TLDR: Tom Oar was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1943, spent nearly two decades as a professional rodeo cowboy, survived a near-fatal bull riding accident in 1970, and drove into Montana’s Yaak Valley with his wife Nancy and a 1969 GMC pickup.
They built a log cabin by hand and stayed for fifty years. Season 14 of Mountain Men is his farewell. H
e is 81, wears a defibrillator vest, and is still in the Yaak.
On Valentine’s Day in 1970, Tom Oar climbed onto a bull named Woolly Bugger. He locked his hand into the bull rope the way he had done hundreds of times. The gate opened and the bull exploded out of the chute. Their skulls collided. Oar went unconscious instantly.
Because his hand remained locked in the rigging, he was dragged and trampled beneath the bull for two minutes. Nancy watched from the stands. Arena personnel eventually cut the ropes to free him. He was carried out on a stretcher and remained in a coma for three hours.
He came back to the arena a month later. He could not perform at his previous level. The knees that had absorbed two decades of rodeo punishment were finished. He retired from the circuit and started thinking about what came next.
What came next was Montana.
From Rockford to the Rodeo Circuit
Tom Oar was born in 1943 in Rockford, Illinois.
His father Chike was a seasoned horseman who had performed in historic Wild West shows, and by the time Tom was seven he and his older brother Jack were being trained in trick-riding, performing complex stunts on the backs of running horses.
At fifteen he hitched a ride to Ohio with nothing but a bull rope and a rigging bag and entered the competitive rodeo circuit. By the early 1960s he had climbed to the elite ranks of the International Rodeo Association, competing in both saddle bronc and bull riding.
Over nearly two decades he ranked consistently among the top ten riders in the association and qualified for the historic first International Finals Rodeo.
Woolly Bugger ended it in 1970. He was 27 years old.
A 1969 GMC Pickup and a 1.5-Acre Parcel in the Yaak
Tom and Nancy had spent summers trick-riding and competing in Troy, Montana, and knew the northwestern corner of the state. When the rodeo career ended, they decided to make it permanent. They packed everything they owned into a 1969 GMC pickup, bought with money earned trapping muskrats in Illinois, and drove into the Yaak Valley.
They purchased a 1.5-acre parcel with only a tiny two-room log cabin on it. Tom had bought a chainsaw before leaving Illinois. They lived in the two-room shack and spent five years building their permanent log home by hand, harvesting local timber, hand-peeling logs, and using traditional chinking techniques.
The nearest comprehensive medical facility was 80 miles away in Libby, Montana. Their first winter brought sub-zero temperatures that tested their resolve and made them question everything. They stayed anyway.
To make the land economically viable they developed a seasonal model that has defined their lives ever since: trap beaver and harvest wild game through the brutal winter months, process hides through traditional brain-tanning through the summer. They needed eight to nine cords of wood per year to heat the cabin. They cut it themselves.
Brain-Tanning: A Dying Art and How Tom Learned It
The craft that made Tom Oar’s reputation is one that almost nobody practices anymore. Brain-tanning is an ancient method of leather preservation that uses the emulsified lipids and oils found in an animal’s own brain tissue to process its hide into soft, flexible buckskin.
The technical superiority of the result over modern chemical tanning is significant. Industrial tanning bonds collagen fibers into a dense, relatively stiff sheet.
Brain-tanning coats individual fibers while keeping them separated. The resulting leather is incredibly soft, drapes like heavy cloth, and is breathable in a way chemically tanned leather is not. Body perspiration evaporates through the microscopic gaps between fibers.
It keeps the wearer cool in summer and warm in winter. The technique also makes the leather permanently soft. A brain-tanned hide that gets soaked in rain will dry just as soft as it started.
Tom stumbled into the craft after years of struggling to produce commercial-grade leather.
The turning point was a 16-page, three-dollar instructional booklet titled Brain Tanning the Sioux Way by Larry Belitz. That pamphlet transformed his hobby into a respected business.
He operates without an internet presence or telephone service. His reputation spread entirely by word of mouth and through his appearances at historic Black Powder Rendezvous reenactments, where he sells hand-sewn traditional garments, moccasins, and jackets without the aid of a sewing machine, earning several thousand dollars per event.
He views himself as part of a dying breed and has consistently treated the television cameras as an opportunity to document the craft before it disappears entirely.
Nancy Oar: The Reason Any of This Was Possible
Tom Oar is the face of the Yaak Valley homestead. Nancy Oar is the reason it has functioned for fifty years.
Originally from northern Illinois, Nancy has been his partner through the entire arc: the rodeo years, the migration to Montana, the cabin construction, the trapping seasons, the television cameras.
She manages the complex logistics of food preservation, assists with hide processing, and when Tom’s health began limiting his physical capabilities, she took on the trap lines herself during the harsh winter seasons.
On Mountain Men, she has been portrayed as the pragmatic anchor who balances Tom’s romanticized attachment to frontier life with the hard realities of aging in extreme isolation.
Viewers know her best for her affectionate references to Tom’s “rodeo knees,” a gentle shorthand for the physical cost of everything that brought them to the Yaak in the first place.
The couple also endured a profound private loss that the show never fully addressed. In April 2015, their daughter Keelie Oar died in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, at 49 years old.
This grief formed a quiet backdrop to the early seasons of the show, managed entirely away from the cameras. It also deepened the family’s connection to Florida, where Tom’s son Chad and other relatives live, creating the emotional bridge between the Yaak Valley and the southern coast that has become increasingly important as Tom’s health has declined.
Mountain Men: What He Said About the Show’s Reality
Tom Oar joined the inaugural cast of Mountain Men in 2012 when the History Channel launched the series. The financial security of the television contract took meaningful pressure off his need to produce tanned hides for basic survival, and he embraced the platform as an opportunity to document skills that would otherwise disappear with his generation.
He has been unusually transparent about the conventions of reality television production. In an interview with the Billings Gazette, he confirmed that showrunners regularly exaggerate daily routines and restage sequences that the camera crew missed when they occurred naturally.
The predator threats and weather dangers are genuine. The specific moments of dramatic confrontation are frequently recreated after the fact.
This honesty did not diminish his popularity. It reinforced his reputation as a straightforward man who respected his audience enough to tell them the truth about what they were watching.
His narrative arc across 14 seasons tracked his physical evolution honestly. The man carrying heavy trap lines in early seasons is visibly different from the man in Season 14, and the show did not hide that transition. It became the emotional core of his farewell arc.
The Heart Crisis and the Defibrillator Vest
In the winter of 2022, at 79 years old, Tom Oar woke in the middle of the night unable to breathe properly. Nancy drove him 80 miles through winter conditions to the hospital in Libby, Montana, in the middle of the night.
The medical evaluation revealed congestive heart failure with pulmonary edema, fluid accumulating in his lungs. Doctors placed him on cardiac medications and prohibited him from heavy labor including cutting firewood and setting trap lines.
Because of the Yaak Valley’s extreme isolation, two hours from emergency medical care, he was prescribed a wearable cardioverter-defibrillator vest known as a LifeVest.
Unlike an implanted defibrillator, which requires surgery, the wearable vest monitors heart rhythm continuously through surface electrodes worn against the skin. If a lethal arrhythmia is detected it automatically delivers a treatment shock.
The vest is worn beneath his clothing. Its presence in his daily life on the Yaak is a visible symbol of the limits that fifty years of extreme physical existence have imposed on a body that refused to quit. Season 11, Episode 4, titled “Heart and Soul,” documented the health crisis and his stubborn refusal to abandon the mountain home despite it.
Season 14 and the Farewell
In August 2025, the History Channel confirmed that Season 14 would be Tom Oar’s final chapter on Mountain Men. The announcement marked the retirement of the show’s most iconic original cast member.
The farewell arc focused on legacy, reflection, and the transmission of knowledge. Season 14, Episode 13, titled “Tom Oar’s Secrets From the Wild,” served as a retrospective of his survival philosophy and the technical skills he has spent decades practicing and teaching.
In promotional material, Oar described the difficulty of walking away from a craft and a place that had defined him for half a century.
The television farewell coincided with a practical shift. Spurred by their adult children and the requirements of managing his cardiac condition, Tom and Nancy began spending winters in Florida, where Tom’s son Chad and other family members are based, returning to the Yaak Valley only during the milder summer months.
The isolation that defined their life together for fifty years is now seasonal rather than permanent.
In May 2024, the death of a Texas resident named Tom Orr triggered widespread false rumors online that the Mountain Men star had died. The rumors were debunked quickly by family members and representatives, who confirmed that Tom Oar is alive.
He drove into the Yaak Valley in a 1969 GMC pickup with everything he owned and the woman he loved, and he built something that lasted fifty years. The cabin is still standing. The brain-tanned hides he made are still being worn. The show that documented it all ran for 14 seasons.
At 81, wearing a defibrillator vest, splitting his year between Montana and Florida, Tom Oar is still here. That is the whole story.
Is Tom Oar still alive?
Yes. Tom Oar is alive as of 2026. In May 2024, the death of a Texas resident named Tom Orr triggered widespread false rumors online that the Mountain Men star had died. These were quickly debunked by family members and representatives. Oar is 81 years old and splits his time between the Yaak Valley in Montana and Florida, where his family lives.
Why is Tom Oar leaving Mountain Men?
Tom Oar’s departure from Mountain Men after Season 14 was driven by his cardiac health. In 2022 he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and prescribed a wearable defibrillator vest due to the extreme isolation of his Yaak Valley property, which is roughly 80 miles from emergency medical care. He and Nancy now spend winters in Florida to be closer to family and healthcare, returning to Montana only in the summer months.
What is brain-tanning and why is Tom Oar known for it?
Brain-tanning is an ancient method of leather preservation that uses the emulsified lipids found in an animal’s own brain tissue to process its hide into soft, flexible buckskin. Unlike modern chemical tanning, brain-tanning coats individual collagen fibers while keeping them separated, producing leather that is incredibly soft, breathable, and permanently pliable even after being soaked in water. Tom Oar is considered one of the world’s premier practitioners of the craft and learned the technique from a 16-page instructional booklet titled Brain Tanning the Sioux Way by Larry Belitz.
What happened to Tom Oar’s health?
In the winter of 2022, Tom Oar suffered a cardiac episode at his Yaak Valley homestead and was driven 80 miles through winter conditions by his wife Nancy to a hospital in Libby, Montana. He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema. Doctors placed him on cardiac medications, prohibited heavy labor, and prescribed a wearable cardioverter-defibrillator vest known as a LifeVest, which monitors his heart rhythm and delivers a shock if a lethal arrhythmia is detected.
Who is Nancy Oar?
Nancy Oar is Tom Oar’s wife and lifelong partner, originally from northern Illinois. She has lived with Tom in the Yaak Valley for over fifty years, managing food preservation, assisting with hide processing, and taking on heavy physical duties including checking trap lines when Tom’s health began limiting his capabilities. She was present when Tom was injured at the 1970 rodeo and drove him to the hospital during his 2022 cardiac crisis. She is widely credited among Mountain Men viewers as the foundation on which the entire homestead rests.
What is Tom Oar’s net worth?
Tom Oar’s net worth is estimated between $500,000 and $1 million, built through his Discovery Channel television salary across 14 seasons of Mountain Men, income from selling hand-sewn brain-tanned leather goods at Black Powder Rendezvous events, and the economic value of the Yaak Valley property he and Nancy have developed over fifty years. The television contract provided meaningful financial security that relieved pressure from his need to produce hides purely for survival income.
