I may be wrong but i can't see there being a grain if truth in this. Lets look at the facts, there's a nutter on the run with who knows what weapons at his disposal, he's already killed once, attempted two other murders and has said he's going to kill again. What bright spark would think, i know lets get a civilian to go in and try to track him. A civilian thats very high profile,a world wide known television personality, unarmed and if anything went wrong it would look very bad for the police, with no chance of any deniability. The armed forces, especially the s.a.s.or the even better trained s.b.s. have people well versed in the art of tracking, who could have been armed and who's skills exceed that of Ray Mears. It could also be that the police and the media fabricated this story to hide the fact that special forces were involved as im sure they would have been. Furthermore with all the publicity involved in this incident i can't imagine Ray coming out and denying it.
The issue of actively using armed forces personell against a simple criminal was discussed already. Suffice to say it's a no-no.
What a lot of people here seem to be forgetting is that Mr Mears was involved in the 'survival' and E&E community for years. He is involved with military survival schools. He's spent at least some time with the paramilitary big-game-wardens in Africa -- who hunt down armed groups of men in life-or-death situations. He's not just some cuddly TV presenter who spends his whole time paddling around Canada and wandering around the South Downs.