This post is part of our week-long Bear Grylls contest.  If you can give the best survival advice to Bear, in a detailed scenario involving camouflage briefs, Budweiser beer and anacondas, you’ll win a Bear Grylss Ultimate Multi-Tool.  Click here for the full scenario and contest rules. Good luck!

Bear Grylls is the quintessential badass outdoorsman. His insanity and advice for surviving in extreme situations has literally saved people’s lives, so if you’ve ever wondered why he puts himself in these dangerous conditions, it’s for our own benefit. In honor of Bear Grylls, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 coolest Bear Grylls moments. Here they are.

#5 Bear Climbs a Bridge and Dodges a Train

There are few people that truly have nerves of steel, but Bear Grylls is definitely one of them. In this clip, Bear climbs to the top of a bridge and dodges a train. He gets a lot of flack for staging scenes to demonstrate what to do in certain situations, but there’s no doubt that this feat of survival is absolutely badass.

#4 Bear Kills a Reindeer and Eats Its Heart

The wild is brutal, so it shouldn’t be a shock that surviving in the wild requires doing callous things like stabbing a reindeer through its head and drinking its dripping blood. This scene is definitely not something Santa Claus would want to watch, but it shows Bear’s skill in capturing, killing and utilizing an animal for survival. This also would have been nearly impossible to do without a good knife.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPyyG6eukVA

#3 Bear Creates an Urban Explosion

One of the best things about Bear is his resourcefulness. He can take ordinary tools or items found in the wild and use them for new purposes, so it’s no surprise that he can do even cooler things with items found in abandoned urban environments. In this scene, Bear is trying to get into a derelict building by using explosive gases to burst through a door.

#2 Bear Eats a Rhino Larvae Beetle

There’s almost nothing n the wild Bear hasn’t eaten,  but this clip may take the cake. If you ever find yourself stranded in the bush, it might be wise to pass over giant larvae as a meals

#1 Any “Polar Bear” Swim

This might be a cop-out, but there have been several scenes where Bear has put himself in the situation of being in the water at subzero temperatures. This feat is amazing for anyone, but Bear has done it a couple times and in the clip below, even swims underneath solid ice where he could potentially get trapped. If you stay in the water long enough, your body could shut down and you could die very quickly, not to mention what could happen to your extremities once you’re out of the water. That’s why his propensity to jump into the icy waters tops our list of most badass Bear Grylls scenes.

Last week, we ran our first contest at the Cutting Edge and the response was huge!  Over 200 people commented on blog posts during the week to enter to win a 51-inch William Wallace replica sword. Since turnout was so good, we decided to give away a second sword as well!  Next week, we’ll be announcing a new product give-away, so stop by for another chance to win great knife merchandise. And without further delay, the winners are…

Eino Hill

William Gagliardi

This post is the last in a week-long series about swords in conjunction with our first Cutting Edge product give-away.  Place a comment before midnight (Central Time) on Sunday and you’ll be entered to win a 51-inch William Wallace replica sword ($119 value).

“I could not be a traitor to Edward for I was never his subject,’ said William Wallace while being tried for treason after his capture in August of 1305.  Unfortunately, the British government thought otherwise.

After a brief trial, Wallace was stripped naked and dragged through the city by a horse.  He was then hanged until he was barely alive, castrated, sliced open and forced to watch while his entrails were burned, and eventually decapitated. His head was covered in tar and placed on a pike on a top of London bridge.

It was undoubtedly a rough way to die, but Wallace had sent many a foe to equally brutal deaths during his reign as the most notorious freedom-fighter in Scotland.

Wallace’s crusade against the British began after infighting amongst the Scottish nobility allowed England to seize Scotland in 1296.  While doing so, the British perpetrated a wide range of atrocities against the Scottish people

Historians speculate that Wallace’s wrath was additionally motivated by the murder of Marion Braidfute, a Scottish heiress that he was married to. He took revenge by slaying her murderer, William Heselright, the English Sheriff of Lanark.

From there, Wallace won a string of battles, pushing the British away from Scotland and inciting his fellow countryman to revolution.  Often outnumbered and facing armies with superior weaponry, Wallace used military strategy to his advantage.  His employment of tactical arrangements—like the Sheltron—as well as his use of strategic terrain defied military ethics of his time.

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