Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anybody watch the Mountain Men show?

We've watched it for years
It's good entertainment, far better than typical contemporary TV programs.

I have been watching it since it started. My favorite is lold Tom Oar, the ex rodeo rider who hunt and traps pretty much for a living. His wife and him make clothing and items out of the hides and animal parts to sell at a general store.

interesting. Eustice just totally turns me off as an arrogant fake the few times we tried to watch it. Of course every show is scripted unfortunately so its probably not him in real life at all. riding a horse 30 miles or whatever to pay a tax bill. Yeah right.

Eustace was the subject of a book. The Last Real Man in America, I think. The chick who wrote it later became his wife if I'm not mistaken. Barkoff sent it to me, and I sent it to Hound girl. It's a decent read, his background and accomplishments are different than most people. Took a coast to coast horse ride. I've never done that. Has anyone else?

Marty is a tough dude. I remember the show where his snow machine engine locked up on him 13 miles from his camp. After walking back to camp, he back packed a spare engine and some tools the 13 miles to his machine and fixed it.

I have enjoyed watching it off and on over the years. I'm another one who always liked Marty and Tom. Eustace is a Drama Queen.

Other than them it seems like there has been kind of a rotation of randos through there as well, I never cared for them much.

Have never watched it. A Montana fishing guide I used to hire lived a mile or so from where they film a lot. He said it's funny to see a "wagon train" of trucks, campers, and limos parked along the road while they film the guys struggling through impenetrable "wilderness" a few yards away. The script has them worrying about getting food - and there's a diner not half a mile down that road. After the last episode of the season is in the can, the stars all fly to Bermuda.

Yeah, I've watched a few episodes. It IS quite entertaining!
The snowmobile thing, 13 miles in the backside of nowhere. Reminds me of "Swamp People" when Liz busted the lower unit on her motor and drifted around (according to them!) half a day before some stranger came along to tow her in.
What about the camera crew filming the incident from another boat? They couldn't have towed her in?

There is a LOT of "sensationalism" filmed into those reality (?) shows!

People just love being bullshitted..

I'd also never seen the show but did a quick read about the show and the man, Eustace Conway. Did a few YT videos as well to put a voice to the characters.

Below I clipped from a interview of a long-term employee(?) of this Trutle Island Camp. He was requested to meet with Eustace to discuss a new position at Turtle Island.


He’d slink into basecamp occasionally—to eat, teach a class, move the horses—only to disappear just as suddenly, zipping on a motorcycle up into the dark, verdant hills. As I fell in love with the place and returned every few summers to work at camp as a kitchen troll (a position about as glamorous as it sounds) or a counselor, Eustace kept his distance.

When he pulled me aside to make his offer in 2019, it was the first time we’d spoken for more than a few minutes. We’d shared space for a decade, but I hardly knew the man. 

Eustace’s other project: for the past several years, he’s been buying and restoring old houses in the area surrounding Boone he rents most of the houses on AirBnb.

One of them he calls home.

The house looks expensive; appliances and stuff abound.
Leslie, Eustace’s housekeeper greets me at the door, instructs an Amazon Alexa to cut the Fleetwood Mac, and points me out back, where the celebrity is.

His white-columned porch overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains, laden with their signature isoprene haze. He’s finishing up a call on his cell phone and eating shrimp a la Leslie, cooked on a modern stove rather than a campfire. The shells he either casts into his large, sloping backyard, swallows whole (“I figure it cleans the colon!”), or feeds to his new Pyrenees/Heeler mix, Rebel.

The rough life of Eustace Conway, barely able to pay the tax man or keep himself fed.

To phoney,can't bring myself to watch any of them.

It's right up there with Mountain Monsters. The old fat guys who chase after the Bloodsucking Wooley Booger of Shìt Creek West Virginia

About as much MM as Biden is a Genius!

I’ve always thought that Eustice was a bit creepy!!

No kid of mine would be involved in the programs they offer..

https://www.turtleislandpreserve.org/

Appears to be pretty heavy into attracting youth to the location that's primarily staffed with volunteer help...

Recipe for disaster...

The show is entertaing like the PTL Club used to be with Jim and Tammy Baker.

It is as phony as the Bakers, just the stars don't dress as nice.

The same company that produced our documentary on Custer, produces "Mountain Men" I didn 't know it during the filming and I told the producer that I hoped our show was better than those phony Mountain Men. He didn't say anything, but later I found out he produced the same show.

Eustice has to be the worst. I watched one episode where they were skidding logs with his steam powered Toyota and they were trying to make it look like a remote wilderness area and you could see very cleary, the road just above where they were trying to skid logs.

The best parts are where any of the so-called "Mountain Men" are in a remote area and can't get their truck or airplane started and have to consider frostbite and being stranded for an uncertain amount of time. When we were filming, there were never less than a dozen people behind the cameras with catered food and tons of resources in a couple vans parked nearby.

Doesn't anyone think that Tom, when he started walking back home in the winter when his Dodge truck wouldn't start, that he could just get a ride in one of the support vehicles with the film crew?

Same way when Marty's snowmobile broke down on the trail miles away from the cabin, and it was -40 outside, and he had to spend the night in the bush. It's all scripted to appeal to an audience that will believe anything on TV.

Just fall in line then Komrad.

Ironic how some people can say it's fake and not worth watching but know all the characters and scenes. Hmmm.

Of course there's manufactured drama and camera crews are nearby. A producer is also helping expedite the scenes. They are not leaving a camera crew, light crew, sound crew and assistant producer sitting around on hourly pay, while Marty walks 26 miles to fix his snow machine. Reality TV is a business, the entertainment business. It's not documentary TV.

I find the show entertaining. I like the bush planes. No faking the flying scenes. It's GoPros mounted on the plane. The backwoods runways could be two miles from a city, but still impressive. It's 100x better than Homestead Rescue, which for the life of me cannot figure out how it's still on the air. Yellowstone Wardens is pretty good too.