Who Is David Young on Alone Season 13? Background and Gear

David Young is one of the contestants on Alone season 13, "Alone: World Championship," filmed in the Richardson Mountains of the Northwest Territories, inside the Arctic Circle. Season 13 is still airing as of this writing, so this profile is about who David is and what he brought into the field, not how the season ends. Note: David's own elimination has already aired publicly (he was the first contestant out), so we cover that below, but we make no claims about how the rest of the field finishes.

Who he is

David is 31 and from Washington State; some outlets place him specifically in Spokane. Our records list him as a project manager and former Idaho Department of Fish and Game employee, which lines up with public reporting that he worked as a wildlife technician for Idaho Fish and Game from 2015 to 2018 and later as a wildlife biologist at a wildlife management firm into 2020. More recently, he is reported to have founded a traditional bow-making venture based in the Spokane area, teaching classes to aspiring bowyers, a skill set that connects directly to the bow-and-arrow kit he chose for season 13.

His Season 13 loadout

Our data marks David's gear list as fully sourced, and it is a well-rounded solo-survival kit:

Item	Category
Bow and arrows	Hunting
Ferro rod	Fire starting
Sleeping bag	Shelter/warmth
Snare wire	Trapping
Cooking pot	Cooking
Machete	Cutting tool
Fishing line and hooks	Fishing
Multitool	Utility
Tarp	Shelter
Saw	Cutting tool

That is a fairly traditional Arctic-season kit: a bow and arrows and snare wire for protein, a ferro rod for fire, and a saw alongside a machete for two different cutting jobs. Pairing a cooking pot with a tarp and sleeping bag covers the basics of staying warm and fed, and the multitool rounds it out as a catch-all for repairs. Given his bow-making background, the bow and arrows pick is the one item on this list that reads as a personal specialty rather than a generic choice.

What happened early in the season

David tapped out on day 3, citing homesickness for his wife and their two young daughters, reportedly around 1.5 years and 3 months old at the time of filming. He is quoted as saying, on camera, that he wasn't in the game mentally and didn't want it anymore, a direct and unusually candid admission for a contestant with real wilderness credentials. It is a reminder that Alone's real filter often has less to do with bushcraft skill and more to do with how a person's mind handles total isolation from family, especially with an infant and a toddler at home.

Why he is worth watching

David's professional background, wildlife fieldwork plus hands-on bow craftsmanship, made him one of the more skills-heavy picks in the season 13 cast on paper. His quick exit doesn't change that; it just underlines how little correlation there sometimes is between technical preparation and how someone's isolation and homesickness play out once the cameras roll and the days start stacking up. If you want to see how his kit choices compare to other contestants in the same brutal Arctic setting, the full season 13 cast rundown is on our season page, and our gear guides cover how contestants across different seasons have approached similar cutting-tool tradeoffs.