their own country, which makes the championship label a piece of marketing rather than an actual tournament of past winners. A genuine version would require national editions first, then a final between their champions.

A retrospective special looking back across all thirteen seasons followed the finale. Episodes reach on-demand platforms the day after they air, though availability still depends on which provider or package a viewer has.

Luke Nichols shut down Outdoor Boys in May 2025 with a farewell video, citing the attention his family was drawing as the channel grew. It had about 15 million subscribers at the time. It has more than 20 million now, without him posting regularly.

He kept one promise. In November 2025 he released three unfinished films he had already shot, one of them a float plane trip with his three sons into Twin Lakes in Lake Clark National Park. He was clear that this was not a return.

Since then the updates have been sparse and secondhand: a church advisory council appointment at the end of 2025, a photograph from a fishing shop in Japan that circulated widely among fans who took it as proof he was still doing the thing he liked, minus the camera.

In May he gave the commencement address at the George Mason law school where he earned his degree in 2009. He practised criminal defence in Virginia for a decade before the fishing videos overtook the day job, and he told the graduating class to save money, having gone out into the 2008 crash himself.

His teenage son Tom has meanwhile posted his own first solo bushcraft overnight in Alaska, building a shelter from downed wood and cooking his own meals, with an admission at the end that he still has a lot to learn.