Ray Mears

"Ray Mears" redirects here. For other uses, see Ray Mears (disambiguation).

Ray Mears
Born	(1964-02-07) February 7, 1964
Nationality	British
Occupation(s)	Television presenter and author
Known for	Bushcraft and survival techniques

Raymond Paul "Ray" Mears (born February 7, 1964) is a British author and TV presenter on the subject of bushcraft and survival techniques.

Biography

Ray Mears grew up in Southern England on the North Downs, where he discovered a countryside abundant with wildlife. He learned to track foxes in the forest at a young age. As a boy, he desired to sleep out on the trail, but unable to afford camping equipment, he resorted to setting up camp using what he could find in his surroundings.

His enthusiasm for his subject, combined with his broad knowledge of survival and the uses which may be made of plants, trees and other natural materials found in woodland, forest or desert, have made him a popular figure in TV broadcasting in the UK and endeared him to various generations of lovers of the outdoors. He has travelled extensively across the world for his various TV series and is always willing to learn survival techniques from indigenous peoples he meets. His knowledge of the wild and his ability to teach others how to find food from seeds, berries, roots and other growing things, and to survive by constructing temporary shelters, fires and even making canoes (all from natural materials), have earned his programmes a wide viewing public and, in the eyes of some, elevated Mears to almost cult status.

He is particularly interested in the survival of groups of Resistance fighters and partisans for extended periods during World War II, such as the Norwegian Telemark heroes (see The Real Heroes of Telemark) and the Bielski Brothers in Belarus (see Extreme Survival). In a 2006 TV tribute to fellow BBC broadcaster David Attenborough, Ray Mears confessed that much of his passion for his subject was fostered by Attenborough's nature documentaries.

Mears founded Woodlore, School of Wilderness Bushcraft, in 1983. The company, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008, has since expanded to running UK and overseas courses on the subject of Bushcraft, as well as stocking outdoor equipment and clothing in their online shop.

Mears has trained less than a handfull of people to full Bushcraft Instructor status. Upon achieving this goal, the new instructor receives a handmade antler handled knife. Three people that have received this honour are, Juha Rankinen, Lawrence Clarke and Ben McNutt. Juha teaches a government-run bushcraft college in Sweden, Lawrence is the head instructor for Bushcraft Ventures, based in the Cairngorms, and Ben is the chief instructor for Woodsmoke, based in the Lake District. Ben McNutt also worked with Mears as illustrator of the book Bushcraft, published in hardcover in 2002 and the smaller Essential Bushcraft published the following year.

Mears' The Survival Handbook was published in 1990, and his first TV appearance was in 1993 in the BBC Two series Tracks. In Wild Food, Mears worked alongside the University College of London's Professor of Archaeobotany, Gordon Hillman.

In September 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University, and later the same year he gave a series of public lectures across the UK on his experiences in front of and behind the lens.

Mears' latest television and writing project was a four-part series set in the Australian outback called Ray Mears Goes Walkabout. The television series was broadcast on BBC Two in June 2008, with an accompanying hardcover book published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton in March 2008. In the series Ray meets his boyhood hero Les Hiddins, aka "The Bush Tucker Man".

TV programmes

Series

• Tracks - BBC (1993 - 1997)
• Ray Mears' World of Survival - BBC and Discovery Civilization Channel (1997 - 1998, 2 seasons with 6 episodes)
• Country Tracks - BBC (1998)
• The Essential Guide to Rocks - BBC Education (1998)
• Ray Mears' Extreme Survival - BBC (1999 - 2002, 3 seasons with 6 episodes)
• Ray Mears' Adventure Special - BBC (2001) Ray Mears takes Ewan McGregor into the Honduran jungle on the trail of the Prehistoric People of the Mosquito Coast.
• Ray Mears' Country Tracks - BBC (2002 - 2003)
• Ray Mears' Real Heroes of Telemark - BBC (2003)
• Ray Mears' Bushcraft - BBC (2004 - 2005, 2 seasons with 5 episodes)
• Ray Mears' Wild Food - BBC (2007)
• Ray Mears Goes Walkabout - BBC (2008)

Guest Appearances

• Trips Money Can't Buy (With actor Ewan McGregor) - BBC (2001)
• Blue Peter - BBC (03/03/2004, 03/11/2004)
• The Disco and Weatherman Show - BBC Education Channel (2006)
• The New Paul O'Grady Show - Channel 4 (11/01/2007)
• Richard & Judy - Channel 4 (21/08/2007)
• Long Way Down - BBC Two (28/10/2007)
• Saturday Live - BBC Radio Four (26/04/2008)
• The Paul O'Grady Show - Channel 4 (29/04/2008)
• The Wright Stuff - Five (1/05/2008)
• The One Show – BBC One (19/05/2008)
• The Graham Norton Show - BBC Two (29 May 2008)

Books

• The Survival Handbook (1990)
• The Outdoor Survival Handbook (1992)
• Ray Mears' World of Survival (1997)
• Bushcraft (2002)
• Essential Bushcraft (2003)
• The Real Heroes of Telemark: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Stop Hitler's Atomic Bomb (2003)
• Ray Mears' Bushcraft Survival (2005)
• Wild Food by Ray Mears & Gordon Hillman (2007)
• Ray Mears Goes Walkabout (2008)
• Vanishing World - A Life of Bushcraft (to be published 2 Oct 2008)

See also

• Mors Kochanski
• Richard Proenneke
• Les Stroud
• Jeff Corwin
• Les Hiddins
• Tom Brown (naturalist)
• Rüdiger Nehberg, Sir Vival
• Survival kit
• Survivalism

External links

• Ray Mears' own web site
• Ray Mears on MySpace
• Ray Mears @ IMDb