Les Stroud Versus Bear Grylls
I’m posting about this because I’ve become a fan of Les Stroud and his Survivorman series on Discovery Channel. Les truly goes it alone in the wilderness. He sets up his own cameras and kills his own food and manages to survive lonely, brutal conditions.
Bear Grylls, the British paratrooper who has a competing show on Discovery called Man Versus Wild, keeps a camera crew with him and doesn’t really tell the audience how to survive anything. Grylls performs stunts in the wilderness, such as drinking his own urine and drinking water squeezed out of elephant dung. Its like a contest of wills between Grylls and nature.
But now it seems that Bear Grylls has been faking it. UK’s channel 4 is investigating him for having slept at a hotel a few times when he was depicted on TV to be roughing it under the stars.
From Reuters here:
Bear Grylls is the star of “Man vs. Wild,” an increasingly popular series on Discovery Channel that recently concluded its second season. Each episode he parachutes into a different uninhabited territory without a map or much else in the way of camping equipment and spends several days trying to find his way back to civilization.
But this British adventurer is now the subject of an investigation by U.K.’s Channel 4, which already has confirmed that Grylls checked into motels on a few occasions when he was depicted on TV having slept under the stars. Other allegations have been made suggesting that the crew that records Grylls in action isn’t as hands-off as it might appear to viewers.
Truth be told, though, “Wild” isn’t so much 21st century “Gilligan’s Island” as it is a hybrid of “McGyver” and “Jackass.” Grylls has a knack for improvising solutions to dangerous predicaments and isn’t above grossing out everyone in the process.
Who can forget the time Grylls, burning up in the heat of the Moab desert, urinated on his own T-shirt, which he then wrapped around his head to cool his soaring body temperature. Or the time he hungrily bit the heads off maggots he found in a frozen animal carcass crushed by an avalanche, cheerfully explaining they were a good source of nutrition?
Grylls often commented on the painful loneliness of being alone in the wild, but unless his camera crew was staffed by bears, he did have some company out there.
So to combat the apparent fakery that has been going on with the Man vs Wild show, the show is supposed to become “more transparent” whatever that means. I guess it will show the cameramen sharing PB&J’s with Grylls around the campfire.
Les Stroud’s official site is here. Check it out, especially the FAQ and his Blog.
BEAR SUCKS ASS, LES ROCKS MY WORLD.
Who cares about a guy who roughs it for a few hours then goes to a hotel with his camera crew to drink beers?!
I WANT THE GUY WHO’S ACTUALLY ROUGHING IT, who actually could die if he doesn’t use his survival skills, and who has to go through the pain in the ass of filming his long shot walks away from the camera then have to go back to collect the camera (usually).
I am SOOO excited that a new season of Survivorman is starting soon.
I hear Survivorman’s next season will all be in HD too.
Get this, after I posted this story, another appeared on the wires that Bear Grylls faked a freakin’ bear attack on his camp!
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001320029-2007350072,00.html
WHAT AN ASS. I am blogging this.
Want evidence?
http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org/bearwiki/Main_Page
Also, he was never with the “real” SAS, but TA-SAS. He never flew over the Everest, was not the youngest Brit to reach the top and so on..
Poseur boy is a liar! Please spread the Truth!
OK, it’s real simple, if you like to watch exciting, thrill a minute TV, then watch Bear. However, If you want to learn what to do properly and how to actually survive in a real situation, watch Les. Bear is interested in one thing Bear, it should be called “The look at me and look at what I can do Show! That’s it, the guy is a total glory hound, period. Half the crap he does to “get out alive” will kill the average person – end of story. Yes look at what he has done, wow, climbed Everest, he’s an ex-special forces guy – a skydiver – yada – yada. That’s great and good for him, I’m sure his mom is proud. Does that make hi more qualified to teach survival than Les?
Hell no, if you go look at Les’s bio you’ll see that Les used to teach outdoor survival and camping and canoeing and yada, yada …. Les’s show is not action packed and a thrill a minute like Bear, that’s true but that’s not why I want to watch the show. It’s supposed to be education and show you how to survive.
You can all sit there in your armchairs and profess to know who’s best based on what you think and offer up your opinion, hell I’m doing it now but with a bit of a difference ….. How can “I” say that Bear’s actions are crap, where as Les’s info in MUCH more practical? It’s real simple … I go out and do it, I founded the Mount Royal Collage Climbing Club in Calgary when I was there as a kid taking Broadcasting. I KNOW ALL ABOUT CLIMBING! I also teach hunting and survival for the Alberta Hunter Education Instructors Association here in Calgary.
I teach people HOW to survive in those sort of situations and I’ve done it …. LOTS ! OK? Honest, I just got back from camping up in the Spray Valley in behind Canmore, AB five days ago and today’s date is Dec 27/08, so yes there was a tad bit of snow and it was -22 each night.
In a survival situation there is ONE key factor that Bear never talks about but Les constantly does – BEING ALONE. I can tell you from personal experience it matters, and it matters big time folks. It’s very easy to go out in a group and spend a night in the woods, survival situation or not, now try it alone. That one factor is why about half the students we take out for a solo survival night fail. That’s it … not because you have no gear or food or water, or its too cold, or too wet or anything, it’s being alone.
Now I have been camping and canoeing and climbing and going on survival trips as a soloing for years, heck I find camping alone VERY relaxing but it’s not for everyone, just try it and see. This summer go camping in a national park for one night and do it alone, you’ll see.
Let’s look at some of the shows and a thing called continuity ….
– If you watch Bear’s shows they are obviously fake and staged, I’ve seen him rap down waterfalls, which is very sexy and looks cool, done it once or twice myself. But with you rap on a SINGLE rope, you can’t recover the damm rope, yet the next scene he has it back.
– There’s also that clip on the web of him jumping over that “unstable” lava thing and it shows another guy doing it at the same spot in the next frame and then the camera pans left to show a highway. Also LISTEN to the corny dramatic music they have in the scene to inject drama. It’s a pretty common trick, go see the above Broadcasting Program I was in for reference, yep, been there done that.
– His gear just seems to magically appear when he needs it too. One sec he’s skydiving in to some location and yep it looks sexy as hell, but where’s the pack with the gear in it? Again in the next frame, there it is! Pretty impressive.
– Finally, tell you what ….go on a day hike and carry bugger all with you and then a week later go do the same hike and take a day pack with 40 lbs in it. Now you know what it feels like to carry 50lbs of camera gear with you.
Cheers’
Dave Cason
You people are stupid, they are both fooling you the viewer, by editing what you see! What about les getting scared a few times by an animal that is conveniently never caught on camera? You idiot’s can’t tell when they are trumping up something for ratings?? If you like one show and not the other even though they are almost the same in terms of adventure, then i’m afraid you suffer from the either or fallacy like every other fucking idiot on this planet!!!
Swole,
Big difference between being scared of an animal and faking a faking an attack by an animal, which Grylls has done.
Bear, Fake! ~~ Les Stroud The man! You like Bear? You eat twinkies.
What now??? Les is off the air!! Not Bear…
Point taken morons
You people really d talk some shit, its funny you think your opinion on this back water 3rd party hack web site really matters.
There both on TV and if ou think any of them really do the things hey say then your as fucking stupid as your comments make out.
most of you are just sad bloggers with no life, so you have to blog about other people.
The funny thing is Les got taken off the Air ha ha and Bear still has a show lol
End of story.
In response to comment #10, hi Bear. You either are Bear Grylls or a very adoring fan waiting for his chance to fellate Mr Grylls as he braves the dangerous halls of the Holiday Inn Express.