What I'm Watching - Dual Survival

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Dual survival was a new series for UK discovery this year and as I'm quite interested in bush craft and survival techniques thought I would tune in.



Basically it's about 2 guys. Dave Canterbury , an ex army special reactions team scout and sniper, professional hunter and survival instructor who runs the Pathfinder wilderness School in southeast Ohio . The other guy is  Cody Lundin who is a bit of a self styled minimalist free spirit having left home to board a greyhound bus, go " on the road " and join a radical hippie commune near Mexico. He now runs an aboriginal living skills school in Arizona. To be honest, of the two presenters, Cody Lundin seems to be the more interesting as you are fascinated by his weird ways such as deciding to walk barefoot nearly everywhere he goes.

So, onto the programme. In my opinion, the programme follows what seems to be a set format typical of those that are on Tv these days, the main difference being that obviously there are two survivors of whatever scenario Dave and Cody are presented with and they have to make there way to civilisation in order to obtain self rescue. One week they'll be in the mountains moving on snow and ice, the next they'll be in the Baja Chaparral of Mexico and may be in a coastal survival situation for their next challenge.

The show is pretty interesting but you can't help feeling the way Cody has to cover almost all terrain barefoot is a bit unnecessary. One thing that does strike you about Cody is his amazing ability to create fire in almost every situation. There are even times when he succeeds where Dave fails. There's no doubt that he is a bit of a wizard with two sticks and some tinder.

You do get to see some pretty interesting techniques in the show but sometimes it does seem a bit contrived. Maybe we're just getting used to the fact of a snake or lizard appearing at just the right time as we have been overexposed from watching other survival programmes and I suppose there are only so many times we can be stunned to see someone eat a live scorpion. Maybe we've just been spoiled by our own high qualty survivalists like Bear Grylls and Ray Mears.

The show is on tonight at 9 p.m. on the discovery channel and even though this blog is about fishing in Scotland, I'll still be watching as I find most of these survival programmes pretty fascinating and would recommend it to others for some interesting viewing

Who knows, come 2012 we may all need some of these skills just to get by.