'Gold Rush: White Water' Season 3: Before hunting gold, 'Dakota' Fred Hurt's hot-tempered son Dustin was a California wildland firefighter
‘Gold Rush: White Water’, a Discovery Channel documentary that’s about to enter its third season, features ‘Dakota’ Fred Hurt and his son Dustin Hurt. In its new season, the father-son duo and their team, who have been mining in McKinley Creek for the past several years, will now move to Cahoon Creek, a much harsher terrain.
2,000 feet up in the Chilkat Mountains, this time the gang will fight the wilderness and the waters to find gold, but separately. Fred and Dustin Hurt are splitting up and working on separate claims to double their chances of striking it rich.
Sure, the docu-series would be nothing without its main man ‘Dakota’ Fred Hurt. But the 75-year-old, too, is incomplete without his son Dustin. Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dustin has always been around heavy machinery.
Even though he is known to have a hot temper and a love-hate relationship with his father, Dustin ultimately wants to prove himself and earn Fred’s approval. What is funny about this father-son duo is they both are on a first-name basis.
Dustin refers to his father as Fred. Why? According to Fred, "Well, he started working for me when he was 16 and he said it wasn’t cool to call your boss 'Dad'. It’s just sorta stuck and it’s like a nickname now." But there’s more to Dustin than meets the eye.
According to Discovery Go, straight from school, he started working in construction installing seawalls in the Louisiana Bayou. One of the four children of Fred, at the young age of 24, Dustin also became a wildland firefighter for the California Forest Service.
And when Dustin isn’t washing rocks he disappears into the wilderness hiking, snowboarding and rock climbing. Speaking to the Alaska Sporting Journal earlier this year, Dustin said, "In my life, I’ve found out that there are two different types of people: People who use failure as an excuse or who use failure as inspiration. And I fall into the latter category. When something challenges me I really like to try to complete my task – whatever that might be. To fail or win, I just want to do it the best I can. I’m not proving it to anyone else but myself. I need to know that I can do it. It’s something deep inside me that has to come out. I don’t know how to begin any other way."
To get to know more about Dustin, tune into the Discovery Channel November 8.