[Deersniper]

I watched the series Survivorman on the science channel [Ch 284 DTV] last night and I will start taping the series. They drop this guy off with no food or water for a week in the wilderness. He comes up with some novel ideas to survive. This is a must see for anybody wanting to learn survival techniques.

[couchtr26]

Yeah, Les is pretty good. If you go to youtube, they have his show on getting off the grid. I prefer him over most that are shown.

[just_a_car]

Absolutely one of the best and most entertaining survival shows out there.

Les Stroud is far-and-above better than Bear Grylls from Man vs Wild. Bear has a camera crew with him and does some outright stupid things that would likely get you killed. Les, on the other hand, is his own camera crew and is forced to make the right and safe choice in how to survive due to the fact that he's alone, even if his safety crew is just a radio call away (but sometimes even they get in danger - see the Labrador episode).

[Deersniper]

I went to Walmart this morning and got a magnesium stick for 5.88, and 50 ft of camo para-cord for 1.88, and a small first aid kit for 5.88. Les will show you how to survive and it helps ease the worry of not knowing what to do. The best survival tools are between your ears.

[larmus]

deersniper, im sorry to say les is no longer going to be doing the survivor man series his last show was friday night...
i liked his show and bear grylls show even though he stayed in hotels and such. i liked the fact that Les went into every senerio except one, by himself and portrayed a lost hiker or biker or individual... some good tips as well, even though some of it was directed towards t.v. because of him i started carrying my multi-tool on a regular basis... i think the discovery channel on line should have his complete works on dvd something to look for...

[couchtr26]

Quote:       Originally Posted by Deersniper

I went to Walmart this morning and got a magnesium stick for 5.88, and 50 ft of camo para-cord for 1.88, and a small first aid kit for 5.88. Les will show you how to survive and it helps ease the worry of not knowing what to do. The best survival tools are between your ears.

Also, look at his Alaska show. He uses a fire piston very nice and easy to use. Expensive to purchase but Youtube has quite a few videos on making your own. Works like a diesel engine. Air is compressed rapidly igniting a small amount of tinder in the base. Simple, effective. Most here aren't aware of them do to the production of matches in the 1800's. They were first encountered by Europeans on trips to the south Pacific. Probably one of the best fire making devices around.

[roverboy]

Yeah Les is going off the air.
I like him far better than Bear.
Bear's crazy. He does stuff that
will get you killed or at least make
you die a slow and painful death.

[TheJoker]

Quote:       Originally Posted by larmus

deersniper, im sorry to say les is no longer going to be doing the survivor man series his last show was friday night... i liked his show and bear grylls show even though he stayed in hotels and such. i liked the fact that Les went into every senerio except one, by himself and portrayed a lost hiker or biker or individual... some good tips as well, even though some of it was directed towards t.v. because of him i started carrying my multi-tool on a regular basis... i think the discovery channel on line should have his complete works on dvd something to look for...

I thought I caught him saying something about his last show on Friday. That's too bad. He did some pretty good shows.

[larmus]

deffinetly joker, deffinetly...

[elmer fudd]

i liked the show to it did teach you alot of good things some people say well wat about when he is off the camera he could have a lunch with him or something if that were true i wouldnt care its still very "educational" lol

[Deersniper]

Glad I taped it then. He had some good rock snares working to get him food. Mud on the face for mosquitoes. I'll have to check into the fire piston. Maybe they have an archived website. Bear did not impress me that much. If you can survive off scratch, think of what you can do if you prepare ahead and have a survival kit with you and knowledge of what to look for in each locale. A survival kit and the tool between our ears. What's your favorite techniques?

[Constantine1911]

Yeah I love that show.

[sunwheel29]

The show is coming to an end because "Survivorman" admits it's too hard for him to starve for seven days a week on a monthly basis....

What is really pitiful about that is that most of the time he has been starving in game rich environments where a boy scout would be living off the land.

Many years from now, when I am on my death bed, I will remember the episode where this Canadian doofus was walking around whining about starving then complaining that an Armadillo got into his camp and ate his weed strings.....
I will remember it, and I will laugh so loud it will probably cause cardiac arrest....
I guess it never occurred to "Survivorman" to actually kill the Armadillo and eat it for survival....

I really wish somebody would explain to "Survivorman"
that:
•Survival means living off the land when you are stranded, not seeing how many days you can go without food or water...

• Since its' your show, you can hire a camera crew instead of pissing and moaning about not having one...

What many of this clown's misguided fans don't understand is that Stroud goes to these places and hires people to teach him how to get by for a week before he starts filming.

The best part of his show was the scenery. That and the unintentional comedic aspects of it....

My second biggest laugh is the episode where he was at the arctic circle and pissing and moaning about polar bears and starving.
I'm sorry. I would have taken a rifle and shot a Polar bear and had plenty of food and a nice rug as a souviner....
But then again, I am not survivorman. I am "Ex-Boy Scout Who Can Survive In the Woods" man.

[larmus]

...and then when you got done filming your seven day "boy scouting" trip... you would get a nice ride in a police car to federal prison and multiple fines for shooting an endangered animal...so that way you could film your next adventure from behind bars...

les has done his fair share of stupid stuff, but so has bear grylls...

jumping into below freezing water...
jumping into a cravas on a glacier and telling everyone that "he hopes this works"...
getting stung by a bee and almost going into anafalactic shock- but truly going into a situation not knowing what your basic allergies are...

so if you judge one you truley need to judge both on stupidity they were doing what they did for the camera and armchair survivalists...

[sunwheel29]

Last time I checked, there is no federal law about killing and eating an armadillo. People out southwest run over them in vehicles all the time and get in no trouble with the law or the Sierra Club.
Not really sure about Polar Bears, but I doubt they are on the endangered species list either.
But hey, don't let a little thing like the facts get in the way of your little rant bro.
I think I have seen just about every episode of Man vs Wild and I have seen about two real mistakes made by Grylls. One was when he was in the jungle and didn't boil his water. Now, that's a mistake as anybody who ever got dysinterry at Boy Scout camp when they were seven can remember and tell you, but it's nowhere near as major as the mistakes Les makes about, oh, every other episode.
As for risks, the guy is a skilled mountaineer. You know what, when your neck is on the line, you will often take risks too. Whether its trying to survive in the wilderness or trying to survive in a shootout.
What is sad, is that there was one example of where Stroud did something PHENOMENALLY FOOLISH and he should have known better as he stupidly said into his own camera, "Now, in books they say you shouldn't do this, but I don't see why not." Only to be regretting it later.
All due respect to Les Stroud he knows a lot about plant life, but he was somewhat shortchanged by mother nature in the common sense department.
If you can't live off the land in a game rich environment — and he can't — you have no damn business touting yourself as "Survivorman."
Maybe retards are impressed by this goober being able to ENDURE going hungry for seven days, but I'm not. Thats not surviving, thats enduring. Two seperate things entirely.
And as for him pissing and moaning about not having a camera crew, he is the producer of the show, if he is too cheap to hire a documentary crew to follow him around (except in one of his cold weather adventures) F#@&* him.
I don't want to hear the pissing and moaning.
You have two tee vee shows with guys demonstrating survival skills in the wilderness. The thing is, one guy actually has some skills and shows you how to get food, even when it means killing game animals or eating disgusting stuff and you have another guy who doesn't have a lot of survival skills but likes to pat himself on the back for being his own cameraman....who also pulled the plug on his own show because he admits "I can't keep on starving for seven days at a time."
Its your free time, you can watch whichever show you want.
I watch both, but I get more comedic effect from one than the other....
About that lack of common sense..did you see the episode where Les boiled the water in a stream to avoid getting sick from germs or parasites....only to eat RAW FISH out of the same stream later? I laughed so hard at that one I think I ruptured an old surgical repair.

Seeing as how Survivorman can't live off the land and he can't keep starving himself for seven days in a row, here's an idea he could have taken instead of pulling the plug on his own show.
He could have hired other people to go into the wilderness to demonstrate how to live off the land in survival situations. There is no shortage of people who he could have hired to do that, people with more skills than he has, like Tom Brown Jr, or for that matter about half the girl scouts in the US...
But he didn't, because even though he has few real wilderness survival skills other than plant identification, he does apparently have a big ego. He is up to bragging about not having a film crew about five times per episode now....When he is not crybabying about starving as the deer and antelope tromp past him on camera.

Before Survivorman and Man Vs Wild were on the air there was another show which had a military survival instructor demonstrating how to do things. It was actually the best of the three shows.

[larmus]

my only tiff with this is you come in talking smack, like you know everything there is to know on both les and bear... you are very much one sided in your opinions, you have choosen to not look at both sides of the coin just the side that you think is best... i never said that les was better then bear or bear was better then les.. i said i liked "both shows" there are very entertaining... the only difference between them is the fact that bear is ex-military and therfore better trained at survival situations... les comes into this as one who has no military training and gets training from other sources just like everyone else...
...and as for "game rich enviroment" ive yet to see bear or les for that matter, take down anything bigger then a rabbit or giant lizard... all the bigger game was provided for bear and les either doesnt have the know how or chooses not to use it( which i agree with you is stupid)...

[Sam Ruger]

I have only recently begun watching “Survivorman” because the first show I watched he did in Alaska and proceeded to starve while surrounded by food. The guy had absolutely no clue what he was doing and, having spent time in that environment, I felt that I knew more than him (And he had me laughing at his attempts to catch a salmon.). So I turned him off figuring “Dexter’s Laboratory” had more to offer. Later, I learned the guy comes from Central Canada and has to rely on the locals for advice. So his shows can only be as good as the quality of his local advice.
I have since watched more of the shows with more of an open mind. Yet, at the same time, I like to see if I can spot him cheating on his viewers (Which he does a lot but half of his stuff still actually works.). Personally, I think his skills are below average and, if left alone for two weeks instead of one, he'd starve. I would suspect the show that actually “got him” however, was the one in Papau, New Guinea. That was a blatant invitation to disease. He was sick for two days before he even got to his “drop off” location and then got sick again. Deliberately exposing yourself to malaria can’t be smart. Evidently, the locals weren’t very helpful because you dig for your food there (As the Japanese Army learned to do from 1942-43.).
Anyway, not trying to diss the guy (although I smiled as he said, “I’m going to survive here with no gear” while wearing a full pack on his back.). This guy has actually influenced my thinking for the simple fact that you can either learn from what he knows, or learn from what he doesn’t know (like eating leaves and flowers won’t carry you very far – Nuts and root vegetables yes – but not leaves.) or just think about the basic situation he faces in every episode – fire and water. I thought I had both of those pretty well covered by matches and a canteen (I even coated my matches in candle wax so they’d still work even if they get wet.). It was watching his show that convinced me of the need to be able to start a fire when the matches ran out or be able to refill that canteen with safe water. He offers a wide variety of techniques but many of them impractical (such as destroying a flashlight in order to make one fire – I don’t even carry a flashlight to destroy – just my solar powered LED). But I noticed that in virtually every show he did, if he had a magnifying glass, he’d have had a fire. So now I have a Fresnel. I also carry a tarp (not a tent) which I can use to collect rainwater or create a shelter or use the Fresnel to light a fire to boil water. I also noticed he gets eaten up alive by mosquitoes a bunch and so now I have repellent. And I’ve noticed his knife is not very useful. So I have a REAL knife, one designed for work as a survival tool. And he’s always unraveling a rope to create a fish line. I just skip that step and carry a fish line. That way I don’t have to ruin my 100 feet of nylon rope (Which I have not yet figured out why I’m carrying ). And he almost always crosses paths, totally by accident, with some kind of four legged critter or bird that is an easy shot for a .22. So I carry two.
Some stuff I learned from him doesn’t require anything not already in my pack. When he lit dried dung and carried it in his camp pot as a coal, I thought that was a pretty good idea. Anyway, his show is hard to find so I figured I’d ask here if anyone has learned anything from him they’d like to share. And I also have a question. His use of snares seems to be effective but, so far, I haven’t seen where he shows how to tie one. How would I learn that?
Just trying to keep this thread going!

[larmus]

sam ruger, thanks for that open minded critic... being as i was the last to post i will be the first to post to your remark... lol!

i have learned the same as you, i see the things that he could use in that situation and then buy them and incorporate them into my gear... the fresnel lens is an awesome addition thanks for the reminder of those. like i said and have thought before les aint the brightest bulb in the pack, but he does it alone like anyone who would go out for a day hike or a biking trip.

i carry two canteens now or a big hydration bladder and i carry a way to purify water, those purifing tabs that come in the little jars dont take up that much space...

[ArkansasHunter]

I don't watch him like I use to. I saw him drink his urine one time when he was in a desert.
For those wondering he peed in something and then drank ...A.H lol

[larmus]

actualy i have heard that urine, all though tastinging bad, is sterile the first go around... it would work in a pinch... this is cited from a nurse and from medics... but dont pour me a tall glass, ewwww...