Best Shovel for Alone-Style Survival, per the Show

The shovel is one of the rarer picks in the show's own popularity ranking, sitting under the "rarely-picked" label in the item catalog alongside the sharpening stone. Across every US season with a recorded gear list, only seven contestants ever put a shovel in their ten items, and just one of them named a brand for it. That contestant is Zachary Fowler, who carried a Cold Steel Special Forces Spetsnaz shovel to a win in season 3, lasting 87 days in Patagonia. Every other documented shovel pick on the show is listed simply as "Shovel," with no brand attached.

The one named example, and who else carried the tool unnamed

Fowler's shovel is the catalog's only contestant-verified product for this item, priced at $40 to $60. The other six documented picks come from three different seasons and land nowhere near the top of their brackets.

Season	Contestant	Result	Shovel
US 3	Zachary Fowler	Won, 87 days	Cold Steel Special Forces Spetsnaz shovel
US 10	Cade Cole	6th place, 23 days	Unnamed
US 10	Luke Joseph Olsen	8th place, 20 days	Unnamed
US 11	Isaiah Tuck	5th place, 23 days	Unnamed
US 11	Jake Messinger	6th place, 21 days	Unnamed
US 11	Peter Albano	9th place, 8 days	Unnamed
US 13	Žiga Ogorelec	Still airing as of mid-2026, result not yet known	Unnamed

That's a small sample, seven picks across thirteen seasons, so it's worth being careful about what it does and doesn't show. It isn't proof a shovel wins seasons. It is a real pattern that the only contestant to treat the tool seriously enough to name the exact model also happens to be the only one of the seven who won, while the five with a known outcome all finished in the back half of their brackets (5th through 9th).

What the shovel is actually for on this show

Nothing in the record explains why Fowler specifically valued his shovel, but the item's general utility on a 100-day solo stay is straightforward: digging root cellars and cold-storage pits for preserved meat and fish, digging fire pits and improving shelter drainage, and clearing ground for a dugout or semi-subterranean shelter, the kind of build that shows up repeatedly across winning strategies in cold, northern locations like the ones used for seasons 10, 11, and 13. A hatchet or knife can dig in a pinch, but not efficiently, and not without dulling an edge that's also doing the season's cutting work.

Against that, the shovel competes for a slot against items with a far stronger track record: the axe and saw are both rated "most-commonly-picked" in the catalog, and a fixed-blade knife or multi-tool covers cutting duties a shovel can't. Choosing a shovel means betting that a dedicated digging tool earns its place over a second rope, a bigger tarp, or a backup fire-starting item, and on this evidence, that bet has paid off exactly once, clearly, and been a mid-pack or lower finish five other documented times.

The honest takeaway

If the goal is copying what's actually worked, the data points to one real precedent: a full-size, purpose-built shovel like Fowler's Cold Steel model, not a folding camp trowel, in a location where digging in for winter matters as much as building up. Outside that specific case, the shovel's rare-pick status and thin win record suggest most successful loadouts spend that slot elsewhere.

For the item's full catalog entry and the official rules on what counts among the ten personal items, see the shovel gear page and the rules breakdown. Zachary Fowler's season 3 win is the clearest documented case for the tool, and Isaiah Tuck's season 11 run and Cade Cole's season 10 run are the closest comparisons among the unnamed picks. Season 13 is still airing as of this writing, so Žiga Ogorelec's result with the tool isn't final yet.