Starvation Man: A Fool in the Wilderness

This man is not Daniel Boone.

I have written in the past about the various fake "wild man in the wilderness" shows, from National Geographic's phony 'Wolf Man' stunt to the contrived toxicity of the poisonous snakes routinely handled by Steve Irwin, to the absolutely ridiculous fakery of Bear Grylls whose advice will almost always kill or maim you in short order.

The latest bit of idiocy comes from Channel 4 in the U.K., which sent "adventurer" Ed Wardle into the Canadian wilderness armed with a rifle, a fishing rod, and a well-stocked pack.

Seven week later, he had to be airlifted out of the woods because he was starving.

It seems this man did not know how to hunt and did not know how to fish.

But you would never have known that if you listened to him before he set out:

"I imagine I have a long future of fish-eating in front of me. It's going to be trout and grayling for 12 weeks.

"But meat's a relatively easy thing to get your hands on too. There are hares, squirrels and gophers. They're good to eat because they're fatty.

"The porcupines are easy to catch because they don't move very fast. As long as you're careful with the spines, they're a good source of food. You hit it with a big stick, roll it over, slice it open and peel the skin back, the same as you would any mammal."

Right.

Does this man actually know how to set a snare? Does he know how to make a fish trap? A deadfall?

Does he know how to load a gun? Does he know where animals feed and where they bed?

Does he know how to conserve energy? How to keep clean? How to make a shelter that will last? How to keep a fire going?

The answer to all of these questions was a resounding NO.

Instead of staying in one location and building up a store of food before moving on, he seems to have moved all the time. His shelters were crude and he seems to have had no knowledge at all of wildlife, guns, snares, traps or hunting.

Apparently he thought it was a simple matter of going out into the woods and picking food off the bushes, while having the wildlife run into your dinner pan fully skinned and lightly breaded.

Ed Wardle seems to have had no notion that thick forests are almost devoid of easy-to-hunt wildlife.

Raised on Animal Planet television shows and faked canned hunts he had seen on TV, he must have though the world was teaming with suicidal wildlife.

Wardle also does not seem to have much knowledge of self. A week alone without another person, a television, a radio, a book, a phone, or the Internet is enough to make some people slide off the hinge. A month or two of that, and some folks will turn past the bend. That is especially easy to do if your calorie intake is crashing, and massive amounts of physical work are being done because you are constantly moving through the wilderness. I know. I have been there.

Here's a hint: The people who made it in the wilderness alone were trappers who lived in trapper cabins.

Put out 12 leghold traps, two dozen snares, and bunch of bank lines, and you will never go hungry.

Fish and berries? Sure. Go for it. You can try to shoot some big game too, and learn to smoke it.

But in the wilderness, it was always traps and snares that kept meat on the table.
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• Related Posts:
  ** Man Versus Truth: More Fakery from the U.K.
  ** National Geographic's Phony "Wolf Man" Stunt
  ** Steve Irwin Was a Big Fat Liar
  ** More Than 100,000 Active Trappers in the U.S.
  ** Releasing Your Dog From a Trap
  ** AR Folks Developed the Dog-lethal Conibear Trap
  ** Modern Scientific Trapping
  ** Trapping and the Cull of the Wild
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