View Full Version : Scotsman Crying in the Yukon - Part 2
Watch the worlds worst 'survivalist' cry for another hour :biggrin:
No, no, that's unfair. I'm sure he'll be adjusting to his environment now....and won't be so emotional.
27 minutes!! There was definitely a whimper at 27 minutes!
hunterman
17-09-2009, 20:49
lol the mans obsessed with bears
why go to a place full of bears then crap yourself all the time
he is a dab hand with the shot gun ain't he lol
I still don't understand why he moves but leaves the bloody canoe behind, he could have got up that lake in half a day in the canoe, but instead it took him 3 days! Even if I had made the same decision as him, I would have unpacked that bergen, lashed all the dry bags together and launched them into the lake and dragged them behind me. They'd float no problems, and I'd just keep my bedding, food and weapons on me. That canoe would have saved him so much effort and I would ditch that bloody fishing rod and get some night lines out pronto! And entice a bear in, the meat on it would keep you going for weeks! And you could make a back scratcher with the claws!
Ought to keep his mouth shut a bit more and stop all the blubbering, might save some precious calories
I know, I know.
He's just not cut out for it.
I feel sorry for him a little....cos I wonder what I'd be like.
I guess I don't really know if I'd turn in to a sniveling wreck either :rolleyes:
30 days by yourself would turn anyone a bit mental, and the fear of bears is messing with his head constantly. To be fair, he has seen more squirrels then bears and squirrels are vicious little bastards! Maybe he is worrying about the wrong thing!
iamasmith
17-09-2009, 21:50
I don't know.. playing devils advocate so I don't necessarily believe in the right or wrongs of what he's done.
Last week he had a Moose close enough for a shot and he's armed to the teeth. He has two decent ranged weapons and he could have had enough food for a month off the Moose but he wasn't allowed to shoot it.
He didn't go into this as a survival exercise, if he did he wouldn't have rules to play by. I know that he was airlifted 7 weeks into the exercise but some of it you have to blame on that he is playing by extra rules.
Switching over again, whilst he knows about berries and is blasting squirrels to waffle with that shotgun he is still thinking about catching Salmon whilst we haven't heard about what lives naturally in those rivers and lakes rather than passing through like Salmon.
I don't honestly know if he is making good choices.. it looks like a ripe area but he's only had a few meets with the plant folks to learn about the local berries? are you going to remember that weeks on when you haven't seen the 'lobsterthermidorefruit'?.. he obviously hasn't considered (this far) trapping and having tools do the work for you when you need to be getting on with something else and making your resources work for you independently. Possibly part of the rules that he needs to abide by.
What I think we assume is that he's uneducated and inexperienced and we are possibly right. Being reasonably intelligent and adaptable he possibly is but what we don't know is some of the extra constraints he's working in.
If I was doing something like this myself, for example, I would want to practice trapping and know how successful I was at it prior to doing it long term.. this is a voluntary venture and it has rules that don't come into play in a real survival situation.
Bah, I'm not sure what my point is in some ways. It's a crap situation for living, if you have these rules that have no bearing on the here and now, and he planted himself in it and wasn't prepared so maybe he deserves all the criticism he gets.
Knowlege is good, experience that you have lived by is what you need though.. doing this for real unless we all seriously break the rules, how equipped are we to do 'the survival thing' if we live in the UK. We look at these rich habitats but how confident are we all that our snares will catch things (how often?) and would we feel confident about living off that?
I don't know, experienced hunters may look at his situation and say it's a blast. I think he needs to live by everything he needs to exploit for that long and in a region like that.
Building a secure home seems to be something he's missing though... DUH!.
(they do say "beer before wine will make you feel fine...", but it does make you ramble on a bit :))
I just cannot fathom some of the choices in kit. A fishing rod? I'll have a gill net thanks! Paddle out in the canoe (That he left behind! Did I mention that already?) and drop that bad boy off, if you fail to catch anything one day you're bound to get something the next! I doubt he'd go a week round there with a gill net and not catch anything. I'd have night lines over the river all over the parish and deadfall traps and snares out everywhere. I think at one point it said he had 20 snares out, considering the size of the place that isn't really that many. If he was on a warren in UK then 20 may do the job but he is on game trails in the back end of beyond.
This isn't his fault though. I do believe his training is minimal; if he had been given better advice he could have gone the distance, of that I am sure. This is an exercise in futility, I cannot believe how scrawny he looks and to put a person in that position just to get ratings on the TV is a poor show IMO. He has now got to the stage where only a large animal would tip the balance, he would never be able to keep up with the trap lines and hunting when he is losing so much weight and his health is so obviously deteriorating. I still think he is a brave man to have tried this experiment out, trapping is a bit of a game of luck really, and once your traps are ineffective then you are losing the game.
Intertidal
18-09-2009, 11:23
Saw this prog for the first time last night. Mildly interesting, but like others have said - Why?
I think its just down to reality TV type bo***cks.
Putting a wimpering, chatty, less than competent soul centre stage is perceived to be more interesting and make better TV than having someone who knows what they're doing and just gets on with it.
I think I'd 'tuned out' at the attempted squirrel shooting stage - did he miss it with the shotgun?
Nick
did he miss it with the shotgun?
Nick
What do you think? He couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo!
What a contrast from BCUK!
Was anyone else shouting "JUST EAT THE SUPPLIES YOU EJIT!!!"
No food = no energy = unable to get more food.
He should of filled his belly and put more energy and time into getting more food. If he didnt have any more "luck" trying to find food he should of just hit the button...
He seemed to have mixed up sport fishing with fishing for food. He also didnt seem very interested in hunting at all which was madness. The snares he set seemed to be way to big and the runs didnt seem to be closed down enough? I have only used snares a couple of times as i dont like them but with my little experience of snaring they seemed wrong?
I hear the comments about the canoe but if you have never paddled maybe you would be more wary about a canoe? Must have been some reason he didnt use it.
I loved the cast iron pots and cooking equipment, i was waiting for the shot of his mule to carry all this stuff :rolleyes:
I will be tuning in again as its entertaining. :)
HillBill
19-09-2009, 18:56
He just didn't make nowhere near enough good decisions for lady luck to be on his side. He's out of his depth IMO nothing more nothing less.
As the saying goes "Fortune favours the prepared mind".
Then theres the 7 "P"'s :rolleyes:
Well, I think he is a God Damned hero!
And my wife likes his butt!
HillBill
19-09-2009, 18:59
Well, I think he is a God Damned hero!
And my wife likes his butt!
3 months in an area like that with no one around with the gear he had really does sound like heaven from where i sit.:wink:\\:D/
3 months in an area like that with no one around with the gear he had really does sound like heaven from where i sit.:wink:\\:D/
Admit it, you like his butt!
:finga:
:lmao::lmao::lmao:
I scribbled this in response to the view that he was doomed to fail from the start due to the calorie counter rule which is annoying me. Over at BCUK they are getting a big bogged down in the science of survival and while the numbers may add up (and I am not disputing that they do) there are certain implicit assumptions which affect them mainly to do with skill.
We are forgetting that indigenous and non indigenous peoples were able to survive for lengths of time alone. Maybe not years in the main, though there have been several cases of this as well.
Lets establish the longest survival time without calories.
This is 382 days. It wasn’t in the wilderness but in Dundee. He was overweight but motivated. He received a daily vitamin pill. He was ambulatory, cheerful and tested normal but with slightly lowered blood sugar. (see “Features of a successful therapeutic fast of 382 days duration” Postgraduate Medical Journal 49 (mar 1973) p. 203-09
We do not know the longest survival time in the wilderness for sure but perhaps this will do.
Four sailors, left with only a musket, 12 ball and charge, one knife, one axe, a small kettle, 20lb. of flour, a tinderbox, a pouch of tobacco and 4 wooden pipes, survived a shipwreck on the coast of Edeoya Island from May 1743 to August 1749. (Shipwrecked on the top of the world. David Roberts 2003 Time Warner Books).
Obviously four is not the same as being alone though company brings its own problems. What is relevant here is that it was in the Arctic at 77 deg N (8 deg north of the northernmost point of the Yukon) and that they ate an almost entirely meat diet. With the 12 rounds gone they made lances and killed polar bear. From the polar bear sinew they made bowstring and from driftwood a bow. Having a ranged weapon they added fox and smaller creatures to the caribou and bear.
Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, survived 96 days on a ice flow eating only meat. He carried on living for years among the Inuit eating their diet. He ate only meat for a year in an monitored experiement in New York and remained healthy. He died at 83years after having eaten meat and offal mainly for much of his life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson) Read his books and scientific papers.
As for fit young Western men, forget it. Reasonable health is all you need and the right attitude.
At Wrangel Island (71deg N) North of Siberia in the Arctic Ocean, 4 Western men, with some Arctic experience, were left in September 1921 with 6 months provisions expecting to live off the land for 12 months. They failed and 3 men left with the sled leaving their Alaskan Inuit woman and a dying friend behind in January 1923, 15 months later. Left on her own, she trapped fox, hunted seals and kept the man alive till April. She was rescued in August 1923. She was the only survivor. She managed two years with 7 months effectively on her own. (Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven) http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Blackjack-Story-Survival-Arctic/dp/0786868635 (http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Blackjack-Story-Survival-Arctic/dp/0786868635)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Blackjack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Blackjack)
All I am saying is that, mental health aside, with the requisite skills you can survive on a hunting and trapping diet indefinitely, barring accidents.
While I think 50 days is pretty good for a modern man (and we should not be too hard on Ed), in the annals of survival he is a nonstarter.
Celt_Ginger
20-09-2009, 07:28
He should have phoned for a takeaway.
Firecrest
20-09-2009, 09:06
well I admire him for what he is doing, you only learn through mistakes and I bet he will know a lot more about actually surviving at the end of his stay than most people on forums will know.
Ps - he probably couldnt canoe owing to Tin Cup Holiday Lodge being on the other end of the lake (8 miles or so) not as `wildernessy` as you might think.
Celt_Ginger
20-09-2009, 09:45
You see, He could have phoned for a take away after all.
Robevs73
20-09-2009, 18:21
I just cannot fathom some of the choices in kit. A fishing rod? I'll have a gill net thanks! Paddle out in the canoe (That he left behind! Did I mention that already?) and drop that bad boy off, if you fail to catch anything one day you're bound to get something the next! I doubt he'd go a week round there with a gill net and not catch anything. I'd have night lines over the river all over the parish and deadfall traps and snares out everywhere. I think at one point it said he had 20 snares out, considering the size of the place that isn't really that many. If he was on a warren in UK then 20 may do the job but he is on game trails in the back end of beyond.
This isn't his fault though. I do believe his training is minimal; if he had been given better advice he could have gone the distance, of that I am sure. This is an exercise in futility, I cannot believe how scrawny he looks and to put a person in that position just to get ratings on the TV is a poor show IMO. He has now got to the stage where only a large animal would tip the balance, he would never be able to keep up with the trap lines and hunting when he is losing so much weight and his health is so obviously deteriorating. I still think he is a brave man to have tried this experiment out, trapping is a bit of a game of luck really, and once your traps are ineffective then you are losing the game.
i compleatly agree with every thing you said. you saved me a lot of typing and i am really slow!
Davey569
21-09-2009, 08:33
One thing I dont understand is in the first week he explains how he has to drop off his tapes at the other end of the first lake. But then he makes a three day treck to a new camp, does this mean that for 6 out of 7 days in the week he will be travveling back to drop off his tapes?
Edit: Also, how could he be oblivious to the fact there was a lodge there when he has a map?
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