The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 015

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Bozeman, Montana. Steven Rinella talks with guests Casey Lavere and Eric Chesser of Hushin, along with Dan Doty and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew. Subjects discussed: writing about a hunt vs. filming a hunt; exploiting your children through social media; breakdown of how an episode of MeatEater gets made; the nicest trailer park in the world; the Fire Bull; the basics of filming a hunt for television; jake brakes on big rigs; visually contextualizing the hunter with the quarry; B-roll; making a living filming hunts for youtube; the best way to learn how to make better hunting videos; prehistoric cave art and the earliest recordings of hunts; Dan Doty's giant chickens. Guests: Casey Lavere Hushin Eric Chesser Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. Thanks for tuning in to the Meat Eater Podcast. We're recording right now out of Bozeman, Montana, specifically out of the spacious, palatial rental home of Dan Doty. Dan has a lookout tower.

We're in his basement. Many floors below his lookout tower which looks out over irrigated pasture, chickens, ducks, fowl. In the kitchen right now he's prepping up some of his homegrown chickens.

To everyone that comes in he marvels about their size and robustness they're really big chickens really big huge chickens this is like a homecoming for me because years ago i lived in montana for a long time about a decade and for a short spell i lived here in bozeman and we rented my brother and i were living in a trailer park and that trailer park like inspires certain images in a person's mind but this guy owned his trailer park you know have you guys heard of rocky creek yeah he put trailers on his trailer park at about the same spacing that they put golf greens on a golf course i mean it was like paradise and it came with private access what to rocky creek really

dude there was like it was a giant place and yeah i think there's like 13 trailers on it what is it now is it still there i have no idea i always want to go look nicest guy he drove around on a golf cart all this dude did was mow grass and had this creek. We picked fairy ring mushrooms off the property. We would shoot our bow in our own little area. He's like, oh, if you boys really want to have a good place to shoot, we had a little shooting area, and we'd explore that creek with fly rods. But if you really wanted to get an accurate idea of what was going on there, you'd run a lead for him through that thing

and turn up a whole other class of fish out of there. No, it was a great trailer park. I never got into this guy's books. It made no sense that he was running it as a trailer park. Where from town is that? Where is that creek? It's out by the

what's that good breakfast place out by the slaughter yard or the sale yard? The stockyard. Yeah, Rocky Creek. But you know why it was the way it was? Trucks ripping down out of Bozeman Pass hit the Jake brakes. They basically know to hit the Jake brakes at me and Matt's trailer. You got used to it after a while.

Living there, I found out why they call them jake brakes it's a compression brake made by jacob industries in pennsylvania do you guys already know that yeah really also known as the engine brake i drove the dump truck for a number of years oh when i was a kid so you're throwing a jake brake i probably you probably blown past my trailer if i would have drove down that hill and i saw your trailer, I would have hit the Jake. That's Rinella. He gets the Jake. We're not going to be talking about trailer parks. What we are talking about is the science

and lore and bullshit involved with filming art. The science, art, lore, and bullshit of filming hunts. This is something like i hear about i hear about in different ways from from people who ask questions all the time they'll ask how do you get into that line of work right so people will see like there's a lot of guys out

there who are like man you know i like to film hunts why can't why don't i film hunts for a living or is it different hunting like do you miss hunting without cameras? Or people just having technical questions about filming hunts? Or I feel like there's other ors. I mean, there's a million questions. And then there's just when you watch and see that people could do, if you're so inclined to film your hunt for memory's sake or for whatever things that one should be doing to do a better job you know you see endless

articles about how to take good grip and grins in magazines you don't see much about like just sort of like capturing yeah film on hunts like how to b-roll footage no no one talks but no one ever wrote an article about that i think it's interesting now let me introduce you okay um i'm here with media producer janice putellis also director and producer dan doherty these guys are both based here out of bozeman at zpz west um casey levier from hush is it hushin or h from Hush. Is it Hushin or Hush? Because it used to be Hushin. Yeah, Hushin. I see your cap there. Hush is the merch line.

Hushin is the YouTube page which is Hunt slash Fission. Hushin. So it'd be like New Balance and New Bell. Yeah.

A lot like that. So explain it again. Hushin is your humongous YouTube channel. Yeah. I wouldn't say it's humongous, but it's our – But just lay a couple of credentials out. I mean, it's a big YouTube. You do a big, brisk YouTube business.

In the hunting industry. Yeah, the hunting channel. I run a couple brisk YouTube business. In the hunting industry. Yeah, the hunting channel. I run a couple different YouTube channels. I have a personal family channel we run that's very successful. We've got over 500,000 subscribers, almost to hit 100 million views. And then the hunting channel is doing really well, and it's got, what, 85? Hunting and fishing.

Hunting and fishing. Hence. Outdoor cooking. Hushing. Hushing. 85 what? 85, okay and then we're almost going to hit 10 million views which i mean when i started this four years ago my brother was the one that convinced me to do this because he was doing youtube full-time back then and he's like why don't you make a hunting channel on youtube i'm like that is not the audience that's on youtube

or on the internet really yeah so it was a hard game at first but now there's it's opening up and other people are starting to put content on there and and i think more and more hunters and fishermen are knowing that they can watch stuff on there so it's done well so i mean compared to some of the giant youtube channels it doesn't seem like a lot but for what we're trying to do it's done really well yeah yeah and uh yeah we're excited to do, it's done really well. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, we're excited. And then Chester the molester. Yes.

He really drives a van. I wish I had a van. Eric Chester. Eric Chester. And not Chester. Not Chester. But everyone wants to make it Chester. Everyone wants to put a T in there.

They want to do what I just did. I could spell it out for them with two S's, and they'll somehow put a T in there. And how do you, what's your affiliation? Well, it's pretty cool how Casey and I met. We actually met at the big Western Hunting and Conservation Expo in Salt Lake. And I was making films and DVDs and some YouTube films before I met Casey, and he introduced himself to me.

Hunting films and DVDs. Hunting films, hunting DVDs, shed hunting. Yeah, anything we can get out there and film. And he introduced himself to me as a YouTuber, and it just blew me away that he did YouTube videos. I really didn't understand it. Since then, we've just kind of partnered up and did some collaborative hunts together and now we're working together are you still doing dvds no no more dvds

right now we're just gonna we're committed to youtube and then that's the direction we're going gotcha it's hard to sell a dvd these days it is i think dvd sales are going down. Yeah. I mean, we're still putting everything out on cassette. Yeah. Let's go VHS. On the hi-eight. Dude, you want to know something like this sort of apocryphal. Is that a word? Yeah, it is.

An apocryphal story. I remember to date myself, not to go on dates myself, but to date my era when i was born i remember being in a class in college at lake state university and it would have been 1994 and i was in this communications class okay and it was like one of the things you had to do is you had to make a persuasion speech okay and i remember a dude getting up there and saying, man, you should be getting rid of your tapes because CDs are where it's at. He's like, the tape don't break. Yeah.

And being there, I'm like, I don't know, man. That was a potent argument in favor of CDs. I'm switching. It seemed like such a risk back then to give up those cassettes for this new thing, right? Are you guys old enough to have had cassettes? Dude, I remember my – I would say I was in fifth grade, but it might have been like sixth or seventh. I had a yellow Walkman, and these were like really popular, I feel like.

Oh, yeah, man. And you could like put them under the water. Like hard hat yellow. Yeah. And it had this – and yeah, it was a cassette. I listened to that thing for like three years, like New Kids on the Block, Criss Cross. You guys remember these guys?

Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, so, yeah. I'll tell you the first tape I ever owned. This is way off subject. The first tape I ever owned was the Ghostbusters soundtrack. Really? Yeah. Mine was Achy Breaky Heart.

I think I owned that same cassette at one point. I might still have it. So you self-identify as a heart. I think I own that same cassette at one point. I might still have it. So you self-identify as a YouTuber. I do. But when I think of a YouTuber, I think of people who do unboxing videos, which I discovered through my kids. Watch a video of someone taking a toy out of a box.

It'll have millions of views. The biggest niche in YouTube right now. And there's a channel out there, and I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically a lady that'll have millions of views the biggest niche in youtube right now and there's a channel out there i can't remember what it's called but it's basically a lady that unboxes disney toys plays with them for a second never shows her face it's like an over-the-shoulder shot plays with these toys videos done 20 million views 200 million views my kid man you like you cut him loose on youtube which i don't like to do because all of a sudden he's talking about stuff he ran into but you cut him loose on YouTube, which I don't like to do because all of a sudden he's talking about stuff he ran into.

But you cut him loose on YouTube because it would be like he likes monster trucks. Yeah. So you play him a monster truck video, and the next thing he's watching is someone unboxing monster truck toys. And he's just like mouth open, drool coming out. It's like he just is transfixed. And how old is your boy? And they do it where you don't see the person. You just see the person's hands.

Yeah. I'm going to do unboxing videos of critters. Yeah. How old is your boy? I'm going to open this here critter up and see what's in there. It's like, oh, it's a heart. Yeah. The thing is with why they're so popular is because what does a five-year-old do?

He rewatches that thing a hundred times. Yeah. It's like going back to the Ghostbusters. I just showed my youngest boy or my oldest boy the Ghostbusters. We watched the my youngest boy, or my oldest boy, the Ghostbusters. We watched the video. He's watched it 10 times since. So they watched this unboxing video, and they're not just going to watch it one time and move on. That's how you rack up hits on YouTube.

You have it so they watch it 100 times. And then it gets into that category of unboxing. So every video, it's suggested videos and unboxing video, and it's the same channel. Just click it over and over and over. It's like wrapped in paper wrapped in paper like a birthday or no it's just how it comes to the store the reason yeah but you could go go you could go watch unboxing videos of a fishing reel go into like go into youtube and type in unboxing shimano stratic and there will be a guy being like so i just got the shimano stratic um he'll kind of like show you how it costs 1995 let's open up or 75 95 whatever we'll open it up and okay so it's in a little cellophane bag

um i might get that open oh it comes with an extra spool i kind of i'm liking the quality of this spool huh let's take a look oh here's the handle yeah and that's why you're just like yeah you're like your mind you're just like you can't it's just amazing man and there's they get manicures nice manicures that's that's a big secret i think of an unboxing video i couldn't do it i don't have pretty hands so it's you and the unboxers and you when did you start making hunting videos? I think I uploaded the very first hunting video like four years ago. Like four years ago, January. What was it? It was, I don't talk about those first videos, Steve.

No, it was the very first video I ever put up was a reel of that season that I was getting ready to upload. So it was like the 30 second highlight of the five hunts i filmed gotcha so the first film i put up was uh i think my brother's elk hunt um and uh it was a good film no it was terrible but it was like 30 minutes long and it was mostly me and my brother sitting in our little uh office in California talking about this hunt, showing some clips of the hunt, basically. And, I mean, it still gets views. It's probably been viewed 200,000 times. Yeah, yeah.

But it's good. Like, I tell people those first couple films are kind of embarrassing because I'm just like, what was I doing? But it's good to watch because then I can see how far we've came. So, but totally self-taught. Oh yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about like going blast from the past, I learned how to film and edit videos when I was in high school because I was trying to become a professional snowboarder. I was writing for a company in Salt Lake and I was trying to get the bigger sponsors on. I'd go out with my mom's VHS, I mean 25-pound camera, shoot video of me snowboarding, go and I'd cut from VCR to VCR.

I'd spend hours doing this for this three-minute clip. Then I'd send all these VHSs out to these snowboard companies like, hey, sponsor me. That was my initial approach into filming myself. Then I started filming hunting and stuff later but uh yeah like self-taught pretty much like on all the new editing software and all the new hd cameras and all that stuff i think it's worth mentioning i think that's when we aired mediator the first time four years ago in January. So same length of life here. I can't turn the camera on.

Honestly, I'll see a camera beeping and I'll be like, oh, must have run out of battery. I have to come find someone. I'll be like, hey man, there seems to be a problem out there with one of the cameras. Something's wrong. I can't figure it out. It's making noise. Yeah, so we started doing hunts like the first hunt i ever filmed was 2010 that pow no we still yeah we started doing

i think it was in 2000 2000 no 2009 2009 geez but it was like a whole different deal because it wasn't like the self-taught thing. It was rolling in with some professional mugs. But I wasn't filming. See, I don't come from a perspective. That's why I'm glad Dan and Yoss are here because talking about filming hunts, I don't really know. You know what I mean? I can't even speak to it. But I have a lot of things about – I have a lot of feelings.

I'd be curious to get your take on it. The way filming it, in some way I want to say it bastardizes it, but in some ways it kind of makes it better. When you're filming yourself. No, just to be capturing it. Because I often get hung up on sort of the big idea of why film it. Like what's wrong with stuff just being in your head?

No, I agree. Do you ever wonder about it? No, I agree. But I'm almost ashamed to admit I have a ton of fun. In some ways, it's more fun to go out and film it. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's two ways to look at it. Like I do the hunting thing, but we we also like i was talking about earlier we have

this family channel where i vlog is like a video log diary of our daily life and i don't videotape every day but five to six days a week i upload a video to youtube of me and my wife and our kids hanging out doing living our life it sounds crazy i know but and i love having those moments i love going back and being like oh look at when you were three you know because we've been doing it for four and a half five years but there are certain times and certain things and moments that happen that i go to take out the camera i said no this this just needs to be in my head it doesn't need to be shared with anybody else you didn't like upload your children passing through the birth canal no but pretty close really i mean my wife wouldn't allow that obviously but you would

she had a c-section the last baby and that's the only one um i really filmed and like uploaded it oh yeah dude my wife like we got to a point now dan your couch is falling apart oh no we got to a point now my wife won't even let me put pictures of my kids online i wasn't gonna ask you about that yeah we decided as a couple no filming kids yeah i don't even want kids on my show yeah no filming kids i don't put my kids anywhere i don't put pictures of my kids up i can put pictures of the back of their heads up yeah but in my mind i just got to be where it's like that's something that they need to decide for themselves. It's a big thing. It's not just private, right?

So it's like later on, are you going to be glad that someone exploited the strong word? And I can say this because I did it. I put my kid on TV. later on it'd be like, are you going to be glad that someone took the liberty of broadcasting your life for public consumption before the age of consent? Yeah, I mean. So it's like, in a little way, I just feel like it started to feel to me

like very exploitative. And not just that, but dangerous. Dangerous and exploitative, I thought. You know, I'd be curious to hear your take on it. No, I have, that's like, one one of the biggest like concerns people always ask us is like, do you really want your kids out there? Like, or do they, do they later want to be out there? Yeah.

I mean, who knows what they're going to want to do, you know, 10 years from now, like maybe they're going to come back and be like, dad, like, why did you do that? But it's always very clear with, with me and my wife that if they don't want to be on film they will not be on film but they love it too little to know yeah i don't know my kid what he wants to eat what's he gonna tell you wants to eat mac and cheese yeah so that's what he wants to eat yeah but i'm saying what is your love but i don't give it to him casey lavere okay yeah so i mean and that's my my last name is actually Butler, but when we started the channel, I didn't want my information out there.

Oh. So, I used my middle name. Really? And now, all the information about me is out there. No kidding. Yeah. But, I don't know. Like, I get, I've heard some weird stories.

I've had, like, big bloggers tell me crazy stories about their kids and pictures and stuff that end up in the wrong places. Yeah, man. I mean, yeah, it frightens me. But you really can't get on any social media platform, Facebook, Twitter, anything, and post any pictures then, really. Nobody can. I don't feel like they target us because of what we do.

Yeah, yeah. They just find whoever like, I don't feel like they target us because of what we do. They just find whoever. And I don't understand it all. But here's another way to look at it because I've had this conversation with my brother. He has five kids. I have three kids. We talk about this all the time. We all, like me, my brother, my two brothers,

my sister, my wife, his wife, we all make YouTube videos for a living. It's like the family business now and it is this is a little bit out there far-fetched but if you grew up on a dairy farm and you didn't want to be a dairy farmer is your dad going to still make you go out and milk cows yeah it's a family business like not with you it's kind of a way i look at it but it kind of not because it is maybe later on in life life, my kids are going to be like, Dad, I didn't want you to record my first grade graduation.

That's a good point, family business. That's what we do for a living. If I didn't see all sides of it, I wouldn't have brought it up. No. If I was just like I knew I was right and I was super confident in being right, I would have never brought it up. I don't know the answer to it. But the thing about, this isn't why I brought it up, but I'm going to do a seamless segue.

I feel the same way sometimes, part of me, feels the same way about hunting that I do about kids. The exploitation of something so beautiful. Filming it.

And sometimes I feel like it's a deal with the devil. I don't understand why. A deal with the devil? Because I just feel like things happen. A little farther. Yeah, we have to. Let's take a quick break. To hear from our sponsors.

We'll be right back. I was just talking about that filming hunts sometimes feels as though that at the risk of sounding spiritual. No, not at the risk of sounding spiritual. That there's sort of this thing, like in the natural world, you're sort of being gifted glimpses into some things you know and it feels private or it feels like um like you paid some level of dues to be there and see these things happen and then to see it and then to capture it or to interrupt that moment in order to make an accounting of it starts to feel like, well, why?

Like, is it not just good enough that it just happened? Does it really have to happen that way? And I've gotten to the point where something amazing will happen. What's the first thing out of my mouth? Did you get that? It's like, it makes you sort of reset expectations in some way. But also I think good things come of it. You know what I mean?

I think that to introduce people to certain worlds, you're inspiring people. And you just have to make a record. The oldest representational art we know about is dudes doing depictions of their hunt on cave walls. People for a long time have been saying like i did and i will now record yeah you know does it feel different to you than writing about a hunt yeah for some reason yeah it's more intrusive more in your face more intrusive i agree with that like there are some things i think that should be experienced and should just be uploaded into your brain and and that's it.

We were talking about one on the way here, like this elk hunt we did last year. He filmed it. I shot this really nice bull, and he got it all on film, but there was this one moment, like the very first time I saw the bull coming through the trees, and we had got none of it captured. But it feels like it is captured because I, I replay that all the time. And that's like my moment, you know, like that was like my thing that only I experienced. And that's pretty, pretty rad. But like what you were going after, like with, it does good things and you've said it before, like the, you feel like your shows, the HR of, of hunting, right.

Like it really shows a lot of people that other words wouldn't have watched hunting yeah what it really happens and that's probably the coolest thing that we see on on our youtube channels because we have such a big audience that aren't necessarily hunters there were anti-hunters they were vegetarians or vegans you know they're the people against it and then they really watch what what a hunt really requires and what it takes it's not just a bunch of dudes jumping in the truck with a case of beer, driving out, killing everything you see and going home. But we respect these animals and we consume these animals. And so, yeah, it is tough sometimes thinking that you exploit those animals for what you do.

But I think in the long run, what the Meat Eater Show has done, I feel like we have done the same on youtube it really opens the eyes to the people that might not have understood what we did before and i think that's the biggest problem with people that don't agree with what we do is they're just not educated on it yeah or or god or do in fact know about something that happened but they know about an anomalous thing that happens. Like that one day, they live in a suburb, and one day a deer comes running their yard with an arrow hanging out of it. Arrow's stuck in its leg.

And they're like, oh, so that's what that's all about. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in

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No one ever shows up those moments though when when you think may should you know should only be for yourself when we do film them and say i'm shooting you and i you know capture you experiencing that like there's there's an i think there's like a next level of uh i don't know just i guess context but possibly beauty too to see someone having an emotional or experiential thing happen like remember when we shot joe rogan shoot his first year there's that moment that that mo captured there that is i you know not that it's greater than his experience of course it's not but there's something really powerful there and you know we're looking for that i mean that's what yannis and i are looking for as much as possible is that real experience but you know it's interesting because you know you're not the writer in that case in that case the producer of the shooter is the writer and you're the subject yeah and um

yeah i mean that's what we go for so it's mean, I don't think it's exploitative necessarily of the animal. I think it also can be incredibly respectful specifically toward that situation. For sure, man. Like, yeah, just to render it. And I think that, you know, I guess it's some little thing where wildlife art, wildlife photography always feels celebratory of the animal. You know what I mean? And I think you can get to that as well.

I don't want to just talk about this because I want to talk about other stuff. When you guys, just like from a technical standpoint, capturing a hunt on film, now that we've gotten into like why would a guy want to, right? Or should you want to or whatever,

what do you think, like from your guys' perspective, all having had tons of experience doing this, Dan, you've, I don't know, produced 60 episodes of Meteor, been on so that many hunts filmed that many hunts or more more actually um when you guys watch let's just say you're on youtube and you're watching hunt videos the guys have made what's the what do you feel is that it

could be technical content whatever what do you feel is like – it could be technical, content, whatever. What do you feel is the thing that guys most often do wrong? Or what are some things that you're going to offer up? Answer this question anyway, C-Fit, but what do they do wrong? What could people do different that would improve their stuff? Everything. I agree. Easily. It's very easy to watch somebody else's content and and critique it right like you can say like

i was not only easy but fun yeah right to me for me i like like those moments you're talking about i like the realness of the hunt and like capturing uh the emotion behind it and like i caught one of his moments when he killed that his very first like big bull on rifle and the emotion it was 20 seconds of you know of his raw emotion and it made the whole film like it made the for the three days we filmed like um i think the biggest thing that i see in like youtube or tv is anything that's not real it's staged and you can see right through it and there's so much content out there just staged hunts. Yeah.

Where they go and kill something, and then they'll go back and reshoot whatever. Yeah, the responses. Yeah. Another thing you see a lot of that makes, that is difficult to watch, is just the standard way of setting it up. Of be like, hi, I'm here with with bob and we're on bob's beautiful place and we're gonna that's a difficult thing to get around you know it's difficult there's an economy like staging stuff is economical i mean it's like easy and quick when we started out when we used to

do like we do this particularly doing Wild Within, is you'd always do these, like you have two people have to meet, right? You're going to meet someone, but you don't film the meeting, right? Because it's chaotic. So later you got to do like, so you walk up and shake their hand.

And I still see it on TV now where like, it'll be like one of those real estate shows and there'll be a shot where a guy's walking up to a door and there's a shot on the inside of the person hearing the knock. And then they open the door and meet and they don't meet like how people meet, you know? Yeah.

They're meeting in the way they meet on TV, which isn't how that interaction goes down. We used to do those all the time. Yeah. Because how else are you going to get into it? Yeah. Yeah. The key we realized is to get into it

with VO and B-roll. Yeah. I hooked up with Doug, right? Shot of the land. Doug, like doing some Doug type activity. And you see Doug doing some Doug-type activity. And just take for granted that people realize there must have been that moment when you shook hands. That we're not... When the door opened from two sides.

Yeah, that we're not seeing. And it's like, to see it, it's like a relief to me. To not have those anguished... So in a way, I always say, like, if you're doing stuff, if something makes you feel so awkward and self-conscious, try to find another way of doing it. Because everyone's going to feel awkward and self-conscious. There's probably people out there who can knock on a door and do like a meet and it just feels great.

Dan used to be into a fishing show. Which one? Oh, yeah. He was good at it. He was amazing. What was that called? Oh, man. Do you know what I'm talking? He's a fishing show. Which one? Oh, yeah. He was good at it. He was amazing. What was that called? Oh, man. Do you know what I'm talking?

He's a wrestler. Anybody seen this? He's a Canadian wrestler. He's the best at fishing. A redhead. He would go extreme fishing, and he was a great showman. He was entertaining. He was so easy in his own skin, though, that he could do those.

Yeah. Because he's a professional, right? I mean, he was a performer. Yeah. He was an actor. He was a performer. He knew how to do that but no i mean he could walk into a bar and do like a fake meat in the bar and it was fun like he'd hit a whole fresh joke was it just like his name it was like billy dan was the only guy watching it i thought i thought i would have beat the super bowl for in. It was on Discovery or something for a while. Or Nat Geo.

It was on Nat Geo. I'm really interested to know what this show is called. That dude could carry a program, man. Really? I got to go watch it. I'll look it up sometime during this and bring it back up. But I want to say that I think the two main things people can do, and they're huge, and I don't know that people can do them easily,

but number one is learn how to tell a story in a basic sense, and that means that there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that it shows an arc of what happens. And I don't think that hunting videos do that very well. Historically, they don't do that, and it's been our focus since the very beginning at ZPZ. We've had a crack team of storytellers being very, very specific about how to craft our stories

from beginning to middle and end and how they work. And we put a lot of time now, Giannis puts weeks into episodes before we go out there with a plan and then monitoring that story while it's happening and then in the editing process afterward, it is a massive amount of work a massive amount of people and energy that goes into really defining that

story and making it entertaining keep you moving all the way through it and uh that's huge i mean i think that's probably number one and the second major thing for for making hunting videos better would be to just learn the basics of framing the basics of your gear and the basics of of shooting um like blocking so you know a combination knowing how to cut from a close-up of casey's face to a wide shot that shows what he's doing with the context of where he's going and there's there's a million things to consider but uh probably the best way to learn it is to be in the edit room and actually put something together because then once you go out there you know what the heck you're looking for to start with oh like when you're sitting down piece it together you

realize stuff you wish you had totally and how to shoot that yeah yeah you specifically and how to shoot that. Yeah. You specifically know how to shoot that exact thing. You'll know what you need. Like Nick Brigden is the creative director at ZPZ, and he gave me a lot of my start and Mo did, but that's what makes his particular magic, and everybody talks about it. It's because he shoots what he edits, and so when he's out in the field or in the field with somebody

who knows how to shoot for the edit, it's all up in their head. They know what they're going to get. When they get it, they get that feeling. It's done, and then you just move on. It's just like checking off boxes all day. I want to speak to the story thing real quick because it's hard to even define what story is. But one way you might get into a story is, and the most basic element is,

a story is something changes. You know what I mean? Like something changes. We work, like at Media, we work with a lot of people who, not a lot of people, the majority of people did not come out of hunting.

They came out of storytelling, right? They came out of film, writing, things so there's their first and foremost love is telling stories it's just this is a variety of story but that's what it is it wasn't like they loved to film hunts but then wanted to learn how to make that into a story so they already got that part down another thing is i think that what we found is maintaining a certain amount of flexibility about what a story is. Because Dane alluded to the pre-production process where Yance might spend a bunch of time on a story.

Oftentimes you'll be midstream and realize that it's just not there or something different is going on. And you're sort of making these game-time decisions. Do we follow the story? Sometimes the story is hard because I always make a joke about what's production and what's content. Sometimes you're in a story that feels very production. Define that. What's that mean?

It feels like the story, like let's say you're going on a hunt and all of a sudden you can't go where you wanted to go. I'll be like, man, this is like a, what I would call a production issue. This is like in the way of us doing this. But you realize that sometimes out of that comes a sort of, you know, another story or an actual story that would be a narrative that you would tell. A different example would be like, you can't film at night at night okay so you can't sit or it's hard to film at night let's say you're feeling under your spearfishing underwater at night let's just say it'd be very difficult to light that and do that that's a production thing right it's like it's hard to film at night so oftentimes i find the main thing you're thinking

about is you get lost in what it requires to make a story and you start missing sort of the story that you would be experiencing in the absence of filming. Like us going to Bolivia. No, it's like us going to Bolivia to film our shows and realizing that it rained for 30 days and you couldn't catch any fish. Yeah. Which is, so you have this.

That felt like production, but it was. Well, but you're right. There's this interesting moment when, you know, you deviate from what you want the story to be to to having to reckon with what's actually happening yeah and i think hunting is an incredible stage to learn storytelling in that dynamic way because you can't predict anything yeah you can't tell to an extent you're always having to shift your your focus at every point i mean whether it's just the light or the weather

or the animals aren't doing whatever, you know, you're sort of, you're intending for something to happen and then it's not going to happen, most likely. Yeah, I think it would be tough to try to set up a story before you actually go out on the hunt. I mean, typically you go out, you meet the landowner with that really awkward handshake, go hunt, kill an animal, butcher it, you're done, right?

But so many times in hunting, it just goes wherever it wants to. Your adventure leads you somewhere different. And I don't know, going back to what you're talking about, like cutting, editing, and video shooting, I don't think you can be a good cameraman until you actually start editing that footage and then you learn what you made where you made your mistakes it certainly helps yeah yeah like my wife just started she has a big craft show on youtube and she just started cutting her own videos or and she started shooting her own videos what does that mean craft show craft like making crafts, hair tutorials, recipes, mom show, basically.

Man, you guys really are neck deep. We are, yeah, we're drowning in YouTube. But it's been great. Well, it's hugely successful, right? Yeah, it does well, and it's allowed us to be with our kids. Before this YouTube world, I was like, blue collar, does it come? I worked at the steel mill. She cut hair.

We were working 50, 60 hours a week. And this is going back to what we were talking about earlier, but now we do YouTube, and it allows us to do everything with our kids. And so I tell my kids, sometimes I'm trying to cut the next Hushin video at 7 o'clock at night to get it ready for the next day. And they're like, Dad, let's go do this. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm working right now. And they get bummed out i'm like remember before when i worked at the steel mill and i was gone 60 hours a week like this is like our like this is me at the

office here for two hours and later when they claim when they come to complain about what you put on youtube you'd be like listen i wouldn't even have been there yeah if it wasn't for youtube yeah so i've been gone yeah cutting my fingers off yeah but um yeah so she's starting to shoot her own videos and stuff at home so she doesn't have to fly out to la as much and uh she's like i don't know if the lighting's right i don't know if i'm talking i'm like just shoot something for 20 minutes shoot it for like how you want it and go and cut it and And then you'll know. So now she loves it.

She cuts her videos and now she knows how to shoot them. And like, that's the thing with us is we shoot and edit all of our own stuff. And so like beforehand, like while I'm shooting him hunting, I'm thinking about how I'm going to cut that video. Like, Oh, this is going to be,

Oh, first rule. First rule. Dude, I don't, my ringer was off. Thank you very much. Oh. First rule of podcasting. Yeah, man, be honest. Dude, I dumped. My ringer was off. Thank you very much. Vibration. But yes.

He added an extra vibrate. So yeah, I mean, when I'm shooting a video for YouTube, I'm thinking about while I'm shooting, like how I'm going to cut it and how I'm going to tell that story. And you tell the stories pretty efficiently because you don't... We work in a 20, like a half hour show. 22 minutes, right?

We work in a 22 minute world. And not only that, but we think about it, we tend to think about it in acts. Yeah, segments or... Like first act. And they're different lengths. So we talk about cold open, act one, act two, act three, act four, right? But it's a 22-minute product. You're dealing with something.

What have you found to be the sweet spot? I don't know. We were just talking about this earlier. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Some take off and some don't. But I have a video up there right now that's 23, 24 minutes. Is that right? Which I would consider to be a long YouTube video.

That's a long YouTube video. But it has great retention and almost a quarter of a million views right now. But can you ever, I'm sure you can, what quarter million views is how many people clicked it? How many people have seen it all the way through? It's hard to say how many people have seen it all the way through, but it gives you a retention rating.

And that one's like 80%. So that one just keeps the people like certain videos yeah like just like any show you want to keep their attention there so they continue to keep watching and something with that video just the storyline of it and the way it's what like just in a one sentence synopsis what is it the hunt yeah i shot the the bull that's named Fire Bull, and it's just kind of gone internet famous, I guess. I don't know. It's just a really big bull, but the story is so cool and so rare. And luckily enough, I was able to capture it on film, so I don't know. There was a lot of anticipation for the video to come out

because it was floating around social media for so long. You killed this giant bull. That I killed this big bull. What happened what's the fire the cool thing about this bull is you know eric eric is a shed hunter and if you guys know shed hunters they're crazy people they will they like eric he has history with this bull he's watched this bull for years like he's watched this bull grow up and he collected its horns and stuff like eric wasn't just out to kill any elk walking down the mountain like you he went out to kill this one specific animal yeah he did i documented everything the scouting and everything leading up to it and the fire bull was this this was the bull i was i wanted to hunt wow and you had his you had his

shed antlers from over a period of time some friends of mine had collected um a couple sets off him and uh a young kid and his dad had found two sets off him as well so we just knew he was on the mountain because they give you did they give you the antlers after you killed it i do have one set from a friend who i had a set off a bull he killed so we i had the set off it's a crazy world so we like swap no and he was super nice about it uh off it's a crazy world he's got my change program so we like swap no and he was super nice about it uh his name's jared and he was uh yeah it was like no questions asked he's like this is your bull so we traded um but what was neat or what was interesting about the hunt and why that hunt has kind of gone viral is i actually shot him twice

but 12 days apart so i shot him the opening week, and it just... You shot him with a bow. With a bow. This is an archery hunt, and I'm hunting out of a ground blind. And opening Thursday, so the hunt started on Saturday, and opening Thursday, a good friend of mine, Kobe, he came to help me with my hunt, and I said, well, this bull has been seen right in this meadow.

I've just kind of been sitting there and haven't seen him yet. So he was kind of getting bummed out because he had taken off a lot of work to come help me. But he had been wishing that he would have waited until the rut. Because in Utah, we get that early season and the bow hunters start to get into mid-September, which the rut starts to get going. And I just remember telling him, like, hey, this is going to be an awesome hunt.. Like there's bulls, you know, in this area, we're going to hunt the fire bull. I mean, that's what I was doing was hunting the fire bull. So it was the opening Thursday and him and I were sitting in the ground blind and this is just a ground blind built out of pine needles and tree limbs and anything we can build up this like makeshift ground blind and uh the fireball came out into

the meadow and i remember my friend he's i was like get the camera ready the fireball's coming and he's like you're you're lying you know he kept saying you're yeah right i said get the camera ready and he can just tell by my you know the way i said that that he got the camera ready and and sure enough the fireball fed out and I waited. And this is so funny going back to like being in those moments where we're filming and when we're not and things we should see and just have in our minds. For me at that moment, like you can see in the film, like my heart is racing when I first spotted him, but it took him quite a while just to feed up to us and to get to where I can like

clear all the branches and shoot at him but in that moment like I was not hunting and my mind like I had the bow in my hand and here's this bull that I've been you know waiting for all summer to hunt and I've got the tag and I've got my chance and I'm like spaced out I'm zoned out and I'm not even hunting like my instincts I was just enjoying the visual of like, wow, there he is. Like it was the first time I had seen him that year with my eyes, other than trail cam pictures. So it was my friend that was like, dude, right now, shoot. And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, you're right. You know? So I had waited for his head to be down. I had waited for that front shoulder to go forward and i just put it right where i wanted it and let go and we heard the smack and uh the bull

ran off and my buddy just you got him you nailed him and everything and we're so happy we're celebrating the cameraman was like yeah he's not supposed to talk he's not even there he's not quiet he's not even supposed to be there this guy gets so excited i mean i this guy loves to hunt and him and i have had some great experiences on the mountain together and he just can't hold it in bottom line he gets too excited so he's you got him so we were excited and we watched replayed the footage and it just uh he kind of jumped the string and i hit hit him in the shoulder blade i mean that you can see in the film that the arrow just rides up the shoulder instead of penetrating in. And it rained all night and

we didn't find him the next day. Luckily, a friend did see him bedded in the thick timber. And I thought I was going to have a second chance right then to go and shoot him. But unfortunately, he got up and walked off so the crazy thing about the hunt is i set that blind i kept sitting in that blind and a lot of people doubted me a lot of people said i was wasting my time and 12 days later in the same blind hunting by myself filming myself with you know just a little hand held camera on a tripod in my head camera he came out 12 days later really oh he looked oh he looks so healthy i mean the first time i shot him he kind of had some velvet hanging off his antlers and he kind of had that really thin summer coat this is 12 days later and his antlers are now just

polished up really dark timbered antlers and uh his cape was just even he was getting more into that rut phase he just looks so pretty and he didn't even have a limp drilled in the shoulder blade and 12 days later he's just walking no kid as majestic as he was out there i mean it was crazy now now you're causing me to enter into that fantasy of the all the stuff i ever crippled is just fine yeah oh like and that's that going back that, how we talked about how filming, we can learn so much, and it does some great things. We learned a lot from this hunt. A lot of people told me he'll never be back.

He's going nocturnal. He knows that meadow is dangerous now. And I just said, look, these animals live in danger 24-7. They're habitual. I think he's going to be back so i kept sitting that blind and when it finally happened where'd you hit him that time oh right in the money like it was a little bit low but it it right behind the shoulder and uh same side same side when people would ask me well, tell me the story. I remember Kobe was the first one I called on my cell phone to tell him the story. He said, well, what happened? I said, well, Kobe, remember how it happened when you were there?

He says, yeah. I said, that's what happened. So what do you mean? Like same area, same everything? I was like, yeah, same exact spot, almost the same time of night. When I hit him, he ran in the same exact path out of this meadow. And so it was- I feel like you're giving way too much away right now oh i can't help you're supposed to spark their interest so they go and watch the video no just right now just say like and that's when the

mauling happened yeah the bears and the coyotes met it is a crazy story because not only you wound an animal and he comes back to the exact same spot like step for step it's a 400 inch bull that's supposed to be the smartest creature on the planet or in the woods that does the exact same thing after well you know what i think i think that bull was thinking there's no way that guy's gonna come back because he knows i'll never be back all his buddies are telling him not to he's not there but what if that dude to come back because he knows I'll never be back. All his buddies are telling him not to. He's not there. They're like, but what if that dude does come back? He's like, why would he come back? He shot me there. He shot me there.

He thinks I'll never come back. That's the only place I am going is there. But it was wild. But going back to your question, like some of our videos, like we run five to seven minutes. But videos like that, it's hard to tell that story in less than that 23 minutes like i've actually been working on a an edit to shorten it up for a um the full draw film tour but

it's been hard because it's hard to take away from the story you know all the preparation the scouting and everything that happened because it just the way it was edited 24 minutes was just the way it was i didn't think like okay i have to edit this at 25 or 22 or whatever i just edited the way i felt i liked it and then that's what worked is that on the hush and channel too yeah that's on the hush and channel so if you just search the fireball elk hunt that's the beauty the beautiful thing about youtube we're so free to do you. I remember being on the New Mexico hunt. I remember camping out, and you were asking me how long, the day after I shot my bull, how long we were going to make the film.

And I was like, try to make it under 10. What did it end up being, eight, nine? I mean, nine minutes told the story, and I didn't need to put anything else in there. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say that I kind of like the time constraints. I like sort of it makes you creatively dig for things.

When you need to dig for things, it also makes you not be precious about a lot of things too. Cutting down is a really cool process. And like the collaborator of nature working with editors and you guys do your own stuff, but we have it, you know, we work in teams and down is a really cool process and and like the collaborator of nature working with editors and you guys do your own stuff but we have it you know we work in in teams and sort of having a bunch of people craft this stuff and you know being precious about stuff is for me could be an issue if i didn't have other people just to like yeah i think they told like i went to writing

school you know um and the thing that writers just pound and pound and pound into you and like every writer says is like you gotta kill your babies you gotta kill your babies you know um meaning don't let like these moments that you that you think are so great are these things that you're you that are so precious to you like get in the way of the greater good yeah you know i remember like when i wrote my buffalo book um i wrote it 100 pages too long you know and i'm telling you man i like fought over every word right and i got it all done it was just ridiculously long i went through and axed 100 pages out of there painful wow but now i'm like i can't believe i almost had that garbage in there yeah like later when you look at it's like like i can't believe i almost had that garbage in there yeah like later when you look at it's like like i would take a whole chapter to just grab a paragraph out of it

you know but you go like well no because i have like it's special because i did it yeah is what it is what you get in your head like it's oh it's special because i did it and and and i already got my time in it now so now it's out there and i think that like having that discipline to go shorter we used to get like we still get inquiries be like oh you guys should be an hour long and i used to think like oh yeah it should be an hour long like meteor should be an hour long show now i'm like i kind of over time i've just sort of like i like 22 minutes yeah because i feel like in 22 minutes you when it's right, it can be just so tight and fast. I watch the show without the ads, though, right? So I watch, like, the way it's meant to be.

And I sometimes remind myself, oh, yeah, but it's broken up by ads. But it somehow is so fast and has such a rollercoaster quality to it. That's the best, I think. It's just like, wham people be like dude i could watch that for an hour i'm like i'm that makes me glad it was 22 minutes yeah i think a good way to gauge it is if you watch it like a 22 minute video on youtube does it feel like it's 22 minutes yeah did you at the end of the video are you like well, well, that was 22 minutes? Or are you like, where did the time go? I mean, TV, you guys are under restraint for,

you guys are 22 minutes every episode, right? How much after you guys go out and film and you guys turn the media into the editors, how much do you sit down with the editors, Dan, and go through with them and try to tell the story? So yeah, so Giannis now does. Run through the whole process. Yeah, I think this would be interesting.

So in the current form, so Giannis is the producer. So he will create, he will run the pre-production. He will plan things. He will create a document called a treatment, which is the hope or plan for the story to happen. In the field, he'll be there and will be in charge of capturing the story both on camera and then in his head and in notes to later go into the post-production process. So that's – post-producing the episode would be working hand-in-hand with the editor every step of the way. So basically we turn in what we call producer notes, which is is so the treatment's the document at the beginning

and then after the shoot the document's called the producer notes it basically is an act by act breakdown with a possible vo already written with really just a script or writing out the show but that changes a lot and it rarely is is actually the product that comes in. And how many hours are you dealing with? How many hours of footage? You know what? People ask that. I don't even know. And it depends.

I mean, we shoot up to how many hours are on one SXSR? I've been studying up on shooting ratio. And oftentimes, documentary-style filming, which is what we do, which I think most hunters do when they're shooting their huntsts is you can get upwards of like 50 to 60 to one that's the ratio yeah you can shoot almost an hour for one minute man i'd say we should especially we have multiple cameras going which we often do it's a lot more i'd say it's a higher ratio than that even especially when you count in time lapses oh yeah i mean we come back what say eight full cards at 120 minutes each and if you have two uh shooters double that you know

you're talking about thousands of minutes of footage maybe between one and three thousand minutes of footage um so at that point it could go up to 100 to 1. Sure. Yeah. And we have editors that we have been working with for a long time, and there's a couple editors that specifically you can be a little less hands-on. But I produced and post-produced probably, I don't know, 40, 50 episodes of Meat Eater, and it just depended on who you were working with, whether or not you had to be really, really directive. Yeah, you get an editor to cut a few, and they kind of know how you guys like them.

I can just say, being on that, we were in the same camp a few years ago in New Mexico. I was blown away at the work you guys put in to capture an episode. Like, there was what? You were there, Dodie was there, and you guys had in to capture an episode like there was what there you were there doty was there and you guys had two other cameramen right one other camera and then we had an assistant audio guy who was out there with us uh peter was out there with us yeah but there's four guys and then steve and you guys were packing the long lens the dslrs

and you guys packed back in for what, a couple nights? Yeah, we carried a bunch of junk. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the excess amount of batteries you pack in on a hunt like that and then SD cards, and it's wild. Batteries are the limiting factor oftentimes, and we'll have to either pack back to recharge batteries or bring a – that becomes the limiting factor.

Both for weight. Well, actually, for a while we only had so many batteries. Now we have like 150 of those big batteries now. They call them bricks. Bricks. Each one weighs a pound. Yeah, each one weighs a pound. That's wild.

It was wild to see, though. You guys put a lot of time and effort into capturing one hunt. Finish out how it goes so you didn't get it to the end though before dan finishes though we're gonna take a quick break yeah so finish out though because you didn't get to the end of how a show gets made okay yeah so while the editor the editor cuts it and he cuts what we call a rough cut which is about to time so you know maybe it's within a minute of the ending and running time, hopefully. And then he sends, we do a round of notes.

So Steve gets it. I get it. Yanni gets it. Usually that's just about it. Maybe one other person. And then we do a round of very, very specific critical notes on that cut. Goes back to the editor. He has a couple more days to get out a fine cut.

We do the same process, another round of notes. Goes back to the editor. He has a couple more days to get out a fine cut. We do the same process, another round of notes, goes back to the editor. He works those notes out and there's a lot of conversation always goes on. In between that, finally we get to what we call a pre-lock cut and we all kind of sign off on it. And sorry, there's other stuff in there, recording VO, getting all that cut in, doing rewrites for VO. But then finally after a three- to four-week edit process and a whole process that's a heck of a lot longer than we have. So we finally, finally craft these shows. There's a lot of people with a lot of brains and creativity working their butts off to make these things the way they are.

In the end, it feels natural. It does. The product, like you wouldn't guess. Yeah. You know, if you had to sit and watch those hundreds of hours of footage,

it'd be mind boggling. Oh, I can't even imagine trying to scrub through all that video. What's your guys shoot ratio doing YouTube videos? What do you say? Like 50 to YouTube videos? Would you say like 50 to 1? We might get like 50 minutes for every video. I don't know. I would say a couple hours.

A couple hours of different point of views, GoPro angles. B-roll footage. But I bet like that New Mexico hunt, for example, I think it's eight, nine minutes long. I bet I cut through like three hours of footage is that right yeah and i'm like by the time i'm done i'm just like all right just put it up like i'm so tired to watch myself talk and walk around the hills but do you guys have any interest in a tv length type thing i mean is that something that interests you or you you're just you're youtube all the way i mean i'm a youtuber eric's a youtuber

like yeah you have a good new business card yeah i don't the way. I'm a YouTuber. Eric's a YouTuber. Yeah, you have to get a new business card. Yeah, I don't have business cards. I'm a YouTuber. YouTubers don't have business cards. No, I love the platform of YouTube. I love the possibilities on YouTube. And that's just, I mean, every day, Monday through Friday, one billion people log into that website.

And so, I mean, it's just been cool. And I don't really see i see ourselves doing anything different i love the freedom we have to do whatever we want upload videos when we want um make seven minute videos or 23 minute videos like so we're happy doing what we do but i mean yeah what do you think you want yeah i'm I'm committed to YouTube. I've done a lot of research and I've been so intrigued by the platform for the last three or four years

that I just feel like it's a good opportunity for me. It fits what I want to do really well and what I enjoy doing really well. The same conversation we're having about cassettes and CDs one day they're going to be talking about TV shows in the same way. Remember when that TV show was on?

I didn't want to burst that bubble with you guys, but yeah. We spent a ton of time talking about what's happening. I don't think TV will ever be obsolete but at the same time like i would love to know the ratio of americans like people in america that have tv and have the internet and who has both because i know i haven't had tv in five years like i consume all my entertainment from the internet and everyone has the internet now everyone has access to the internet basically an iphone tablet a watch whatever well we know for a fact that mediator fans or mediator watchers over 50 are not watching it on the channel at the time that

it airs they're they're watching it through other means we did yeah yeah the other thing we talked about tapes and cds earlier it's like right at the time that that guy did that persuasion speech in communication 101 okay an album that was out at that time was counting crows august and everything after yeah now the guy that the the you know whoever that guy is in that band, I don't think he was sitting around being like, but are they going to listen to it on CD or cassette? Yeah. It's like at a point, if you have confidence in what you're making, you know what I mean? I don't spend too much time thinking about it being this show or that show.

I'll spend time thinking about how people are going to consume it. I don't want to get caught in a weird thing where we haven't thought our stuff out, but I feel like the basic format, the premise, I know we'll find homes for the stuff. I agree. I feel like if you're

making... I mean, content's king. That's the old saying. You make good content, it can live anywhere. I feel like you guys could transform what you do now, your 22 minutes, to whatever digital platform it would do great. But you're right. You don't have to think about that right now. Just make good content.

I get a little jealous of those TV shows on HBO or Netflix that you get once 22 minutes, maybe you get an episode that's 26 or 28. You kind of have that little wiggle room. That's pretty cool. Here's one thing I want to do. How long have we been talking? We're at an hour. Here's one thing I want to do.

I'm going to do the first one. Because people have such an interest in recording, capturing, hunts, fishing, outdoors, whatever. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a

sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the great white north can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxm maps.com slash meet on X maps.com slash meet. Welcome to the, to the on X club y'all. I want to just go around the room for a while and very quickly say thing. You're give your findings,

things you think. One thing that I've found that's become a personal thing for me is I really like, and we go to great ends, to establish, hunting big game, okay, or any kind of hunting, to contextualize visually the hunter with the quarry.

Because I'll point out right now I'm watching, it's been out for a while, I've been watching Planet Earth, right? And Planet and planet earth you know like tells these stories about earth but they tied in with like the the real bread and butter of that is predator prey interactions right it's like they just punctuate it well they don't go four minutes without showing something eat something oftentimes they got great footage right a snow leopard grabs a marco, and the marco gets away. Oftentimes, they don't, so they'll show an Ethiopian wolf walking. Then they'll show a baboon looking nervous. Then they'll show the wolf.

Then they'll show the baboon. Then they'll show the wolf. Then they'll show the baboon, and the baboon runs away. And you go, you know what? I never saw the damn baboon and the wolf in the same shot. And it's like a weird kind of fuckery going on you know and i hate that kind of thing to where i always feel like when we have a sequence where you got like a long lens footage footage of an animal one guy's filming an animal a turkey coming in and one guy's filming you and later you're like bouncing like turkey you turkey you i always feel like that the viewer's mind is open

to the fact that his chain's being jerked and i breathe such a sigh of relief when there's that shot where there's like you or the hunter and the thing together brought together it's like the technical term is tying it in like a shot that ties it together it like solidifies it solidifies that action because when that happens that back and forth everyone thinks is this real is this really going on and it just solidifies it when it shows like an over-the-shoulder shot of you with your gun and there's the turkey and the guy that like gave meat eater its visual look to to a huge degree is a guy named mo fallon who shot many of the first ones and mo i don't know if he ever articulated it this way or not but mo had this sort of idea that it was like that the viewer is your buddy you're the viewer is your buddy with you you know and and if you watch the show you like you start

to kind of feel that where like the camera is often right where if you were with your buddy your buddy's hunting it's like the camera's where you'd be where you'd want to be to be a participant in this and that's sort of like over the shoulder shot when all of a sudden something comes into view and you got the person and your person could be just blurry right it's completely like out of the depth field but it just feels so good and it got to see those moments i remember that first season it was substantiated i think you know we maybe after the second episode or something we got a facebook comment that said you know i can't believe how you shot this it felt like i was right there with you and that I think maybe after the second episode or something, we got a Facebook comment that said,

I can't believe how you shot this. It felt like I was right there with you. And that was the point. It's those moments. It's like those moments where everything comes together in a way. And we even found, sometimes you're talking about something so far away. So we do a lot of open country hunting and your glass and stuff. We'll just go do an overshot.

Someone will get back. I'll be talking about something. I'm pointing. And they just kind of zoom over. You're never in a million years going to pick it up. But you zoom over and you start to make out the landscape. And then you can go to that tighter shot that shows it. But you do feel like you've been delivered to that point it doesn't have this like arbitrary feel to it yeah that makes it feel like tv you know because

oftentimes when i'm watching stuff i don't like to have any moment where i'm pulled out to question what's going on and like like i talk about watching the Planet Earth series. They're showing like these polar bears making their first emergence. But the snow is covered in tracks. Like they've clearly been out a whole bunch of times. They keep going back in the den. Their first emergence. It's like, well, these tracks are all over the place. Like the entrance to the hole is all mudded up.

Yeah. You know? And I'm like, why tell me that? Because now I'm sitting here thinking about why you said that when it's not the way it is. So just have it be that he's coming out of his den and I'll enjoy it. I won't be like distracted. You know, so I'm always like when I'm watching our stuff, I'm always like, what are the things that's going to catch someone and pull them out of the reality? I want him to experience and make him enter into the reality of his head as a skeptical

viewer. Yeah. You know, another example of that to take it even further is like, if you are cooking a piece of meat over a fire, there's something magical and beautiful about a shot that actually without cutting away pans from that piece of meat up to your face, rather than having two shots where you just have a shot of that meat on the fire, you have shot of the face like that's fine that's great tv that's you know you can do that well but there's something specific about that uninterrupted either having both objects in the frame at exactly the same time or being able to swing and move without actually

cutting the shot there's it's something seamless and um important that happens in being it's like it gives it more realness like it's exactly like with a kill shot right like you know like you can either do that over the shoulder kill shot where you're in the frame the animals in the frame focused you might your shoulder might be out of focus and i remember like your guys's first season there was a lot of that i love that shot but like if you are zoomed in on the animal after the kill shot and then that swing to the yeah it just gives it that realness you know so we'll deal it like dealing cards so that makes dan's up dance just finding just one tip just like a thing man like a like a like a like an example of what i'd escape for for people who want it's like for people um people who want to capture their stuff because so many people now want to capture their stuff, man.

When I go out fishing, even when I'm fishing on Lake Washington, there ain't a guy out there fishing without a GoPro on his hand. All right, so I'll say a very basic one that's not very sexy but super important is just learn what the heck you're doing with your equipment. Know, practice enough, read enough, have somebody show you how to use your camera. Actually use it and audio. Actually, let me

make that my point. If you have crappy audio and it's not, your quality will never rise. You still might have a successful video, I don't know, but have an actual microphone, mic'd up, know how to manage it, have good levels so people can hear what you're doing,

and learn how to make a shot with cameras and learn how to be steady. Don't be wobbly. Steady, that's a big one. Steady, just practice enough. Can you do audio without getting into audio equipment? Do you mean just give i mean yeah a lot of cameras have on board um you know mics that that may be okay in most situations but you get in some wind or you get in in some other type of scenario and it's no longer going to be good get a cheap lav mic get

get a cheap mic to put on your on your shirt lav mics now and uh the road makes them and you can download the app that you can plug it directly into your phone, and it gets great audio. And it's not a lot of money. It's like 100 bucks for the lav. Or a Zoom recorder. Just spend a little time,

and learn what you're doing with your stuff. I had to learn that all myself. I started shooting before I knew how to operate a camera, and it was tough. My finding, and we get asked a lot about how we got into filming and stuff, and I feel like now we're talking to not people that are trying to create TV shows necessarily. No, people that are trying to capture their stuff. Capture their stuff.

My finding is just do it. I mean, the way, and this was going back to me talking about cutting from VCR to VCR with that big giant VHS when I was trying to record me snowboarding, is technology's crazy, man. There's some great cameras out there that somebody can pick up for three, four, five hundred bucks, and you can record some amazing

stuff. And I think for most beginners is they think they have to have all the nicest equipment and they have to go through film school i don't know it's just get a good camera and go out and capture moments because that's what it's all about is you're trying to relive those moments one day you know if you're not trying to put out a tv show or youtube channel you just want to capture your your hunts just do it figure it. Go out and shoot wildlife and shoot your buddies shooting a deer

and try to film yourself and just learn and do it because even after we started hunting, sometimes, and I'm sure you get this way, sometimes we're on a hunt for 10 days and it's like, alright, leave the camera at home. I don't care if we get the kill shot. I want to end this thing.

I've done it a few times. I went out and shot something and I thought, how stupid was that for me not to have the camera going? It's easy to set up a camera. It's easy to have your buddy hold a camera. It might not be the most professional footage, but it's a memory that you can relive. And it goes back to like talking about, you know, exploiting animals. One of the coolest things I think about hunting is seeing old school pictures from like my grandpa's time and my great grandpa's time and going through those and seeing what hunting was like back then. You know, everyone had a 28 inch buck, you know, in the back of the truck.

But it's so cool to relive that through these pictures. And I feel that way with what we're filming. One day, my great, great grandkids are going to be able to go and watch my adventures on if it's youtube or wherever but it's just capturing those moments it'll be very detailed logging of a bygone time yeah so i my my i would just say if you want to just go out and capture you know some footage of you hunting just do it get a good camera you can use your damn phone almost like the phone to take amazing footage but go out and buy a 400 camera and just start doing it yep gotta get started somewhere well yeah that's what i was gonna say is just get out there and get started so i have to think of

something else um but one of the things that come to me when a lot of people approach me and say hey i got this got this awesome hunt on film. Do you want to use it for your next project, your next DVD, YouTube, whatever it is? And sometimes I've been like, yeah, cool, let's check it out. And yeah, I got the kill shot. And that's it. I'm like, this is a great kill shot. And the kill shot can be very important in a hunting film or a hunting TV show or something that we do on YouTube.

But it is it is a it is that sliver of you know that second or two seconds and that's it the rest of the hunt and the story is like you said earlier is that 50 hours of b-roll footage and all the other cool stuff so my advice would be to film everything like pack a lot of memory cards. The worst thing is running out of memory cards when you're out there and you're trying to delete all your other things so you can film the next thing. You're deleting your last one on accident to film the next one. So yeah, be prepared with memory cards and just film a lot of cool stuff and think outside the box. Think what's a cool point of view. Can I stand behind this tree or get these flowers in the shot?

And just try new different things and experiment. And then when you get into the room to cut it, I find that it's the most random clips that I'm like, that is so cool. Like the sun just hit just right on this one clip and I didn't think it was that cool because all I was filming was your feet. So just film a lot of B-roll stuff because when it comes to editing a story

it you can't you can't edit a hunt with just a kill shot so get a lot of other b-roll footage and you have a lot more to work with a lot of coverage i think the kill shot thing is weird because i think that some people kind of tend to fetishize the kill shot in that if we're talking about like if you want to capture the reality of a hunt or you're trying to in some way capture the experience of it when you're hunting the kill shot is like you don't even really log it no in your own mind do you mean it's just like a bam it's done it's gone or you don't even know what happened i oftentimes want to look at the footage to find out what the hell i just saw happen and so i've tend to be like i tend not to react like i try not to one i try not to take in a lot of media that is just like what i'm trying

to make because i'm always afraid of what my influences will be or that i wind up responding not from an honest place i won't like create ideas or perspectives from an honest place but it'll always be like i'll be reacting to whatever happened to me last or whatever i saw last so going against that i have noticed this like kill shot thing right so i'd be like playing it again and again and again you know and it just to me has in some ways felt a little bit ugly and so the way that i have reacted to what i saw in a way maybe is just to go against and not make such a big deal out of that i kind of like it when we don't even have it or you don't even know what happened like you just see something to happen

and it's like that's like what it seems like though yeah it is it's such like it's one of those moments in life that happens so fast that it's kind of a blur. You might be like, I feel like I saw a puff of hair. Yeah. But I could be wrong. I swore I saw a puff of hair. Or I don't know, it seemed to do this when I shot. And you're trying to replay to figure out

if you had a good hit or not, you know? And you realize the minute you get a, the minute you hit something and it runs off, you realize how frail your recollection of what just happened is because you often can't put it together. You're like, I feel this. I feel that. Or you might get lucky and you notice it like the belly lifted, the back arched upright. And that probably logged in your head just from past experiences that when you see that, you know it's dead.

He did the hunch. Or he slouches the wrong way. And from past experiences, he's experiences like that didn't look good he don't you know so that might stick in your head because it triggered some memory but often you have no idea and so i like stuff that doesn't just sort of like glorify this this blood splattered moment not out of any deference to people's sensitivities but just because i feel like that's what it is. That's what it's like. I agree.

And going back to talking about being the HR for hunting and showing people that are outside of what we do, looking in, it is. It's such a small, just a sliver of the experience and the story. That's not the ending. I still think it's important. It is. It's such a small, just a sliver of the experience and the story. That's not the ending. I still think it's important. It is. I think it's important. It's an important film. It's the one thing I always want to see when we're out in the field.

Yeah, everybody does. We all want to see it. It is important, but like Steve was saying, you watch some of these shows and they glorify it so much. They play it like... They hang their hat on it 10 times slow motion reverse upside down it's like okay i got that you killed that animal and it's cool like as hunters we know how hard you have to work to get to that point

yeah to pull the trigger and so that's kind of like the the i did it you know yeah but it in my i agree like in my eyes like like, I hate seeing stuff overplayed. And that's the kill shot. Like, yeah, put it in there. You need it. It's like kind of like the button almost. I was at an awards ceremony one time. I'm not going to say what it was, but I was at an awards ceremony.

And they had a – what must have been – it felt like 10 minutes. Maybe it wasn't 10 minutes. A kill shot real? Dude, it just got to be a bit much. But like I said, me not wanting to fetishize kill shots isn't out of sensitivity or deference because they used to say

if you look at old guidelines for outdoor TV, it would be like, you can't show the kill shot more than seven times in a row. Really? And then the next sentence, no bloody hands, no raw meat. Really? Couldn't have raw flesh, right? It was a guideline.

It was a guideline. Wow. So you can show the kill shot seven times, not more than seven times, but you could not have a host have blood on his hands. So our show is like an abattoir. mean our show's like a like a like a butcher yeah show sometimes like sometimes we'll have five minutes of butchering so it's not like that i'm sort of it's not like i'm going like oh no i don't want to show anything unsanitary here it's just a personal thing to me that i just think it's not it's just not that cool. And there's also like, sure, there's people that want to see it. But if I was in a business

to just give viewers what I thought they wanted, I'd be like, I don't know, I would have gone into making like Lucky Charms breakfast cereal. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm not here to like make Lucky Charms. Do you know what I mean?

It's like, sure, kids want cereal, lots of sugar. Let's just put more sugar in there and see if they like it better it's like in some way i'm like sure you probably want to see a bunch of kill shot stuff you're not going to find it here it's like i'm sorry you know i'm not going to like bow to your base instincts and in some way but again there's a level of hypocrisy because when we're out that's the only thing i ever make the guys play for me it's the only thing you want to see i'm like what do you replay it seven times yeah not eight times not eight especially if we're sitting there doing the old 45 minute wait yeah track something and i'm like dying wait let me see it

again let me see it again let me see it again and we analyze well as a hunter i i do the same thing because there's something that happens when you take a shot at an animal. And it's like almost instantly, unless that animal just takes a nosedive, almost instantly you start second-guessing yourself. You start doubting yourself. You start thinking of everything bad that could have possibly just happened. So when you rewatch it, because we do the same thing, I'm like, did I hit him? Where did I hit him? Where was it at?

Did I miss something in there? And so it gives you that reassurance that I did make a good shot or you didn't. Have you ever owned a doll sheep? No. So there's all this stuff like what's a legal ram? Yeah. You can shoot a ram that, like in most of Alaska, you can shoot a ram that's eight years old, which you determine by growth rings, which are very hard to see.

Yeah. You can shoot a ram that's a double broom, which means he's broken off his lamb tips on each side which is sometimes very obvious sometimes like not at all obvious or you can shoot a ram that's full curl mean 360 degree curl on his horn which is sometimes very obvious sometimes not obvious you shoot a ram and he falls down. It is the worst moments of your life. The time it takes to walk over to that ram. Or moose with the 50-inch tip-to-tip. The worst minutes of life. With a camera rolling, it's even worse.

You might entertain the idea of everyone just keeping quiet with a camera and stuff. It's like, yeah. What's at the end of everyone just keeping quiet with a camera and stuff. It's like, yeah. Yeah. What's at the end of the trail? It's weird that you do that. I don't know if it's human nature or what, but before you pulled the trigger, you were You were sure enough to shoot? Yeah, you were sure enough to shoot.

But as soon as you do, it's like, all right, was that legal? Was that really what I thought I saw? All right, Yanni, what's your tip? Oh, man. Yanni's got too many tips. Too many. So many tips. I think just a quick thought on the kill shot thing,

because we do strive to get it, but I'm glad that we don't have to hang our hat on it. We can make a show without a kill shot, no problem. But for me personally, it's so anticlimactic. I love to hunt. i love to chase and it's like as soon even if that animal just fall dirt naps you know which is like a kind of a nasty way of saying like you just made a great shot and it just fell over you know dead right there in its tracks but at that point my hunt's over you know it's like now the work starts and like i'm not out chasing anymore i'm not gonna go tomorrow morning i'm not

gonna even if i go hike the same ridge line i'm not out hunting anymore unless i have more tags in my pocket but you know what i mean it's like even though you're you're trying to get to that moment so hard it's anti-climactic even as a producer don't you just feel complete and utter relaxation after it happens as a producer it's different as a producer but that was just my personal thought on kill shots um tip and this isn't just for someone trying to capture their hunt but i think for people that are trying to maybe do a little bit more than just capture a hunt whether it's full draw film too or you know something fun like that is we see a lot of like people putting too much effort into the beauty shots, I think, as opposed to the basics that you were talking about. And that would be my tip.

Don't worry about the sliders and the jibs and the cameras flying through trees and stuff. Just work on documenting what's going on, I think, would be my tip. And try to be there and be ready. Leonard Skinner, one of the guys from Leonard Skinner once said, learn how to play a guitar, then get sexy. That's a good point. But I think, Giannis, you're referring to a heck of a lot of hunting videos

that are beautifully shot, and then it's all VO. They all kind of sound the same, sappy, like, oh, it's so beautiful to be in the woods in the fall. That's what comes in with going in without a story in mind. You're just going in and logging. It's like people get in a situation where they just log and log and log and log footage, and later they sit down and go like, okay, now I'm going to impose some logic upon this,

and it winds up being. And it requires on-camera interaction, I think. Not to just shoot the beauty stuff, but it requires hosting in a sense or something or interaction between people, you know, capturing the actual people in the action, not just them walking a path. Yeah. And not them checking in, you know, because that's almost at that point, it's a certain script because the person's been thinking about what they're going to,

you know, check in with at that moment. But you can't get away from checking in. You can't, but you need to be getting that and just always be ready for when someone just starts talking and you're going, man, this is pretty cool. I should be capturing this. I agree. And I'd say if you're a camera guy,

don't be your camera guy who says, I don't believe you. There's no L coming through. That guy's fired. But I feel like we can get away with a don't be your camera guy who says i don't believe you there's there's no l coming through yeah oh that guy's fired yeah but i feel like we can get away with a lot more or or certain things that you really can on tv you know what i mean like i think a lot of times i watch youtube videos and you know as serious as some of them try to be and there's this interaction with the camera guy and the guy hunting but that comes out of – I think it's great. That's a hunting TV thing.

Yeah. You think it happens on TV? No, I think in hunting TV, there's a great amount of – there's like a tremendous amount of – traditionally, a tremendous amount of interaction between the film, the filmer, the cameraman, and the hunter. Yeah. I think that there was a show for a while, the premise of the show cameraman, and the hunter. Yeah.

I think that there was a show for a while, the premise of the show was a dude filming his wife hunting. Really? That was the plot. I don't know why. I've often wondered why that world. Is it just a manifestation of it being so difficult to capture the kind of stuff we're talking about in these uncontrolled environments where you don't know what's going to happen and like there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty that you feel the tension

of trying to capture it and so as a way to buckle to that tension you open it up and have it be a dialogue you'll see stuff i mean like great shows you see like you'll hear the guy like did you get that and the guy will be all excited and i don't know why they that intrusion is so welcome the the term i learned this term just through production they call it like breaking the fourth wall so imagine like if you were filming this room right here right we got the three walls but then this wall is where the camera's set up to break the fourth wall to turn and see what's here. And we try to do it very carefully, not very often.

Yanni might have been, before Yanni was even doing what he was doing, Yanni was just a gear packer. You might have been the first wall break. Spotting a grizzly in camp. Really? And all of a sudden it was like it's kind of like maybe we're talking about being adaptive to the story like yeah the camp is way more tense than there are people on camera like it's like we're filming out of this camp there's a grizzly coming up into camp

and we're like did it and um i think some people like it there's a sense of camaraderie there yeah you know but for me personally um i tend to not welcome that i i and i don't know why it's you know like they do it in morning shows now and then they're like joe like the camera guys you know it'll be his birthday and yeah you know but it's like it doesn't happen in most forms of media yeah have you seen that new show on nbc the island have you heard about this where the camera guys were i heard about our buddy from town here's on it oh rick smith is that right yeah but totally blowing that whole concept you know now the camera guys are the talent and a right he's a character yeah he's a character and one of the shooters but is he actually shooting is Is he just a character, like a scripted-in character?

No, actual shooting. Oh, so he's actually shooting. So he didn't just go cast people to act like camera guys. Oh, he's a camera guy. The whole camera crew is cast. There's a level of cynicism in some television. Oh, yeah. We're running out of time.

That's another thing I want to talk about is just like grappling with your own relationship to the facts. Like, what is your obligation? And it's a personal thing that everyone has to decide for themselves. What is your obligation with reality? What is your obligation to reality? In what you present happening and it's a tricky subject because we were talking earlier we film hundreds of hours okay and 22 minutes come out you know um you're already making a huge judgment about what the trip was you're saying the trip was this 22 minutes.

So you're already in some way, if you were absolutely loyal, faithful to reality, even the editing process would be, you wouldn't do it because you're already putting a spin on it. And inevitably, because of issues of time, because of issues of what's of interest to people, of what's palatable to people, of just making a quality product, you end up fudging things such as what day something happened on.

We try hard to not mess with the sort of integrity of something that happened. But we do. Like Monday, nothing might happen. But some moments from Monday might wind its way into Tuesday. Yeah. Because it's not like toying with the – you're not like messing with you know the pristineity of the thing or you know you're just sort of making a product that's been our number one argument back i'd say since the beginning is time and how we manage time on the show and and how it's hard to make an eight

day hunt where not much happened stay compelling the storyline the entire time when you could fudge a bit and just show four days. And trying to nod to the passage of time. Yeah. Because we have a thing, too. It's like if it didn't happen on film, it didn't happen. If it didn't happen on film, forget it. We're not going to talk about it. It just didn't happen.

So, yeah, it winds up being, and I always walk that line. When we were doing Wild Within on Travel Channel, there was tremendous pressure coming from all directions to just BS. Bullshit. Really? Tremendous pressure. And now, you talk about freedom like now we have freedom from the pressure to bullshit but at the end of the day it's also it's like you're trying to like do something and to capture the essence of it maybe to capture the essence of it you do at times mess with chronology yeah you know we don't borrow dead animals from people no i hope you know what i'm

saying yeah but i don't know i guess every we we bet it's one of the primary things we battle about it's that's a good question i guess there's a fine line like you know you want to tell i've always tell people like the realest stuff is the best to me like that's what it excites me and uh you can see through the bs i think and so we've always like we were talking earlier like i never go back and reshoot shots or anything like that is that right yeah we that's a hard decision it is decision i mean and we could make a lot better quality content if we could go back and redo this kill shot or whatever. You could make a better, higher quality video. But for us, it's about the reality of it.

If I was to do that, I would go back and watch that video in a year from now, and I would hate it. I would hate that video because I knew it. But like what you're saying about maybe monday bleeds into tuesday and wednesday you know i think maybe yeah we fall we fall into that like yeah oh yeah i could like for example the bear hunt we just put out you know we sat in the same stand for four nights so say i needed a clip on that third night of you know case Casey climbing the tree stand that I didn't necessarily film on the third night, but he did the exact same thing on the second night. I can

pull, you know, three or four seconds of him climbing at the tree stand just to tie in that story a little bit better. But we do try to keep it as real and as raw as possible. But yeah, like piecing together the story, if you have that clip you need from two days before, I still think that's okay. Yeah, even like what you're saying with the bear thing, like let's say you hunted four nights. You go, let's just make it all one night, but every bear we saw came that night. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's going to look like an amazing. Yeah, which is, yeah, we could have done that. That would be the kind of thing where we would be like, yeah, I don't know. That's a little bit, you know. Well, not in our case. We saw the same five bears every night. Yeah, it would have been like, one crazy night of bear hunting. We would be like, yeah, I don't know. That's a little bit, you know. Well, not in our case. We saw the same five bears every night. Yeah, it would have been the same thing. It would have been the same five bears with just different lighting.

Different lighting. We try to keep it real, but things like that, I don't think it takes away from the realness. It's like B-roll footage. You can kind of use that anywhere. It's just like what you're talking about, meeting somebody, and it's so awkward, but now you guys go into b-roll with the vo and it's not so awkward it looks good but but like when you're shaking that hand dodie's not really out there you know

shooting b-roll of the scenery or bob or whoever you know so i don't think it takes away the realness of it but uh but you know you get into is like this we have a thing of you get a concluding thought that's gonna be my concluding thoughts we're dragging on um you know you're watching wily coyote roadrunner wily coyote right you're accepting all this stuff you know but then you see something that you don't it's just like outlandish It's like, okay, you're already accepting that coyotes and roadrunners have communication and mail order from Acme. It's like the suspension of disbelief. I think that anyone who sits down to watch TV

in this day and age knows they're watching product. You're watching product. You're watching product. You're watching something edited. Generally, if a guy's out alone in the woods, I think that most viewers are savvy enough to be like, he's not out alone in the woods. I had a guy one time say to me, I can't believe the places you go alone.

It's like, well, you're referring to a show you watch, and clearly some dudes are shooting that show. So there's that that, like we're filming. But within that suspension of disbelief, I do think that you do have some obligation. There's still obligations to the viewer. Some people live free of that, and people go into reality television some people um don't live free of that and have that that guilt or that problem or whatever's going on in their head or they feel some fidelity to reality um i struggle with it every day and i've tended to over time had to feel that fidelity grow.

You know, the interest in the truth to increase rather than diminish. That's my concluding thought. Dan? My concluding thought is a challenge to the greater hunting community to step up the collective game of the quality of their video and storytelling ability because i think it says a lot to the wider world um you know what the hunting story is if it if it's told really terribly with bad camera work and bad stories i i challenge everybody to learn the craft and get real good and make hunting something that doesn't look like a bunch of dorks in the woods

that don't know what they're doing. Yeah, that it's as beautiful as it is. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'll chime in with what Dodie's saying. It's not only, you know, good quality, you know, tells a good story, but honesty, like we've been talking about and i really feel like a huge uh um supporter of people filming things that open the eyes of maybe non-hunters and people that maybe don't know

exactly what we do and capture those moments and share them because the reason most maybe don't know exactly what we do, and capture those moments and share them. Because the reason most people don't enjoy what we do and don't believe in hunting is because they're uneducated and they just don't understand. And by us filming what we do and telling the honest, true story, it's really opened their eyes. And those are the comments I love reading more than anything, is the people that were anti-hunters, were vegetarians,

that hated hunting before, and they watched our first video and they're hooked. more than anything is the people that were anti-hunters were vegetarians that they hated hunting before and they watched our first video and they're hooked they might not ever become hunters but they understand what we do now and that's through good storytelling and i want to say good quality content which you know we can get away with not everything being perfect on youtube but i mean we do a really good job telling an honest story, I think. Yeah, and I think that's why a lot of people like watching the channel, just because of the realness and just showing people how much passion we have for what we do. I mean, how much respect we have for the animals and the land they live in and kind of sending that message through our videos is one thing that we like to do is just showing that we're out there having fun.

This is something that we love. And yeah, I don't know. It's just fun to share it with people. I want to change my concluding thought to be that everyone needs to go buy one of Yanni's Hunt to Eat t-shirts. Nice. That means I get to change mine

because I was going to finally have to plug my own shit. Do you guys own a Hunt to Eat t-shirt? I means i get to change mine because i was gonna finally have to plug my own shit but you guys have you guys own a hunt to eat t-shirt i don't but i'm just like oh brian does you know hey by the way i don't know we don't know when this episode will air but today we have montana hunt to eat shirts live you can go buy them which is apropos to the fact that we're here in montana i'll point out i'll point that Yanni's is not a paid sponsor. Not at all. If I buy a shirt today, it will be a paid sponsor. No, I'm saying that. Oh, you're right.

It's like I'm not being bought and sold here. Okay. I get nothing. I get diddly squat. When's the Idaho shirt's going to come out? We're making sure that Heart to Eat is a thriving t-shirt business and that Yanni becomes a t-shirt magnate that your children will read about, that your children will watch videos about on YouTube.

There you go. I've seen that shirt floating around social media. I love that shirt. You should do an unboxing video of your shirt. Yeah. It comes in a nice plastic wrapping. Let's open the bag. You've got to change it up so you're not like every other unboxing.

Unbox with your feet, and then it will be a little bit different than the rest of them. I'll have a cat unboxed. There you go. Oh, my gosh. That's a viral video. Cat with a double rainbow unboxing shirt. That's a viral YouTube video. Now, I want you to get two concluding thoughts because I want to hear the plug you were going to give.

I just gave it, man. I got Montana hunting shirts. Are you really going to use your concluding thought to plug your t-shirt business? Of course not. Oh. No, I didn't get to talk about the difference between hunting alone and hunting with the camera crew. So I was just going to touch on that because it never got around to me earlier. Either way, he wears the hunt to eat t-shirt.

Especially during podcasts. On camera or not. It's a good reminder. I relish the quiet we still get it because we do a good job i think of remembering to that's why we're out there you know hunting and to get those quiet moments and i think when everybody sees our upcoming coosier episode that's going to really come through because we just like hung out in the quiet for four days enjoyed that but i always look forward to going out on my own hunts without you know the

crew just because i like just sitting there and just not not talking to anybody just listening to the birds and the wind yeah and you've sacrificed a lot of that being in the line of work that we're talking about here what you guided a lot and so guiding is probably not that quiet yep guiding elk hunters is probably not that quiet but you've sacrificed a lot, and so guiding is probably not that quiet. Yep. Guiding elk hunters is probably not that quiet. But you sacrificed a lot of your what would be alone time in the woods in order to get, in a way, to get more time in the woods, but it's different time. That's right.

You know? It's been a good sacrifice. Does that count as my concluding thought? No, you still got a concluding thought. That doesn't count? No. That's good. I missed my quiet hunts. That's a concluding thought.

Buy one of Yanni's shirts. He misses his quiet hunts. Casey, do a final. Give everybody a rundown on how to find. Go to youtube.com slash hushing with LaVere or just type in get hushing and it will come up and go check out. If someone just goes to YouTube and types in hushing, what happens?

It will come up. Spell hushing. H-U-S-H-I-N. Hushing. Yeah, go just type in hushing in the YouTube browser. Come on, go watch some of our videos. They're good. What's the best?

Like if you could have people watch one what would you have them watch um i shot a video not the fireball it's too long no i would this is like this is i'm not trying to plug our channel i'm trying to plug eric here like it's one of the most amazing honey i've asked you to plug i've ever seen like um he he captured the whole whole story and it's an amazing story he told about go watch the fireball hunt there's a couple videos i'm really passionate about i did my it took my son on his first hunt not he wasn't hunting he was with me on an antelope hunt last year and it worked it just was an awesome hunt and uh there's a couple

of them go go watch all of them how many do you? I think there's 100 now. We're close to it. Push in 100, yep. Yeah. So, yeah, go watch them. Go, yeah, type in Hush and you'll get the whole smorgasbord. If you got 22 minutes to kill and you've watched every meat eater that was ever made, go first. Type in the Fire Bowl. I have one request. If you click on a video, you got to watch the whole thing, though.

No skipping. Once you click, you're committed dude yeah don't don't skip the pre the pre-roll ads that's how we make our money i'm just kidding so is all does all your stuff eric all your stuff lives on hush yeah the most for the most part yeah most of my videos as of recent all of my videos recently are on the hush and channel and these boys this, make a living making hunting videos on YouTube. Yeah. I should have said that at the top of the damn podcast.

I think we kind of covered that. But that would not be what we talked about earlier, right? Systematically. Do you want people to know that a fellow can just go out and make hunting videos and make a living? Yeah. I do. I do. I have to keep that under my hat. People think it's like this hidden secret i'm trying to

hide from i want everyone to do it i want i want you to go and make videos on youtube i want everyone to go to youtube make hunting videos because it just makes it powerful more powerful brings more eyeballs but uh yeah and i don't have tv so it's hard for me to watch your tv show well we're about to stream it. Start putting that stuff on YouTube. Listen, go. Tell me the best way to stream your show. Meater.vhx.tv. Perfect.

Stream all day long. We're going to put a whole bunch of more videos on YouTube in the near future. We're cutting a whole hundred or so episode series of how-to tips. It's going to go on the Meat Eater how-to. With the whole Meat Eater, like a ton of people, like loosely affiliated people you've seen on episodes, just like a ton of people doing it. Cool.

Yeah, I love that stuff. I mean, I've watched most everything on that channel, behind-the-scenes stuff. It's fun. Good. All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Bowls in Montana. Watch some hushing. Watch the scenes stuff. It's fun. Good. All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Bowls in Montana.

Watch them hushing. Watch the fire bull. He kills in the end. He ruined it. All right, guys. Thanks for joining. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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