Ray Mears

Ray Mears grew up in Kenley Greater London and 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 the various 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 the Second World War, such as the Norwegian heavy water plant saboteurs (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 stated that much of his passion for his subject was fostered by Attenborough's nature documentaries.

Mears founded the 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 only a handful of people to Instructor level. Upon achieving this goal, the new instructor receives a handmade antler-handled knife. Four people who have received this recognition are Juha Rankinen, Lawrence Clarke, Ben McNutt and Paul Kirtley. 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. Paul Kirtley continues to work with Mears as Woodlore's Course Director.

Mears' first book, The Survival Handbook, was published in 1990, and his first TV appearance was in 1993 in the BBC2 series Tracks. In the 2007 TV series 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 United Kingdom 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^[1], with an accompanying hardcover book published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton in March 2008. In the series Ray met one of his heroes: Les Hiddins (aka "The Bush Tucker Man").

Mears experienced a near fatal experience in 2005 while filming one of his documentaries in Wyoming. The helicopter in which he was traveling with his camera crew suddenly malfunctioned and crashed to the ground, rolling three times. Despite fuel escaping and pouring all over the wreck of the helicopter as well as Mears and the crew, no fire started and Mears was able to escape the wreckage and then help rescue one of the crew who was badly injured in the cockpit.^[2]

• Tracks - BBC (1993 - 1997)
• Ray Mears' World of Survival - BBC and Discovery Civilization Channel (1997 - 1998, 2 seasons with 6 episodes)
• Ray Mears' Country Tracks - BBC (1998, 2002 - 2003)
• 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' 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)^[3]

• 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 (29/05/2008)
• BBC Breakfast - BBC One (7/10/08)

• 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 (2008)

Quotes by Ray Mears include:

"Bushcraft is what you carry in your mind and your muscles."
"The great thing about bushcraft is that wherever you go, the skills go with you."
"One of the great things about bushcraft is that skills you learn in your back garden can be used all over the world."
^[4] "Knowledge doesn't weigh anything."

• Bear Grylls
• Les Hiddins aka Bushtucker Man
• Mors Kochanski
• Richard Proenneke
• Les Stroud - In Survivorman
• Jeff Corwin
• Tom Brown (naturalist)
• Rüdiger Nehberg (Sir Vival)
• Survival kit
• Survivalism

• Ray Mears' own web site
• Ray Mears on MySpace
• Ray Mears @ IMDb
• Ray Mears' Survival shows on Dave (UKTV)
• Photographs of 2005 helicopter accident