Personally, I think Les Stroud is the man. He goes it alone, no crew whatsoever, and legitimately lives off the land for 7 days. Bear Grylls on the other hand... well... check out these videos:

Survivorman Vs. Bear Grylls

Man vs. Hotel: Bear Grylled

Bear Grylls is a Fake

This month's Outdoor magazine has an article where Bear Grylls comes clean about the whole issue. I don't think it was ever his intent to be a fake...it's just the way the show was put together and represented on TV and in the press.

Personally I find bear to be more entertaining than less, but both are great shows IMO. Sure, Bear may be fake, but so is CSI

Even better -- take a look at this video -- imitation of Bear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQC5YfDVpI

I like watching both shows, personally, and I'm really looking forward to Season 3 of Man vs. Wild. Both shows remind me of hiking and messing around in the woods behind my stepdad's house when I was a kid, and all of the "adventures" I would get into hanging out in there all day.

I have fond memories of just me, my Swiss Army knife, some waterproof matches, a plastic spork, and maybe a can of beef stew or soup going and hanging out for a whole afternoon. Watching both shows makes me feel like a little kid again. I miss those days now more than ever since both my stepdad passed away recently and those woods were torn down to make room for low-income housing. Watching both Bear and Les take me WAY back, back in the day...

I also enjoy both shows. The concept/premise of the two shows are different, which makes for good variety. I mainly watch for entertainment and armchair adventure rather than instruction. Plus, it's fun to watch people eat gross stuff.

Who cares, it's simply TV. Look at past posts, you should see more than a few on Bear and his show.

Season 3 will include a disclaimer so that there is no misrepresentation. They're also going to include the crew in the footage and make it clear that they are there and the role they play.

Actually, before I posted this I did a search to see if it had already been discussed, and the search results showed nothing at all about Bear Grylls.

The problem I've had with Bear from the beginning, before his "outing" in the media, is that, first, a lot of what he's modeling to kids is poor survival practice and, second, some of it down right dangerous. Yes, he has some good stuff in there, real survival techniques, but unless you already know something about survival, how do you sift out the good from the bad?

Example of the first: He's emphasis on speed. Any survival situation can be compounded by injury. The last thing you want to do, short of an avalanche bearing down on you or the like, is to emphasize speed and risk injury. Also, one needs to conserve energy. This is just poor survival practice.

Example of the second: In one episode, he climbs directly down the face of a water fall because he doesn't want to take the chance of getting separated from his watersource. Well, I wouldn't want to get separated from a water source either, but climbing down a water fall is an extremely dangerous thing to do. If you don't slip just from the wet surfaces, the force of the rushing water may cause you to lose your purchase. In the episode I'm thinking about, they show the water shooting off the waterfall and hitting Bear with great force. The water shoots out around him. The only way I can think of to hang onto the face of a waterfall in the midst of such force is to be clipped in with some kind of harness. Kids will be thinking that they can do it unaided.

I think his show is generally irresponsible although it can be quite entertaining to those of us who see right through the idiotic portions.

I saw one where he actually jumped off a cliff and into the water. I kept thinking, 'you dumbass, what if you land on a rock?'

I know there are guys right here in this forum that know alot more than either of them. Bear is a fake. Les pretty much starves and freezes for 7-days (often less) which just about any healthy guy his age can do.

Bear's name isn't Bear. He isn't surviving. He isn't showing great technique. He isn't in danger.


But he says he is....

I agree Jim.

The bounding from rock to rock is beyond stupid. I do use it to teach my daughter "this is what you don't do" and she's gotten very skilled at spotting the stupid risks he takes for ratings.

The only thing I watch MVW is for the scenery. I suspect Bear has a bigger budget based on the number of shows he's done.

My wife does like to watch me watch MVW though just to see me yell at the TV. Sometimes I just mute the TV and just watch the scenery.

I have a lot of respect for Les and the quality of shows he puts on. Just wish there were more of them and they were on more.

Here, here.

No show's perfect, but Les demonstrates fire and shelter building quite a bit. He at least gives one an idea of what one ought to be about and what one's priorities ought to be.

It's sad that a lot of people I have met have seen Man Vs Wild, but not Survivorman.
Market share and distribution gave us VHS instead of Betamax.
The great unwashed masses don't know which is ACTUALLY a survival show and which is entertainment.
I can't imagine someone saying I watch "Bear" and it saved my life, but sooner or later we will hear it.
Les does a great show, but in this world it's style over substance all the time.
Looks like the advertising men have killed us in more than one way.
We are fortunate Les was able to talk the discovery/science networks into the idea.
Who knows maybe he will get the media credit that he deserves.
We could always do a poll ?

I'm not all that big on comparing the two shows, I firmly believe in the motto of "each to their own".

I like Les and his show. I don't enjoy Bear's show to learn survival techniques but his show embodies the "extreme" attitude that had shown up in recent years. "Extreme" versions of some video games and "sports", that is. If you're into that thing then fine. I just like the more realistic attitude that Les shows while attempting to get people to think "outside the box" when it comes to innovating with your tools at hand in his quasi-simulated scenarios. I also like Ray Mears, Ron Hood and Mors Kochanski, et al - but for TOTALLY different reasons.

Bear's shows may be staged or even faked to some degree, whatever. But he is still entertaining in the same mode that WWE or Man-hunter seems to interest some people. Just not me.

"Bear Grylls -- the survival equivalent of professional wrestling." I like it!

I recently saw Bear use his knife to cut through about a 2" tree branch. He was hammering on his blade spine with a rock. It looked like a rock. Good way to break a perfectly good blade in a survival situation. If you must chop through something use another piece of wood to hammer on the spine of your blade.

He drinks entirely too much pooled and/or running water at considerable risk and drank his own urine on one episode. Most survival books I've read never recommend doing that.

Biting the head off the snake and eating the darn thing as is....

Its showing off and giving bad advice, but it can be entertaining to watch him do things inwhich he takes entirely too much risk.

I have a lot more respect for Les Stroud.

Not to mention all the running and jumping off of things that Bear does that puts him in potential danger of hurting/killing himself in his "survival" situations.

I like both. I'm not concerned with Grylls' faking it. I like his aloof and live-wire attitude, although he does come across as a bit careless as a result of his being accompanied.
Les seems to not succeed enough that you get a real sense of survival situation, although I think he tends toward the dramatic with his emotions at times.
Ray Mears is refreshing, even though not current, as far as I know. He has such a pleasant gentle-giant sort of vibe, and likes to impart a spirituality, which I enjoy. Maybe I will find more of his stuff at his site.
There are simply not enough shows of this kind for me to thoroughly nit-pick. They are truly something to appreciate.
They all obviously love wilderness, and that is something everybody need to discover in themselves.

I would not want to seem so picayunish about Bear's show, except that he comes off as some sort of expert, and he mixes good advice with bad practices enough to mislead the less experienced into dangerous assumptions/actions.

Since he has a fair amount of intell about what he's doing and adequate backup, he seems too reckless. He's entertaining for those of us who know better, inspiring to those less knowledgable, to a fault. I don't mind his antics, but I would prefer he make more qualifying statements during his show.

Those crazy Scotsmen, I've not met one yet that isn't extreme in some manner...

I think that's the general consensus!

Well said; exactly my complaint.

You sure that's why she likes to watch? My wife didn't seem to mind watching Bear, and I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with survival (unless of the species variety).

I've long since stopped watching - for all the reasons listed in this thread and others.

I'm a big fan of Ray Mears as well. If you do a search for him on YouTube, you can find a bunch of his videos from the "Bushcraft Survival Series" and "Extreme Survival Series". I'd order the DVDs from his site, but they're not in my region code-wise.

I also like Les Stroud a lot and love Survivorman. Les gives out a lot of great information, and I respect the fact that when he screws up he'll show it and admit it. I also admire his ability to "go for the shot". He expends a lot of energy setting up cameras for a great shot only to have to go back and retrieve them afterward. Sure, it's an unnecessary expenditure of calories in a survival situation, but makes the show more enjoyable than if he were doing the whole thing with a hand-held camera. He'd probably do a lot better if he didn't have to deal with the cameras... LOL

As for Bear, I came down on him pretty hard in the beginning, but later some people here helped convince me of the fact that it's just a different type of show. I still think that a lot of what he shows is reckless, but the show is geared more about him pushing himself than anything else. When we started to hear the rumors that a lot of the show was staged, it didn't really surprise me that much.

In the end, if I were going to point someone to a show that contains great survival information I'd direct them to Ray Mears' or Les Stroud's work.