I picked up his book and just started reading through it. I've always admired Les' adventures. I would definitely trust his advice over Bear's.

He often does a lot of his survive on what you have on you shows, but this last one, he actually had some decent equipment on it. Loved him signaling the helicopter, shows how to employ signaling devices. Would have liked to have seen him use a whistle too.

Does anyone know if the current Survivorman episodes are watchable online in some fashion? I never seem to catch it on TV.

They're generally not available unless there's some kind of a bootleg copy on a bit torrent (peer to peer) site or something like that. You can see a sneak preview of the Arctic Tundra episode here: http://www.lesstroudonline.com/video/season3teasearctictundra Note that it's only a preview.

HJ

Y'know, I bet there's a whole lotta those episodes he'd like to do over, but properly equipped and resourced instead. I know I would surely love to.

Please note that a Kcal is the proper scientific term for a food Calorie or a Big C Calorie as they are sometimes called.

"One food Calorie (1 kcal or 1,000 calories) is the amount of digestively available food energy (heat) that will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. Some advocate the convention of the capitalizing the C in these so that one food Calorie is equal to 1000 lowercase calories..." - Wikopedia.

i.e. 3000 kcal is 3000 Food Calories

Or to put it another way, using a survival mindset, about 3/4 lb of body fat.

Thank you for pointing that out. I always wondered what all the “kcal” stuff was about. I learn something new every day… like exactly how stupid our (American) measurement system is.

Kilocalories are sometimes also described as "Calories", while a single calorie is a "calorie"- the capital C is significant.

Again Bruce, and I'm not trying to pick a fight but I just don't get it, what are you basing your estimate of 3000 KCals on? That is a lot of energy expended, and I just don't understand how you are arriving at that number.

"Again Bruce, and I'm not trying to pick a fight but I just don't get it, what are you basing your estimate of 3000 KCals on? That is a lot of energy expended, and I just don't understand how you are arriving at that number."

Bruce might be including the effort to build all of the traps and snares, not just the guitar trap.

>>Does he demonstrate an expert approach to survival, I would think so.

Grylli Vanilli, an expert? Weekend warrior sham, yes. Hotel frequent flyer, yes. Expert, laughable. I won't let my children watch Idiot vs. Motel.

Les at least tries to show survival skills. He also tries to demonstrate a different skill each time, hence why he doesn't just pull out his shoelace and start a fire each time.

I'm sure some of us are fairly comfortable in our own environment, but if you were dropped into Africa or Arizona, you'd struggle too.

At least Les is authentic and doesn't demonstrate things that not only won't help you survive but actually increase your chance of failure.

As for the lean-to quote, I'm sure for his experience in a boreal forest, he's correct. A lean-to just doesn't offer sufficient protection here in Upper Michigan unless you are sleeping in front of a raging fire.