I think I watched a few episodes of that with my father-in-law and all I remember is that several of the contestants spent the first 8 hours or so building shel

I think I watched a few episodes of that with my father-in-law and all I remember is that several of the contestants spent the first 8 hours or so building shelter (and if I recall correctly is was summer, so freezing was not an issue) and only then started to think about finding food. If they had any trouble at all finding food (which basically everyone did), then pretty soon they were too weak to continue searching for food because all of the physical activity had caused them to burn far too many calories for their meager food intake. The people who had a lot of experience hunting and fishing tended to know how long it would take them to find food and went about it with much more urgency. I do remember bad luck striking as well for sure, but it seemed like strategy was at least as big of a factor as luck for many of the contestants. I agree that no matter how hard your will, you can't make it past certain things, but a lot of contestants hamstrung themselves right off the bat by badly underestimating how many calories they would need or not accurately predicting which sorts of problems would instantly end their bid.