Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Great quote from Mountain Men TV show

The guide in Alaska was on chasing a Kodiak for himself.
His own rifle is a 375 H&H.
He noted clients often asked him what rifle to bring.
He said: " You can bring any rifle you want, as long as it's 375 H&H."

Love this crusty old timer.
His boat is to die for !

Mike Horstman.
I was puzzled by his bear rifle having a blind magazine, no floor plate, no barrel sights.
It would be harder to clear in case of a jam.
It would not be dumping a magazine of ammo with a floor plate popping open, however.
Of course a jam would never happen with the sleekly tapered .375 H&H, heh-heh-heh.
But the cartridge weight is so light that a magazine full of them would never pop open a floor plate, heh-heh-heh.
It's a wash, heh-heh-heh.


His rifle looked like a stainless M70 Classic .375 H&H in a synthetic stock, non-factory barrel ?
Was it a Remchester like a Kimber ?
I wonder what he would say if I showed up with a stainless-synthetic .458 WinMag
with 404-gr Shock Hammer at 2500 fps ?
He would probably think it was OK if I was paying for the hunt.

No backup iron sights on barrel and he carries the rifle like a briefcase, gripping the scope with one hand like a bucket handle.
To be continued after the bear is down ...

Haven’t watch the show……but, I like the guide already! I thought that I was the only guy that “disrespected” my scope by using it as an handle! 🙂 memtb

Mike Horstman got his bear.
A 25-year-old boar with well-worn teeth and battle scars.
Mike knows what he is talking about when it comes to aging Kodiak bears, and the hunting of them.

Mike did not use his rifle scope as a handle anymore in the finale episode, Episode 13.
He only did it for a few seconds of a scene near the end of Episode 12 of Mountain Men.
The only other thing I can critique on his rifle scope respect is he should get some flip-up lens covers on that abused scope,
as much as it rains on Kodiak.
Scope looked like a Leupold Vari-X II, 2-7x33mm, gloss black in nickel-plated Leupold rings and the old JR-style 2-piece bases,
with windage screw on rear base and rotating dove tail for front.
Both bases overhang the loading/ejection port slightly.
All-in-all, maybe not the best for luggage-handler use.

Kudos for Mike reloading his own ammo.
He used Barnes TSX for his demo .375 H&H loads.
One bullet and the bear dropped, DRT.
Looks to me like it was a spine hit a bit far to the rear, paralyzed hind legs, butt went down,
forelegs thrashed once as the bear turned about 90 degrees to his left and died on his right side.
Hind legs did not move as it crumpled.
Bear was shot almost from the rear, quartering away and was hit just forward of its butt, high on the right side of bear.
Bullet exit wound on left side of bear is visible in one brief shot of dead bear, high on left side of bear,
about where I would say the chest meets the abdomen.
DRT.

Mike has a muzzle brake on his .375 H&H rifle.
He also wears a Medic Alert bracelet that says "Blood Thinner."
I guess he wishes to reduce bruising of his shoulder.

It is amazing what you can see if you DVR the episode and advance it frame-by-frame at the important seconds of time.

Riflecrank, I was nodding in full agreement until……you mentioned the muzzle brake. Unless it’s a “very” light H&H ……2+ inches of useable barrel length was wasted with the brake, or the break made it longer and more difficult to handle in the thick stuff!

Other than that little disagreement with his tools…..I like his choices! memtb

Front sights grab branches.

Amazing all the expert advice from the guys who have never hunted on Kodiak island, not to mention ever killed a Brown Bear.

I remember one show where the client had this silly huge "tactical" rifle with a long bbl and huge protruding magazine and a giant scope. Mike had to tell him to shoot the bear several times before he did. All it takes is money.

The worst part of that show is the idiot who thinks you can chase away Pumas and they won't come back.
He also drags around an AR when 94 Trapper carbine would do anything he needs done.

Must be participating on a neighboring hunting forum! 😂 memtb

I seen some doozies here before but this is new.

Bullshitting is easy, eh ? Tell us more. OK:

I spent 5 years in Alaska and soon as I became a resident hunter I went self-guided for a week, some might say misguided, to Kodiak for deer and fun with the bears.
Had a Kodiak bear press his nose on my tent so his nose and mine were separated only by inches and a layer of nylon cloth,
one moonless night at Spiridon Moor on the shore of Spiridon Lake near Spiridon Bay.

A couple years later I drew a brown bear tag for another Kodiak week at Jap Bay.
Misguidedly I ran at King Kong of Kodiak glassed from a mile away, got within 300 yards of him before he ran.
Had he not been sitting 50 yards above the camp of a couple of bowyers, watching them with his head on paws,
sniffing their breakfast bacon, I might have been sneakier, and I might have been less of a hero to the deer hunters.
Maybe I saved their bacon ?

I hope Mike has an opening, guiding Kodiak when I get it all together for a brown bear hunt there.
To heck with leaving it to someone else.
404-gr/.458 Shock Hammer at 2500 fps MV should do nicely.
Now back to critiquing his .375 H&H,
the good, bad and ugly of it all:

Good:

Good, bad, or ugly, it depends on the eyes of the beholder:

Rifle Crank can you get a close up of the powder he used? I watched the episode and it looked like coffee grinds?

Definitely ugly, carrying rifle using scope as handle:

The barreled action is definitely light, so is the scope,
but about the stock I do not know.
Weatherbyesque Monte Carlo butt and grip with flat-bottomed and flat-sided, long, fat forearm might turn it into a medium-weight rifle.

MadDog4298,

This is the best I can do, no picture of a labeled cannister was found by me:





Looks like an extruded smokeless with medium to short grains, yes, almost the color of coffee grounds.

I do not think Mike has been reduced to making his own BP yet,
but if the supply chain forces him to, he probably could.
He is still getting supplies, and still has electricity to power his simple RCBS digital scales.
Same as the first digital scales I had.
Mine is long since caput as well as a Hornady that dispensed and weighed the powder, a second digital caput for me.
I am back to using metered throws, a manual trickler, and mechanical balance beam scales.
To heck with the modern stuff.

Riflecrank thanks for the pictures.

Mike Horstman is definitely the best they have on MOUNTAIN MEN of The History Channel.
Phil Shoemaker's son has shown up there too, as bush pilot to fly Mike around on Kodiak.

I'm sure there is much you don't know.

The same production company that did our documentary, also produced “Mountain Men.” The commonality of the mountain men was they all had a beard. That is the only real qualification for the series.

One look at Eustice and you will see all you need to to determine how phony that series is…

The picture of the rifle barrel with the electrical tape on it, is common among Alaskans. They will wrap the barrel several times with tape and then use the tape to cover the muzzle against water and debris.

It is a small tape dispenser…

Certainly makes for a good sound bite. As much as I like the utilitarian get it done efficiency of the 375 H&H, I would take one of my 338-06's or 416 Rem.

I’d be surprised if it goes under 9#…..scoped, loaded, and slung! memtb

Honestly, I think that rifle is ugly. Certainly not to my taste. A rattle can treatment would do it a lot of good.

And it's a fuggin 375, why the muzzle brake?

Heck, there's a famous 458 in AK that has more curbside appeal.

I call BS.
Meat-hunting team Martha Tansy and her pubertal daughter Elli are stars of Mountain Men and neither has a beard.

Of course, everyone reading here knows about taping your muzzle
to prevent obstruction of barrel whether by snow, mud, or dirt dauber, etc.
The point of the illustration is that the tape can disguise a slimline muzzle brake,
until the rifle is fired once,
for those who are not proud of being caught with a brake on a .375 H&H.

Agree.

How many wraps does it take to convince someone like you that it isn’t for disguising the muzzle brake?

Not new to me.

Had to give up hunting a P64 featherweight in the Adirondacks for this reason.

No slings either for same reasons - pretty sure Bluefish has plenty of experience in the woods - just not something a local hears everyday

shrapnel,
I see you have no sense of humor.
Mike Horstman also has two separate wraps of black tape around the stock forend and barrel of his rifle.
I would have made a joke about it being a fine-tuning for proper tip pressure to improve accuracy of his bear rifle,
but figured you would not get that either.
White or fluorescent tape on the end of the barrel,
either longitudinally or circumferentially or both,
makes a passable night sight. No joke.
Jungle jaguar hunters and Alaska bear guides of note have been known to do that.
Wraps of tape around the scope tube is also a good place to spool your tape. No joke.

BTW, Elli Tansy is pretty young. She might grow a beard yet, will wait and see.
The Mountain Men show is pretty sappy and scripted-like too often.
It does have some good segments that stand out if you can stay awake through the drivel.
Overall, I find it alternately both exciting and dull.
Look at the bright side of life.

You are so sure of yourself and call BS on what I said about the criteria for Mountain Men. Nathan Sterner is a producer for the Mountain Man series, he works for Warm Springs Productions and I worked with him on the Custer documentary and he told me that when they picked the stars of that show, they were looking for men with beards. How or why you want to call BS needs to be thought out better before you make such a claim.

Where is your sense of truth?

Wow, shrapnel really is humorless, and quick on the keyboard, and thinks a little name dropping is impressive.
He posted before I was through with this edit above:

"BTW, Elli Tansy is pretty young. She might grow a beard yet, will wait and see.
The Mountain Men show is pretty sappy and scripted-like too often.
It does have some good segments that stand out if you can stay awake through the drivel.
Overall, I find it alternately both exciting and dull, overall worth watching.
Look at the bright side of life."

They have beardless women starring since original JOKE by the producer about casting only bearded men.
Shrapnel did not get it then, does not get it now.
BTW, that is just my sense of the TRUTH.
Heh-heh-heh.

Mountain Men is heavily directed. Marty Meiotto is a complete beast(He is right about 60 years old and can bench 350lbs at 180lbs bodyweight) but they would often portray him as a weak frozen popsickle with frosted glasses always on the cusp of death by exposure. I am pretty sure that Marty is tough enough that he could go out of his place in Pleasant Valley right now in -5F in a t-shirt and jeans and dig a snowcave, make a brushbreak, or just siwash under a spruce tree and survive the night on just doing sets of pushups and making a fire out of the soggy crap that is on the ground and the stuff in his pockets. I am sure that Horstman is like that too. His outfit looks very much like lets git chit done and not worry about the nuances of every aspect of his weapon. Everybody is just a little bit different in their tastes. One legendary master guide that is one of my mentors uses a Remington KS in 416 Rem. This is a guy who went through the Lassen Community College Gunsmithing School and Caltech in Mechanical Engineering for his BA. He owns many planes and a fishing and hunting lodge in Bristol Bay. He could 'smith a perfect mauser with a Echol's Legend and probably knows the Echols 52 move trick with a lyman peep. He uses that Remington because it happened along and it did the job exactly right.

Marty Meierotto was 2012 to 2019, and he was occasionally spotted without a beard, heh-heh-heh.
It seems the strongest move on from the series, have better things to do with their time,
or it just gets old pretending to be a popsicle for the director.
Sort of like MainerinAK, a member here,
he only lasted 2 seasons on LIFE BELOW ZERO: THE NEXT GENERATION.
Too competent to play popsicle.
Mike Horstman might be the next.
He has only been on the show since 2018, Season 7, so there is hope he will put up with it a few years more.

That is probably just for the Greenies, I bet he shoots the "Puma's".

Eustace is an interesting character. North Carolina has it's share of hicks.

Seen the drapes?

I've known Eustace Conway since well, as in 40 years or so, before Mountain Men. While he comes off as a pure hick, uneducated, backwards inept clown on the show, I can assure you he's anything but. Do a little research before you call someone a phony, you just might be surprised.

The comment was the series is phony. When they show him hauling logs up a steep embankment and trying to pull it out with a team of horses and you can see a road in the background, phony is exactly what it is.

Pay attention to what you are defending…

For those who don't read:

PUMA/MOUNTAIN LION/COUGAR/PAINTER/CATAMOUNT are different names for the same animal.

A classic example of why using the scientific name has advantages sometimes Puma concolor

/John

Martha annoys the piss out of me.

Jake, like Rich before him, bores me just treeing those cats and then calling the dogs off. Shoot them and I'll pay attention.

Tom is about the only one I still enjoy watching, and Eustace to a degree, because I know the area.

Have never watched the show. Don't need made for TV drama, scripted BS.

Just do not see he entertainment value.

It is kinda funny how Tom is worried about making it back home alive, but the camera crew doesn’t seem too concerned…

Reading this thread for the first time is just plain entertaining. I know the show(s) discussed here, but I dont watch them. I know just enough to know what is being discussed.

I'm gonna repeat something that David La Dart, from the Swamp People show, told me, when I asked about some of the strange things they done. He said, "You gotta remember, this is for entertainment. What's call reality tv, ain't necessarily for real."

The characters also make me wonder. My dad was approached to do some show for tv. They didn't tell him what the name of the show was, but it was just after Swamp People came out. Anyway, he politely refused. The person asking him couldn't believe that someone wouldn't want to be on tv and started telling Dad that he (Dad) didn't understand, what an opportunity he was missing, etc. Dad told him he didn't want to put up with all their BS and to carry his ass. Dad wasn't on tv.

Hey, you gotta make a living, I understand that, but sometimes I wonder at what cost.

I met Mike Horstman a few years ago on Kodiak prior to a bear hunt. Nice man. He was getting ready for a bear hunter coming in: we shared the same hanger building for a night or 2. I noticed a rifle there and asked him about it. It was a rather beat-up winchester 71. I asked him about it: he said he loaded Barnes tsx, the weight I can't remember: I remember his saying "I've tried them all" as in bullets, but loved the Barnes. We didn't talk guns any more: he was busy, we'd never met and I didn't feel comfortable taking more of his time. As I recall, he, his guide and hunter was going to head out on a boat for their camp, not far from town I believe.

That hanger building is my son’s and numerous hunters use it to store gear as they pass through.
I know Mike well and have been close friends with Marty ever since he moved to Alaska. Both guys are the real deal and serious hunters and shooters.

That’s good to hear. I’ve always liked watching Horstman and I’ve felt like he was the real deal. Hearing he’s the real deal from the real deal seals the deal for me. 😂

Additional, Mike Horstman is always the organizer of the Kodiak gun show every year . He is as far gone as the rest of us

Eustace might be a real brainiac and the nicest guy in the world. IDK? But for me, being a born and raised North Carolinian I cringe every time I see him on that show.

Mike typically suggests client bring up the same caliber of rifle he is carrying that season in the hopes they will leave unused ammo ☺️