Mountain Men (2012) s04e06 Episode Script

Previously on "Mountain Men," Tom takes matters into his own hands Damn.
as his season falls apart.
If I'm not trapping things, I ain't making any money.
Rich tracks a killer The wolves are just moving in on us.
They're all over the place.
and brings the battle to the enemy While Morgan meets Alaska's monster mountain.
The mountains are real dangerous this time of year.
I bet it'll be well below zero up here.
I got to find a place to bed down for the night.
Make one little screw-up, and you're dead meat.
In America's frozen north, the Alaska range is the highest on the continent topping out at an elevation of more than 20,000 feet.
Nearly halfway through a treacherous pass, Morgan Beasley awakes after surviving the sub-zero night in a hand-carved snow cave.
Got to melt some more water for the day.
I'm getting low on wood here.
I just have enough for maybe one more night.
The dried sausage, I only got one more, so I need to get the heck out of here.
When it's down negative-30, I'm in full-on survival mode.
There's no room for error.
I can't last long up here without firewood.
You know, a day or two, and I'll be looking at hypothermia and frostbite.
Morgan is 20 miles into his epic crossing through the mountains, but the most dangerous grounds still lay ahead.
Not very many sticks left in this bundle.
You know, it seems kind of silly, but my life really is resting on this little bundle of sticks right now.
What I'm hoping for today is to get all the way over on my high point and down the other side.
From here today, I got to work my way over some big, broad, flat ridge tops and kind of traverse into this pass.
A lot of that's gonna depend on avalanche hazard, which route I take.
I might have to take a little more circuitous route.
As Morgan climbs higher, he'll need to avoid slopes of 30 degrees or more where any sudden movement can trigger a weakness in the snowpack and cause a deadly slide that can reach speeds of up to 80 miles an hour.
Once I make it on the other side, I should be in timber the rest of the way.
If I got trees to start a fire, I'm usually pretty safe.
The shelter of the timberline is 10 miles east across the avalanche zone.
Looks like some weather's moving in.
Better get a move on.
The Wind's starting to blow here.
You can see it's dropping some snow on me.
And Morgan has less than five hours of daylight to make it over the pass.
There's no room to make mistakes out here.
It's kind of an all-or-nothing kind of deal.
I have to be as careful as I possibly can.
High up in the Montana Rockies, Rich Lewis prepares for a new day of keeping watch over the Ruby Valley's latest predator threat.
Last night was a long night.
Wolves started howling, and I wasn't sure whether it was one wolf or three.
They were howling all night long, so I just stayed up all night, kept the fire going, and I'm beat.
I set some traps yesterday, and so maybe I lucked out and have one.
There are more than 600 wolves in the state of Montana, and as their population increases, so has the number of attacks on local livestock.
Rich's trapping license helps him to keep the area safe from predators.
Easy.
Easy.
Come on.
Easy.
Easy.
Easy.
He's tracking a pack that's targeting goats on a local ranch.
Yesterday, Rich discovered an active wolf den in the high tree line.
Now he's back to check his traps.
With the way they were howling last night, they were moving around, so hopefully, I got something this morning.
If Rich can catch just one wolf, it'll signal to the rest of the pack that this area is no longer safe and should drive them off.
I'm taking my gun with me 'cause if I got any luck at all, I might have a wolf in the trap, and that way, I can shoot him.
I don't want to go too close to my traps, leave any more scent around than I have to.
Those wolves can smell 10 times stronger than we can, and I mean, if they smell something, they're gonna shy away from it.
Man, nothing.
Dang it.
The wolves are so unpredictable.
You just never know where they're gonna be.
You think you kind of got a plan to set a trap for one, and that wolf might not ever come back there again.
Nothing today.
I checked all my traps.
There wasn't nothing in 'em, and wolves are hard to track, but I'm not gonna give up.
Rich needs a new strategy if he's going to outsmart the predators.
I got to figure out where these wolves are because we've got a serious problem here.
If I don't take care of it, it's just gonna keep getting worse and worse, so I'm gonna head to the high country where I think maybe these wolves have headed.
Just 400 miles away, in Montana's Yaak Valley, a winter full of setbacks, including a bear break-in and a pillaged trapline has driven Tom Oar higher into the hills in search of fur.
As far behind us, I got after the bear thing and everything, I've got to be catching some fur.
I haven't been catching any fur.
The journey is a physically demanding three-mile hike across dense snowpack to a remote high-country lake.
Tom set exploratory traps there yesterday and is now making the trek for a second time to see if his gamble pays off.
A catch here could start to get his season back on track.
I'm in such a pinch.
I'm trapping under the ice.
Very hard to trap beaver under the ice compared to open water, but I need to get my pelts coming in.
We need to be making some money here.
Let's see if we got something here.
Well, damn.
Ain't got nothing.
Stick her back in there, and see if we get something going on it.
You never know.
Is it gonna take one day or two days or a week before that trap is full.
You never know that.
If you're not catching enough to pay for your gasoline, then you're in trouble, you know? I mean, so you got to be catching something all the time.
Can't make many runs like I do without catching stuff, or else it starts costing you a lot of money.
Well, here we go again.
We'll check this sucker out.
Kept the water from freezing.
All right here, let's see.
Oh.
Hey.
We got a beaver.
I haven't caught anything for about five weeks now.
This is really a big deal for me now.
When you pull up that trap, and it's got something in it, it's like you won.
Oh.
35-pounder.
Nice beaver.
A beaver this size can fetch as much as $400.
All of a sudden, it feels kind of good to have good luck.
You know, hey, maybe things are coming around.
You know? Who knows? We'll just have to keep checking traps and see what happens.
Beaver colonies typically house up to 20 beaver at a time, so this first catch could be a good sign of more to come.
This ice is soft, man.
Oop, the trap's missing.
That's a good sign when the trap's missing.
We got one.
We got one here.
Oh, yeah, we do.
He's a big sucker.
Oh, God.
Well, Merry Christmas.
Whoo.
Well, that's a dandy.
Well, he, at least, is 50 pounds of beaver.
Wow.
See them teeth.
They don't come much bigger than this one.
Just what I needed.
I had more full traps than empty traps.
That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
In Montana's Yaak Valley, Tom returns home with his first win of the season.
Hi, Ellie.
Hey.
How'd it go? We got a couple.
Yay! Good job.
Let me see.
But there's still a lot of hard work ahead Oh, wow.
before he can cash in on his luck.
That's a big one.
Two beavers is about as much as I can handle.
I'm gonna be doing a lot of skinning.
A lot of time in the old trapping shed, yeah.
The size of Tom's payday depends on his ability to use every possible part of the animal.
To me, a beaver is a whole bunch of money.
Let me put my glasses on.
I can see a little better, maybe.
I'll make $400 off of each beaver that I catch.
I make knife sheaths out of the tail.
The hide fits right up against the meat.
There's no separation.
Lots of times, you can pull off a deer skin, but with a beaver, every bit of it has to be cut off of them.
That's a pretty nice-looking beaver skin.
The pelt will bring a sizable reward, but it's the castor gland that's a trapper's prize.
The castor gland is in the belly of the beaver, and it's used to mark territories.
You can catch a beaver with the beaver castor as easy as you can catch 'em with bait.
I mean, they'll come right to beaver castor.
It's the castor gland.
Now comes working the hide.
Time to flesh the beaver skin here.
There's a lot of money in skins, but they're not worth anything until they're done.
Across the state in the Ruby Valley, Rich is at war with a pack of local wolves, and since his traps have come up empty, he's gone on the offensive, surveying the ground for any sign will give him the upper hand.
I'm not seeing any wolf sign right here.
Maybe they're farther up in the higher country, so that's where I'm gonna have to head up to.
I'll do whatever it takes to get those wolves.
I'm not gonna quit until I get 'em.
Oh, hoo, hoo.
Oh, man, that's fresh.
That's wolf.
I just come up here into the high country, and I got a fresh wolf track heading right this way here.
It's a pretty good-sized track.
Probably a younger male is heading up this way, and there could be more, but right now, I only got one track.
I'm just gonna start following him.
It's fresh.
I'm in some wolf country now.
This isn't good.
It's a lone wolf.
There's just one.
I've cut the tracks.
There's just one wolf.
You guys need to stay behind me a little farther so I got a little breathing room.
A lone wolf is the deadliest of the species.
A male grows stronger and more aggressive when it leaves its pack and is forced to hunt alone.
The ranchers are gonna have a lot more trouble with this wolf.
By himself, he's gonna have a harder time running an elk or a deer down, so it's gonna be a lot easier to go down there and kill a calf or a sheep or a goat.
If I don't get this wolf, these ranches are in trouble.
This has got my blood pumping now.
I'm right behind him somewhere.
I'm hoping I can sneak in on him and shoot him.
Get back there! Get back! Get back! In Montana's wolf country Get back! Get back! Damn it.
That wolf just ran in front of me.
I've been tracking him.
I get a glimpse of him, and he takes off.
He's gone over this ridge now.
I mean, the country's just getting so thick, and he's gone.
The gun blast sends the wolf into full retreat.
With a top running speed of 37 miles per hour, it's too fast for Rich to pursue on foot.
All he can do is hope that he's scared it off for good.
The sun's going down, so I'm just gonna have to head back.
But this is a dangerous wolf, so I think he'll be back.
Rich returns home for now, but the war is far from over.
He'll have to remain vigilant as winter tightens its grip, pushing man and predator into battle.
This wolf's gotta learn its boundaries, and if it comes back again, I'm gonna have to teach him that.
Back in the Yaak, Tom sets out to increase the value of his beaver skins by fleshing them for market.
Fleshing the hide is scraping off any parcels of meat and fat that you might have missed during the skinning job.
It's very, very hard to scrape off beaver skin.
That fat and meat sticks to the hide real, real tight, and it's real hard to scrape off.
One beaver skin ready for salt right there.
Salting the hide draws out the moisture and seals it from bacteria that causes rot.
It barely fits on the damn table.
Inside this skin, there's a liquid that makes glue and by salting it, it'll pull that glue out of the hide.
And those are the juices you need to get out of the hide to make it tan easier.
This is one salted beaver.
This is about what I needed right here, I tell you.
While Tom is still thousands of dollars in the red, his perseverance today pays off in a pair of skins worth up to $800.
It's real neat to be able to make a nice catch in a day, but celebrations out here are pretty short-lived because, like, it just goes on, you know? I mean, yeah, it was a good day today.
What will it be tomorrow? You never know, so I got to keep my traps running so that I can be catching stuff every day.
That's just the life we live.
300 miles south of the Arctic Circle, a storm bearing down on the Great Alaska Range catches Morgan in a dire scenario.
At 8,000 feet, the temperature is now negative-15 degrees, but worse, 6 inches of loosely packed snow create the perfect conditions for the mountain's deadliest threat of all.
The snow's really settling in slab formation.
Makes me think there's a good avalanche layer in there.
When you're in steep ground in the mountains, avalanches are always concerns.
I'm trying to stay on terrain that's out, away from steep slopes.
I'm trying to stay on the ridgelines.
You basically look at the hill, and be like, "Well, where's an avalanche gonna slide? Whoa, oh.
God, look at that right there.
You see that? How it separated perfectly? That is sketchy right there.
Some of that were to break loose -- it might only be six inches of snow up top, but by the time it gets to where I am, it could be six feet deep, and they'd probably never find my body.
All right.
No loud noises now.
Morgan doesn't have enough supplies to wait out the storm, and he's in too deep to turn back.
His only choice is to keep pushing forward.
Most people who get killed in avalanches, they trigger the avalanche that kills them 'cause, you know, the weight -- the extra weight of the person on the snowpack is what breaks it loose.
Any little thing can set it off.
You guys, you shouldn't be bunched up here with me.
Just go back and film me from afar.
If something cuts loose, three of us don't need to get buried.
Oh Above 8,000 feet in the Alaska range, Morgan fights through a treacherous avalanche zone.
Oh, But weather conditions are deteriorating fast.
It's real windy out.
Blowing the snow into my face, it ain't very fun.
It's the perfect storm.
With more than a mile to go to the summit, Morgan has only two hours of daylight left Can't hardly see where I'm going.
and the snow is relentless.
Whiteout conditions, you know, you can barely see.
You don't know if the ground's dipping down 10 feet right in front of you, or if there's a snow drift you're about to walk off of and twist your ankle.
You just can't perceive it, so I'm using my ski poles a lot.
If something looks weird at all, I'll reach out there with my pole.
In some instances, you don't touch anything, then you know you're on the edge of something.
You're kind of almost like you're blind.
It's all just big, white canvas.
I can't see anything.
There's no land forms out there.
I've been using my compass here to keep myself pointed in generally the right direction.
Yeah, I'm actually already 15 degrees off my course.
Every couple hundred yards, I'm checking it.
Each time I've checked it, I've been 15, 20 degrees off, so it's really important that I'm using that.
So, I was heading this way, but actually, I need to be heading a little more thataway.
I wish I could see something.
If this weather gets any worse, that can be life-threatening.
I need to get out of this avalanche terrain.
Hopefully, I didn't use up all my luck.
140 miles to the north, the deep freeze bearing down on Alaska's Revelation Mountains finally gives Marty Meierotto the advantage he needs to jump-start his trapping season.
He's gambled everything on a return to this untouched forests where last year he discovered the promise of fur.
But after six weeks of unusually warm weather, he still hasn't caught a thing.
The main reason I'm here is to trap, and I'm behind where I hoped to be, so I just need to get out there and start catching fur.
He's running his new line for the first time Nothing here.
Maybe I'll catch something farther in the woods here.
See how it goes.
Looking for a sign that the reward of doubling down on these mountains was worth the risk.
But this year, it's really weird.
You know, I'm in a country that's supposed to have six feet of snow and probably got, I don't know, two feet of snow.
I'm thinking, what is this gonna do to the trapping? What is it gonna do to the animals? How are they reacting to all this? Well, what do you know, an empty trap.
But so far, the unpredictable weather here may mean that Marty's invested in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Obviously, a marten that's used to six feet to snow, they're gonna do things differently, so I don't know, you know, whether the marten moved farther up the mountain or, you know, I don't know.
It's nature.
As things change, you have to adapt.
You have to keep going.
Giving up's not an option, but I'm not sure what I can do.
Across the country, in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, with his business partner Preston and new hire Tom, Eustace Conway finally has enough muscle to fully launch his backwoods logging operation.
That's an $800 tree.
That's the money.
He's taken a gamble on a job for a local land owner to clear 100 acres of dead and damaged timber.
In exchange, he and Preston have the right to salvage the wood for their own lumber business.
They've let Tom cut his teeth on smaller trees for the past week, and now that he's up to speed, they're heading straight for the big money.
We've got three huge poplar trees.
It'd be the bigger trees that we will fell, most likely, on this whole trip, so it's some big timber.
I guess this is gonna be the first one we'll drop.
I think we can fall it right down in the trail here.
There's a lot of wide-open spots.
This 100-foot poplar weighs more than half a ton.
Felling any tree of this size requires an expert hand, but on these cuts, Eustace must be careful to protect the lumber.
Any damage to the tree means damage to his bottom line.
Big trees have a lot more canopy up there.
Just a lot more limbs spreading out a bigger distance.
They can rip into a lot more things.
A lot more pieces can come shooting back at you.
Get ready to drop it down.
Heads up.
A big tree just makes a lot more impact.
A lot more things can go wrong with it flying down.
Whoo! Nice job, Eustace! We got it! Yeah! This tree came down just fine.
We're gonna get a couple logs out of this, and it's on a hill, so where it's not so steep, we'll be able to use the hill to our advantage to pull it down.
It looks like we got a really nice 12-footer right here.
Up to this bend here.
Yeah.
Tom, if you could go down there and just limb all that up, break it down and get it ready to rock down to the ground there, please.
We've got Tom working on the limbing while we saw it up into logs.
And then once we finish that, we'll go and scout out how to drop the next one.
The whole top of this one's dead.
Yeah, this is a dangerous tree.
We're gonna drop it just to the left of that locust.
Hopefully in that trail there where we can work it up more easily.
Whoo! That thing exploded.
It caught that whole locust -- Pshew! -- just blew it up.
Let's go cut some up here.
That's a big tree, and a lot of things can go wrong if you're not paying attention.
And it just comes natural to these guys.
I really respect what they're doing.
That's a serious log right there.
Yes, sir.
I love that.
That's a beauty.
Here, give me the end of that tape.
Let's measure that out.
Hey, Tom, can you get on that locust right there? Just cut that up, 'cause we're gonna have to get that out of the way before we can roll these logs over.
You got it.
So, we'll get Tom just doing the easy work.
He doesn't have much logging experience, and if he can take care of that, it's just a good beginner job.
Hey, hey! Quit it! You can't -- You're hitting the rock! That'll destroy that chain.
You won't be able to cut anything.
In North Carolina, Eustace's new hired hand just made a rookie mistake.
I doubt it'll even cut again.
Try it.
That saw's down for the day right there.
You can't do that, Tom.
That just didn't work.
Yeah, I didn't see that.
Just work on picking up these limbs and stuff and roll what you got sawed up out of the way.
Let's just get that saw out of the way so we don't hurt that again.
Really, just do your best, all right? Man.
He, more or less, broke his chain down to nothing, you know? That's the end of that chain.
We could have sawed for two more weeks with that if we hadn't hit a rock with it.
The third and biggest of all the trees -- the most valuable one of all -- and I mean of all in this whole tract of land -- it's just got one little blemish on the bottom where a tree fell and hit it, some kind of scar.
But the property owner said take it down, so we're taking it down.
Let's hope we can get it to go right down through there.
I'm just really concerned about which way this is gonna go.
I don't cut too many trees this big.
There's not this many trees this big nowadays, is there? Unh-unh.
There it is.
There it is.
It's going! Good-bye, pine tree.
Ended up right where we wanted it.
Yep.
Man, that thing is huge! I ain't never felled a tree that big.
This is gonna be nice for us 'cause this a nice piece of timber right there.
Before we cut anything, let's measure it out.
This is too valuable to make a mistake on.
Just pull all the way down to that bend, if you will.
It's gonna be about 24.
We could get two 12s.
I'll take the first one.
One 12-foot log of poplar lumber is worth $400 if it's a solid 12-footer.
Oh, no, Preston! Hollow.
There was no indication of that at all.
Man, I hate that.
We were hoping to get over $1,000 out of this one tree.
It doesn't look like we'll get maybe one log.
That's a big loss right there.
But I guess all we can do is go forward and accept reality, you know? It's really challenging to achieve what we're trying to achieve here.
And the fact is it might not work out.
In the Great White North, blinding whiteout conditions throw Morgan off course, but a strong coastal wind moving in from the south brings a much-needed break in the storm.
Man, I can't believe how well it cleared off.
I felt so good when I looked up, and I saw the sky brightening and could actually make out the ridgeline again.
With the way finally clear, Morgan has his sights set on the summit, a climb that will take him to an elevation of 8,700 feet.
I love getting close to the top.
You always get a little burst of energy.
Yeah! Whoo-hoo! Here's the other side, right down there.
Yeah.
This is the last real serious uphill I'm gonna have to do.
That feels good.
I can't even tell you.
I thought I was totally screwed with that snow earlier today, and after that squall blew off, and the sun came out a little bit.
And it felt pretty good.
If I hustle down off of this, I can probably get down into the thick brush before nightfall and get myself a nice big fire of dead alders and willows going.
Cook up some hot food for the first time in 36 hours or something.
And the land I've got is probably about 70 miles as the crow flies that way.
It's all downhill from here, and it feels good.
In Alaska's Revelation Mountains, Marty is halfway through the first run of his trapline, and he doesn't have a single fur to show for it.
Well, I didn't expect this.
Why is this happening? I don't know whether the marten moved farther up the mountain.
Is this whole season gonna be a bust? All right! First marten of the day! That's what all the hard work's all about is just getting to be running line and catching some fur.
Very nice.
Young female.
This catch will earn Marty up to $200, a crucial first step towards paying off his investment in these mountains.
Well, at least the traps are working.
I was a little worried, but they're working.
That's cool.
Hopefully, my luck continues.
All right, off to the next one.
Hey, all right! Second marten in a row.
Nice dark one.
Catching marten in a trap just makes the set better because all the scent of that marten is around that set.
Like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.
Any dog that comes along, he's got to go and do that, too.
Cool.
It's always nice to get a line put in and set, and your traps are all working for you.
All I got left to do now is head back to the tent.
Skin a marten, hang up some fur.
I would say it was a really good day and a good sign of things to come, hopefully.
I got a lot of work ahead of me, and I'll just try and keep going.
In Alaska's Revelation Mountains, Marty heads back to camp after a successful first run of his trapline.
I had a good day on the line, caught quite a few marten.
It's nice, you know, that the line's starting to produce.
I'm loving life.
Whoa, what's this? A bigger track.
That's a lynx track.
Boy.
There's usually not lynx in this country.
I never saw a lynx track last year.
Maybe I'm into a pocket of lynx here.
It's just amazing to see lynx sign in this country.
I would have never thought I would see any cat tracks here at all.
Variety is the space of life.
If you can catch something besides marten, that's great.
I mean, I love trapping marten, but I love trapping lynx.
Marty may have stumbled on a windfall.
Lynx furs are worth twice as much as marten pelts.
That's the fun of trapping.
You just never know.
It's an unexpected chance to trap one of the most valuable games on the market.
I'll get some sets in here, maybe catch lynx, too.
It's nice to have a plan and then, you know, have it start paying off the way you had hoped.
So, it's a good deal.
3,500 miles away in North Carolina, Eustace and his logging crew are calling it a night.
When we get back to camp, our work's still not done.
The evening work is beginning, you know? We have to sharpen saws, do everything that we have to do to get ready for the next day.
It doesn't matter whether we get the logs that we want or not.
Y'all are a quiet bunch tonight.
Oh, I'm disappointed about that dang tree.
That was the best tree we had.
How's that chain looking, Tom? I think it's done, guys, but why don't you take a look? Golly.
It's surprising it even has teeth left on it.
Let's change that out.
I don't think you're ever gonna get any service out of that.
I'm sorry about that, guys.
I truly am, and that's the last time that's gonna happen.
Cool.
I've had some mistakes today, for sure.
I feel awful.
I need to earn these guys' trust back, so I'm gonna work a little harder, show 'em I can do this.
That's a new chain.
It won't be as tight as that old one.
There you go, yeah.
That's it right there.
Just about five more turns, you ought to have it.
It's a disappointed evening, really.
That'll do.
Thank you for your help, sir.
But we'll have a better day tomorrow.
When it's daylight, we'll hit it hard again.
Next time on "Mountain Men," Tom heads to the high country to secure his winter meat.
One elk would last Nancy and I till next season.
Come on, baby.
I got one shot at this.
Brandy! And when Rich races to protect one of his own Brandy's been out all night, so I've got to find her.
his worst fears come true.
Aw, man.
That's what I was worried about.