I watched an episode of this a week or so ago. They were cleaning out all the machinery to gather up the gold. After the clean out, the whole group was gathered around a campfire, waiting for the old guy, who was alone in a tent, to weigh the gold they had found.
Ummm … can anybody explain why he was alone with all of their gold?
I guess they trust the old guy not to rip off any gold. Or maybe he wasn’t really alone , they just said that to make the show look better.
Because the old guy, in addition to being completely worthless as a prospector, is an asshole who would probably throw a temper tantrum if someone else watched him.
This show really amazes me. I know very little about the type of gold mining they are doing, but I know that a lot has been written on the subject, and there is probably tons of information on how to build good working equipment, but these guys don’t seem to have checked out any of that. They have had a few knowledgable people come check them out, but it was always after a month or so after they got there.
I don’t understand why it took them so long to get set up. Most of the equipment was already built, so all they had to do was set it up and start working out all the little problems. Seems like it was several weeks before they even had the equipment assembled together. Considering how they make sucjh a big deal about how short their season will last before winter, and how much money they are burning through each day, I don’t understand why camp set up took so long. One guy was building his house, like, about 5 weeks or more after they got there?
I agree with many of the previous posts - they must spend a lot of time doing nothing but wishing and hoping and not doing actual work. A lot of the footage shown is of an empty work site. You would think these guys would be there sun up to sun down, and even later if they have the lighting. Do they think they are going to get rich working a couple of hours a day? They had buckets of black sand sitting there that they figured was full of gold, but their new gold-sifting machine wouldn’t work for them. Were they afraid to pan it by hand and get their hands dirty?
And the deal with the families is ridiculous. They are concerned about their money situation, and here they have the added expense and distraction of their families there. One good thing about having the kids there - if a bear shows up, you don’t have to worry about being far from a gun, just as long as you can out run the slowest child.
I knew the show was going to be a mess when they showed them all gathered together in camp the first day and they were all totin’ guns around like they were expecting a mass bear attack.
I’m thinkin’ Fucknuggets works particularly well here.
[QUOTE=Turek]
This, of couse, leads to conflict.
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What the hell, did an entire generation miss Paint Your Wagon?
I’ve been watching it since it premiered because I am genuinely interested in mining gold as a hobby (I live in Montana). But these guys appear to be hopeless amateurs.
The premise for the show seems flawed since why would all of these people risk everything on finding gold? Yes, gold is at an all time high, but what happens if they strike out? It seems that they poured a lot of money into the operation in hopes of getting rich, but they really didn’t have a good plan or appropriate expertise. Perhaps this is false drama that was created to make it look riskier than it really is, but running out of money before the summer season is over seems to point to an inadequate funding source. They should have known what their daily operating costs were going to be going in.
It’s not like they haven’t found any gold… but I don’t see why some of them moved their families up there since that didn’t really help. Whether they manage to get rich, break even, or lose their shirts it’s fun to watch them fumble around trying to fix things with very little knowledge of how to do it in the first place.
They must be getting funding from the Discovery Channel, and presumable that paid for a lot of upfront costs, but all this drama and not much gold makes for a good soap opera but not a compelling show about gold mining in Alaska.
They are getting money from TV but we don’t know how much. It’s possible they did not know how much either because the show probably was not picked up until after they were done mining. If no network bought the show they could have ended up with no cash from TV.
This is telling;
http://www.goldminingrealityshow.com/
“The 72 hour deadline was about 3-4 weeks of filming. It dragged on for weeks. This was a plot for an episode that was made up by the screenwriters and producers that really didn’t sit well with Todd Hoffman. He was not interested at all in playing along with story lines that were developed by the production team. Actually Todd has been trying to fire Raw Television since the day they secured the deal with the network. There was an extremely tenuous relationship that existed between Todd and Raw during the filming because Todd had actually written executive producing rights in to his contract with Raw. Unfortunately in the negotiations with Discovery Channel he was not given production rights as most participants do not even get the opportunity to see the footage before the show airs let alone make any decisions about how a person is portrayed (as with me). Todd told me many times that even though Discovery did not give him producing credits he was able to review the cuts that were sent to Discovery for final editing. I never believed that although he spent many late nights at the production house having meetings about something? Everyone knew these themes as we waded patiently through each episode but the production could not seem to get Todd on board with their story lines. Many plots I internalized and it actually became an actuality for me because I felt I could not really act. I had to believe the lines that they were feeding me to be able to say them without sounding scripted. The 72 hours became a week which was going on a month and then I felt compelled to actually leave the mine to fulfill the prophecy that I spoke into existence in the hours of interviews about the deadline. Here is where truth and fiction meet in a world called Reality TV."
and
“They were never going to get any considerable amount of gold and I knew it. Actually I thought at that point that the show was going to get cut. We were supposed to be at episode 4 (that way he didn’t have to pay me the money he owed me at the time.) Oh not because he didn’t have any money, he made a grip of money from Discovery Channel so the Hoffman’s were not hurting. Jack also sold his airplane because of his morphine prescription for back pain which keeps him from flying anymore (or driving heavy machinery?)”
I guess Dorsey was so mad he started up his own blog to tell his side of the story. I cracked up when he went to the cops about his fight , it appeared the cops did nothing about it.
The one question being asked repeatedly on his blog and totally ignored is why the fight apparently happened on the 7th, but they were shown flying full speed to the police station on the 10th, three full days later, with camera crews in tow. The Police declined to allow the camera crews access to the police station and several other areas to film.
They probably figured it was a publicity stunt, they had no solid evidence of a crime, conflicting reports and it was too much of a hassle to take any of it seriously.
I had hopes for the show when it started. But it’s turning out to become one big cluster fuck of idiots.
Why would they want to bring their young boys up there ? Bear bait ? Something for heavy equipment to run over ?
The first episode when they left Oregon on their way up to Alaska the filming stopped at the Canadian border it would appear and 3-4 days later of driving poof they’re in Alaska, what gives ?
Having the families there never made sense, it just drove up their costs. Seems like it would be better for the wives to stay in Oregon and get jobs to help pay the bills.
They are finally getting gold now, but of course they are still not happy about the expert telling them what to do. The expert was sent in by the claim owner. There are only 2 more episodes left.
I dunno. The show is definitely depicting them as disorganized amateurs, but that’s not really reflected by what I’m seeing. These guys did their homework – they figured out what was needed for mining – shaker, pumps, heavy machinery, etc…, orchestrated moving it all up to Alaska and got it all assembled and working in a fairly short time for pretty short money, despite having little or no mining experience. That’s pretty impressive. On the other hand, their selection of personnel leaves something to be desired. Hiring a chief mechanic with a bad back to do heavy physical labor seems to be a pretty bad idea. And Dorsey was dysfunctional from day one.
As for bringing the families – I don’t see why that’s dramatically more expensive than leaving them home – they have to be fed and housed in either place.
Biggest problem with them is that they seem terribly unscientific about the actual gold hunting part. I’d figure they’d be panning samples from all over the property looking for the biggest concentration of gold, but instead they just seemed to pick a random likely spot and start digging to China.
Right now they are digging where they think there is a lot of gold based on the fact that it’s what is called a “glory hole” . They explained why they picked that spot in an early episode. I think it is at the bottom of where a waterfall used to be.
Who are you people? Remember Planet Earth and quality shows like that on Discovery? You actually spend your time watching trash like these rednecks trying to mine for gold? In fact, you’ve made it the number one show on cable!!! You should be boycotting this kind of Reality Crap!
Don’t worry I am not doing ratings so my viewing does not count. 
It’s the #1 new show on Friday night which is a long way from #1 overall.
In case anyone is wondering they ended up with about $20k worth of gold, but most of that they found in the last few days before they had to shut down due to snow. They are going back this summer.
I’d have to nominate this show, along with Storage Wars, as the most ridiculous televised entertainment since Geraldo opened his secret vault on prime time.
Geezer does a great Walter Brennan impression.