Who Is Cubby Hoover from Alone Season 11? What Happened

Spoiler note: this covers how his season 11 run ended.

Cubby Hoover holds a distinction nobody wants: he was the first contestant eliminated on season 11, the Arctic Circle season filmed in the Mackenzie River Delta of Canada's Northwest Territories, out after just 4 days. He was 33 at the time, from Seligman, Missouri, and placed 10th of the cast.

The cause was not hunger or cold. A stumble in the brush drove one of his own arrows deep into his leg, roughly four inches, and the wound would not stop bleeding in the field. Medical staff confirmed he needed hospital treatment, and tapping out was his only real option. Full details are on his season 11 contestant page.

His gear and what went wrong

Hoover's gear list is fully recorded in our data, and it is a standard, well-rounded loadout: a sleeping bag, a 2-quart pot, a ferro rod, paracord, a multitool, a bow and arrows, fishing line and hooks, snare wire, a saw, and an axe. None of it was defective. The injury came down to an accident in the field with his own equipment, not a gear failure or a design flaw in what he carried.

That detail matters because Hoover was already an experienced bowyer heading into the season, someone who built his own traditional bows rather than just using a manufactured one. An arrow wound from your own equipment is a particularly unlucky way for a skilled archer's run to end, and it is part of why his elimination is remembered as a genuine accident rather than a preparation gap.

Detail	Cubby Hoover
Season	11 (Mackenzie River Delta, NWT, Canada)
Age at filming	33
Hometown	Seligman, Missouri
Placement	10th
Days lasted	4
Reason for exit	Deep arrow wound to the leg, first out

Life after the show

As of mid-2026, Hoover is reported to have returned home to Washburn, Missouri, where he lives with his wife, Sydney Hoover, and continues making traditional longbows. He has reportedly recovered fully from the leg wound and has focused on growing his bow-making business since coming home, which lines up with the bowyer identity that was already part of his profile heading into the season.

A GoFundMe campaign was also set up for him around the time of his elimination, which is a detail worth noting cautiously since crowdfunding pages for contestants can be started by friends or family rather than the contestant directly, and the specifics of how it was used are not something we can verify here.

Why his run stands out

Being the very first person out in a season, at 4 days, is a rare and specific kind of headline, especially when the cause is an accident rather than a strategic or physical failure. It is also a useful reminder that a complete, well-thought-out gear list does not eliminate the risk of a bad step in thick brush, particularly in a location like the Mackenzie River Delta, where dense underbrush and uneven ground make a stumble with a nocked arrow a real hazard rather than a freak occurrence.

For the rest of that season's cast and how their runs compared, see the season 11 page, and our rules page covers how medical evacuations like this one are typically handled.