History Channel
History Channel’s Mountain Men has been under speculation for possibly being fake for years, but fans have renewed their idea that the show is staged after recent episodes.
While many viewers of the current season of the show have expressed their opinions that the show is going downhill and becoming boring due to the storyline about Jake Herak and his dogs, others are saying the show seems staged because they are not impressed with brothers Kidd and Harry Youren.
There have been many articles and posts throughout the years about how Mountain Men could be staged or fake with most of those pointing to producer-created drama and danger, as is the case with most reality shows.
Read on to learn more about why some people think Mountain Men is fake.
Is History Channel’s ‘Mountain Men’ Real?
The master and apprentice are back at it this Thursday – and up against a deadline with Eustace’s homestead at stake!
Of course, something doesn’t go wrong every single day, so sometimes, in order to spice things up, the producers have to make things seem more dangerous than they are. Mountain Men star Tom Oar told the Billings Gazette that they have to make things dangerous so he doesn’t seem boring.
“They always have to make it seem more dangerous,” he said at the time. “I’m too boring otherwise.”
The show is also not as off-the-grid as viewers may like to claim, which is self-explanatory. Each of the cast members has a crew of camerapeople following them around everywhere when they’re filming, and, while some of the areas don’t have cell phone service and only some access to internet, it’s not as isolated as they make it look on TV.
Oar said that he often sits down and watches Mountain Men with his wife.
The Cast Are Survivalists
Well, guess that’s one way to do it. Don’t miss a new episode of Mountain Men this Thursday at 9/8c on @HISTORY!
One thing that is definitely real about the show is the fact that the cast was chosen because of their survivalist skills and overall demeaner; however, they do film some scenes just for the cameras.
In the Billings Gazette interview, Oar said that he has seen grizzly bears and wolves when he was working, but when filmed for the show, they shot the footage of the animals in a different setting since they weren’t around to film the scene originally.
While that may be the case for that one scene, there have been times where the cast and crew have been charged by mountain lions, though.
“When prospective cameramen start talking about decent hotels and per diems, we know it’s not going to work out,” Co-creator Chris Richardson told Men’s Journal. “Our guys know how to keep batteries from freezing, lug 50-pound cameras up to 10,000 feet on elk hunts, and make do without electricity for days.”
In addition to that, the conditions the people on the show encounter are real according to camera man Mason Gertz. He told Men’s Journal that he “nearly lost part of my hand to frostbite while trying to film a lynx” and said he would have if it weren’t for Marty Meierotto.
According to Nicki Swift, the cast is also not as poor as the History Channel makes them out to be, pointing out that Eustace Conway had already established programs at the Turtle Island Preserve that cost $300 a person. The show made the programs extremely popular, making that a lucrative source of income for Conway.
Reality Star Facts estimates that each of the cast members is worth over 100 thousand dollars each, with multiple cast members including Eustace Conway, D.B. Sweeney and Morgan Beasley being millionaires.
READ NEXT: Eustace Conway on Preston Roberts’ ‘Mountain Men’ Death
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Is ‘Mountain Men’ Staged? Why Do Some Fans Think the History Channel Show is Fake?