Survivorman 10 Days premieres Saturday, June 30

On OLN in Canada. I don't know about US channels. Got the PVR all set to record.

First stop: Norweigian mountains
What is different about this series is that each is 2-part episodes and Les is in the wild for 10 days instead of 7. My guess is that he will use liberal use of his Camillus knives. I hate to rag on the guy and fellow Canuck but bowing to commercialism knocks a point or two off the show for me.

In the US, the old episodes air on the science channel. Not sure if they picked up his new episodes as well.

His website says the new episodes will be airing on Discovery Science Channel in the USA.

http://lesstroud.ca/news/survivorman-returns

I set up my DVR to record all new episodes of "Survivorman" on any channel, but it didn't come up with anything to record for the upcoming period (I think the "period" is "the next two weeks" for my DVR programming guide).

Where did you hear the June 30th start date? I even went to the Science Channel website and searched their TV listings for June 30th and there was no Survivorman there (or anything with Les Stroud, even if the show has a new name).

I checked the OLN online schedule and sure enough, you friends up north get the first episode on June 30th. But it doesn't appear to be available for those of us in the USA at this time. :-(

http://www.oln.ca/schedule.php?date=2012-06-30

Imagine that Huh. The man has his own show and his own line of knives and by marketing them toghether it "knocks a point or two off" for you. Of course he should market his knives on his show. Are you suggesting you wouldn't if you were in his place? Give me a break.

Doug Ritter markets his knives on his website as well, does that also knock points away from the man for commercialism?

I'm not going to get into a silly worthless debate here. I just think it makes him look like Bear Grylis in commercializing his once novel show. If you want to discuss calmly, you can PM me.

FYI, I have a mixed opinion on Doug's knives too. Got an MK3 (looks pretty but feels all wrong to me) and I never use it because there I have better options. Comparing Doug's and Les's marketing of knives is illogical, an apple and orange would be a fairer comparison.

The show hasn't even aired yet. How do you know what he's going to do? You're just speculating, and bashing him based on your prediction. Talk about "silly worthless debate"...

I have no idea what this is supposed to imply. My logic is telling me by your statements that you would have a problem with watching Les strouds new show if (heaven forbid) he used it to advertise one of the knives to which he was key in designing. I drew attention to the fact that Doug Ritter owns this website/forum and also uses it to advertise his line of gear, to which you appear to have no problem.

I wasn't trying to debate anything silly or otherwise, I don't like Les Strouds knives personally, Nor do I like Mr. Ritters. (personal preference) But I would certainly not accuse a man of bowing down to comercialism for trying to make a living. Les Stroud put a lot of work into designing his line of gear so if he uses his show to hype a few of his knives from time to time then good for him. Since the man designed the dammed knife I would be kinda dissapointed if he DIDN'T mention it in his show. If I were lost for ten days in the middle of nowhere and could have any knife in the world with me it would probably be the one I designed as well.

I don't need to PM anyone to discuss anything calmly either. To imply that I would be upset because of anything a person would post here is insane. I know that Trying to win any arguement over an internet forum would be a complete exercise in futility so I wouldn't waste my time trying. I have my opinion, you have yours. If we need to run behind closed doors each time someone disagrees with each other then the point of an open forum is lost.

I just sometimes wonder what the view is like from atop such a high horse.

Gentlemen, please. We can agree to disagree. Let's not get into personalities.

Les is a class act, and I think we can rely on him to avoid the cheezy product placement shots that would distract from the program.

Let's stop talking about the knives in this thread.


chaosmagnet

Since we're not lucky enough to have this show available on the 30th (tomorrow!) here in the US, I set my DVR to record any "new episode" of "survivorman" on "any channel". So hopefully when the show finally does become available here, the DVR will pick it up even if I don't notice it when it airs. Could be many months from now for all I know. How did we ever live without these DVR's in the past?!

The real question is does Les bring his guitar for ten day trips or just the harmonica. I root for the harmonica because I can play Yankee Doodle and taps on that but only the chorus to smoke on the water on the guitar.

Seriously, I look forward to seeing his new show. I was disappointed when he stopped Survivorman but when he said it was just too hard on him to do all the schlepping of gear and survive and film it, I completely understood it. It hard fricking work. Best of luck to him I say.

And I own a BG fixed blade and a DR Mk3. I use both and actually really love both. I will not be buying one of Les's knives.

So tell us, is the new Survivorman (or whatever he is calling this new show) good, bad, ugly, sad, or ... ??

Would love to tell you but I failed at recording the show while I was watching a football game on another channel. Argh!

On the upside I caught several episodes of "Survive This! Season 2" which I thought was quite entertaining and informative. Better than the 1st season. Les takes a group of high school kids out to the middle of Northern Ontario, gives them some inital training and then sets them forth on his junior version of Survivorman. I give props to the final 3 kids (13-15) who displayed some pretty decent skills and no quit.

Did not watch this rats!...
Next time
Lee

I don't think we get "Survive this" here in the US. It was airing on Cartoon Network but apparently didn't pull in enough ratings for them to retain the show. perhaps I can find it on netflix. Or if anyone can direct me to a channel it might be airing in the US?

I missed the first 15 minutes, but the format is pretty much the same as his Survivorman series ... these are called "Survivorman 10 days." As the name suggests, the difference is he is on his own for 10 days instead of 7. For this reason, each special is comprised of 2, 1 hour segments.

I'm guessing those of us who liked his show will like these specials.

The premise of this first special is that Les is stranded in a car on an empty stretch of road in the mountains of Norway. Maybe I shouldn't mention it, but if one of his knives was used, it was his Helle Temagami (along with a nice axe & a folding saw).

Survivorman is one my all-time favorite shows! I'm glad he's getting some more content out there for his fans (and I count myself among them).

Watched the first episode of the new season. Very mixed impression. It looked like Les is intentionally making a lot of little mistakes, obvious even for a casual camper, loosing time and energy trying to fix them later. Or he is simply loosing the edge?

E.g.
Making his first fire with the gas from the car tank looked like a complete newbie's effort, barely corrected to something what looks like a success only by the video footage editing.

He has started scavenging the car's upholstery, ruining its insulation badly the day before he has decided to bug out, having a colder night in the car as the result.

At the end, his attempt to build a well known fir tree shelter was a complete failure, in my opinion (the actual result will be known in the next episode though). He has selected a completely inadequate fir tree in the first place. So it looked like he has heard something about this type of shelter, but did not research important construction details beforehand.

Also the stuck in the snow car was much better prepared than an average one (good survival car kit in the trunk, a sleeping bag...). Felt like an unfair initial approach, even though many of us have much better kits in our cars.

By the way, the entire ordeal of the episode one reminded me the Kim's family survival and death story of 2006. It looked like Les was trying-on their situation and showing how to avoid wrong decisions in similar conditions.

Waiting for the new episode anxiously, as this season start feels even more a reality-show-like now. Meanwhile, I have started watching Les's "Survive this" show with my 12yr old. Quite amusing and educational show indeed. Especially when you realize, that in a dare survival situation a little scared kid inside you or others may step forward more than one can expect.

I have also seen the first episode (both parts 1 and 2) and I have also seen the second episode, part 1.

In Episode 1, I was not as taken as Stroud's previous shows, but they are still notches above other similar shows. In the part 2 of Episode 1, I noticed something that just did not seem right to me. Without giving much away, Stroud finds a partial deer carcass and skin supposedly left behind by hunters. If you look closely and have paid attention to the weather Stroud is in, it is winter with temps at or just below freezing. In some scenes there are icicles on a building that are frozen..meaning there is no thaw drip which is also is indicative of ambient temps. Yet this deer carcass he finds, shows no sign of being frozen as the meat and skin appear to be completely thawed which is strange unless those hunters had been there only that same day. Had that deer been there for hours such as overnight, I would think that parts of it would of showed some signs of being at least, partially frozen.


So far, I have found Episode 2 to better then the first as given the location, Les seems to be in more in his element. Part 2 will air this Saturday night on OLN for us Canadian viewers.

Since we can't get this new series in the USA yet, I hunted down one of Les' other shows (I think he produces it or something) named "Dual Survival". It's on Netflix streaming. Only season 1, nothing from season 2 yet.

I found that a pretty good show as well. I liked Survivorman better, but Dual Survival is a close runner-up. One good thing about Dual Survival is that we don't have to look at Les' ghost-like face bobbing around in the dark right in front of the camera. It looked like infrared photography or soomething. That always spooked me out - kind of like the Blair Witch Project. I watched all ten available Dual Survival episodes across a week's timespan. There is certainly a vast difference in Cody's and Dave's survival styles. If I were in a bad situation, I would definitely pick Cody as my survival mate.

There's another Les show on Netflix streaming that I think I'll check out next. "Beyond Survival". See if that one's any good...

*** Possible Spoilers ***

I missed the first epsisode of his first outing and saw the second episode. The hunter's leftovers and the tracks seemed way too convenient to me. Les does set up his show to resemble scenarios that people might find themselves in and it looked he was going to great lengths to let people know that it was OK to use personal cabins, etc in an emergency situation.

Although, he doesn't come out and say it - I'm pretty sure this was a setup. To go 10 days without a reasonable amount of food would be very hard on a person's body and he has promised a full season of this. I am pretty confident that this was a pre-arranged food drop by his crew. He magically comes upon a snow trail left only the day before and this leads directly to the cabins and the carcass. I'm not saying that Les knew the details of the setup but that they agreed before hand that the crew would provide these food drops under the guises of the scenario.

Remember, Les and the team scout the locations, they know the terrain from maps and he usually gets prep training by a local (he did in the first couple of seasons anyway). It would be impossible for Les to completely feign surprise so he is probably not told the details of how he is going to be set up either. That way his assumptions while talking to the camera are quite real. This is not to suggest that the show is faked in any sense. He really is out there by himself doing both the camera work and the survival stuff. In episode 2, he really was in a near hypothermic scenario. Being soaked through and through and his only real alternative was to keep crawling down the snow covered slope to the base. He knew there was shelter near the bottom but did not know exactly what -- I expected him in a real life scenario to stop where he was and prep a make shift shelter and dry out instead of continuing down the slope.

I presume that Les has a fail-safe option he isn't showing the camera, perhaps a SPOT devise or something can he use to signal back to the crew that the day has gone OK or if he is in some sort of real emergency he can't handle.

I've now watched the 2nd scenario and I see a similar type of pre-arranged setup coming but I will have to wait to confirm this. My apologies if I have given away too much in the way of spoilers.

I liked the season 2 of "Survive This" a bit more than the 1st as he patterned it to be more like a youth version of Survivorman. Above all, Les wanted no comparisons with "Survivor". No social games and voting people off. He wanted people to take outdoor survival seriously and not as hyped up game. He got a fair bit of critism of Season 1 in the way it was edited on the personalities of the kids so they did some tweaking for the second season. The methods and scenarios the kids go through seem to be good lessons for novices and John Q Public rather than a hard core survival crowd which is the intent of the show in the first place.

I believe he does although I don't really know for sure what it is. I always assumed it was some kind of long range walkie talkie set up (the support crew is usually set up fairly close to Les's location, at least in the original survivorman series).

I forgot to mention that I'm watching the season 2. And I'm totally agree with you that this one is quite different from similar kids shows, which look more like sport games.

We're not getting that show here in the lower 48, at ;least not that i know of anyway.

Google it.

Well, I watched the first two episodes of "Beyond Survival". I doubt I will watch any more. They were mildly entertaining in places, but moved way too slow to keep me interested. I guess I'll just wait for the new Survivorman series to make it to the US or for Netflix streaming to pick up season 2 of Dual Survival.

On Saturday night I watched Episode II, part 2. The complete Episode II was IMO, much better then the first episode. As have I watched and re-watched Survivorman through the years, it has always been my opinion that Stroud seems to be more at ease and comfortable in certain locales and environments and I thought this especially in this episode.

That said, there were a couple of things that struck me as not quite right. Again without giving too much away for those who have not viewed it, Stroud mentions that it was midday and that the sun and heat was very hot. What I did notice though that if was midday, why was his body casting such long shadows from the sun onto the ground like it was more like evening time?. Maybe because I have never been in Mexico and that by midday, that this is normal or perhaps that Stroud's definition of midday is much later then what I consider (2-5 pm)?

Also one other aspect that did not seem quite right. A couple of times, there is a wolf that gets fairly close to Stroud. Nothing wrong there and was interesting. However next, there was a scene taken from overhead with the wolf trotting down the beach. With his limited camera gear and Stroud being the only one person there to film, I thought it was a bit odd that this scene could of been taken by him at that moment. To me it seems like there is another film crew close by...and there are also a couple of more brief scenes where I thought the same. The TV station up here usually will air repeats during the week so I will watch again to recheck my observations.

Lastly. To Stroud's credit, he came up with great method to "carry fire" from one camp to the next then light an actual fire from it. The next move to another area did not work as well but Stroud was still able to start a fire using a more traditional method. I won't give any further spoilers on this but if anyone is wondering, they can send a PM.

I believe it was a coyote or as Les pronounced it "cay-ot-tee". There must have been a second unit out doing background and aerial photography and they also spied the coyotes on the beach. This is very common in other shows, I never really noticed it before with Survivorman.

I didn't notice the inconcruence with the sun and shadows - I will have to rewatch to see what you mean. Midday or 12-1 pm the shadows should be at their shortest.

Les was rather proud of his new fire carrying method, even though it eventually did go out, it served him well for restarting his fire at his first stop. Perhaps he enjoyed it too much.
It was a certainly a lot less work than creating a fire bundle from scrap wood and grass.

I wasn't sure if it was a wolf or coyote as each time, I only caught the tail end of the scene...no pun intended.

As for the backgound or aerial camera work, it is a good addition to the show but takes away from concept of the show of Stroud being alone for 10 days unless the footage was taken before or after the 10 day period.

I don't recall the specifics of the shot, but he's also been known to set up cameras and leave them unmanned to gather footage ... maybe that could account for it? Then again, we only saw around 80 minutes out of his 10 days out there so maybe he did have the opportunity to gather some of that footage personally at some point.

The thing I found interesting about the fire scenes was I was almost positive I saw one of his new knife sheaths - with the included firesteel - hanging from his belt the whole time

Yes, you are correct, it is a coyote. I spot checked Episode 2, Part 1 which we have recorded. Stroud mentioned and filmed the coyote at about the 35 minute mark. Not sure how I missed that when I first watched the episode...

Yep, that was definitely the Camillus brand knife. I recognized the green accents on the knife and sheath. He used his Temagami in the first show - which makes sense to use his Norweigian designed knife in Norway!

Side question - anyone know many locations/shows he is doing this season?

I think that might be it for now. My understanding was he was moving to the special format instead of actually doing another actual season due to the physical demands of doing a full season's worth of shows.

It will be interesting to see if this is the actual end of the specials. I would think that Stroud probably has a few more planned and or finished as OLN ran a number of commercials promoting a new season and which I don't think that 4 x 1 hour episodes is the complete series due to the promotion the show has been given. I guess we will find out this Saturday night if a new episode airs or not...

Found the first part of 2-nd episode on Vimeo.

I came across some information about the US airings: He's back: 'Survivorman' returns to Discovery

It looks like a new episode will air on the Discovery Channel August 19th at 9 pm ET.

Thanks for digging up the information. I'm looking forward to the first airing here.

I believe that is the US debut of the series, being shown after the Olympics and not a continuation of the series or more episodes being shown in Canada. I'm not even sure there are more SM-10days episodes beyond these 4.

In other news from Les's FB page "last week shot a new pilot for a Survivorman series called - wait for it - 'Survivorman and Son' - thats right I said (and SON)". Yep, it looks like he is bringing the family into the show. I expect an abbreviated series - probably 4 episodes or so. I don't know how old his kids are but I am guessing late teens.

Wow! That sounds really great. Would be nice to see how to parent a young survival companion in a stress situation properly.

Right On!.
Lee

aw man, i missed it too