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OliveOilMom
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01 Feb 2015, 9:10 pm

I only have Netflix right now and so I can only watch what's on there. I've seen most of what interests me that they offer so now I'm watching other things that looks slightly interesting. I'm now watching "Mountain Men" because it looks somewhat interesting. I actually started liking it. Here's my beef with the whole thing.

It's three guys who supposedly live way out in the middle of nowhere. One lives in his cabin for the winter in Alaska, 300 miles from anywhere and makes his living as a trapper. The other lives 150 miles from anywhere in Montana with his wife, in an area with very few neighbors on the side of a mountain. The third lives in the mountains of NC near the Tennessee border. All are interesting, all are shown doing things that I would love to know how to do but wouldn't choose to do on a daily basis. My beef is that they showed the NC guy walking to his mailbox.

If he's walking to his mailbox then that means he lives a ways out of town on a rural route and with a lot of land. We have people like that around here! I wouldn't call them "roughing it"! I like the idea of showing how people live who are virtually cut off from civilization and have no choice but to rely on themselves and their family and maybe a small group of neighbors. The NC guy could wait and flag down the mailman! While he may live in that same style as the other two, he doesn't have the danger factor that the others do.

I still wouldn't want to live his lifestyle all the time though. I don't think I'd mind it for a vacation or something but I'd get sick of it and want to give up and get takeout and lay on the couch and watch Netflix or something - providing Netflix got some new stuff I like.

Anybody else watch that show? My oldest son is watching it with me now. He hadn't seen it before and loves it. That's actually the kind of lifestyle he wants and he can actually do things like that. The only thing keeping him from doing it is he wouldn't get to see his daughter if he moved out to the hills like that. He also loves Duck Dynasty, and I can't stand that show - it's too fake. You can tell that they set up the situations to make it look interesting and the guys aren't really that good at acting. I know a lot of people like those DD rednecks and they would be just as interesting if they just showed day to day life, cause rednecks are always getting up to something ridiculous.

I wish I could get a email address for the Alaska guy and his wife. I'd like to email them and ask some questions about things they didn't cover, since they focus on the guy and not the wife, I'd like to hear how she manages to do what she's got to do way out there far away from everything. Even though she doesn't go with him to his winter trapping cabin, she lives in their house which is way out in the middle of nowhere, sort of like how the Montana people live.

Watching those guys in Montana and Alaska, it's really made me appreciate our Alabama winters! I can deal with maybe one or two weeks of temperatures in the teens, which is really all we get and it's usually not all at one time. Our real cold weather is for a few days, then it gets back up in the 40's which is still real cold to us, but probably summer to Alaska and Montana. I'm sure that Alaskan ladies are very thankful for the invention of the tanning bed! The ones that are in the cities, not the ones who have to work so hard just to survive.


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Kraichgauer
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14 Feb 2015, 3:44 am

I'm glad you found something you enjoy watching, but... I miss the days when The History Channel actually played history programs. Sort of like MTV used to play music.


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Campin_Cat
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14 Feb 2015, 10:14 am

OliveOilMom wrote:
I wish I could get a email address for the Alaska guy and his wife. I'd like to email them and ask some questions about things they didn't cover, since they focus on the guy and not the wife, I'd like to hear how she manages to do what she's got to do way out there far away from everything. Even though she doesn't go with him to his winter trapping cabin, she lives in their house which is way out in the middle of nowhere, sort of like how the Montana people live.


Maybe..... If you have a Twitter account, you could write to them at #MountainMen.



GoonSquad
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14 Feb 2015, 1:44 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
I'm glad you found something you enjoy watching, but... I miss the days when The History Channel actually played history programs. Sort of like MTV used to play music.

I have not had cable in a VERY long time... History and Discovery used to be my favorite channels. One of the reasons I cut my cable is due to the way those channels changed--Showing reality TV, UFO and paranormal nonsense.

I'm sorry to hear things haven't changed. That said, there are a lot of good history, science, and social science documentaries on Netflix these days, mostly from PBS and a few indy sources.

On topic, Mountain Men is kinda interesting. I'll agree that the guy in the Alaskan bush is probably most interesting. However, the guy in North Carolina does seem to be the most authentic in that he uses a lot of primitive tools and methods... still, some of the stuff he does seems a bit silly and staged. In one episode he and a friend go squirrel hunting with muzzle loaders. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, BUT nobody would actually do that with the type of ammo they used. They used single, solid "musket balls." Anyone who's actually serious about saving shot and powder (and putting food on the table) would use scatter loads--basically turning their rifles into shotguns. That's a MUCH more effective and authentic way to hunt small game with black powder.

A similar and much better series (in my opinion) is Frontier House from PBS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-prRxB1ggg

The show follows three modern families as they try to homestead a plot of land in Montana (I think) using only 1880s technology.


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AspieUtah
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14 Feb 2015, 1:56 pm

Western states are odd in that way. Certain government services can be slow, but they do come through eventually. The largest county in Utah (near the Four Corners area) requires public-school students to wait for their bus at various times over two hours before getting to school. Of course, this means that the students must wake up much earlier than the urban cohorts, but it works. I suspect the same is true with the example you gave. The man had a mail box, because he probably gets mail if and when it can be delivered to him.


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