Ray Mears will once again speak about his surprising link to killer Raoul Moat, when the survival expert appears in an extended documentary which examines the search for the killer.
This weekend, ITV will begin its three part true crime drama, The Hunt for Raoul Moat, with the series revisiting the tragic events of summer 2010, when, just days after being released from prison, Moat headed to Birtley and shot dead Christopher Brown, the new boyfriend of ex Samantha Stobbart; also leaving his former girlfriend in hospital after shooting her too.
Moat's shooting spree didn't end there as, after making threats against Northumbria Police, he shot and blinded PC David Rathband on the outskirts of Newcastle, before fleeing to Northumberland, with the help of two accomplices.
READ MORE: Why Paul Gascoigne was 'cut' from ITV's Hunt for Raoul Moat drama
A massive search operation was launched by police to track down Moat, as the hunt for him made headlines on a national scale. The gunman was eventually traced to Rothbury and that is when Ray was called into assist.
How was Ray Mears involved in the hunt for Raoul Moat?
His involvement in the investigation was detailed in a documentary about Moat in 2020, 10 years and will be on screen again when the extended documentary Man Hunt airs on ITV on Wednesday night.
Using skills honed over decades, Mears led police to within feet over where Moat had been hiding and recalling what happened in his his autobiography My Outdoor Life., he wrote: "It was the hardest tracking I’ve done. I didn’t want a situation where he knew we were coming and could lie in wait for us.
“We knew Moat was very dangerous but the most important thing was that I didn’t want to let people down. That was more a concern for me than Moat.”
The fact that Ray was involved in the search is something many people still can't get their heads' around. In the aftermath of the trailer for The Hunt for Raoul Moat airing on ITV, one viewer took to to Twitter to post: "Gazza turning up wasn’t the strangest part to this saga for me. It was the fact the police were finding it so hard to locate Moat that they hired woodsman and TV presenter Ray Mears to help find him. Bizarre times."
A second commented: "I've been thinking a lot about the Raoul Moat manhunt of 2010. We all remember Gazza's surreal intervention with chicken and fishing rod, but an equally weird detail is often forgotten – they called in Ray Mears to help track him."
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