I agree. Many of Bear's tactics leave little room for error. If it isn't executed just right, the results can be devastating, bordering on lethal. Does he demonstrate an expert approach to survival, I would think so. Unfortunately his audience will miss the context of most of his actions and if they follow his example, are more likely than not to experience failure. What he does is extreme, and merely illustrates how bad it can be and what must be done to overcome the worst possible outcomes. That is not a good teaching environment, because the failure for the pupil is so catastrophic as to be impractical.

Wildman, which one was it?

BruceZed: What kind of errors did you find?

He is very much doing "can't go back, can't go around...."

As for people who miss the point and get killed?

Mr Darwin thanks you.....

3000 KCal later he has destroyed a guitar and wasted enough calories to live for 2 days and has nothing to show for it.

"Survival is the Art of Minimal Investment for Maximum Return"

Survival is also an art of learning, some by reason, some by trial and error. The point in this case is in making an effort and thinking of something that should work. Sometimes you gotta be able to give these little experiments more than a day to prove up. There is an element of chance in all this too.

Here's how the equation works, you can choose to expend some energy trying to accomplish something sensible, even if it is a little unorthodox, on the chance that what you try might fail, or you can sit around and do nothing, and be assured of failure.

In addition to the mouse trap, it says he rigged some decent snares with the guitar strings as well. Hunting and trapping for survival typically has a low success rate, so increasing your odds by deploying as many tries as possible is perhaps the only suitable hedge, aside from being more prepared.

The point is, you gotta keep trying. A guitar trap is not an impractical effort, just not predictably successful.

BTW, I missed where it said he burned 3,000 kCal building this one trap. That number seems mighty excessive to me. I manage about 500 kCal on my elliptical going all out for half an hour. I can't imagine building this trap would be six times that effort. Maybe 3,000 calories, or 3 kCal would be a more appropriate and believable number in this case. The amount of work effort (3,000 kCal) claimed just to build the trap is unbelievable.

"A smart man learns from his experiences. A wise man learns from the experiences of others".

Les' show is an opportunity to be a student of someone else's experience. Sometimes seeing failure is beneficial to a student. Even if Les had set up the traps perfectly they may have not caught game. And that is another valuable lesson: sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.

Interesting. What is your source for that? I'm just curious, because I can't for the life of me figure out how taking apart a cheap guitar would suck up 3000 Calories. MAYBE 300.

Its also worth noting that Les has demonstrated the Paiute (figure 4) deadfall and snare setting in other episodes where he successfully scored a meal. The fact that he got skunked in most recent episodes drives home the point that you need many traps, and even then success isn't guaranteed.

For me the biggest value of the Survivorman series has always been the mistakes made (and shown). He's injured himself doing stupid things, he has tried to rig things that failed, and hes demonstrated that many of the activities associated with getting food in a survival situation involve more skill and more luck than most want to admit.

I agree. If nothing else, Les' mistakes teach you what might go wrong, what to look out for. If someone executes everything flawlessly every time, then you have no idea as to the what the pitfalls of that technique might be. When you see a screw up, you then are on the alert. Sometimes knowing what NOT to do is as valuable as knowing what to do.

(For starters, watching Man v. Wild looking for survival tips is something you should NOT do)