Survivorman or Man vs. Wild
 

I have to ask...for those of you who have seen them, which do you like best. Survivorman (Les Stroud) or Man vs. Wild (Bear Grylls).

I know Grylls is a pretty tough SOB when it comes to eating nasty shit and taking unnecessary risks...but I have to go with Les Stroud.

LOL, I'll be embarrassed if no one else has ever seen the shows..

Never seen Survivorman but I have seen Man vs. Wild and that guy is pretty impressive. I remember one episode where he was drinking water and said, " well there is life swimming in the water so it very well might me drinkable." Then that night he does his little night cam thing and all of a sudden starts throwing up... I just couldn't stop laughing. I'll have to check out the otherone.

LOL, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. You ain't surviving if you're lying around in the woods dying from giardia or something! I do get a kick out of the show though. He's always taking fish out of the river and biting into them raw, eating grubs and worms, shit like that.

I've never really watched Survivorman but Man vs Wild has to be one of the most entertaining shows out there. My two favorite moments is when he bit into a baby snake while it was alive and when he somehow managed to club a hare by throwing a stick across an entire field...the guy has skills :biggthumpup:

just watched Man vs wild for the first time like 2 weeks ago. havent seen the othe show though. He is pretty bad ass. sorta like the Mcguyver(spell?) of the wild

Yeah, Survivorman was the first show. There both good in different ways. I like Survivorman the best because it's just him all by himself and he films it all himself. He doesn't have a film crew and a survival expert accompanying him. But no doubt, Grylls has skills. And I like the show. I just feel like there is more of pure entertainment thing going on.

But I just love this stuff in general. Survivorman will have a new season soon. They have to film all the trips and edit and all that.

I'm not much of a TV viewer. Discovery rocks though.

His name is Bear Grylls, hes gotta be better

I will have to say, at about 1999, the Discovery channel has become exponentially better. They started to see that they could gear to the "average Joe" crowd that is into Manly things, i.e., building motorcycles, Man vs. wild, Dirtiest Job, military weapons, Deadliest Catch, etc.
Discovery is definitely top 10 channels IMO.

WELL.......bear is an x-sas operator for british special operations...our delta force training is based on their training....SOOOO, in my opinion he is tougher but he also has a camera crew follow him around. Survivor-man is all by himself and carrys his own cameras making for a better show...in my opinion.

That's basically how I feel. I find Bear entertaining. But altthough I know I'll probably never need it fact is I couldn't smack a hare with a stick thrown accross a field :biglaugh:. But I could set the traps like Stroud does.

I just have to wonder sometimes when Grylls is traversing this difficult terrain like it's the most harrowing thing in the world but yet there's at least one guy traversing the same terrain alongside him carrying a camera focused on him....hmmmm....who's got the tougher job? Les has to travel the same ground twice in order to set up camera shots. Not exactly a wimp in his own right :)

bear is crazy, I saw one episode where he was in Australia he ran out of water so he drank his own pee. That takes some guts I have a hard time with some supplments. Survivor-man is just as crazy and all alone plus he doesn't have the training bear has. So, I would say both shows are good but I like bears more because he seems to have new episodes more often.

^^^That's just because the Man vs. Wild show just began so you're seeing new shows from the first season. Survivorman is in the process of making a new season of epsiodes. Pretty soon you won't be seeing any new Wild shows either for a while. Which is good since they'll usually be new episodes of one or the other as long as the shows survive.

I have watched both shows and really enjoy them. I feel sorry for the Survivorman guy because is has to deal with the isolation of being by himself in these situations so it seems more real and hardcore to me. The guy also has to lug around all that camera gear, that must suck. Not to take away anything from Man vs. Wild cause I honestly find that more entertaining! Both are great though.

Hands down, Survivorman.

And a lot of that choice comes down to what's been mentioned already... the guy on Man vs Wild isn't out there alone. He's got crew with him all the time. Whereas, on Survivorman, yeah he's got crew close enough for rescue if he direly needs it. But they're not two feet behind him (helping) the whole time.

The last eopisode of Man vs Wild I watched was where he was out in the Glades. I found myself nit-picking that whole episode. He's showing how to make a bed that's raised so that he can get out of the water and away from gators. Then he says build a small fire at one end. And gee, how convenient, he's got flint rocks with him. How many people that have run aground and destroyed their boat in the glades are carrying flint rocks?? I'd venture a guess at hardly any of them.

The next morning, he's showing to create a makeshift filter to fill his canteen with water by using his shirt to strain the dirt and leaves. He throws his dirty sopping shirt up onto his raised bed. Camera cuts and 30 seconds later in the playback, he grabs a clean dry shirt from where he had thrown the yucky one.

Not that dude doesn't have some great skills, but there's just too much outside interference for Man vs Wild to be a true "survival show" to me.

But on Survivorman, he only gets what a 'normal' person would have if caught in a similar situation. Like the one where he was in the Arizona desert for example. Scenario is that he's out biking for the day, wrecks/gets a flat/whatever, and all he has is the bike and what was in his pack, which is typical of what a person out cycling would have: a multi tool, water, and some snacks. That's it. And he shows people how to actually survive if that were to happen. MUCH more entertaining and informative to me.

Just my $0.02 :D

Absolutely, that's exactly the what makes me like the show more.

There was another show that wasn't Survivorman but featured Les Stroud. A couple (severly uprepard) got caught out in a severe blizzard in the middle of no where with hardly anything except some snacks from a convenience store. They had a baby an almost froze to death trekking out of there.

Les recreated the situation and showed how to use various parts of the truck to make some insulated waterproof snow shoes (Eskimo style) and all sorts of other gear. He also started a signal fire with the truck battery. That is a realistic situation. It's the same thing that makes me like Survivorman so much more. Like you said he starts out only with gear a person might logically have when caught unprepared after an accident or something.

Again their both entertaining. I just wondered if people who had seen both had the similar thoughts or if I was just nit-picking :D