NARRATOR: In the
remote Ozark mountains,
homesteader Jason Hawk is
pushing deeper than ever
into the wilderness--
If you're not hunting,
you're buying more.
NARRATOR: --to put an
end to a dry spell--
But it just hasn't been
a good year for hunting.
NARRATOR: --that's left him
without a new supply of meat
for more than six weeks.
I keep moving further
and further out,
trying to look for, you know,
where the game's hiding at.
It's just continually
pushing into new territory.
And sometimes, that's
what you've got to do.
But it's just kind of quiet.
NARRATOR: But it's
deep into winter,
and the pickings are slim.
What the hell is that?
Metal, maybe?
Old grain hopper or something.
[suspenseful music]
Oh.
It's a damn plane.
You don't find a
plane every day.
This is neat.
I'll be damned.
The seat, flaps, pedal controls.
She's stable.
This whole area back here
used to be farm country.
It's got to be some kind of
old crop duster or something.
That's not aged aluminum that's
melted all in through here.
You can see where it's
melted onto different pieces
of the frame.
And this thing
either caught on fire
and crashed, or crashed
and caught on fire.
I'm not seeing any remains.
Hopefully, they walked
or hobbled out of here.
Man, I wonder what its
story is and how long
this thing's been sitting here.
I see some fiberglass in here.
So my guess, roughly, is
probably that the plane came
out of somewhere in the '60s.
In a piece like this,
there's higher carbon
steel, lower carbon steel.
Instead of harvesting
meat, I think it's time
to harvest some metal.
NARRATOR: A salvage
job of this size
could yield thousands of
dollars of raw material
if it's the right kind of steel.
I'm going to go back to
the shop, get my goods,
and then, hopefully, turn
this plane into some money.
NARRATOR: On the back country
trails of the Ozark mountains,
Jason heads back to the site
of a long abandoned plane crash
to salvage what he hopes is
a jackpot of forgeable steel.
One of the first
things I'm going to do
is pull out the grinder and
take all the small stuff.
If there's anything with enough
carbon in it to make good edge,
it's going to be the cable.
So I'm going to start there.
NARRATOR: Steel is
one of the strongest
alloys on earth,
created by mixing
iron ore with pure carbon.
The higher the carbon
content, the harder the steel.
I like that piece.
NARRATOR: But Jason won't know
what he's got until he tests
the samples back at his shop.
I've done just about
what I can on the grinder.
Now it's time to get in,
get the cutting torch,
and take out some chunks.
Oh.
That's a pretty good
piece of steel--
make something interesting.
Out of gas.
Looks like this is
what I'm taking today.
I've got a bunch
harvested at this point.
Torch is dead.
It's time to pack it
up and head on home.
