Your main concern has to be harvesting 600 lbs of (live weight) food per month. If you can be the only guy who lost no weight on this challenge, doing so will make you rich! You will be the "go-to" guy for training, videos, books, endorsements of gear, etc. If you've lost no weight the first month, and have preserved another 100 lbs of food, they'll declare you the winner on the spot. This will limit your exposure to illness/injury and double your hourly wage while you are suffering out there. Take adequately warm clothing and sleeping bag, so you dont have to waste time and calories on an elaborate shelter, or cutting and hauling lots of firewood.
For season one, they were only allowed ONE 5 lb ration of food (pemmican and gorp are best). Since, they were given the option of 2 rations, but season 4, the ration size was cut to 2 lbs. (for 2 men)! For season 1 and 2, they were just given a 20x20 tarp, but that has not been the case since. So the 12x12 was a wasted pick for those first 2 seasons. They should simply have cut up the 20x20, that's all. An axe and big saw are both wasted picks, contrary to what everyone "thinks". The Indians didn't have either one and they made it. There are other, more useful picks, like a Cold Steel shovel, one of Chief AJ's slingbows and the 6 arrows, the duct tape, the paracord hammock. Unravel the hammock, gut the paracord, and weave the 7 inner strands into the 3" mesh netting that will feed you. Ditto for the paracord gillnet, of course.
If it's really cold, then force-dry (using hot stones) some soft debris and stuff it between the layers of your clothing. Use the Dakota fire pit (with a long, tapering entrance and the Siberian fire lay to heat big, flat stones, and use half of the stones to radiate heat from the far side of your work-awning. Put the stones under your raised bed at night, if need be. Also, you can wrap hot stones in your socks and take them to bed with you. So you do not want to be messing with lots of firewood, or having a fire inside your sleeping shelter, where it can burn up your gear (and your hair!) or kill you in your sleep with CO poisoning.
I have to laugh when I see entrants who waste $150 on a huge folding saw, when all they have to do, in order to reach branches that are overhead, is lash their smaller saw to a pole. This lack of critical thinking shows up in all their gear and what they do (and dont do).