Do you guys watch Mountain Men? I was just watching our local NM hero go after a Buffalo, as in Bison. His name is Kyle Bell and he is a big game guide.
In the show he claims to live in the Cimarron Valley. His web site says he lives in Folsom, NM which is not in the Cimarron Valley
There are no 'wild' buffalo in NM. There are all on private ranches. The Boy Scouts have some, Ted Turner has a bunch. Several Indian tribes have some.
The other large herds are located on several large ranches.
The bufs can be hunted in several places, prepare to pay.
When I looked at Kyle's web site, it says no buffalo hunting avaiable at this time! I love reality TV!

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

The real Mountain Men all disappeared in the 19th Century. All after them are somewhat poseurs.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

When was the show filmed?

Nope, I prefer mountain women.
I have watched the series just enough to know that I don't want to watch it. Don't care for any of the un-reality tv that I've seen unless someone considers staged and scripted as reality.
Today there's more tv but less to watch in my opinion.

I watch it mostly for the scenery which, for this flatlander, is the stuff dreams are made of.

'Course, watching it on TV means I can't feel the wind and the cold.....

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Eustace and his buddy have a truck breakdown and have to walk miles back their place...Wonder why they didn't catch a ride with the TV crew... Sort of deflated the suspense. O' well it is TV I guess it beats the family fro Arkansas that has I think 20 kids. Yet they take all those high dollar trips.....Mom an Dad seem like nice folks as do the kids...I guess I know what the parents do for a past time.....I mention that to my wife and the argument starts...I know better to open my mouth but...The devil gets me.....

I'm guilty of watching it. Not 100% sure why. I do find some of the characters to be genuine (whether their escapades are or not is debatable) but, they are generally likable folks.

I did notice this week that Marty's "airstrip" seemed to have a few tire or ski tracks on it. I assume it's the camera crew's and gave them a pass on the BS meter.

All-in-all compared to the other total trash we are subjected to on the tube; it's a pretty good show.

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paws for friendship

I dont think I have seen the series you are discussing but about two years ago the national geographic channel had a show on three mountain men crossing the mountains riding horses and mules and carrying BP rifles and wearing the period cloths. I had watched it and by chance a few weeks later one afternoon Theresa and I was having lunch at Chili`s in the bar section.
The place was almost empty and a lady came in to meet her boy friend that was the star of the show that I had already seen. They had made a date to watch it again on TV at Chili`s. It was neat. We all watched the show together and of course, discussed it as I had worked where some of it was filmed in the tetons years ago when I was in the national park service.
I asked him how he got on the show. He said, "They found me". I believe he is a local cowboy and hunting guide type that lived here.

My guess is that the producers of the show make the choices as to what is said and done and the mountain men are only guilty of allowing such twisted BS to be filmed as the truth. The old guy in the western hat from Montana is so lame it even hurts me to see him get around. If these men even were aware of how it makes them look they probably would not do it but I am sure they like the money and laughable fame.
Most of these type of shows are so inaccurate it is sad. However the majority of viewers have no experience to know the difference.

Did anyone else notice that the buffalo in last nights episode had ear tags?

I watch a little but Eustace, the mountain man guy here in the Appalachian Mountains (our deadly part of the world) just drives me nuts. He is depicted as being out in the middle of nowhere. He is actually 8 miles and 16 minutes (according to Google maps) from Boone (In 2012, Boone was listed as one of the 10 best places to retire) and Appalachian State University (17,000 enrollment, 6th largest university in NC).

Not exactly a 2 day slog through rock, snow, and raging rivers to get to Starbucks, the bagel shop and Walmart. The guy has skills but he is not living and making it in the frozen north.

It was a cow...those were earrings; all the rage in the days of yore.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

We live in SW utah near Cedar Breaks, Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks. I am constantly amazed and always reminded of how tough and rugged those people had to be! Theresa and my biggest recreation is riding our RZR on the trails around here. We live right on the old spanish trail and yesterday rode on a tough 25 mile section of it. It is unbelievable rugged, steep country. I have been flying over it too and it is hard to imagine what the pioneers went through to get over it. I cant begin to understand how the early Mormons got here by pushing those handcarts! For you that havent heard of them they were a high two wheeled push cart with a small box that carried all their belongings! No horse, just push the darn cart from back east to utah! Check this out!
Mormon handcart pioneers - Ask.com Encyclopedia

I did watch briefly, but not any more because there is absolutely no reality in that so called reality show or any of the others for that matter.

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Dick

Watched it for five minutes last year, been re-arranging my sock drawer and washing my horse ever since.

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Bill
Dis B. Leaf

Good question. The guy in Alaska is obviously in very cold nasty weather.
The NM guys who are up almost to the CO line appear to be in cool weather but not that nasty. And their buf hunt isn't state controlled, so they can hunt anytime.
The Alaska guy appeared to be in a dangerous situation. I would expect the film crew to have a satelitte phone with the number of their bush pilot programmed!

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

Scripted? Camera crews? Do you mean to tell me Gilligan could have left the island any time he chose?

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

When anyone left from back east to go west before the railroads were built they were looking at about six months of hiking or riding----one way! Probley most of them started out thinking they aren't coming back. Now people complain about the 4 hour plane ride! I ride the trails a lot. Still, they were built by others. I do it on a machine and anything beyond a mile after we leave the truck I am progressively concerned as to my sanity as both my wife and I arent in shape to walk out in this steep country. Sometimes we get 35 miles one way from the truck. A ten minuet drive on the rzr away from the trailhead is more than I want to walk back if there is a breakdown. 54 + years ago I worked walking daily in the mountains but I was 19 years old. My wife insists we go well equipped. Sometimes I get aggravated loading and carrying all that stuff but some of it occasionally comes in handy. Specially the porta pottie! I have been recording our "tracks" on a APT called "My tracks" on a Samsung Tab 2.
The Tablet has a GPS built in it. You just turn it on and it records your trip. It gives your speed, the time the trip took, elevation and the distance you went. When you get home you can bring it up on or as a map or goggle earth. You can zero right down on it and it will even fly you down the trail or road just as you drove it! The other day I tried it out in my airplane. It worked well. So far I have recorded about 30 jaunts since I learned it a couple months ago. This is probley old stuff to many here but I have been computer challenged. It is real intriguing to me!
Watching tv about the west is one thing when they show guys riding through meadows but to get to those meadows there is a lot of steep rocks, brush and trees to navigate! Maybe a few murderous savages hiding behind them too! It seems in those days there were also many Grizzleys too where there are none now. This is the way to go!

Gilligan was supposed to be a spoof....The reality shows are supposed to be real..(Well almost real) The producers seem to think we all live in some Mega city and believe that stuff....Well they just might be right..I hear what some of the people in NYC say about the government and I wonder how much moxie the really have. I'm afraid they might be able to navigate around the Big Apple but in Missouri they would be considered a dumb butt. On two trips to NYC I was amazed how many have not owned an auto nor were able to drive..I guess it isn't practical to be a driver in Manhattan. The produces of these so called reality shows are basing their product for urban consumption I guess. Sort of like the gun shows..Most people with gun experience didn't buy into Sons of Guns or the other over the top what I called (Gunners Soap Opera's)..Somebody buys this stuff or, I guess better said ..watch the stuff....I am as guilty as most and end up watching some of it out of pure boredom...I'm getting old..My excuse.....Whats yours???

I watched it last night...simply because nothing else was on, so it was basically just "mental chewing gum."

I got turned off on the program several weeks ago when ol' Tom permanently kept a mountain lion off of his place by yelling, "Get outta here!!!"

I also thought it was kinda humorous when he was afraid a grizzly bear was frequenting their place. He was going to be out of town for several days, so he taught it wife how to shoot a gun in order to protect herself from the grizzly. The gun?...a single-shot .410. Obviously, he must not love his wife much.

Lots of discrepancies. I keep telling my wife, though, that they could really increase their viewing audience by letting the wolves attack ol' Tom, or by finding Marty frozen to death by his broken down snowmobile, or by letting that little kid in New Mexico get eaten by a bear. Now that's what I call entertainment!!!

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Pack light and cinch tight.

I like the guy up in Alaska, Marty.. And the old rodeo guy, Tom.. The rest, i just fast forward through..

The dude in Montana with the mountain lion dogs is hilarious.. He's always complaining/worrying about his dogs being lost.. Every shot of his dogs I've seen, show a GPS tracking collar on them.. Either this show is not completely "realistic" , or he can only afford the collar & not the receiver ?

Isn't he the same guy that gut shot a mule deer and lost it earlier in the season cause he was having such a hard time blood trailing it in the snow?

The guy in Alaska(Marty), the houndsman(Rich) and the old guy in Montana(Tom), seem real and I think they could maybe be considered Mountain Men. Eustance, Charley and Kyle are jokes.

I also really like Tom in Montana. I just looked him up, he's
Tom Oar. I was thinking he was Tom Orr. Had a buddy from Kentucky named that. We lost him in SEA.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

If you take the show for it's entertainment value I guess it's OK. The "peril" these guys face is ridiculous when you're watching their plight through the eyes of the camera crew that's ever present. That said, it would be interesting to know how the camera crew live when they film this stuff. In one case, and I can't recall the guys name, he lives in a little less than a one room shack. And. he bathes naked outside in the extreme cold. He also eats what I think is only one step up from roadkill, some of which he eats raw. Where do the production guys stay and what do they eat? His shack couldn't stand a bear attack and looks like it's relatively unheated.

I think a better story would be what's going on behind the cameras.

My wife insists on watching Mountain Men. I can tolerate every one except Useless, I mean Eustace. He isn't so much a mountain man as he is a miser! If he can't beg, borrow or get it for free he doesn't want it. He needs to wash his hair and clothes too.

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Virtue,Liberty & Independence

That would have been Eustace. He supposedly has his truck running on wood now. I researched this and it can be done but not like he did it. The article I read was very detailed about the problems involved and what it took to overcome them. Apparently all this person got when they started was a lot of tar. It took numerous attempts to reach something that actually had a chance at working and still hadn't been perfected enough to use.

Eustace and his buddy took the truck on quite a trip and we're supposed to believe he was able to do the whole trip using his "gassifier". The contraption he made was always in danger of falling off the back of the truck. They never showed him loading any wood for the purpose and also didn't show him stopping at the gas station.

If I do watch the show I also rely on the humor it provides. I just wonder how much these guys get paid.

It has to be fairly substantial. I mean, let's face it, they'd have to be giving me a pretty big paycheck in order for me to act as unintelligent as some of these guys.

I got a kick out of the part when Tom and his son were 15 miles away from home with their snowmobile and they had to stop and catch a fish or they wouldn't survive the trip getting home. C'mon!!! Fifteen miles on a snowmobile wouldn't have taken them that long. Probably less than an hour. Do they really think they're going to starve to death in an hour??? Gimme a break!

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Pack light and cinch tight.

Hay, they were hungry and the closest McDonalds was two hours away.

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Don

Eustace is more of a Rainbow Coalition person than a Mountain Man........I think they call him that because he just happens to live on a mountain.....

That guy, Marty, every problem he has/had seems/is of his own making. He tries to fix his snow machine only to dump gas allover his cabin that has a wood burning stove. His ashtray glasses get lost in the snow and he's blind w/out them - he has a spare set he can't find - and he finds them so he can fly home. Then he goes far out in the field with a bad snow machine motor that dies on him in the middle of nowhere and he has to walk uphill both ways -only to conveniently have a spare motor and the dramatic walk back.
With the back cloud of bad luck that follows him around in each episode, why is he not dead?

If you do the math there is no way Marty can make a living at what he"catches"! The only one I kinda like is Tom Orr. The rest are just lame jokers.

In years past I did A LOT of 4wd-ing out in the desert. We carried food (for supper under the stars), and a lot of water, and sometimes more rum than water. We'd have a few slugs, sometimes more than a few slugs, and bay at the moon. Carried a shovel and a tow cable, too. We went with another couple; I'm a lot braver in 4wd when there's another vehicle along.

Packed a Ruger Security Six, 6" barrel, and sometimes a rifle. Never fired either when out there.

Hey, I know guys that do it for nothing and they don't even have a camera pointed at them.
I guess if I look at it in a certain way, it can be entertaining in how the characters act in their dramatic given situations.

I know this is an old thread, and not even sure how I found this blog.

But I thought I could shed some light on the OPs thoughts. My family owns the ranch where Kyle and Ben hunted their buffalo. It's an odd location. His website says Folsom because that's what the USPS dictates in order to get mail. The ranch, including Kyle's home actually IS in the Cimarron Valley, on Cimarron Highway to be exact. Mailing address says Folsom, mail is picked up out of Clayton, NM, post marked out of Liberal, Kansas. Wonderful government at work!

I'm not sure of the precise meaning of "wild buffalo", but on our ranch they are pretty much free range in that they are fenced, but only because they choose to stay. LOL Truly, a buffalo goes where he desires pretty much by brute force. We don't herd them or work them. They are free to wander the top of the Mesa on our ranch. They increase their herd completely without human intervention (unlike the cattle on the lower lands of the ranch). Personally, I would say the Buffalo that Kyle and Ben shot was as close to wild as you can get today. Yep, some are ear tagged, because some were purchased, as you have to keep refreshing the gene pool. Those born on the ranch are not ever touched.

I'm guessing the shows ratings are good enough that they are paying them quite well to behave the way they do on the show. But, yes we do offer buffalo hunts most times, and yes, expect to pay handsomely for the rare opportunity to hunt such a majestic creature.

He does, once a year whether they need it or not.

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Don

Now they have a new guy who is walking through rough country to get to a piece of property he bought in Alaska apparently sight unseen. He finally gets there through all the peril of falling through the ice, waiting for hours to shoot a beaver so he'd have enough to eat (the film crew probably can't help him out). Now he's waiting for a bush pilot to drop supplies so he can set up his homestead. If he had enough money to buy the property I'm thinking flying in close to it could have been arranged. He hasn't removed his clothes to clean them or bathe since he started his trek. Would think after all this time he'd be rather ripe.

[QUOTE=kismetique;138671338]I know this is an old thread, and not even sure how I found this blog.

But I thought I could shed some light on the OPs thoughts. My family owns the ranch where Kyle and Ben hunted their buffalo. It's an odd location. His website says Folsom because that's what the USPS dictates in order to get mail. The ranch, including Kyle's home actually IS in the Cimarron Valley, on Cimarron Highway to be exact. Mailing address says Folsom, mail is picked up out of Clayton, NM, post marked out of Liberal, Kansas. Wonderful government at work!

I'm more confused than ever!
Let's say - I am drinking coffee at Mc Donald's in Raton.
Which direction- highway do I take to get to this ranch?

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

I tried watching one episode,but the canned ""drama"" is all I could stand.

Heh heh,NOW I know who to blame.....

I refuse to watch any program with the word "reality" in the title or description.........................

I watch the show for it's entertainment value as I do most shows of that nature. It's a far sight better than a lot else that's on TV these days.
I sure don't believe all I see but some of their circumstances are interesting even if staged.

I've tried to watch most of the redneck/mountain/Alaska stuff that comes out. UGH... Generally garbage.

What struck me about the rugged mountain men was that they sure do whine a lot...

Drinking game for those shows... Hear the phrase "meat for the winter" or "provide for my family" = take a drink.

[quote=THE PILGRIM;138671425][QUOTE=kismetique;138671338

I'm more confused than ever!
Let's say - I am drinking coffee at Mc Donald's in Raton.
Which direction- highway do I take to get to this ranch?[/quote]

For the ride of your life take the road to Taos from Raton. The only road I have ever been on where the car compass was spinning. More exciting than a reality show. Larry

[quote=tops;138672890]Have done that many times!
It is a very nice ride.
The must see places to stop are the NM Vietnam Veterans Memorial and NRA Whittington.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

All of those shows run together and I get them confused but the one where the guy loaded up his wood stove and went off on a trapping trip and the wood stove burnt his home of 20 years down kind of got to me. He built it out of stuff he found in the woods and it looked kind of nice. I really felt sorry for him and the producers came in and took him to a motel.

The only "Mountain Men" show worth watching stars Charlton Heston and Brian Keith.

If any of you are interested in a true description of life in the mountains in the early 1800's, read JOURNAL OF A TRAPPER by Osborne Russell. Excellent book.

...I watched an episode where an old guy loaded water jugs up on a sled and pulled the sled with a snowmobile down to a well or spring...my wife and I looked at each other...he had five or six feet of snow at his cabin...he could of filled a big pot with snow and melted it on the wood stove...I've had to do it before...

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A Country Boy Can Survive

Just heed Frank Zappa's warning... don't eat the yellow snow..

I live and camp in snow country. I have a 7 gallon water tank that connects to the wood stove that I use in my tents. Using snow to fill it sucks. It takes a lot of snow to make water. If possible I will go to open water and fill jugs even if there is a lot of snow.

I have watched a couple of these shows and agree there is a lot of malarkey. Plus, they filmed a episode of dual survivor North of here and they spend the night at a ranch instead of in a round hay bale as depicted on the show. My late step father outfitted and told me about guiding a fishing show he guided and how they "caught" the same poor trout repeatedly for the show. Reality TV ain't.

I usually spend over a month a year living in my tent setups. I have a very comfortable setup using either my 14x16 or my 12x14 and during hunting season both setup together. I have a good time, but I think most TV viewers would find me and my methods rather boring. I have more life threatening events going into town than I do camping.

Well, I'm still trying to get a spot on Naked Dating. It looks pretty real to me.
BTW does anyone here know how to un-pixel the screen so I can see the boobies???

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