Crickets are not his first choice for a meal, but Jef Chenault discovered that when that's all there is, he can adapt. In fact, he's having a party and serving crickets!
Chenault, of Pea Ridge, enhanced his survival skills by spending five days in eastern Kentucky's cave country this past March. His adventures will be featured in "Fat Guys in the Woods" which airs at 8 p.m. Sunday, July 19, on The Weather Channel.
Cooking his crickets well done, they tasted like burned toast, he said. In honor of that experience, he, his family and friends plan to have a viewing party Sunday night at a Bentonville restaurant with a cricket buffet.
Katherine Wong, senior corporate communications specialist, said about the show: For thousands of years, man lived wild, out in the weather...but now he's at the top of the food chain and it shows -- few are able to fend for themselves in the great outdoors.
"I'm an amateur prepper," Chenault said, explaining that a "prepper" is someone who prepares for hard times, like a great depression or other extreme. He said he had seen the "Fat Guys in the Woods" Facebook page, joined the group, then received a casting call. "I applied for it for kicks and grins. It snowballed from there."
He said he had not met the other two men prior to their meeting in the Atlanta airport, but they have formed a "lifelong friendship" from their wilderness experience.
"We were given a canteen with water, a glow stick, a knife and a hatchet head. From there, we had to ... purify our own water, find our own food, build shelter," he said, adding that Creek Stewart, the show's host, guided them in their journey.
There was snow on the ground when they got to their destination. There were three backpacks with the gear near a cave with a sign. The three decided to enter the cave.
"We determined that we needed to go deeper into the cave because of the glow sticks... we were crawling on our hands and feet. Creek was waiting on the other end of the cave."
He said he thought staying in the cave would be relatively easy, but "Creek wasn't going to let us off that easy." They built a shelter from a hemlock tree they cut down, he said.
"Creek is the most genuine guy anyone could meet. I could not believe what a nice guy," he said. After four days following his lead, each of the men spent the fifth night solo.
"I went out there with no real expectations -- to test myself and my abilities. I wanted to see how I would do in a stressful situation, going without food, constantly working. There was not much idle time. Being a fat guy, it was surprising how much I could do," he said. "Everything I did that week would have been 10 times easier had my weight not been a factor."
One of the first things the group did after building the shelter was to make maple syrup. "We boiled it (the sap) down, smeared it on rocks to make a sticky trap," he said, explaining that because of the snow, there wasn't much else to find to eat.
Lessons learned? He said he plans to be more aware of what he eats and will not take luxuries -- like running water as well as indoor heating and cooling -- for granted.
"I added a bunch of tools to my life's tool box," he said.
Chenault, his wife, Jeffie, and four children -- daughters Cecilia, 7, Penelope, 5, Eliza, 3, and Mark, 5 months -- live in Battlefield View subdivision. He works as a fleet manager at J.B. Hunt.
A native of northern Virginia, Chenault moved to the area in 1995. He graduated from Rogers High School, then moved to Pea Ridge in 2007.
In every episode of "Fat Guys in the Woods," survival expert Creek Stewart brings three average Joes back to the woods to survive for a week with only one objective: to teach them the skills that make a man, a man. Together they will learn the art and science of outdoor survival while battling the threats of Mother Nature.
In this episode: Creek and this week's three average Joes -- Bill Beyer, Jef Chenault, and Ron Gamble -- explore Eastern Kentucky's cave country, which brings a wide range of weather conditions. It goes from two feet of snow to intense rain almost instantly at one point. They start fire with a never-before-seen zero gravity bow drill and water is later sourced from deep within the cave in a small dip under a rock formation. Since there were no signs of animals anywhere, the group dined on maple sap and cave crickets during their week in the woods.
Religion on 07/15/2015