kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

just goona post about him, top bloke one of the few things worth watching on tv these days

ajm

He donates free places on his survival courses for the marines apparently too!

Cyberevo

iTrader: (1)

The guy must be gifted, he is so knowledgable at such a young age.

Nicks VR4

Mmmm not AFAIK

Top gezzer

See link from the observer interview April 2005

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magaz...466705,00.html

Spoon

He was on Richard and Judy a few weeks back.

sti-04!!

Watched him on BBC2 last night

Totally amazing

Abdabz

I'd like to put him in a modern office for a week to see if he could survive Watching him hunting the photocopier would be most amusing...

Nicks VR4

Works fine here mate

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magaz...466705,00.html


Ray Mears, bushman, 41, London

Interview Tom Templeton
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer

I grew up with a love of tracking foxes, but I didn't have any camping equipment. My judo instructor told me to use survival skills, and the door opened. I stepped through it and have been going ever since. The more you learn, the more comfortable you feel, the more you have a changed view of the world around you.
There's always an excitement when you're walking in the African bush. You're not top of the food chain.

For most people an outdoor experience is a temporary affair. They are out there as long as the food lasts or their clothes are dry and then they have to come back. The challenge is to learn bushcraft skills well enough so that in whatever new environment - from the Amazon to the Arctic Circle - you can stay there indefinitely. I can't claim to be able to do that in all environments, but that's what I'm working towards.

The jungle is just like Surrey, but it's bigger and hotter.

We have a tendency in our society to talk about aboriginals like they're children. It's a Victorian thing: we see anyone who doesn't wear clothes as being further down the evolutionary ladder towards the orang-utan.

I always talk very carefully about deserts because when people get into trouble in the desert, the clock is ticking. It is probably going to be too hard for the amateur visitor to the desert to obtain water. I'm being brutally honest. Going into a desert on foot and trying to find water is something I did many years ago and I really enjoyed it. There are times when your whole soul is tested by the absence of water: it's like being in a room with no oxygen and you get to the last gasp before you find the opening that gives you more air.

One human lifetime is not long enough to learn all the things that need to be learned.

All the aboriginal people see animals as deities - the Inuits, the Amazonian indians, Australian aborigines, every one of them. In the Amazon, people who have been out hunting use narcotics to go into a trance to appease the animals that they've hunted. If you go out with a Canadian Indian who cuts a tree down, after he's gone, very often on the stump of the tree there'll be a little bit of tobacco as an offering, and if there's no tobacco he'll have thought about the gift. Nothing is for free in nature.

In really desperate circumstances people have shot larger herbivores, like elephants, and drunk the liquid from the stomach. To do this, collect the foul-looking green mass from the stomach, wrap it in a cloth and express the moisture by wringing it tightly. The disgusting liquid that results is drinkable, but should be left to clarify first. You can speed up this process with the addition of a small piece of liver.

Personal hygiene is important in the field. I carry with me pine-tar soap, effective in removing parasite insects, as an antibacterial antiperspirant, and for removing pine resin from skin or clothing.

The way people in rainforests see the world is very different to the way people on the Serengeti see it. I'm sure that people who have lived thousands of years in a habitat have specially adapted their senses to that environment. Many people find woodland claustrophobic, but I love it. I feel exposed if I'm on grassland. I'm not afraid of darkness either, and I think there's a link there.

When I travel I can use aboriginal-style navigational techniques to verify that my global positioning system is working. I'm lucky, I can have one foot in the Stone Age and the other in the modern world.

I track anything that comes along. Time disappears. I can get caught up in these things for days, even weeks. In tracking you use all the senses. I love sniffing the air and knowing what's going on. You follow an animal by the traces it leaves behind, two day's scent marking, footprints, disturbance of leaves or gravel, the minutest bits of information. You read the life of the animal. If you follow a person you can sometimes read hesitation or thoughts which the person may not even realise they've had.

If you put a budgerigar in a cage and you don't clean that cage out, the budgie will eventually die because of all the filth that builds up. We are in a cage called the earth. We have to take care of cleaning that cage.

Long pork is New Guinea pidgin-speak for human meat, because of the long bones. I've never eaten it, but if I was hungry I would eat you. Someone said that to me once. I pointed out I'd be more useful alive.

· Bushcraft Survival (£20, Hodder & Stoughton) by Ray Mears accompanies his new BBC2 series, Ray Mears' Bushcraft, Thursdays 8pm

Abdabz

Poison darts out of pic biros, copy paper to start a fire, uhu glueing the mouse mats together to catch the water from the sprinkler system for drinking etc...

Nicks VR4

http://www.raymears.com/shop_item_de...&itemType=DVDs

The Zohan

Never seen him interviewed.

He is great to watch, his show are just compulsive viewing. He realy brings the subject to life.

Top Bloke IMHO!

warrenm2

interesting bloke - but lets face it - he really needs a girlfriend!

Jamie_B

It makes a change to actually watch something interesting could come in useful one day, you never know when you'll need to make a canoe.

TopBanana

where can i get a knife like his?

Notorious

Just chap the door of your friendly neighbourhood Chav!

Iwan

http://www.raymears.com/shop_item_de...utting%20Tools

I have one, it's a truly lovely bit of kit. Ridiculously expensive but you get what you pay for, well worth it in my opinion.

pete1977

He,s known in certain circles as "fatty mears"PMSL.

warrenm2

Yeah - who ate all the flies?!

NewLabour

The flies usually eat Ray and I'd imagine with his wholesome lifestyle he makes good eating.

Anyway as he's a survivalist I imagine the fat is his contingency against lack of food.............