Why The History Channel's Mountain Men Is Completely Fake

It's probably passé at this point to rag on reality TV for being unreal. Ever since MTV aired The Real World back in 1992, people have been wondering how "real" life can be while being followed by a camera and crew. Sure, dramatic, directed narratives about mountain men taking down wild cougars using bloodhounds make for more entertaining television than outdoorsy guys sitting around bored because there's no electricity. It fits America's rugged individualistic "man against all the odds" ethos (actually historical), and fits the expectations of the History Channel's target audience. The issue is when people mistake fiction for truth, and if a show isn't clearly branded as one or the other.

Take Eustace Conway, for example, a Mountain Men mainstay who admits in his biography The Last American Man, to faking his survivalist savagery anytime he leaves his property to head into town. Conway founded the Turtle Island Preserve, which on its homepage says, "We interact with the beautiful clarifying teachings of nature as we interpret its story." This kind of earnest, flowery language might not fly on a show about soapless and bearded dudes, and so Conway has more or less been caught in his own public persona. He does teach traditional crafts like spoon carving ($95), and outdoors skills like building a treehouse ($250), and makes a decent living doing so, but there's clearly a big difference between this kind of life and the one presented on Mountain Men.