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Loneiness would be the worse thing I think....surely he could find protein other than the salmon...bet there are other fish in that river!! Who is this guy anyway?

Has anyone seen the documentary...not sure, think it was made in the 70's about the guy who lived in the Alaskan wilderness for YEARS! They've shown his videos on PBS many times. He documented it all and think the cabin that he constructed is still there.

No, actually it was made recently, Suzie. He did catch some fish, but they were as small as sardines and he only caught three. I'm not familiar with the Yukon, so I don't know what there is in the way of food resources in terms of hunting and gathering in the region. This is actually a NatGeo series called "Survivor Man". Ed (that's his name) was supposed to be out there for three months. He lasted only 50 days and had lost a ton of weight in the interim and was half mad when they got him out of there. When he does an episode of this series, he is completely alone with no film crew...just cameras which he has to operate. How NatGeo monitors his condition while he's out in the wilderness is a mystery to me. But they should have gotten him out of there a lot sooner. From what I understand, he lost it big time and had to be hospitalized for several weeks after this episode.

I would think summer time in the Yukon would be a fine place to get protein. Didn't say if he had anything to hunt/fish with either.

The series from the 70 was really good but he went supplied with rifle, fishing gear, seeds as he grew his own food in the summertime and some general staples. Hunted, fished, preserved his own food/veggies. He filmed all of his own footage. He actually took books. Guess you can't exactly say he was a survivalist but I wouldn't have wanted to do what he did....alone. Let me look to see if I can find the guy's name, it was a really good series.

Well, if the salmon were supposed to be doing their annual run up the river in the Yukon, I would imagine that this episode started in late summer entering Fall. And I may be mistaken, but I believe that the Yukon is at a much higher northern latitude than say central Indiana. So I would imagine the temperatures would be considerably lower at the end of summer than they would be here in Indiana. I don't know, I could be wrong.

I think you are probably right about the temps.

I found the guy I was talking about. Dick Proenneke, the video is "Alone in the Wilderness". Was pretty good...not the greatest filming because smaller film cameras were just didn't have the quality that they have now.....but worth a watch. Very resourceful man.

It sounds to me like he got cocky and didn't do his research. surviving long enough to get out or be rescued is a lot different than choosing to live in the back country. if you choose to stay awhile location is everything. salmon are picky, they don't just swim up any stream. Ever wonder why so many bears congregate in one area? I wonder, did he even try to hunt rabbit and mice? Or did he wander around until he was near death? You have to have a plan and stick to it, panic sets in quickly. up north there is also a particular plant, a tuber i believe, that looks just like an edible variety. but should you eat it, something in it destroys your ability to absorb nutrients from food. You starve to death on a full stomach. No gun? how does anyone end up lost in the Yukon with no gun? Even if you were in a plane that crashed, they have guns in their survival gear...I mean really, what was he trying to prove?

~Zeke

Very good point, Zeke. I honestly don't know. I watch the series every now and then when I don't have anything better to do. But to be honest, I really don't know what the deal is here.

Eric

Agree with Zeke, even if it was for some reality survival ploy, don't think they'd just drop him down somewhere in the wilderness without a pocket knife and a rifle...if nothing else, for protection...geez

.................though it has been awhile, and I was much younger then now, I remember my 5 week special forces survival training in the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina during the winter in snow and ice and subfreezing temperatures. That wasn't all, because we had to survive as groups of three men and cover the hundred mile distance of the park from north to south within the alloted time without getting caught by the Blue army of graduated special forces A teams, or getting ourselves killed. There were about 80 of us in these little teams, and only about 50 of us graduated by making the objective. Two died in the period of the survivial course, one by drowning, and one by hypothermia. dozens were injured and unable to complete the course. I myself has frostbite on all my toes and fingertips, and my nose and ear lobes. My finger and toe nails had to be removed(pulled out with a quick jerk of pliers), and I still get extreme pain in my finger tips and toes today if they get freezing cold........
.................I remember happily eating raw deer meat when I successfully snared it and broke it's neck to kill it, and loved the taste of the warm wet blood when I cut it's throat.......
.................to finish the course, we had to keep moving at about 2 to 3 miles a day at minimum(35 days to go 100 miles). This was in steep mountainous country, mostly covered in 3 to 6 feet of snow, often having to cross turbulent raging rivers and streams. That was why the two fellows died, and how and why I and many others had frostbite. The thirty or so fellows that didn't make it, were washed out and did not recieve their green berets...........
..................I survived............

I was reading about the series from which this clip comes and learned that the challenge is for him to survive with whatever equipment the producers of the series decide to give him beforehand. He has no say in what tools or weapons he has in each survival challenge. So the fact that he doesn't have a rifle was not his choice nor his screw-up! Someone on the production end screwed-up royally! It's amazing he survived as long as he did with what he had to work with.