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.