check this out---http://www.nfb.ca/film/survival_in_the_bush

with just an ax these guys jump into a flooded forest from a canoe and left on their own--real stuff--not a set-up..

COOL!

Thank you for sharing.

That was excellent Canoedog, and thank you.
I forgot how good some of the older Film Board footage was.

Watching that was a strange blend of old faded memories of stuff my father and grandfathers taught me that was from just before my time, and some stuff that was new.

I remember a freighter canoe like the one they went in with from when I was a kid. I think ours had a two and a half horse Johnson motor.

I have never seen a fire plow set like that used.
Certainly something to be tried.

I was shown that deadfall trigger once when I was a kid.
It was hard to get the uprights to fit right.
I wish they had shown more of that.

You can't catch Sturgeon that way any more at any place I know of because they are too scarce, but I bet Angus would have made a net and set it if the Sturgeon had not been in feeding on the clams.

Angus did an absolutely wonderful job on the canoe.
I haven't seen a birch tree as big as what he was using in years.
The same with the size of the bark sheets for their lean to.

I have only heard of one person still making bark canoes and he is somewhere in La Vérendrye.
I saw one of his canoes and the bark was used with the brown side to the water.
I don't remember his name now or know if he still lives. He was getting pretty old the last time I heard him mentioned, and that was more than 20 years ago.
I think he was Cree.

Thank you again.
If you find any more like this please do post them.

That was pretty cool. Thanks for posting it.

I loved how he said, "Alright Mr. Cameraman it's time to go!" Then some guy walks out from behind the camera, but the camera still pans and follows them up the river as they leave. LOL

It was staged, but still pretty cool.

The part about the bears disturbed me a little.

The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) is a treasure trove of some great documentaries of every kind. When I was in school, I remember watching many of the films they now also have placed online and opened to the public on Wednesday. The last day or so, I have downloaded 23 videos from their website to my pc for later viewing.

There is a lot of outdoor related video that can be searched for here.

Nicodemus--ya the bear part was very 1950's..but it did show that you could really make a trap with nothing but an ax and kill a bear--and that was no set-up..flys and all..
Sherpadog--20 something downloads!!!..no wonder i can get the loggers dance cartoon to download---
the canoe making one is great--same with igloo..

The canoe and igloo videos are great....highly recommended for all!

BTW, my downloads are up to 27 now and should taper off any day or so....

I've made plenty of practice deadfall and snare traps, so I know the concept.

The bear being dead didn't bother me, but rather the fact that there was so much of the show that was set-up, it felt to me that there might have been no need to kill the bear at all. Worse it made me suspect that someone went out and hunted a bear just so that they could place it in the deadfall. We didn't see it happen, and they very well could have killed the bear in any other number of ways.

To be fair the bear could have been killed in the deadfall as presented, but from the first moment they fudged the facts everything that followed became suspect to me. And the film was full of set-ups from start to finish.

I hope the Bear cub escape was the same so that the cub was not slowly strangled by the "cameraman's belt" as it grew, if it survived on its own at all.

I still enjoyed a lot of it, but it wasn't just three men in the bush filming whatever the day brought, no matter what they said.

Not unless they were using the axe to shave with too.
3 weeks in the bush and not even a 5 o'clock shadow?
I think you can be sure there was a full camp of support staff near.
I don't think they had video cams then, so I bet it was all film with all the lighting and processing crew required for that too.

I think the parts about the bear were real enough, even though setting up a camera and letting her eat the fish seems to me like they were baiting her into camp.

The skills they demonstrated were quite real, but I don't think you could catch many fish like that anymore.
Not because the technique is flawed, there just are not that many fish left.
I can remember catching pike in the spring when they were spawning on flooded meadows and spearing the sucker fish when they ran. That is not effective any more because the runs are much smaller for them now too.

I bet they didn't let the cub get away with the belt either.
I didn't see Mr. Camera's pants falling down as they were loading the canoe.

Our attitudes were different then, and this film was meant to be shown to children as well as adults, so to please the kiddies the bear cub gets to roam free instead of being killed.

A cub on its own is pretty well doomed. It wouldn't likely get to starve though, there are the wolves and bobcats who would enjoy it as a meal.
I suspect it got shipped to a zoo instead, but thats hard to know.

The fire making was real. I just have not seen a fireplow made quite the way he did it.
Also, judging from the number of cuts away and back in that part of the film it took him a lot longer to get it going than they showed. (Likely a LOT longer.)
I intend to try doing it his way once to see how it goes before I judge though.

well whatever it was, it was 1954, and for it's day good stuff and more that likely the first of it's kind..notice how the guy said "bush" like it was some unknown,wild place.also note how the indian slipped the ax into his belt.i watched another one about Gray Owl and his pet beavers and he did the same thing with the ax in his belt in almost the same moves.. the Blackfly song and cartoon is also good..