James "Wyatt" Black

James Wyatt Black was the amateur in a field of professionals, at least on paper: the only Season 10 contestant without formal survivalist or trapper training, a home renovation business owner from Bracebridge, Ontario. His list plays it exactly as straight as that resume suggests, the complete consensus ten, every category among the most carried across the 101 recorded lists in our data.

The one place the generic kit hides a private edge is the fishing line. Black holds patents on the Gold Fury fishing lure line, and at Reindeer Lake, a fishery above all else, the anonymous words fishing line and hooks meant something different in his hands than in most. He could not bring his lures, but he brought the mind that designs them to a lake where reading fish was the whole economy.

For everything else, the standard picks are the humble ones: axe and saw because processing wood is a renovator's home turf, bow and snare wire because you cover the systems you are weakest in rather than skipping them. It is the kit of someone who knew exactly what he did not know.