S08.E04: Far From Home

[GreyBunny]

One more helpful tip from the NPS.

[Melina22]

So for black bears you make yourself bigger, for the grizzlies you make yourself smaller. Good to know. 

For black bears you fight back, for grizzlies you walk away slowly. 

I'm so sure I'd remember any of this if a bear was threatening me. The temptation to scream and run would be overwhelming. I wonder how effective bear spray is? 

[LittleIggy]

Animal Planet had a show called “I Was Prey,” and they had a couple of grizzly attacks recounted. Boy, those guys don’t give up! I remember one involving a mama bear with a cub nearby. 😳 The victim would think she was gone, but then, WHAM! she would be right back.

1 hour ago, Melina22 said:

So for black bears you make yourself bigger, for the grizzlies you make yourself smaller. Good to know. 

For black bears you fight back, for grizzlies you walk away slowly. 

I'm so sure I'd remember any of this if a bear was threatening me. The temptation to scream and run would be overwhelming. I wonder how effective bear spray is? 

I remember a few years ago hearing Jack Hanna say he was hiking one time and encountered a bear. The bear spray worked.

Edited June 27, 2021 by LittleIggy

[LittleIggy]

13 hours ago, GreyBunny said:

One more helpful tip from the NPS.

You don’t need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your friend.

Edited June 27, 2021 by LittleIggy

[LennieBriscoe]

23 hours ago, AZChristian said:

I've seen them catch really tiny fish in them on some of these shows, but the sticks that Rose used were SO far apart that anything small could swim right through the sides of the thing.  And I think the bigger fish are all being pulled out by the guys who have built boats and piers.

I suspect there are more "bigger fish" available than are caught by fellow Aloners!

[diebartdie]

On 6/26/2021 at 4:33 PM, iMonrey said:

I don't recall every specific, but to the best of my recollection, the people who last the longest have only the most rudimentary, basic sorts of shelters.

Fowler in season 3 (?) had a beautiful woven shelter that was incredible, he won. Roland expended a buttload of calories building rockhouse, he won.

[qtpye]

On 6/27/2021 at 11:01 PM, diebartdie said:

Fowler in season 3 (?) had a beautiful woven shelter that was incredible, he won. Roland expended a buttload of calories building rockhouse, he won.

That season was in Patagonia and access to bamboo. It seemed like it was much easier to make a shelter fairly quickly out of bamboo than tree logs. I knit and it felt like everyone was knitting a pretty good shelter from bamboo that season.

That said I really liked Fowler, He also was smart to put on weight before the season began.

On 6/26/2021 at 4:33 PM, iMonrey said:

I had Jordon pegged as an early tap back when he was talking about missing his family and it was only day 7. Also: the participants who build really elaborate, impressive shelters never seem to go the distance. Remember that guy who just about built the entire set from Gilligan's Island, complete with water dispenser and paper towel holder? He basically just got bored and went home.

I don't recall every specific, but to the best of my recollection, the people who last the longest have only the most rudimentary, basic sorts of shelters. They don't spend a lot of time and calories building something that looks like a movie set right out of the gate. And I think that speaks to why they are the ones that end up winning. They're practical. They focus on the essentials. 

That's not to say Jordon's story wasn't heartbreaking, because it was. But this just wasn't the right place for him. 

What that the Barbara man who accidentally made out with a slug because he was dreaming of Barbara?

[diebartdie]

5 hours ago, qtpye said:

That season was in Patagonia and access to bamboo. It seemed like it was much easier to make a shelter fairly quickly out of bamboo than tree logs. I knit and it felt like everyone was knitting a pretty good shelter from bamboo that season.

That said I really liked Fowler

Fowler also was walking the equivalent of up an 8 story building several times per day in order to build his shelter so no, he wasn't lugging heavy timber or giant rocks, but still, his shelter was elaborate and beautiful. Crafty people tend to last the longest, the greater the creativity one has, the greater the likelihood one can think one's way out of a bear filled problem. 

Boring, fat slug men also tend to last a long time, moldering in their "shelters" being boring. Give me Callie in Patagonia or Fowler or Roland or anyone who goes out there and shows ingenuity, shows creativity, opens their hearts to the experience and then lets us, undeserving as we may be, see that vulnerability. That's what I watch the show for anyway, not the starvation, not the boring fat dudes in boring "shelters", not the boring fat dudes that tap on day 1 due to spotting a wolf/bear/wolverine/a bunch a trees.

The Patagonia season was the best specifically due to the high level of creativity shown by multiple contestants that season.

[Chit Chat]

On 6/26/2021 at 8:48 PM, GreyBunny said:

How to handle a bear encounter.

Don't go in the woods!!

[ProfCrash]

We saw a black bear in Sequoia National Park today. It held up traffic while ambling across the road. That is as close as I want to get to a bear in nature.

[LittleIggy]

45 minutes ago, ProfCrash said:

We saw a black bear in Sequoia National Park today. It held up traffic while ambling across the road. That is as close as I want to get to a bear in nature.

I watched “Grizzly Man” again tonight. That’s as close as I ever want to get to a Grizzly! Ever. 
I hadn’t seen GM in awhile, and have to admit Herzog had me tearing up at the end with that footage of Timothy walking along the stream followed by two bears.

[ethalfrida]

A stray cat hissed at me yesterday and caused me concern. Don’t think I can handle much more than that.

[ChristmasJones]

It would be interesting to have a season with all the same gender and also the same starting BMI.  Having a lot of fat on your body at the beginning seems like a very unfair advantage.

[Melina22]

That would certainly help level the playing field, but there will still be areas of unfairness. Some sites have basically no fish, others have more bears, some have almost no beach, etc. But I agree that having them sorted by weight and gender, while tough to put into practice, would help. Well, the gender part would be easy, but not the weight. 

[qtpye]

I think the first season had all male contestants.

[dranelittle]

On 6/24/2021 at 9:59 PM, patty1h said:

Jordon built a GD impressive log fort that would be a great shelter for a long haul in the wilderness, then he bailed.   The story about his daughter was beyond sad and I hope being back with his family brings him the peace he needs.

more bs. He was starving.  You can't waste more of that precious, warm first month upon making  more of a shelter than a tarp tent during the first month. That takes a couple of hours and getting the needed debris pile takes a couple more hours. You dont set up the shelter where you dont have lots of debris, folks. You put the 12 ft long ridgepole in the fork of a tree, or tie it to a limb. If you can't notch a tree to hold the other end of the ridgepole, make a tripod to hold it. You dont want a 6" OD,  50 lb ridgepole to fall on your head in a storm, either. What you do is cut a couple of 2" OD at the base, 8 ft tall saplings, lash their small ends together, overlapping them by 2 ft each. then your ridgepole is easily found/cut and weighs 15 lbs. THAT can fall on you and not ruin you. Once you've passed a month and temps are consistently sub-freezing, you can make a 10x6x6 ft quonet hut in one day, out of debris and ice.

On 7/3/2021 at 3:14 PM, ChristmasJones said:

It would be interesting to have a season with all the same gender and also the same starting BMI.  Having a lot of fat on your body at the beginning seems like a very unfair advantage.

no kidding, like being a 230 lb man vs a 140 lb woman,  which was the only way fowler beat Carleigh on season 3

[dranelittle]

On 6/29/2021 at 8:04 AM, diebartdie said:

Fowler also was walking the equivalent of up an 8 story building several times per day in order to build his shelter so no, he wasn't lugging heavy timber or giant rocks, but still, his shelter was elaborate and beautiful. Crafty people tend to last the longest, the greater the creativity one has, the greater the likelihood one can think one's way out of a bear filled problem. 

Boring, fat slug men also tend to last a long time, moldering in their "shelters" being boring. Give me Callie in Patagonia or Fowler or Roland or anyone who goes out there and shows ingenuity, shows creativity, opens their hearts to the experience and then lets us, undeserving as we may be, see that vulnerability. That's what I watch the show for anyway, not the starvation, not the boring fat dudes in boring "shelters", not the boring fat dudes that tap on day 1 due to spotting a wolf/bear/wolverine/a bunch a trees.

The Patagonia season was the best specifically due to the high level of creativity shown by multiple contestants that season.

 If fowler had actually known anything, he'd not have needed to climb that hill much and could have left a strand of rope from the hammock there to help him if he did.  All he had to do was make a 6 ft long handle for the cold steel shovel,  go about 15 ft up the hill, to allow for the lake flooding when it froze up, fall rains, etc, and made an 8x15 ft ledge on the hillside.  Drive some stakes, put logs across those stakes, forming a "retaining wall'.  Then  dig out the high part of the hill and pack it into the crevice formed by the hill and the retaining wall.  When  you can make 2000 sq ft of netting out of the cotton rope hammock, you dont have to continually be out there, re-baiting your 24 trotlines.  Also, if you can use live bait, you make little tarp and tape bait bags, with a treble hook barely protruding from the little hole that lets the smell and taste of the fish-guts bait escape from the bag.  Then the minnows can't nibble away your bait.

Roland is a fool and an A-hole.  you cannot heat boulders with your little fireplace. You MUST leave ventoles in your shelter if you have a fire inside of it, cause it'll smoke you to death if you dont.  So you lose almost all of your heat up the chimney and out of your vent holes.   You want building materials that don't suck the heat out of the air in your shelter and you dont want to exhaust and starve yourself for 2 weeks while you build your shelter, either.  WTH goes big game hunting with just one broadhead arrow? He was so weakened by his shelter-building that he couldn't make a proper stalk on the ox. So he shot it in the butt and let it SUFFER for  FIVE HOURS rather than trot 10 minutes back to camp for more arrows, or make a spear out of a pole and his knife, using his boot laces to lash the knife on and to make a bola, using 3 rocks.  Entangle the ox's legs with the bola and then stab it in the neck and rip out its throat and jugular vein. Then the animal  only suffers for 10 minutes or less.

Edited January 29, 2022 by dranelittle
forgot.