I was a scout master once. If I was in the same capacity, I would be be teaching the same same vision of self reliance.
Posted on 05/17/2009 6:05:22 PM PDT by appleseed
Scouts can earn activity badges for skills from skateboarding to global conservation, but the new chief scout could herald the prospect of members tackling some slightly trickier future pursuits – such as eating snakes and climbing Mount Everest.
Bear Grylls, 34, the former SAS man and survivalist who, as television viewers will know, long ago earned his stripes for both the above, said he would be encouraging more adults to volunteer so that 33,000 youngsters on waiting lists could join scout groups.
Grylls will become the youngest chief scout in the organisation's 102-year history later this year when he replaces the former Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan, and he spoke warmly of his boyhood memories of scouting. "I got a sense of identity and a sense of belonging from scouts. My love of the outdoors started with scouting. It was a real confidence boost for me and opened a lot of doors."
An author and public speaker whose television shows have included Man vs Wild, at 23 he became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, crossed the Atlantic Arctic Ocean in an open inflatable boat, and served three years in the SAS.
Grylls said that he hoped to increase the 90,000 adult volunteers offering more than 200 activities and to dispel the image of scouts simply singing around campfires in old-fashioned uniform
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I was a scout master once. If I was in the same capacity, I would be be teaching the same same vision of self reliance.
Great, he’ll be able to teach young kids to take stupid risks and hurt themselves.
Goofy guy though. And don’t let him teach outdoor safety. He’s had a couple owies lately (like almost cutting his fingers off a few weeks ago).
or how to go skinny dipping in any part of the world.
Self Reliant/Survivalist ping list
last I heard he broke his shoulder in a fall. how’d he cut his fingers?
Isn’t this the fraud who was busted sleeping at a hotel rather than “roughing” it?
No kidding. I don’t care what his credentials are, I’ll take my chances with Les Stroud because he doesn’t take stupid risks that need not be taken.
You would think that would be among the first rules of survival.
“Isn’t this the fraud who was busted sleeping at a hotel rather than “roughing” it?”
Yep the very one. There is video on Youtube of some of his things. The film crew walks with him and they stage each event. One of his scenarios was supposed to be remote, when it was actually within sight of the highway.
Yep.
One day Les Stroud will stumble across Bear Grylls’ decaying remains.
Read my tagline. Guess where I got that :)
He’s the guy featured on “The Soup” the other night, who took a hunk of bear poop and picked out undigested apple bits, splashed some water on the apple bit, and proceeded to eat it. The look on his face was priceless. Let’s just say it appeared that it tasted more like the poop than the apple.
Les Stroud is the real deal.
Bear’s fun to watch, and there’s some useful info mixed in with his shows - things like getting through the Everglades sawgrass if you need to with a stick. Les Stroud seems a bit more the real thing though.
Last month or so (both) seem to have been missing from their usual Discovery / Science channel homes. Wonder if some contractual issues are brewing?
Glad to hear Bear’s helping BSA.
In the litigious American legal climate today, there is no way I am involving myself in the Boy Scouts. Or anything like it that involves my engagement with your children.
I have a wee small aversion to the kinds of lawsuits that some of you folks just love to to file and that none of you decry.
Good luck with your next generation -- and what you're teaching them.
http://www.morungexpress.com/entertainment/23050.html
Intrepid TV adventurer Bear Grylls has had emergency surgery after almost severing one finger and slicing off the tip of another while filming his latest show. The star of Channel 4’s Born Survivor cut the middle finger on his left hand to the bone on a ‘razor-sharp’ bamboo shard during a trip to the Vietnamese jungle last week. The wound was sewn by doctors in Vietnam but Grylls, 34, was flown back to Britain, complaining of a lack of sensation in the finger.
The adventurer, who gives wilderness survival tips and demonstrations on his shows, posted a picture of his injury and the jagged lines of the stitches on his internet blog. ‘I got it sewn up but it was a bit of a quick job to see me through,’ he said. ‘Hence it looks a bit ugly and ragged. The production team flew me back to the UK but what concerns me is the lack of feeling in the end of the finger now. I also sliced off the tip of another finger, which bled like nobody’s business, but the raw flesh is covering up now, slowly. Dank, damp jungle conditions are bad for such injuries, trust me. Anyway, hopefully the nerve damage will repair and I can get back for the next show, God willing.’
Grylls, who has been forced to postpone filming until his injuries have healed, said filming the programme was ‘quite a mission’. ‘It reinforced the huge respect I have for any soldier who had to operate in those very intense conditions, especially for those who turned up with no jungle experience – it must have been hell on earth,’ he added.
A new Channel 4 Born Survivor series, which is also broadcast around the world as Man vs Wild on the Discovery Channel, begins next weekend, with Grylls once more stranded in remote locations with a camera crew to show off his survival techniques. Last December, Grylls and his crew had to be airlifted out of Antarctica after he broke his shoulder in a fall. The Eton-educated former SAS member had been travelling on wind-powered skis, propelled by kites.
Scouting is just one generation away from oblivion. Bear may be a bit nutty, but at least he’s helping to keep it alive.
Which one is the guy who never seems to ever be able to get any of his tricks to catch food to actually work?
“Which one is the guy who never seems to ever be able to get any of his tricks to catch food to actually work?”
Bear is the one that usually relies on his camera crew to catch fish. That and the hotel pancakes.
OK kids, the very first thing you do when alone and trying to survive long enough to reach civilization is to do whatever you can in a bold effort to break at least one extremity, preferably a leg.
If it is cold and you have no food or outside source for heat, or fresh clothes and are alone, then leap into a freezing stream, you get extra credit if you can leap from a height guaranteed to break a leg if you hit a shallow bottom or a rock.
Remember kids when trying to make it out alone, always be hasty and find the most risky, injury prone manner to travel, leap, jump, rock climb, do whatever it takes to make a great show of it and to flaunt the possibility of losing mobility.
I don’t think it’s Bear. Doesn’t look like him. I know one of them is always near starvation out in the wilderness because any plan to catch food involving more than reaching down and picking it up never actually works.
A manly man. Nothing effeminate, mincing, or metrosexual about him. A great pick.
I know what you’re saying as far as lawsuits goes.
Been there and done that. I’ve come to the point that I don’t care what comes from my every day actions because I know what I see what is happening and I don’t like it. I teach my kids the way I think I see fit. I’ve had some shtf in my own life and I’ll live it for rest of my life. If someone teaches that life ain’t all fluff and roses, I can relate to that. Just my opinion and the way I see things.
Properly supervised I agree that this is a good thing for scouts.
Wonderful.
This guy is an idiot, he pats himself on the back for taking ridiculous risks while presenting himself as a “survival expert”, exactly the kind of person the Scouts need to be presenting as a role model to their members.
It seem not even the Scouts are immune to stupid.
That would be Les Stroud, Survivorman.
He may not manage to catch any food, but he’s an order of magnitude more capable than “bear” in any survival situation.
The scouts have a serious PR problem, and he should help with that.
“He may not manage to catch any food, but he’s an order of magnitude more capable than “bear” in any survival situation.”
he does ok on the food. I think its realistic on what you can do out there. Not too many pancake houses out in the boonies.
To all the naysayers on here who think he takes too many risks.
Les Stroud is on his own, that is why he doesn’t take risks. Bear Gryllis has a camera crew and he jumps into dangerous situations because he’s trying to teach people what would happen in a worst case scenario.
He jumps into a bog to show you how to get out, he jumps into a pond covered with ice to show you how to get out. Les doesn’t do that because he seriously might die.
Totally different types of shows. One is not better than the other, they are just different.
Gryllis does some seriously stupid crap to sensationalize his show. I’m sorry but there’s no good reason to leap from a cliff face into a tree as a means of getting down. That could get him killed regardless of who he has with him.
That said, I’m sure he has the skills and I would like to think he wouldn’t take the same risks in a real survival situation.
‘If all they need is a flashy, self promoting figurehead with no substance, “bear” is their man. “
I don’t like him either but I bet he will attract young kids into the Scouts. And that is a good thing.
The normal guys will be the ones that keep kids from getting themselves killed.
LOL
Interesting tidbit about Bear Grylls.
When asked what was his scariest moment on the show, he replied it was in the US Everglades when he had to swim across a river where there were alligators.
He and his crew watched the water for an hour (looking for bubbles indicating alligators) before he swam across.
This one is the real deal - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpCkhqJs2tc
This shows his crew - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT6Bh3A0Fu0
Alligators in the everglades are very unlikely to bother you. I was down there kayaking and the guide said if we fell out and stuck our foot in its mouth we might get bit. Unless its mating season or someones been feeding them they rarely bother humans.
I’ve been diving in a spring fed river with a 9’ gator not more than 30 feet away. Water was crystal clear so it looked bigger.
Man vs Wild is a study in activities that will get you killed in a real survival situation.
I do enjoy the show but I enjoy it as a “straw man” starting point for me to consider what *I* would do in such a situation.
I find that Bear is overly aggressive/foolhardy at times, typically choosing a reckless but speedy method of moving forward that would likely result in immediate death or in an injury followed by death in a real survival situation. Examples of this are as follows:
+ Climbing down the rock face/cliff in the Sierras
+ Floating down the near freezing river in the Sierras just prior to the sun going down
+ Jumping off the cliff into a pool of unknown depth in the Rockies in order to escape from a bear that he never heard or saw
+ Floating down the near-freezing river in the Rockies rather than hiking down through the forest
+ Climbing down the near-freezing waterfall in Alaska to avoid going through the thorny (and appropriately named) “Devils Club” plant
+ Climbing through a glacial ice cave of unknown stability and depth and without knowing *exactly* where it goes
+ Swimming across the lake in the Sierras rather than hiking around
+ Swimming *under* the log and debris dam in the Utah slot canyon
However, these stunts can be instructive if you just ask yourself what you would do as a reasonable alternative if you were faced with such a choice.
TM
What happened to Bubble? "Gah" Those cruel bastards!
If you haven’t already, post 18 describes how he nearly cut off his fingers (2 of them). Doofus!
Weren't you making fun of Bear for taking unnecessary risks? :)
True enough, he has had some success.
I like Les Stroud because he shows his failures as well as his successes and usually explains why it didn’t work or why it should have and just bad luck struck.
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