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New History Channel show - Mountain Men

4K views 23 replies 12 participants last post by  4thIDvet 
#1 ·
The History Channel introduces viewers to the real meaning of living the "simple" life on Mountain Men.

4With all of the hip talk about living “off the grid” that has infiltrated the speech of many so-called “preppers,” i.e. “doomsday preppers,” it is not surprising that the History Channel is introducing a new show, Mountain Men, to take a look at the reality of the "simple" life dreamed about by so many.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live your life off the grid?” they ask potential viewers of this reality show. Fans are promised a look into the lives of true mountain men, who do not have the “complications of modern society.” These men, they say, truly live lives in the wilderness, and rely on nature for their sustenance.

Could you do it?

Think about it for a minute. Maybe you prefer to purchase organic-grown veggies at the grocery store or local farmers market, but could you really grow all of your own vegetables? And preserve them for use throughout the year? And, what about meat? Again, you may be organic all the way, but what if you had to not only raise that cow/chicken/turkey/pig, but kill it and clean it? Could you do it? Could you go out in the surrounding wilderness and take down deer/bear/moose/etc.? Go fishing? Could you process these creatures yourself, and, again, preserve them for use during the harsh winters of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina; seven-month winters of the Yaak River area in Montana; or absolutely frigid conditions in northern Alaska?

This is the “simple” life.

There are more challenges for these men than just finding food—mudslides, weather, and facing off with animals that may be hungrier than they are at the moment, not to mention building and maintaining their surroundings. Often, when one dreams of the “simple” life, the true weight of such living is not part of the equation. But, after all, it’s just a daydream—unless you live it, like these men do.

Meet the Mountain Men

The cast of Mountain Men are described as follows by the History Channel:

Eustace Conway

Eustace says that, when he was 16, spirits told him to live off the land during a Native American ceremony. So he and a few friends bought a 1,000-acre piece of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains called Turtle Creek Preserve, of which he owns 500 acres. Interns come to Eustace to learn the old ways of living with nature in a self-sustaining society. They include Justin, a tough city boy who can be hard to handle and doesn’t like taking orders; Chloe, a college student who hopes to someday help Eustace take Turtle Island Preserve to the next level; and Jessie, who is willing to work hard but struggles to adjust to the harsher side of outdoor living.

Marty Meierotto

Marty was 8 when his dad took him fur trapping for the first time. From that moment, he knew he’d be trapping for the rest of his life. At 25, with 10 bucks in his pocket, he set out for Alaska, where he’s now known as one of the top trappers in the territory. Marty lives in a cabin 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle with his wife Dominique and their daughter Noah. Working the trap line means leaving his family for weeks at a time to live in his primitive one-room log cabin 200 miles from civilization. In bone-chilling isolation just a stone’s throw from the Yukon Territories, he relies on his wits to survive nature’s deadliest obstacles. It’s heartbreaking to be away from his family, but Marty’s inner spirit is calling him to the wild—and he has to listen.

Tom Oar

Tom was a bronco rider on the rodeo circuit for 28 years. When the work started to take a toll on his body, the long-time trapper taught himself tanning to support himself and the love of his life, Nancy. They’ve been a team for more than 40 years. Nancy worries about Tom working the trap lines every day: wolves are becoming a big problem, and he’s not a young man anymore. She’s concerned that if his health or hers should fail, they’ll be forced to give up the life they love and move to Florida with his kids. Their neighbor Will is a close friend of Tom’s from their rodeo days. He looks up to Tom, who taught him how to live the mountain man life. Now that Tom and Nancy are getting older, he helps them out from time to time.

Meet the men and their families, and learn about truly living a life “off the grid,” when Mountain Men premieres on the History Channel tonight, Thursday, May 31, at 10/9C.

UPDATE: Mountain Men: A modern-day Alone in the Wilderness

Mountain Men gives viewers life off the grid on History Channel | HULIQ


Black Blade: Saw this last night. Was better than the obviously staged "Doomsday Preppers" type shows. Not that this one isn't staged, but looks more realistic.
 
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#2 ·
I saw this show the other night and though soon i will not be able to keep up, thank god I no longer watch Son of Guns or American guns

so between Swamp People ( troy & gang) Duck Dynasty, Top shot, top guns, air alaska, gold rush ( todd & gang) Mountain men, my Welsh & Irish sitcoms on PBS, & Outdoor channel I will no longer have time to build I think I forgot a show or two

sprat
 
#3 ·
I watched & thought it was ridiculus. My idea of a mountain man does not drive a $40.000 pickup truck or an airplane. One quote was " He just makes enough to pay his bills" ! Mountain man with BILLS??? WTF ,Yeah right! The one couple had a log home bigger than the Cartrights ponderosa!
 
#16 ·
I read this post a couple of times and I thought about it a little bit. I have this to say as a thought for everyone. We are in a unique position in this nation that our fore bearers were not in. They had many more options available to them than we do. First of all you could homestead, I don't even think that is possible in Alaska nowadays as they stopped the practice a few years back. Secondly even after the passage of the income tax in 1914 we still had people who did not pay taxes to the government and yet they owned their land and could work it and prosper.

Our options today are vastly more limited, if you go and try to live on BLM land and squat for too long they will run you off or arrest you, no option to homestead. If you buy a piece of property no matter how remote you will pay at least property taxes or they will put a lien on it and evict you no matter how far out you live. If you have no job with taxable income then the IRS is going to say your subsistence activities are in fact a job and try to tax the produce of your labors such as trapping and hunting.

In fact other than Alaska there is no place in the union where it is legal any longer to subsistence hunt or fish. Try that where I live you will be fined and then jailed if they catch you doing it more than once or twice and I live in one of the more "Free states" left in the union. These people on that show have bills because we don't live in a free society any longer. In fact with property tax which is only slightly less onerous than income tax you are at best never the owner of your land. Merely a lease tenant.

Even if you live like these blokes on TV the best you can ever hope to be is a mere shadow of what someone who lived 75 to 150 years was. Yes we have cars , jets, the Internet and what essentially amounts to a whole society that has been permanently indentured to the government from the time we are old enough to earn a paycheck till the day we die in front of the TV.
 
#4 ·
Ya Bradrock ,,, that kinda struck me as a bit funny too,,, man talk about roughing it,, huh???? I should have it so rough!!!! So tell me does that make me a "mountian man" cause I used to hike the AT for two weeks at a time when I worked with the Forest Service??? Don't look to me like they ran into much more than I did during the course of a normal work day on top of a mountian somewheres or as a ice fishing guide like I do now. Didn't look like a big deal to me, just a normal day in paradise!!! IMO
 
#5 ·
Even if the first episode was somewhat tolerable, it won't be long before they ruin it with the whining and bitching and acting like high school girls the same way they do all the others.
The American Restoration crew are some of the best restorers I've ever seen, but their show has been ruined. IMO


Our time is better spent with the tv off.
 
#6 ·
PBS nature, documentarys and science shows for me!!! Best use of time spent watching TV, well NASCAR too of course!!! Don't have cable or dish and all this other shit is just ,,,, well,,, just shit!!! Stuff like jersey shore, and stuff like that,,, I can't even imagine watching that crap,,, what a waste of time! No wonder people are such dumb ass's now days, they learn there ways by watching that silly shit!!! More of,,, "The dumbing down of America!!!" I'm afraid to say.
 
#8 ·
Damn..

You guys are rough, ruff ruff. :)
Well now that I am old and tired. I would build a fort like Jim Bridger did in Wyoming. Top of the "Wind River Canyon."
Keep many Indian women..
Sell whiskey too the ******.
"Tim's fort. Last stop for all your needs. We are not cheap, but this is your last stop in the Rockies. Buy here or die. Sorry, no credit cards or checks."
What is the name of that town top of the "Wind River Canyon."
Hot spings there. Incredible mountain man history too the place?
 
#9 ·
it won't be long before they ruin it with the whining and bitching and acting like high school girls the same way they do all the others.
I think the same thing about those type of shows, just watch a few of them when they first start and then forget about 'em because they all end up the same way.



The American Restoration crew are some of the best restorers I've ever seen, but their show has been ruined. IMO
But at least that show has a reason to turn that way, he has his teen age son & his friend working at the shop :D
 
#13 ·
Good Man Bro..



Thermophiles. Mountain Man country.. Jim Bridgers great granddaughter owns a museum there. Well she did in the early 80s.
Part of the "Outlaw Trail."
That was where old Jim retired from trapping and set us his trading post.
"Unsolved History" is a good show.
They set up famous battles and re-create what really happened.
 
#14 ·
I worked around Thermoplis and all towns around that area. I was a driller on seismic top drive drill.That was fun.There is the best digging you could as for 200 feet of blue clay and there is also a lot of bentonite around the area.I loved that in and out in 12 minutes .I could dig 2000 feet and be done about 1 or 2:00 and had the rest of the day to hunt or fish.
 
#15 ·
I saw a lot of dinosaur stuff in thermopolis as a kid when my grandparents took me there in the late 80s. Pretty cool.

I have several hundred digital cable channels, and with a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old in the house, we watch Curious George and Little Ensteins. And no others so it seems. until they go to bed.

Have to watch this mountain man show. sounds interesting. I was a big fan Survivorman with Les Stroud, Dual Survivial, yes, even man woman wild.

My wife and had a running joke/laugh about the History channel, everytime we see its on, its about Hitlers Bodyguards or the last days of Hitler, and we jokingly say "Holy crap the history is showing something about Hitler!"

I like the Military Channel and G4. Also HCI and H2, because they play older History Channel shows, not just WW2 and hilter.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Good post Sharpshooter... So very true..
I live in the middle of one million acres of National and State forest down here in Florida.
With the current depression and bad economic times were in..
People, down on their luck, were moving into the forest and setting up camp.
The Govt. stepped in and put sand piles blocking every un-numbered road.
Hell like the American Indian said.
"All your doing is living on it till you croak. Then the next guy takes over."
 
#19 ·
If anyone watched last night.. Eustace got a tax lien on his property.... The show also spoke to the fact that he struggles being able to pay the bill because of his subsistence lifestyle.
 
#20 ·
no matter how far you go back in to the woods the Tax man will follow,

breaking down in the Alaskan wilds un-armed??? that does not sound wise

Poor Tom no deer!! but he will be eating Beaver for the winter??? heck I did that my sophmore year in college!! come to think about my junior & senior years too

in response to
Yep the history channel went from the 'Hitler Channel' to the social engineering channel.
wonder when it will be called the Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot channel each killed 4 times as many of their own peoples than Hilter ever did, Stalin killed more Jews than Hilter
yet this what we see and hear all the time
I should note I am not excusing the atrocities of Hitler

sprat
 
#21 ·
Yeah, if my wife could tolerate the cold, I wouldn't mind living like Tom in that georgeous log home up in North West Montana. Damn that was beautiful country. He and his wife sure have a nice spread. Not sure how far off the beaten path they are, as they seem to have plenty of electricity. Place was lit up like the 4th of July during the snowstorm on the premier episode. Could be a generator, but it just didn't seem like it. Looked more like the grid to me.
 
#22 ·
My brother lives off the beaten path to the point their aint no grid. They use a generator, solar and wind. They have lights all night long. They just don't waste their electricity.
 
#23 ·
Well I thought the first episode was a farce, but tried again tonight. It will be the last time. What B.S. The dude in alaska is not a trapper...He's a bum with a shack.
Did anyone notice him walking back to his broke down snow machine carrying NOTHING, but out of thin air appears the replacement engine that HE carried back?Do the producers think no one will notice?? Walking back to shacck the night before he was dying for water & barely made it back alive.. even though surrounded by camera crew & helicopter flying overhead?? Good grief!! The loser hippie in carloina blames his poor deer shot on a misfire?? Wish I could get away with that excuse! Heh...Heh. Did anyone notice that while tracking deer from his poor shot that half the time he was carrying a rifle & half the time he had a shotgun?? WTF?? The Tom fellow with the great log home & swell friend seems allright, but the other two losers are just bums who hoodwinked the TV people into thinking they were real live off the landers. Really though....not a mountain man in the bunch.Not even close.
 
#24 ·
Commercial flight years back, flying at about God knows how many feet.
Somewhere over the Canadian mountains.
Just one of those crystal clear cold nights, where you could see everything on the ground.
All the passangers sleeping. But I was fascinated with the view..
Miles of nothing but beautiful mountains and snow..
Then a cabin... lights on.
Incredible, it was like I could make out the windows and the light coming through.
For real, whoever was there was so far from human life, this guy was a mountain man for sure.
Never forgot that.. Once in a lifetime.
Almost woke the passangers up to look.
Wonder if they would have got pissed? :)
 
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