Survivorman | Boreal Forest | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Les Stroud

I just heard something big crack [Music] [Music] the Canadian North is one of the most vast areas of wilderness on the planet the forest here reaching from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains is the largest tract of unbroken forest in the world every year nearly 2,000 people are lost out here and have to face dangers ranging from the biting cold exposure starvation and even predators this week I'm stranded here miles from the closest human being I have seven days to not only survive but find my own way out all without shelter or water and with only one match Canadian North is magnificent this time of year nights are clear and cold and the bugs are all gone if you're lucky you get to experience the first winter snowfall love to reward myself with a late fall canoe trip problem is when you're completely alone if something does go wrong that's serious all right here we go even the most experienced paddlers can be hit with you it can't happen to me syndrome cases on a river like this canoe can be gone for days downstream camera crew leaves me alone now completely alone I'm soaked to the bone that looks like it's gonna rain and sun's about to set seven more days the first thing I have to assess is my situation and get my head straight the decisions made after an accident like this often define whether you're going to survive or not it's the hikers that often or lost hunters that often panic set in they don't think about making a shelter they don't think about sitting down and staying calm often what happens is they just take off and they going pretty much as fast as they can try and get out because they're there they're certain but just around the corner is gonna be the trail that they lost or the road or their car or wherever the parking lot wherever it was they left to go on that hike generally speaking though they never find it see what's in the pack all right camera camera gear cheated a little as the camera I'm using right now and there's another tripod in the case but inside of rain pants spare fleece it's gonna help oh yeah my hat a handful of cashews and there's a little bit of beef jerky in there one match and a Swiss Army knife we've got a great discovery over here on this side of the river his big flat rock is gonna be a great spot for me to get a huge fire going to try and dry out huh the good news is that it's not raining yet bad news is is that it's snowing not very much but it's knowing I better get the fire going soon this big rock area in here might make for a great shelter area if I can build a big fire all along here and reflect the heat back to me later in the night this guy's a little bit in the way would helped a lot more if I'd out an axe gathering firewood without an axe not easy reduce to pretty much a lot of small wood thanks a lot of gathering ok time to use up a one-match cuz I gotta get dry and I gotta get dry quick success with my one and only match it's been over an hour since I fell in the water and I've remained soaked to the skin ever since on this cool autumn day in great danger of hypothermia you know it took me probably nearly two hours to get those clothes dry now my job is just to keep that fire going long as possible but night is coming in on me quick it's not gonna be a warm one in a couple hours or at least when this fire dies down I'll just sit here and wait for it I'll then push all the coals up against the big rock take all these boughs and put them down and sleep on top with their nice warm bed basically all the heat from the rock coming up through the boughs I call it my Jeremiah Johnson shelter actually it's not a shelter at all if the wind picks up or if the rain comes down heavy or wet snow I'm a long wet night hypothermia could chill me to the bone and kill me quickly but it isn't the only danger I'm faced with in this remote Canadian wilderness most times hypothermia doesn't occur in the winter it happens now in the fall of the year when the snow and the freezing rain can catch you by surprise but there's more this is the rutting season for the bull moose and at this time of year it's the most dangerous animal in North America okay this is pretty much how I spent my night like this actually to the boughs and on the ground and heating the rock up like that worked really well there's that the the rock is actually still warm to the touch and so I was pretty warm for about the first three hours maybe or something after that though even with the warmer ground without having anything over top of me it just started getting pretty cold fortunately it didn't rain it's uh I just heard something big crack what an incredible sight I'm I'm actually I'm trembling I'm completely trembling right now I feel a lot better now that I saw that it was a cow moose I'm trembling because had that been a male bull moose in the rutting season of which we are in the height of and I'm in major moose territory is hands down the most dangerous animal in Canada Bar None there absolutely an insane creature during this time of year fifteen hundred pounds of absolute rage and I have been chased and put up a tree before by a huge bull moose during the season she's passed my camp but now I'm gonna be wondering who's on her trail because I'm sure she's got a bull or two not too far behind her I'm trying to get myself further up from the water's edge and I can I can feel it getting warmer even right now just coming up about 20 feet or so up the hill you can just feel the temperature just difference as you go up in grades and that's good so I'm looking for a good shelter spot I think something's over yeah yeah check this out that's not bad not bad at all it does feel warmer up here there's rocks there there's sand it's a little damp here it's not gonna be comfortable but it's gonna work I'm gonna put all these rocks make a fire pit so I got my bit of warmth that's under the assumption of course that I can make a fire without matches every location is different but if I'm to survive seven days in Canada's North in the fall shelter is a high priority probably by far the safest way to break up branches like this they protect it from getting hit with the branches it breaks a lot better than jumping on it in the north an axe holds the same importance as a machete does in the jungle without one survival is extremely difficult actually shed the rain really nicely I'm not gonna be super dry in this thing but I'll be ecolo heck of a lot drier than I was last night that's for sure and I didn't get rained on but I was wide open he's this way I've got some protection I like to I actually kind of poke this the branches in so that they're nice and smooth like this you don't really have to you can just throw them on but this way all the rain sort of goes with the flow of the of the boughs even if I can't get my fire going tonight at least I'll be a little more comfortable in here a little more protected if if not warmer sometimes the only way to get yourself a nice sharp edge is to smash a rock is dangerous though end up getting hit back up in your eye or something let's see how this goes there we go that's what I'm looking for I think I might as well use my rock and I split open here because it'll extend the life of my knife and not dull the blade so I also even get fires going without matches even when you have matches means you'll have matches for that much longer all I want is this fluffy fluffy cedar bark here it's good fire starting tinder in the fall and the Canadian wilderness fire is a major priority my one match was gone long ago leaving me to start a fire the way it's been done since the dawn of man by rubbing two sticks together these guys here nicknamed tinder fungus let's find out why didn't do something stupid here because I've never tried it's using this fungus method before and it's starting to get already but duska me I made a decision it was either add a lot more on to the shelter so then protect it from the rain which looks like might be coming in or get a fire going and opted to try for a fire let's see so I've got my fire bow which is just the bow and the soot lace and the spindle straight and dead and dry and then to push it all down I've got this bearing block it's just a piece of wood and I've couched out a hole to hold it all down and then the bottom end are these funguses here let's give them a shot man guess I should have practiced this one at home only ever seen this done oh man this is useless [Applause] okay I know somewhere out there there's some wise Bush guy who's saying aw come on it's easy you know this is working but it's killing my toes ah I'm gonna grab some cedar now this method I'm more familiar with so let's uh let's try it with a little hole I'm here to start off not spins pretty good that's better okay oh that's nice that's a good good sign but you see it just scatters all around the top here and it's got to have a place to go all that dust has to have a place to collect and form like a little ember so I'm gonna cut a notch in the side sort of V there we go hopefully that little notch there will give it a place on the ash place to fall come on I probably should just go on the shelter cover it all in so I don't get rained on I'd be cold but at least I'll be dry finally and that way I start to fire in the morning and put all the materials aside but I'm just by going now once I see smoke it's my signal to keep going not to quit and I have to remember to breathe I've got to give it all I can and then carefully stop so I don't knock everything flying I don't think there's anything more important than getting my fire going during this damp cold season this looks good looks good oh yeah oh yeah yeah we're gonna move the spindles out of the way oh shoot talk about panic I got no wood ready that's about as stupid as it gets alright well there's enough here I'm the other fire I'm gonna build it up nice and high and then and then I'll take it into the shelter with me so I've got there for the night carrying the fire more than a hundred yards through the thick bush is a lot easier said than done get my way all the way to the other shelter ah I'm not gonna make it that was interesting I tried to make myself a torch to take to the shelter you have to be a little too much you have to try that again house I gotta get a fire over to the shelter somehow sorry I didn't bring you with me on that one it's just too much work trying to carry the fire and the camera at the same time before it gets too dark all I'm gonna do now is gather some firewood the rule of thumb is look at your firewood pile when you first think you have enough then make it five times bigger if you want to make it through the night there's nothing worse than running out in the dark [Music] well I made it through the night all right it's a lot better being protected with this shelter that got too dark on me too quick and I ran out of time to cover over the shelter more but it only rained just a little bit so it wasn't too bad off and even with my feet getting pretty cold just being able to warm my face and hands up by the fire or turn around and put my feet by the fire made a big difference now I better get this shelter covered over some more so in case any foul weather does come in I'll be I'll be protected I have to start thinking about food in northern Canada there's about an eight week window to gather wild edible plants after that if you don't hunt or fish you'll starve any bit of extra little bit of sustenance I can get is gonna be helpful and here's some some yellow wood sorrel hmm Carla lemony taste to it it's just a delicate little plant grows around wet areas like beaver dams and swamps and moist woods and in a lot of calories but at least it's got some vitamins to it I don't know if this is true but I've always done it I drink a lot of water and mark my territory all around my camp and hopefully it'll serve as a signal to bears passing by that they shouldn't come in this area I could be fooling myself though finding a piece of birch bark like this is great take it out open it up and you've got yourself a nice shingle which is gonna help to get some of the again keep you from getting wet this is actually a good place to find grubs and worms and things that can throw in the stewpot if you want but maybe you can also find grubs and things for bait carpenter ants and big juicy creepy crawlies cook them all up in a nice pot of water and you've got some sustenance there well there's something I wasn't counting on well I left to get some more boughs and some more firewood I came back and all the underside of the tree roots here were on fire they were all flames coming up and I had to quickly grab a rock and scrape them all down to put out the fire well that's the last thing I want here even though I want to be warm tonight that's not the kind of warm I'm talking about so I'm gonna have to make use of some of the dirt that's here and pack this in and put some bigger rock a couple of big rocks there to protect this whole underside from catch on fire again God remembered it man what I'm making here is one big gigantic tinder bundle just stayin alive it can be dangerous ever since I got here there's been a couple of red squirrels chattering around me all day long and what I'm making here well it's called a figure-four deadfall if there's squirrels or rodents like rats or mice around it works just about on any location to help up the odds of getting some sustenance and you know a little bit of meat in my belly tonight would go a long way towards making me warmer I'm sure thing get this to hold it's like a little hairpin trigger damn okay so this parts a little too big try that again come on decided to make a whole new set smaller and a grabbed a different Rock two last thing I want to do is break a finger out try this again see if I can get this one to work I don't know what's up today and I definitely pinched my thumb you know it's only a pinched thumb but out here every injury is magnified because it's just that much more discomfort you've got to go through when you're out here whoa I forget to put the bait right on the stick before I lay the trap so now I have to lay it all around this could turn out to be a foolish waste of my only food but one thing I know I can do right now is this sort of creaky areas got pond lilies and at the base of them is big tubers full of starches and nutrients but water is freezing cold so I'm not looking forward to this long as I don't get too cold it'll be worth it to get the calories [Music] in just a week or two these lakes and ponds will start to freeze over for the winter right now it already feels like they're cold enough to form ice I don't know if this is even worth it i ìm my body my core temperature has dropped pretty pretty good because of being in the water like that it's just that without any food energy of me now I'm just kidding just I'm losing my energy I don't have the wherewithal to bother trying to cook this thing up tonight or in any way maybe tomorrow besides Suns going down and I got to get another big pile of firewood ready to make it through the night [Music] in the northern bush you've got a scant six or seven weeks of picking wild edibles while the thought of blueberries and raspberries seems ideal food to actually survive on is another story [Music] breakfast at least these are pretty safe for me to eat I'm hoping they'll just be bland and give me the nutrients and energy I need right now kind of feels like a roasted marshmallow oh let's hope it tastes like one [Applause] oh god that's horrible Oh okay let's try boiling it well huh I'm gonna try and soften up these tubers a bit and maybe kill some of the flavor bite Oh stuck to my glove by pulling these hot rocks in and basically trying to boil the water in my hat fortunately the Hat is a heavy heavy cotton I think so it's holding the water okay you just keep doing this you keep replacing hot rocks until you bring the water to a boil and in this case I'll even cover it over as it was pretty bitter and awkward tasting just roasted but maybe this will soften down the flavor a bit I suppose if I was just at home fasting for a week I'd be okay but not so when I have to film everything build shelters start fires without matches and climbed through thick bush all day that I really need food so I can function oh wow oh it's still bitter but not as bad I guess oh I got to get this into me dog I'm starving I'm really really hungry and I finally get some food into me soon I just gonna get weaker and weaker and all my energy level just just is just dropping down so I have to bear with this well what goes down must come up it was just too much and too bitter for my stomach to handle and I hate being sick in the bush I hate the thought of killing anything but as a matter of survival all creatures are fair game finally some meat escargot anybody it's uh it's not a squirrel meat but I wish it was but at least it's can be better than bundling tubers I can tell you that much crack one of these guys open see what we got here he's good they're all over the place now that I know they're here I'm gonna just check out all the rocks all the way around this shoreline to see how many of these I can find I did find a second one right off the bat hey there we go how's that look anyway hi just kidding I'm gonna roast it on the fire now on a rock all I need some garlic butter mm-hmm I'll let the snails cook for a while on the fire put some more punky logs on and as you can see we're back to this again just an all-day drizzle it seems like yeah at least it's not snow that's a cold wind that keeps coming in here every once in a while it just feels like winter coming in you know well it probably doesn't look all that bad on camera but trust me it's a downpour in fact just a few moments ago it was also thick snow as well and like an idiot I've got rain pants and I haven't been wearing them they've been rolled up in my pocket the whole time I'm gonna go hide in my little shelter enough of this [Music] okay well I mean my little shelter I'm actually dry in here as shelters keeping me pretty dry the fire is out though I figured it's a lot easier to put a couple of big punky logs on that big outside fire and let it sit out the rain then to try and feed this one for the next couple hours for one thing I've just used up all my small firewood that I need in the middle of the night so now I just wait there's one cold wet fire nothing there [Music] not only is it raining and doesn't look like any chance of breaking so look at this my deadfall it's still standing but the food is gone yeah what's so stupid I didn't stick a little bit of jerky right onto that twig onto that branch you would have to pull out it instead I was being lazy and a man and I'm paying for it down this is not the breakfast I was hoping for [Music] it's been about 48 hours I think of non-stop rain I haven't filmed I haven't done anything I I just huddled in my shelter and I slapped at least at least it didn't seem to be that cold I guess with the cloud cover so I did sleep a lot after two days of solid rain it was a matter of get up dry out a bit shake it off and and start planning my escape I know there's a highway off to the east and it could be five kilometers could be 50 kilometers I don't remember how far then any luck maybe it'd only take me a day I don't know I just gonna get - oh we're the reigning for two days non-stop I thought well I didn't want to go ahead and eat that snail without you and not share the meal with you so I I still have it actually my two little snails I still need some garlic butter with them okay so that's it two snails three cashews today now a little bit of jerky what I'm just uh just raring to go you know sometimes the decision to stay or go is made for you like what if you're 100 miles from from anywhere and you know there's no way of hiking out other times it's just a very critical decision that you you simply must make right in the beginning am I gonna stay am I gonna go well you know can I stay is there a place is there a way of getting food around here holy mackerel this just keeps getting just like the forest is closing in on me here you know can I get food can I make shelter is anybody even gonna come looking for me heck does anybody even know I'm gone and am I able to move around am i capable of of traveling these are all important questions you've got to ask before you make the decision to to move on the other hand you might make it out to safety before anybody even knows you I hate that feeling like you've lost your sense of direction huh okay here's that do this well the moss only grows on the north side of the trees you know you can see all the moss here and that's this is definitely the north side I can tell by the Sun right now it's definitely the north side of the tree and then it's clear over here so that works out pretty true but you know what a lot of times it's not true at all I've seen thousands of trees where the moss is just circled all the way around and you know you can't use it as a as a gauge here's another tree just over here same thing again that's the north side of the tree so in this case you know that's a bit of a bearing for me and I'm gonna use it because I don't want to go due east I've come to yet another Lake pretty much hit it right at the tip end of it here cuz it's a long lake it would have been a long like to walk around so good news is it's a some treats for me here and it's not the great right season but still helpful see what it's like these guys like in June all down in here is actually quite fresh and in my mind it's actually even quite tasty and then full of starches and nutrients I have a feeling yeah it's pretty old in the season but it's already gone woody on me not much chance eating that I can always use the top end it's good for tinder it's good for stuffing for my clothing to keep me warm if I needed it or it's good fire starter this stuff goes up like just like gasoline you put a little spark to it my mantra in a situation like this keep moving ahead but I've got a deal cautiously and carefully with every obstacle that I encounter I see creek crossings lakes to get around thick tangled bush there's no room for bravado or carelessness when you're alone in the bush I see something over there that's a good to take whole it right now grab what I can while I can birchbark you know from an environmental perspective I don't like to neuting the forest of anything and even taking this birch bark you know I'm just taken okay I'm in a survival situation so I mean you do whatever you have to do to survive but I'm just taking you know the dead hanging bark or looking for a tree that's already on the ground and pulling the bark off that rather than stripping the tree all the way around I can kill a birch tree well that Creek wasn't so tough to jump over this lake is another story it's a long thin lake and it's right in my path probably go that way I asked to meet at least two kilometres extra just to get around this lake man it's windy and cold now it's clear but it's certainly getting colder despite of how beautiful it looks I've been walking and walking and I was thought you know well either I'm gonna hit that highway or at least another lake and I'll stay by a lake I feel better for some reason waiting beside a lake for the for the night to pass that's not happening and there's only maybe like an hour and a half maybe an hour of sunlight left so I'm gonna use that time to build a big fire here if my fire bow will work again and just pull an all-nighter beside a fire it's cold and I'm cold from getting in and out of that water oh yeah I'm just gonna spend the next hour left of sunlight gathering firewood and some boughs to sleep on and that's that's it then I'm getting nothing out of here as soon as I can but I'm too tired and too chilled to keep walking the whole psychological part of being completely alone really comes into play here purpose of the fire is to keep away the boogeyman and all things that go bump in the night because it's could be spooky out here because I'm right in the thick of it just in the middle of the forest I'm gonna warm up these rocks and at different times just in intervals when they're not too hot just warm them take them and just tuck them right inside up against the cold areas a small my back and like little little mini hot water bottles that'll help that'll keep me warm like on my back end here tonight well the Front's warm by the fire the back would be warm by these rocks and keeps snowing off and on just a little tiny light light flakes hopefully it won't come on any any thicker I just hope this passes through quick I gotta go get my other coat on [Music] I have one more day to find a road or some kind of help after that the crew will put a helicopter in the air and look for me oh man you know layerings been great being like dressed in layers when you're out in a place like this because you're cold at night but during the day you trying to you know get get out of here get rescued or escape and you overheat really quickly so I just keep stripping down a layer upon layer until I feel like you know I'm comfortable and I'm not sweating sweating is the worst thing if I start to sweat oh it just makes the night's miserable because then you just get those chills you know and that's not fine no this is a nice sign for the weary wanderer oh yeah okay do you follow them or do you keep going east because you think there's a highway over there you could go up the railway tracks and be right around the corner from you know an establishment on the other hand you could be 250 300 kilometers from the next Junction and and and maybe the the place that's closest is that way and you go that way in this case my decision I think is to is just to keep going east I know what you're thinking you should follow the tracks the thing is I know without a shadow of doubt that the road is due east and not much farther I'm going with a sure thing well here I am yet another night I really thought I was gonna make it out by the end of tonight except you know the sun's going down and Here I am at another lake I gotta traverse around sucks I'm gonna curl up somewhere beside a tree I guess I'd be fine as I try to sleep I'm still panicking and having made a wrong decision about my route I know where I paddled into and I was fairly confident on where I had to go to get out due east what could go wrong but my guess was maybe one really long day of walking not three hey this is a good sign hydro line not always that good of an idea to follow them though these things can go miles and miles in either direction and think about hydro lines is they can go right up and over lakes and swamps and just keep going and you can't I'm just gonna keep heading east I got to stick to my guns carry on because it doesn't necessarily mean salvation when you find a hydro line who means I'm getting close though [Music] now I'm desperate I just want to get out I start making the mistake of letting myself get wet I know the producers will be looking for me every time I come up to water I just don't care anymore and before you know it my pants are starting to get soaked a dangerous situation if I'm stuck outside one more night burned over areas would be a lot of tricky climbing and scrambler but I happen to love this weirdo Ferris why yes I can hear the highway [Music] [Music]

Channel: Survivorman - Les Stroud

Views: 1,377,263

Keywords: Stroud', Survivorman TV Show, Les Stroud, Outdoor Survival, Survivorman TV, Survivorman, Survivorman Les Stroud, Survivorman TV Series, Survivorman - Season 1 - Episode 4 - Boreal Forest, Todd Standing, Logan Stroud, Sam Omik, Uzimann, Joseph McConnell, Bob Wilson, survivorman full episodes, les stroud survivorman

Id: TDry6ukO848

Length: 44min 17sec (2657 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/UltraMegaMegaMan]

I still remember one episode where he was in the Amazon or some jungle and he started being stalked by a jaguar. He was filming while he walked back to a nearby human camp, and you could tell he was genuinely scared. He said he had tried to scare it off, and that normally once they know they've been spotted they'll go away, but this one had no fear of humans at all and that's when he knew he was in trouble. At the end of the show he's inside the camp, still filiming, and you can hear the jaguar stalking around outside clawing at the walls, still trying to get at him. Fucking wild stuff.

[u/MenInBlerg]

The above link is to episode one. Every episode can be found on his channel here.

[u/operath0r]

Jesus Christ I’ve been looking for this on and off ever since he paywalled his show on his website. Thank you so much for sharing!

[u/fistymcbuttpuncher]

neat

[u/RingoJuna]

Fucking A

[u/ydontukissmyglass]

Les is the man!!! Humble, knowledgeable, and occasionally funny. He deals in reality pretty well for having a reality show

[u/potatobro7]

I love this show. I learned so much watching this back in the day. Les is an incredible person!

[u/ningyna]

Great show, love that they posted this. His recent pbs sure was cool, bit I like this better! Great post

[u/thecoop21]

I got to meet him in a coffee shop in grants pass Oregon. He is a fantastic musician. Got him to sign my old beat up acoustic guitar.