The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 128: Outdoor Media

Episode Date: August 6, 2018

Minneapolis, MN- Steven Rinella talks with Mitch Petrie of the Outdoor Sportsman Group, along with Ryan Callaghan of First Lite, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. The good, the bad, and the ugly of outdoor television; the outdoor media talent pool; the disproportionate draw of whitetail and turkey content, and the aspirational nature of big game hunting programming; is hunting TV good or bad for the sport?; sandwich boards and where the bite is; working through the fears of evolving media; the responsibility of sportsmen; and more. 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. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Okay, Mitch Petrie, I want to return to something we were talking about before we turned the machine on.

Did you say that musky fishing in Minnesotanesota is called the fish of a 10 000 casts yeah not just are you guys but oh not just in minnesota i thought maybe you're confusing that with the state 10 000 lakes yeah yeah it's just a number that was stuck in someone's head right now they say the fish of 10 000 casts i've heard that it's just a known thing yeah um but the way we do it it's not the fish of ten thousand casts the the fish i would tell you it's evolved over the last five years the lake we'll fish on has uh zebra mussels and a lot of milfoil uh so the water clarity has really improved and the muskies have moved a little deeper. Five years ago, there's hazards all over the lake, and there's always fish at these hazards. Not always the same fish, but the structure is so perfect,

we could just go and you would have a muskie encounter almost guaranteed. You don't want to say the name of the lake. It's not a secret. There's no secrets in Lake Minnetonka. There's no secrets in muskie fishing? No, which is funny because you'll see guys out there that you'll they'll post photos and they'll delete the back the backdrop so people don't know where they are but it's like well you can figure out where they are for the most part but um no it's it's a great musky lake and it's

under a fair amount there's a lot of pressure but there's a lot of fish i think the dnr estimates there's a thousand trophy muskies in lake minnetonka what makes what makes a trophy musky 50 inches 50 inches that's what we're going for tonight 50 inch musky wow yeah wow is right yeah now are there all kinds of northerns mixed in with these muskies there are northerns and bass this the lake it's an amazing lake and it's 25 minutes from downtown minneapolis hence the pressure yeah yeah um in your lifetime how many muskies have you caught 15 i've only been doing it for counting your cast on a golf clicker i haven't you need a golf clicker that goes really high yeah yeah i haven't but uh i had a i had a young uh young guy who worked for me was a musky guru and he got me

into it my boss at the time a guy named ron shara who was a local writer he wrote the outdoor beat for the minneapolis star tribune for 40 years his advice to me when he heard that i was getting into musky fishing was to take all my musky gear and destroy it before it ruins my marriage because that's kind of what musky fishing does and it sucks in because you can't catch them you can't yeah you can't master it right my maternal grandfather was a very avid musky fisherman yeah he would fish northern wisconsin yeah it's that's a it's a great place for it as well that's probably the he was a live bait mus a live bait muskie fisherman, as I think probably most people were back then, right? We use live baits here in the fall.

So as the season goes on, the muskies start eating bigger baits. And then in the fall, we slow troll suckers, live suckers, like 20-inch suckers. Whoa. It's pretty cool. It's like fishing halibut yeah and you're just sitting you're watching you watch the tip of your rod it will start bobbing and then you go you feed it line and then because the muskie once they get it in their mouth it's not like a trout or something if they feel it doesn't feel right they spit it out right away

that once they taste that meat in their mouth it's on my bucket list i haven't done it um but i've i've seen it on on like youtube um muskies will take the sucker and they won't have the hooks in their mouth but guys will you'll boat the fish and they're just holding on to the live sucker they don't even have a hook in their mouth but they're not they won't let go of it so yeah because they got the like in northern they got those back angled they got the teeth that lock yeah it's kind of when they grab something man it's like it's gonna rip when you pull it out yeah it's not like that's not a two-way street no we heard that same thing about the lingcod right yeah a couple weeks ago yeah you hear all i haven't seen it happen but anyone that spends a ton of time fishing them talks about catching them that aren't hooked.

And then people are always catching them on, catching lingcod, latched on to another lingcod, latched on to a rockfish, latched on to a pink salmon. Sure. He just comes up in the boat. We do a lot of fishing in northern Minnesota, walleye fishing, and a lot of stories of northern pike smacking a walleye as you're as you're bringing it in the same deal they'll they'll hold on to that pretty good too i have brought in northerns that were on something else and not hooked and in fact uh not too long ago my little boy caught a largemouth on a bluegill and got it up in the boat into a pontoon boat yeah and that thing wasn't hooked that's funny just holding on yeah i've had been bass fishing with little plastic worms and i've had sunfish holding

on to the worm not hooked come into the boat yeah he's ready for a big fight yeah uh not here to talk about not here at all to talk about muskies but uh lifelong minnesotan yes sir born and raised born and raised um minnesota's Minnesota is where my family is. I've lived overseas, but I always came back here. And I told my boss, Minnesota is a hard place to recruit people to, to come live here, because it's probably the winters. But it's a hard place to recruit from as well. I think we have four seasons. Summers are relatively short, but you get a good spring and a good fall.

And, yes, there's over 10,000 lakes, which I thought was a pretty big deal until I went to Saskatchewan, and there's like 100,000 up there. But we have a very, very good – it's a little bit – I do a lot of work in Colorado. And out west, great outdoor lifestyle. Minnesota has a little bit of that that just no mountains but a lot of lakes a lot of water a lot of water also oh uh real quick also joined by ryan callahan who's in it you're you're um just coming from the outdoor reelers retailers reelers retailers retailers yeah outdoor retailer yeah um also in denver pretty good time fish out of water or no no not at all there's not a super hunting crowd over there you know oddly enough so i wouldn't uh i was invited to kind of talk about hunting on a on a public panel uh at the winter session um with uh folks from rei patagonia

um you know on this big public forum and it was kind of intimidating but uh after we got done with that panel i can't tell you how many people came up and they're like man that was great and uh you know just so you know i'm a hunter too and then and i like buddy yeah it was yes it was um and then and i i really like this trade show because it because it's not hunting specific i can just kind of lurk around and actually check things out and and um you a hunting community is so small. You're always running into people you know constantly. You can't ever get anything done. You can just enjoy your anonymity and look at product.

Yeah. But I got stopped a ton. A lot of Meteor fans. Lots of folks that listen to the podcast lots of seemed like old dirt myth was was there as well um we checked out a couple of you know different companies for you know the stuff that we use all the time um sleeping bags and pads and boots and and every stop somebody in the booth would like break away from the conversation they were having come over and be like hey you thank you guys so much for

what you're doing like love the show that's cool yeah and this is the one that pulled this is the um this is what we're here to talk about either but just real quick outdoor retailers is the one that in protest of public lands issues out of Utah, it's outdoor retailers that pulled out and went to Denver, right? Yes. It had traditionally been in Salt Lake City. Yeah, it's been in Salt Lake for a long time. um and uh yeah and and in an effort to sway governor herbert at the time on uh a lot of their beliefs on uh monuments specifically the rescinding of bears ears

and grand staircase escalante um they were leveraging with this giant check this huge revenue stream that would come into Salt Lake City. If you've ever been to the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, most of those hotels and stuff down there didn't exist prior to that show. And so they said, well, we're going to pull out if you guys support this. And then they actually did it. And they actually did it, yeah. Which, you know it's there's

a real strong argument there that if you want to make some change you got to stick around not take your ball and go home too so um it's not as per usual it's not a cut and dry uh situation yeah so i i heard on the some feedback because I was in Denver yesterday as well, that maybe last year or two years ago there was no camo at Outdoor Retailer. And this year, it seemed like I heard every booth, a lot of products.

I think Otterbox had a big presence there this year. A lot of camouflage at Outdoor Retailer. Like cool kid snowboarding type camo? Like squiggly line camo? You mean like camo because it's like part of the snowboarding, kind of came out of the snowboarding scene? Or like camo for hiding from stuff?

Winter OR, your ski brands, sure enough, camo is hip. So it's not stuff that you would see traditionally in the hunting space for the most part um but uh summer or there's definitely like a little bit more you know a lot of people don't realize it but these uh outdoor research patagonia um lots of these big brands also do military business yeah and you know that if if you're looking you can see some of that stuff sitting on on the displays as well so yeah arcteryx or patagonia all do military contracting yes and well yeah and that stuff goes the real that stuff goes to the dudes who are kicking down doors in places, man. Yeah, no.

I mean, this isn't stuff that the general army is buying for everybody. Did you see any fishing camo? Because I came off of ICAST a few weeks ago, and now there's a lot of fishing camo patterns. And that has a life. You don't need camo. We won't be wearing camo tonight, or at least not fishing camo when we fish. I end up wearing a decent amount of camo when I'm fishing just because I don't like having. You're accidentally cool.

Yeah. No, but we saw a lot of fishing camo. Is it like blue, like lots of light blues and whites? Some of it looks like water, squiggly lines. And then some looks like sky. Orvis does some stuff in camels, Sims has some camel stuff. Yeah, I have an L.L. Bean shirt that has kind of a cool, might wear it tonight actually. All right.

Yeah. I just got an email from a dude. I need to read it more carefully, but this guy was kind of saying that he had, he said, yeah, I don't wear a camel anymore because it's politically too divisive. And we're thinking like, I feel like right now that's not the case. No, and there's a lot of cool kid camo, a lot of skinny jean camo. Yeah. And also Janice Poodless, Jan janice got an email the other day from

a guy who said his wife's name is janice but she spells it j-a-n-i-c-e and i need to write him back and clarify that it's in fact janice please do that i will all right mitch mitch petrie tell uh tell everyone what you do for a living. I'm a vice president of programming for the Outdoor Sportsman Group Networks, which are Outdoor Channel, Sportsman's Channel, and the World Fishing Network. So if you've got a question about what in the world is the world of outdoor TV, this is the man. It's fair to say you know more about it than maybe anyone at this particular moment, let's say.

I wouldn't say I know more than anyone, but I have a pretty unique perspective on what I know based on all the interactions that I have. I was a producer for 10 years before I joined the network. Like produced a TV show. Produced TV shows. I did Wardens in Montana. That was one of my first breakout hits that got me on the radar of the network, at least. Wardens gets talked about every time I go home because we're always right around the Sun River Game Range. And there's that episode with the shed antler and the radio.

They put little radio controllers in the antler and the uh like the radio the radio uh they put little radio um controllers in the antler so they can track down we got some pretty cool stories and we told a lot of them on warden so we did that for six years in montana what channel was that on that wasn't on outdoor channel it was on outdoor yeah it still is in fact we've actually moved it from montana to michigan um so still going strong I think we've had probably 150 episodes. Are you involved with it? Yeah, I'm still. Are you still involved?

I think officially I'm still the executive producer. I started it with a former partner, a guy named Steve Puppy, who got me into television back in the day. He was a former hunter specialties road warrior. So he had an HS truck and would go and do trade shows and work with different retailers. Hunter specialties, the game calls. Yeah. And then he did a DVD, which was probably VHS at the time,

So You Want to Be a Bow Hunter or So You Want to Be a Turkey Hunter. And he was a Minnesota state champion turkey caller. He he started his own tv show and my wife and i got involved with that and that's how i got dabbling into uh into tv coming out of software sales coming out of software sales in france yeah and i lived you know lived in france and in australia worked for a manufacturer my wife will tell you uh she married a computer geek and who evolved into a redneck because i mean i have i've fished my entire life i did some pheasant hunting and small game hunting as a kid you know from like 13 on but i've just always been a fisherman um but it just kind of went away we went overseas and we didn't just didn't do that very much we came back and and now she's lost

me to uh fishing and hunting um so you so you went when you were producing the show though you weren't you weren't working with the network you weren't working with outdoor channels no channel uh we had a uh production company called muddy boot productions and we just we did um so you sold the show? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, that's one of the first things I want to ask to explain when people wonder

about, people wonder about like outdoor TV or people call it hunting TV. Can you explain, because there's different ways in which the, like there's different business models by which the networks will engage with shows, where you have shows that networks own. So you have shows that a place like Outdoor Channel, Sports Channel will own. There's shows that they license. And then there's a thing called time buys. Can you walk people through what a time buy is? Sure.

And I've looked for other examples of television networks similar to ours, and that time-by model exists on a smaller scale in some places. But for the most part, hunting television is just unique. But a time-by model would be like an infomercial show or channel. Right. Exactly. You could do that. Like the Golf Channel, you could buy time on the Golf Channel, but most of their programming is owned by the Golf channel. Right, exactly. You could do that. Like the Golf Channel, you could buy time on the Golf Channel, but most of their programming is owned by the Golf Channel. The way television evolved is the networks create this platform. They negotiate with the carriers to be in millions of homes.

And before my time, they just went out to producers who were starting to film their hunts you know, millions of homes. And before my time, they just went out to producers who wanted to, were starting to film their hunts and just wanted to put them somewhere. So the network would essentially sell them commercial time and sell them a 30 minute block and they would get five minutes of commercials. And that's kind of how that model was born. So it's still probably 80%, 80 to 90% of our business are independent producers looking for a place to air their content. It's still 80%. Yeah.

And at a time it was 100%. Right. So what happened, as things evolved and the network started to grow and the affiliates want different things. The network started investing in its own content so that we could, like Wardens was an original program, original production that we produced for Outdoor Channel. It didn't fit that time-buy model where we couldn't go out and get endorsement deals. We didn't have a host.

We had game wardens that we were following. So we couldn't fund the production. But the essence of the time-buy model is you create a show, we air it on our network. You get commercial inventory, you sell commercials or other things to your sponsors to fund the production and to pay for your airtime. But a lot of companies, there's a lot of companies who look at doing a time buy as basically as a marketing spend for the company. Right. Right. One of the shows I produced as an independent was Fox Pro Fur Takers. It's a predator hunting show. And so, you know, that's their brand, Fox Pro. They're hunting anyways.

So they started filming and, you know, we did real high quality production. And for them, it's a marketing expense. They also brought in some sponsors to help underwrite it. But at the end of the day, they weren't making a profit on their TV show, but it was a perfect platform to get their message out to a mass audience. And that's what our networks deliver, are a built-in audience who knows what to expect when they turn on the TV and watch Sportsman's Channel. So and i don't let's just say like take a place like cabela's or bass pro or any manifest retailers manufacturers they'll do the time they'll do the time by and then of course they their block of time they have their half hour segment has the show in it so they're making an actual show but it also has ad units.

So there are companies that will come in and use some of the ad units to draw the connection to their own brand. But then they might also go and have ad units that are used by other outside partners of theirs. Exactly. Bass Pro Shops has productions. They have their own production operation so they buy time from us for example for the bass pros on outdoor channel so yes you know they run bass pro and now cabela's spots in that show but they'll also run well and they'll do they've got other brands too so the nitro boats but they might do a mercury

commercial in it or they may even have um you know specific you know strike king or something as a sponsor of the show so even though the retailer owns the show uh they have a team that will go out and sell it and the nra does the same thing we have an nra show american rifleman um that the nra owns and produces they have their own production operation but they go out and sell a lot of advertising around that. And then they have a magazine that supports the production as well. Yeah.

And another thing that happens, and this is, I think, where, this is what's a little bit more interesting, is the other thing that happens is an individual can go and build a show. Right. Because I think there's a lot of people who are like, how does one have,

how does a person get a hunting show? Right. And I think that there's probably like the path, I don't want to say it's the path of least resistance financially, because there's a ton of resistance financially. It's a lot of work to put it together. But like lay out how a person, like an individual, not a big company,

how an individual goes and creates a show and finances a show yeah it's um it's evolved a little bit because the barrier to entry has gotten a little bit higher but you know 10 years ago and it was a you know a guy who loves to hunt um has a buddy who knows who knows how in in air brackets how to film or how to edit and they just you know they and everybody thinks they're interesting and entertaining so they're gonna they're gonna do their hunting show um and there are a lot of shows that got that started that way but the networks started raising the standard of quality and and you have to start buying better equipment and hiring more talented people and evolve.

But there's a lot of people that just started with that dream of wanting to hunt. They watched Bill Jordan on TV and TNT 30 years ago and wanted to be that. Now there's a lot of people that want to be the next Michael Waddell. And so there's still that dream of just buying a camera and buying a Mac and cutting a show. Going and getting a bunch of sponsors and selling advertisement space. But I think that's when I advise people early on, because we get a lot of inquiries. And I usually tell them, you have to probably plan to spend upwards of $500,000 to get a show off the ground, to do it right, to have the production values and to build a brand to the point where advertisers want to be a part

of it. And that's probably the biggest mistake the aspiring outdoor TV personalities make is these brands are not interested in funding your lifestyle. They're interested in moving product. So some of the best in TV have been, and the most successful, I should say, have understood that. Guys like Pat Reeve from Driven TV, he's been doing this for 30 years. He knows at the end of the day, if his show, if he's not using product properly

and not overselling it. you know, not, it's not to the point where you raise suspicions. Right. Exactly. And it's, it's, it's a battle that, that I fight. Um, cause I get it. You need to satisfy your, your sponsors and your advertisers, but you're also, you know, you don't want to oversell, you know, viewers can smell the cell, you know, we'd, I'd rather see them just use a product properly than say hey look at this you know thingamajig i'm using here and this is making me you know kill more deer or bigger deer whatever viewers get that they just want to see the success so so we try to minimize the commercial elements in a show but you know that's what's funding that but like i said i think the biggest mistake

the youth are making is they feel like oh these there's there's no brands out there that you know their mission is to help somebody else you know pay for their hunting it's they want to move product so and that's what we're that's a lot of our content inspires people to get out and hunt and and you know they they learn a lot from you know on new products and how to use them and use them properly. So increasingly, you guys want to be, I mean, coming from the network perspective, you want to be in a situation where you're saying like, sure, you're buying space from our network, but there's some parameters around this. Like I'll sell it to you on the condition that your product meets a certain threshold of quality.

Right. And that, too, has evolved because Outdoor Channel has had very high standards for the better part of a decade. And we've been sold out, for the most most part for the past 15 years, so we can discriminate a little bit about what kind of content we're willing to take. Oh, you say for 15 years you haven't had to worry about how you're going to fill that space up. No, in prime time, I don't have a lot of flexibility because I've got a lot of long-time shows that have owned those time slots for a long time and have been very successful for us and for them. I say a lot, I'm in the business of creating these mutually beneficial relationships. We have all of these assets and investments in our networks and building our audience so that when the show, when Meat Eater comes on, you know it's going to reach that audience. And then the producer needs to go out and be successful in selling that time

to their sponsors to fund it. And if they're not successful, then we're not going to be successful. But yeah, we've been sold out for the better part of a decade. When we were emailing, you mentioned the good, good the bad and the ugly of outdoor television what do you mean by that uh when i took this job you know i i had um you know a vision and and really a goal to to leave hunting and fishing not just hunting and fishing intelligent but in a better place than than um than when i when i came into it um but there's a lot of masters, you know, and there's a lot of, you know, people have very specific tastes in what they like.

And so, you know, we have some producers who are, you know, loud and great characters, and they tend to draw a good audience, but they also draw detractors. And so I'll have, you know, people, oh, you need to get rid of that show because of that. Or I'm only into, you know, Western archery hunting. I don't want to, I don't care about, you know, Midwest deer and guys whispering in the tree. So, and yeah, so I have to program the network to reach a broad audience, whether it's we have Upland shows and we have Archery shows.

And so the ugly thing is I get all the viewer feedback, although social media is evolving some of that now. Most people just go to the show pages and start bashing in that. They're less likely to call you now? If someone wants to, we have a feedback form on our website and so I'll get it. But so if somebody wants to send feedback, they have to go to our website. It's not hard to find. They find the form,

they fill it out and they have to answer a couple of questions. And so by the time I get that kind of feedback, I'm dealing with somebody who's passionate about it. And we respond to viewer feedback and I'll personally respond. If someone is critical critical as long as they're respectful I'm happy to to respond what would be an example of a criticism that would

come in you mean those people being dissatisfied with something they saw right on outdoor channel we uh we're running uh some syndicated shows we're running uh wicked tuna right now which is an awesome show if you haven't followed Wicked Tuna. And we did Deadly Sketch and Duck Dynasty. And Duck Dynasty, a lot of our people, the core audience, hunting audience, they don't like Duck Dynasty. That surprised me to hear when someone who's very familiar with that show was explaining that it wasn't, it's not hunters. Hunters weren't watching that show as much.

Right. So the idea, so like I said, we have many masters and we work with affiliates, you know, Dish, DirecTV, Comcast, all the major carriers. And this hunting market is not expanding the financial side. You know, there's a finite amount of money in this market. It wasn't getting bigger. Hunting, it's debatable, you know, numbers are declining or participation is declining. So for our company to succeed and for our producers to succeed, we had an initiative to try to expand our audience. We had research that showed that people who maybe don't participate in hunting or fishing, but like outdoor adventure programming, like Deadliest Catch, like Duck Dynasty, we called them, it's a primary attainable

audience for us. So that's why we brought in Duck Dynasty. They have this huge brand, whether you like the show or not, the brand recognition for Duck Dynasty back in the day was like 98% of the general public were aware of Duck Dynasty. And we were the first network to syndicate it. And it brought in new audience. We can show. We've done research. We've seen the numbers. So it actually helped us grow our audience and helps us maintain our distribution.

But if I'm a whitetail hunter from Iowa, I don't want to watch duck dynasty or you know fake reality tv or whatever it is so you want to learn how to kill big giant bucks that's it and yeah and the reality is this um the hunting market is driven by deer and the fishing market is driven by bass so really yeah my impression of how hunting my impression of how people watched hunting TV probably isn't correct. But my idea was that people watched it like how people watch the news, where there's people that just have it on, and they just watch what's there. But you're saying that people, like the viewers cherry pick. They're like, I watch that show, I don't watch that show.

You know, one of the biggest, and this wasn't from research, but just from talking to people most of our viewers you know they're they're they're hardcore so if you're watching hunting it's because you're really like you're in into hunting and i think they judge the shows they watch mostly by if they would want if they would want to be in camp with the talent you know i um i hunted last year with roger rag, who's been in the business for 30 years. And part of it was because I was like, when I watch Roger Raglin on TV, I want to experience what it's like to be in a camp with Roger Raglin. And that's a lot of the feedback you get in social

media as well as a, you know, Michael Waddell is, Oh, I wish I could hunt with Kip Campbell from red arrow. So, so, you know, and there there are guys that that don't appeal to certain people so i think when they watch it they're like yeah i'm it's it's like almost i can't hunt now but i'm gonna be watching these guys hunt and that's that's how they pick the shows they like 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 Canada the great features that you love and on x 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 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 onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX x club y'all what are some of the um of the uh kind of like the famous talent pool right yeah what are

like do you got people that you look forward to them calling and then hosts that you really don't look forward to them calling? Right? Because you're communicating with all these people. Is there a chance any of them will hear this? No. No. Okay, good.

So I started as a producer and had my own company. So I've run a small business and most of our producers are small business owners. And I've walked that path business and most of our producers are small business owners and I've walked that path. It's not easy. So I go into, whether I like somebody personally or connect with them as a friend or whatever, I go into almost all of the conversations with a certain amount of respect for what they're doing, growing their business. You know, we have producers who have, you know, 10, 15 employees and it's, you know, so employees. So they're very passionate about hunting and the business. So yes, there are times when my phone rings and I wouldn't say I cringe, but it's like, okay.

The biggest problem I have is I can have three things I need to get done in a day, and my day will be hijacked by like 8.15, and Mondays are the worst because something will come up over the weekend, and so I'll get a call, and they're all important calls, so I try to take them all as I can, but it's hard to get through. But we definitely have characters in the lineup, and there's none that i dislike

but definitely have those that are just a hoot i i i'm a yeah i'm a i'm a sucker for you know people with passion so whenever and so i i like i had a conversation today with mark zona he's a bass fishing guy zona's awesome fishing show and the Show. And the guy, he's hardcore. He is intense. He's an amazing- That's what it's called? Zona's Awesome Fishing Show? Zona's Awesome Fishing Show. I like the guy already.

He's a Chicago guy. He lives in Michigan, but he's just a great character. And he's somewhat polarizing too. Some people don't like his style because he's dude. He says dude a lot, but he's authentic. And I'm drawn to that in our talent. I like talent who are the same off camera and on camera. Yeah.

Because at some point, it's hard to, I don't want to know, is this the on camera guy? Most of our hosts are authentic. And I like that. And so we work with Ted Nugent. And to explain Ted, and I've worked closely with him, he's in a league of his own. I mean, he's a rock star. He's a hunting TV star.

He's literally a rock star. Yeah. And, I mean, Ted has, there's nobody can do what Ted does. I mean, people think they might be able to do it, but to go on to CNN and take on Pierce Morgan and just be Ted, you can't. I've met Ted and I've met Donald Trump now and you can't connect with these guys. Like we can connect.

We can connect over fishing. We can connect over food. We can connect over. Ted is just, he's so driven and that dude works harder than any human being I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, he still does like 200 concerts a year. And he hunts like 340 days a year. It's like, seriously, I mean, he is just always out doing something.

And he's passionate. So we did something as a network that Ted didn't appreciate. And he called me one day and told me that. And for 15 minutes, he told me that. And I was like, man, and he was very spirited. In a very quickly spoken, articulate fashion. Yeah, no, exactly. And it wasn't bad, and he was not disrespectful.

But I was like going, man, man most people if you want to hear ted nugent go off like this you have to find it on youtube i'm like one-on-one on the phone i wish i could have recorded it because he's he's brilliant that way and um so that you know i enjoy i enjoy working uh with ted and um and but he's he's one of the most unique talents on our network so when you're when you're fitting out the programming, right, do you picture it like walking into a big sporting goods store where you're like, oh, here's the fishing section. Make sure the fishing's okay.

And then here's my warm water. Yeah, here's upland over here. Here's camping. Here's big game hunting. here's the waterfowl like do you do you try to keep all that in mind and make sure that you're not missing anything or could or do you want to realize now and then you have like a big hole you know i inherited first of all you know this the the lineup essentially in the schedule and i have a a peer who i work with um Katie Gladstone, who actually does the scheduling.

So she's more analytical on the schedule, and she's looking at ratings. But the business, the time by business, has really established a lot of that for us, where seasonally there's less demand in TV, hunting TV, in first and second quarter. So fishing kind of built up in first and second quarter. So fishing kind of built up in first and second quarter. And then the retail cycles, because hunting retail, it's mostly like September, October, November. So that's when the retailers and the advertisers want to be in there. So the market has kind of driven some of that schedule. And then yes, we will do, um, we'll focus more at whitetail or big game in prime time in third and fourth quarter. Uh, but you know, weekend mornings have become

fishing, uh, pretty much year round. Um, weekend afternoons are very good, um, day parts for us. Um, so we will run waterfowl, upland,, some of the non-big game in those time slots. So it has kind of filtered out that way, much like you do see in a retail store. Because you're chasing people's interest? Because you're chasing what people... Let me put this a different way. So you're timing it out because that's where the advertising dollars are for producers. Or you're timing it out because some guy's like, I'm'm hunting deer in a week i want to watch about deer now and i don't want to

watch about deer in may right because in may i want to watch about fishing right yes our viewership grows and viewers watch when they're actually participating so there's like a real feedback between what a person's what a person's experiencing and what they're wishing to watch. Right. Yeah. Or like if they're mentally preparing for their hunting season, they'll start watching more hunting. But what about dudes watching wardens? They're not like saying like, I'm going to be getting busted by a warden next week.

No, wardens was a bit of an anomaly. And we think it was successful because it had such a broad appeal. And the story packages were smaller. They were only like five-minute segments. You might not be interested in the antler hunting on a game range, but that was only five minutes.

The next one is going to be some guy shooting an elk decoy. And that was kind of interesting. Yeah, because it's like an ensemble-type show that follows these bunch of different people. As opposed to, you know, trout fishing historically hasn't rated very well. And so if you're a trout fisherman,

you got some of that on wardens. And everybody's had their own warden encounters or warden stories. And when we were in Montana, and now we're in Michigan, those are both great states. I mean, Montana is a very unique state in terms of its resources.

So we had viewers just wanted to learn about Montana. And the wardens were great characters there too. So it just had broad appeal. If you were going to go look at all the, let's just say all the hunting content, so remove fishing content, all the hunting content from Outdoor Channel and Sportsman Channel,

what percent of all of that content is driven by the whitetail deer? It's probably 60%. Wow. Yeah. You like that, Yanni, huh? It's the first thing you've said. I can't believe it.

Yeah. 60%. I would have thought higher. I would have thought a little higher. Whitetails and turkeys, though. What's that? Yeah, what's the number? 75%.

So what's number two next to whitetails? We do a lot of elk, so a lot of big game. And some of the aspirin, moose. So it's big game. People like of the aspirate moose. So it's big game. People like to watch a moose show. Right. Jim Shockey will tell you that his ratings, they bump every time he does a big Yukon moose. And that's aspirational.

We see a lot of that. There's not a lot of people who participate in sheep hunting or goat hunting, but they'll watch it on TV. One thing's interesting, though. Your show is very different, I think, but a lot of – like the big international destinations – and I'm not talking Africa. I'm not – but like hunting in the Himalayas or, as Michael Waddell accused Jim Shockey of hunting red-bearded devil goats in Djibouti or something like that. It doesn't really drive, you know, viewership because,

you know, your, your average Joe can't relate, wants to see deer or they can relate to a moose or they can relate to an elk, even if they don't participate now. Cause it's in there. It's in there. Like it's like spatial awareness,

man. It's like a thing that one could feasibly go do. Right. And people will watch, you'll watch some sheep shows or some of the, the ibex shows or because the destinations are really cool and and it's it's kind of out there but they it you know it's it people they're not they're not driven like they are for deer hunting yeah i like shocky though man he's a good dude he's a he's a very very interesting guy really really uh really nice guy authentic too

so last year um he came into our booth at the archery trade show just to say hi and um i was had a brief conversation with him within 30 seconds there's somebody standing next to him waiting to tell him a story or meet him or do something he was there for like three hours meeting his fans and talking to people he didn't do an appear wasn't a scheduled appearance he wasn't just you know just you know loving it yeah people stand there being like look at this buck my cousin shot yeah exactly yeah there's a downside to that too i've had conversations um you know um uh will primos is a guy uh who i have a lot of respect for dude yeah and there's no i'm telling you as just like a communicator and a consistent personality yeah and just like a guy that seems

like a good human being will primos yeah so i'm going hunting with him this fall i get you know good for you i get some good opportunities and i want want to have those experiences while I can. So I don't get to do a lot, but Will and I, we did some business together five years ago, and we had talked about going, and this last year I just said, Will, I think now's the time. I've never gone on an elk hunt. I've probably watched 10,000 elk hunts on TV, so I'm excited. And I'm a very passionate turkey hunter.

And when I get a turkey and I call a turkey in, and it's gobbling and I can feel it drumming and strutting, I just get super excited. So when I have an elk coming at me, the first time I told Will, I might have to wear diapers because I can't imagine how awesome it's going to be. So we're going to New Mexico, and we're going to do an Archery Elkhunt in September.

You talk about that thing that happens where it's like you want to be with someone to listen, even just to put in, and I honestly have a bunch of the CDs, like to put in his stuff and hear Will Primos explain things, right? Right. He just explains things now and then in a way where I'm, he explains things where I'm jealous that I hadn't thought to put it that way. Yeah. And you're drawn into Will and the Primos, it's one of the top shows on our network.

And it's not, they've got good production values and they've got a great team. But the reality is it's exactly that. He just connects with the viewer on a very deep level people are comfortable with them they trust everything he says he's not just schlepping product he is actually he's you know passionate about he's using it he's developing product so he's been very successful at doing that one of the things it is for me is he likes animals yeah he likes animals he likes knowing about them he likes being around them for him animals are not a tool by which to secure fame right or perceived fortune or something that he kind of also a little bit doesn't maybe like that much yeah it's like he loves wildlife right and likes to be in proximity

to it and and all the elements of the hunt and and the camaraderie and the family and yeah it's and likes talking to them you speak the language thing is like is real it's not just a cool slogan and tricking them yeah yeah if humanity were to end and all the planet were to die off except for just Will Primos, I think that Will Primos would still go out and observe wildlife. I'm getting to this. I shook the dude's hand one time and he didn't know who I was or what I was doing. It was a long time ago, but I'm just getting this from listening to his DVDs. Yeah. Yeah, he's a good guy.

And an amazing businessman, too. I'm trying to think. He tells a story about how he got started making the mouth calls. He used to buy condoms for the- To get the latex. To get the latex. And I think he tells a story about being a- I think he went and had to buy buy condoms for the... To get the latex. To get the latex. And I think he tells a story about being... I think he went and had to buy some condoms

and he ran into the father of one of his classmates and was... So anyway, that was before he was buying it commercially and that. But there's so many little stories like that in this industry. No, I'm just making game calls. That's why I want to spend time in camp with these guys

to hear more like that. You brought up the idea. I'm not floating this,. That's why I want to spend time in camp with these guys to hear more like that. You brought up the idea. I'm not floating this, but you brought this idea up. Is hunting TV good or bad for the sport? I think there's a lot of people who hunt and a lot of people who fish I feel that would say it's bad. That's why I brought it up. I hear it from them all the time. That's why I wanted to talk about it because I'm interested to hear what you all think about it.

I generally think it's good, and we at the network work very hard to make sure that it's good in terms of the quality that makes it to air, the ethics around it, the storytelling, the conservation message, the recruitment and participation. I think those are all good things. But when I talk about the good and the bad and the ugly about TV, it's like, well, there's other sides of it that people don't care for. If you're a Western big game hunter, you don't like to see some of the things that your colleagues might do. And a big part of the market does. There's people who don't like to see some of the things that your colleagues might do. And a big part of the market does. There's people who don't like predator hunting or Africa hunting. That's a very polarizing part of our programmatic mix.

So in general, I think it's good, but i thought it'd be something worthy of discussing because you know there are there are those who who who don't think it is that this is um this is a uh a personal sport and that it doesn't belong on tv i think it's done a lot to help promote hunting and when it's done properly it's a very good thing yeah if i was to imagine like if i was to think of the different criticisms I hear, I think that that's kind of, that's a big one. It's just that Thomas McKinter, he didn't use it in this context, but like pissing in the cathedral, you know. But it's like this, it's this very personal thing. You're in the out of doors you're

out you know you're in the outdoors because you're someone asked me where why some people say out of doors and outdoors when i grew up there's a magazine michigan out of doors i just got in my head out of doors when you're in the outdoors in nature it's like this personal right experience you're having and some people feel that to film it is to film it and put it out there for distribution is kind of like sacrilegious there's like the whole point of it is that it's private and self-contained and it's something that you live and experience in your own space and in your own head and to take that and package it for consumption and put a personality behind it, it strikes them as being a little bit offensive.

And I think of the other things, the other criticism I'll have, people will come and be like, oh, it's all an infomercial, right? And I think you can kind of explain that by talking about what the model of it is, like how it works and how it's funded. And I don't even really pay attention to that one. But the one that does strike me is that one where it's just like it's sacrilegious.

And I think that the reason that speaks to me a little bit is because it is something that I do, like that part of me feels right like there's there's like push and pull inside everyone's head and i think even my own brothers who i grew up uh hunting and fishing with and they're two of the most dedicated hunters and of my involvement in doing outdoor television writing about it supportive of that right they felt that aesthetically that's like okay but then look at the deep history of it like people been writing about it since people were writing right so there's a like there's a trajectory there there's like a thing it's like for 100 plus years more well i mean the the it's kind of funny how deep it goes because if you go back and look at the oldest known representational art in europe is

people wall art right writing the story of their hunt on a cave wall. So it's something that it's like acceptable because there's something very personal and intimate about writing. But to them, it was kind of like, you're going to do what? All right. Like film it. And then put out your innermost personal experiences out for like,

why would they want to watch? You know, just a suspicion, man. Yeah. It's tough. And I haven't fully, and I haven't fully,

I've never really found like a really great way of countering. I haven't found like a great way of countering the argument. There's some things people say, and I'm, I always look forward to him saying it because you can, you can tear their argument apart so easy that it's almost fun. But that one's not one i really look forward to taking now because i have to kind of say like if you feel that way i'm probably not going to change your opinion about it i'd like you i'd like if you watch the show right but in your show could change that person's opinion but there

are others and they're and they're not wrong for it that wouldn't because they're it's more of a character driven hunting show and it is kind of a character-driven hunting show. And it is kind of a, hey, look at me. Michael Waddell is a very passionate hunter, but he's a character. People watch him because they're curious about what he's going to say and how he acts. Very different than Sportsman's Channel. We've differentiated the networks a little bit, where Outdoor Channel is more general entertainment, talent-driven type content, where Sportsman, because a lot of our magazines have driven that content, is more editorial style.

It's less about the talent and more about the art. And so our viewers are different that way. And interestingly enough, I don't remember the exact number, but it's probably around like 40% of our magazine readers actually watch the network, the TV, because it's just a different type of consumer. If I'm going to read guns and ammo, it's because I'm interested in guns and ammo and i'm gonna go i want to go deep if i'm going to watch um the gun father on outdoor channel it's because i want to be generally entertained it's not because necessarily i'm a firearm enthusiast so so when someone says you know i think it's a very personal thing they're right for them it is but for millions of others it's not it's it's aspirational they're they're learning you know as i was going others, it's not. It's aspirational. They're learning. I was going to say, it's very hard to generalize.

We have 200 different producers and a lot of different shows. So I could tell you that your show is very personal for people, whereas some of the others, not so much. It's just about that hunt, and huge audiences like those shows too. So there's no right or wrong answer either. No, the aspirational stuff is big because we get so many notes from people who watch the show, I'm sure a show, any show, and then say to themselves, I'm going to go do that. Right.

Which is cool to hear about. And it's nice to know that there's that inspiring aspect of it. Right. As in everything, there's also a flip side to that where you're like, man, so tags just got even a little bit harder to draw. We used to get, and Montanans are unique, and so wardens would generate a lot of feedback. And I remember, I probably saved them, I should send you some of them.

The locals in Montana did not like the warden show because you're showing people where we hunt, all of our great hunting. Oh, really? We don't like non-residents. Keep them out of here. You don't pay taxes in Montana. You shouldn't be hunting here. It's like, really? I mean, come on. But um we got some pretty good begrudging tourist state i've

always said yeah it is we've had interesting interesting experiences there too just trying to operate a show for um six years in montana i mean there there was resistance yeah from the general population and and there's also people who absolutely loved it, but not everybody. Yeah, a lot of people hate any kind of incursion into their own thing. We try to be really respectful in any kind of public land situation,

which is the bulk of our stuff. Yeah, the bulk of our stuff is filmed on public land. And we have certain lines we don't cross right in terms of not blowing a spot out but that criticism is extended even like that kind of thing is extended way outside of just hunting television or fishing television because in the ski world the surf world right i'm sure probably in the mountain biking thing, it's like there's people who feel passionate and do it. They look at representations of it, like public outputting.

They're already suspicious of public output, people putting the experience out for public consumption. And the first thing that's going to jump in their mind is you're going to send the masses to my spot. And when it comes to things like a particular break to a surfer or a particular meadow that's real man right it's like people are talking about like oh you're going to ruin you know tourism is going to ruin paris right you're talking about like millions of people and you're adding some number more and it's hard to track it but if you got

like a little meadow that's easily identified, one dude ruins it. So get this. Coming off of ICAST, my wife and I did some fishing. Two short stories from there. One, Mark Davis, who does Penn's Big Water Adventures, big salt water, great show, great character. Penn Reels. Yeah, Penn Reels. So Mark goes all over the world fishing.

And he had somebody come up to him at the show and they they said, you know, you got to come down here. We got redfish. And Mark's like, do you like – the guy was just selling him on the quality of the fishery and the giant fish and how amazing it was. And Mark's like, do you like your fishery? Do you like how it is? Then I'm not going to go there because if he goes there, everybody else will go there. Not just show, but like people will show up and it, it, it can have a significant impact on the fishery. And the example I'll give

you is, uh, my wife and I fished with Carter Andrews after I cast. And we, um, we, we found these, uh, red anchovies, these giant schools of red anchovies, really cool. I'm like the size of a football field. And there was tarpon rolling in them.'ve and um we've we did a Facebook live event and I caught a tarpon the next day in that in that um and apparently two or three days later there's like nine boats off this area because people recognize the bridge or whatever or we probably they knew we were off of Vero Vero beach okay and it's like you know so that was just some minor social media exposure and all of a sudden it's like I mean they I was gone already but they had continued fishing and they're like yeah when they showed up there were already three boats on it two other boats came in the word is out

yeah but but here's but that's the funny that's like kind of the point I'm making too is the word is three people. Right. Like that is, that's the tipping point. Right. And, but then that, that's,

that spot is like done. I mean, there's too much pressure now and it's like everything moves out. But on a, on a more positive note though, um, there's, when you go to a tackle shop and it's probably the same in Montana, where you go to a fly shop,

but the word gets out like, you know, whopper ploppers is a is a top water bait and you can't find them around here because somebody started catching fish on whopper ploppers and now all the stores are sold out so you'll go in across the country and like rapala is headquartered here in minneapolis um and they sell countdowns he's like just original floating rapalas and in one store they can't keep them in stock. And in another store, they can't sell them because some guy locally had success on it. And people just start hearing it.

And the tackle guy starts moving them. So as a community, we do a lot of word of mouth, I think. So it has a downside where you can really have really have an impact the criticism's so high there like if you do something like if a person in outdoor media does something where you reveal that people are pissed but then if you go to any you know you go to any mountain town right and you go to the local fly shop they put a sandwich board what do you call those little things like i love that they put like a little board out on the sidewalk that says where the bite is right and what they're biting on i think that's rock creek squalus i think it's brilliant because exactly you know if you're a retailer you you need people to have success you know so and

that's that's what like yeah but no one goes and kicks the door maybe they do do people get pissed at fly shops for sending everybody where the hot bite is yeah yeah but at the same time vague information too i think also a creek it's like okay yeah i know this guy's telling me this probably just told the last 25 people that like we we were over in the henry's fork this year um ran over there to uh fish you know the salmon flies were coming off on the henry's fork this year um ran over there to uh fish you know the salmon flies were coming off on the henry's fork and uh some of the guys i was with they're like oh we got to go in the fly shop and i got to pick up a few things i said okay no matter what this stretch that i want to fish is what we're going to fish and that's it your intel yeah like i do not care what these guys think so of course we end up fishing the stretch that the guys at the fly shop told us to fish

and i was just in a bad mood the whole time we get down there there's more trailers at the put in than i've ever seen the people running shuttles on the river have uh like 215 passenger vans out of shuttle shuttle drivers because they're moving more boats and trailers on this stretch than they ever have and i'm like folks this is this what a sucker looks like that's unique to fly fishing because bass fishermen lie i mean they'll come off the water and they'll say yeah what'd you catch your fish on oh you know we were fishing uh crankbaits and deep weed lines and of course they're fishing like worms on docks they'll lie about everything but uh the fly shops will you know i don't know if they embellish but uh i appreciate it when they do that as a but i can see how yeah you're gonna you're gonna stack that river up in that section because

they're telling everybody i was staying there with a buddy of mine one time years ago, and we had just skinned a bear. It was spring season. And we're coming out of logging road, and a guy pulls up, and he looks at my buddy's pants and says to him, looks like someone got one. And he looks him straight in the face as well it's just some old rabbit blood you know and it's like awkward because everyone knows that it's just not true yeah and it was kind of like more it was almost more painful to me than if he had just said like i'd have been irritated if he had said it but it was more painful to me to have a standing lie right yeah like i have a difficult time like if someone says hey how was the fishing um i find i

find myself trying to not lie but then you know but oh it's okay got a couple right i can't just be like nothing when in fact there was something yeah because you know you wind up trying to be like not a horrible person but then also you want to serve your own purposes a little bit i mean we're so fortunate minnesota like they're bass fishing if you like catching bass i mean that, the saying is, I think, God put bass on the earth so everyone could catch a fish and muskies to separate the men from the boys. So we're going to go musky fishing tonight. But if we want to, we catch bass. And you can catch bass on every lake.

Yeah, exactly. On every single lake. I grew up on a bass lake. Right. Well, every lake in Minnesota has bass in it. And they're not that smart. And they're they're not that smart and they're they're fun and so i i'm all i'm all about participation growing participation taking kids out taking friends out i love to take them hunting and fishing so i'm i'm an open book when it comes

and i'll also like on my social media i'll post when i don't have success because otherwise people think well you know that i only they don't understand that we don't always go out and catch tons of fish. I've been able to fish by myself more. I've got three young boys, so it's, normally I'm not ever by myself between friends, family, and work. But when I go on my own, I'll go and I'll explore new water or new techniques. And I won't have success, but, you know, we're going to fish a spot tonight that I found when I was looking for smallmouth beds. And I ended up finding a giant muskie area. What do you call a muskie area?

An area? This was just a weed bed. And the water was crystal clear. And I just kind of drifted over. And I looked down, and it looked like a railroad tie laying on the bottom. That's how you find them. Yeah. Well, that's how you find them yeah and

well that's how i found that one but you'll see a lot of them and in the summer when the water's really hot we don't generally target them when the water temps are way high you don't want to hurt them right and uh but they'll they'll they'll be kind of lethargic they'll be up in shallow water just kind of sunning you can you can boat up to them and poke them with your rod and they'll swim off oh really yeah but they won't eat them you won't eat that. They're not catchable. They're just not in that kind of pattern. I went fishing with Matt Elliott from Benchmade. Yeah.

But he's a... Yeah, Yanni served Matt Elliott his first ever bass sandwich. Oh, nice. Competition, a hobby, what do you call it? An amateur competition bass fisherman who had never eaten a small mouth sandwich he had a little small mouth tear rolling down his down his cheek he thought it was good oh no yeah he's just wiping that tartar tartar sauce off he thought it was good he didn't want his wife to realize that they were good

but some of those she was wondering what he was doing some of the rigs you know so i was super asking a bunch of questions and i I never get to fish with that stuff. Did you guys drop shot? That is exactly what I was going at. There are some rigs that these bass guys tie up that I just wouldn't fish with purely for the fact. Because I'd be like, well, of course you're going to catch fish with it. Like, of course. Isn't that the goal?

Yeah, but if there's a foregone conclusion, I'm just not that into it. The musky thing is super appealing. But the drop shot thing, I'm like, well. Years ago when I started hearing, I do want to get back to what we're talking about, but years ago when I started hearing i do want to get back to what we're talking about but years ago when i started hearing people say drop shotting i was picturing i don't know what i was picturing i was picturing some i just heard it i thought it must be some elaborate right 18 knots and

you know crazy things running off here and there whatever whatever. And then when I saw that, I'm like, that's what drop shotting is? But my man, does that work good? Oh, my God. How can it not? I mean, I guess that's what, yeah. But, yeah, I guess I would skew more towards the musky side of things because I want the challenge. You want the experience.

You want the 10,000 casts. Yeah. It's not for everyone. So you have to enjoy the journey and everything else around it just like it's a difference between gun hunting and bow hunting you know the success rate is not that high but you still do it because you you're passionate about it and it's not always about that kill it's about the big picture and being outdoors gets me more days in the woods so in uh in outdoor tv and hunting tv are there lines that cannot be crossed surely if a producer turned into thing where he was hunting panda bears you guys would be like you know what

um not going to be running that episode we have uh we have very strict guidelines and we have a quality control team that that enforces those and producers are aware of those if you're an independent producer you don't want to spend thousands of dollars on something that's not going to make it to air so so it's pretty buttoned up i would say but yeah we have we have lines you know we have um we want to protect the sport and so so there's things, and there's safety issues. We don't want to show things that are unethical or unsafe. We don't allow blue sky shots. So you enforce ethics?

Yes. Like beyond law? Yes. I mean, our guidelines say you need to follow the laws, and then you also need to follow some of the general safety. Obviously, anything that's illegal is not allowed. You have to follow all game laws, and if there's violations, we are very strict in how we enforce those. Talk about some of the things that have happened recently with hosts getting in hot water. I can think of three off the top of my head.

Yeah. recently with hosts getting in uh with hosts getting in hot water i can think of three off top my head yeah well in the in the last three yeah i mean our actions were pretty swift and pretty consistent we've do you mind laying out the story of what happened um and just broad brushstrokes in um like in the case of um chris bracket for fear no evil sure um yeah you know it's uh first of all i told you that, you know, I have a lot of respect for the people that I work with in these producers and Chris was one of them because Chris started with nothing. He was a postman and he had a dream and he had a passion and he, I saw a video that Chris sent to Pat Reeve and it was essentially a demo. It said, hey, Pat, I love what you do at Hunter Specialties. I want to get into this space. To see what happened was disappointing.

The incident that happened in Indiana happened five years ago now, where he shot two deer. He had a tag for one, but shot two deer. And, you know, he put himself. He had a tag for one, but shot two. He had a tag for one, shot one, you know, and there's, there's questions around that too, because he had a camera guy with him and, and people don't know the whole story. You know, they, they did tag the first deer that he, that, that he shot. And, you know, so there's, there's nothing, there's, there's no.

I really don't know the details of the story. I'm not, I'm not like being coy. Yeah. I really don't know the details of the story. I'm not like being coy. Yeah. I really don't know the details of the story. The only thing people know is from what they saw in the video is that a deer came out and he shot the deer. And then another one came out and he shot that one. And he says he wasn't sure he shot this first one. And it's all speculation beyond that so

so yes you know to take you through that so when i heard saw the video on that you know i i was disappointed i mean you know disappointed on a human level and i was i was you know chris had has evolved and had already evolved he's a changed man from what he was four years ago and people think that you know he went through this and then found God. No, Chris had already transformed his faith life, but he's human. We're all human. So he made a mistake. And then another video comes up about him berating a camera guy. And it's like, I've been there before. I've never berated a camera guy like that. But Chris put a lot of pressure on himself back four years

ago when he made that second shot to try to produce something you know to and and he made a mistake and he's paid a pretty significant price for it i mean he we removed that we find out about it you know there um um there's some questions so we had to do a little bit of research and you know and talk to chris and talk to others it. But we pulled the show immediately. Is that a tough decision to make? No. We have guidelines. It was tough on a human level because I care for my producers.

I care for Chris. I felt bad for him. And I don't want to pull the rug out. This is his career. This is what he's built up but um so um yeah and then you know ultimately yeah the show just you know he he lost some sponsor support and and chris is a guy he's he's a he's a he's got a great heart you know i've had him at my home with my kids and he's great with my kids and that and he made a mistake and it cost him i think it cost more than than it probably should have but his than if he

was a private individual yeah oh yeah oh yeah absolutely private individual this would have been first of all he's he's never been charged with anything so he's he's he just lost his career he didn't he doesn't get a ticket he hasn't uh there's nothing has become of it and nothing probably will other than he's lost his livelihood as a tv host and it's interesting that the three cases that i'm thinking of which uh the three cases i'm thinking of where hunting show personalities have been in trouble have been in trouble around these issues of shooting something and then shooting something else i think the a thing you hear about it

i think you hear about that people fear is people are like oh being in that situation where you're this you know hunting celebrity which is a term people hate right there's this hunting celebrity and they're under such pressure to um they're under such pressure to get that big buck in order to become more famous that they're put in these situations where they have poor judgment because they're trying to service business, right? Which would sort of imply that violations and getting in trouble is sort of just like only happens in outdoor tv which we all know that it certainly doesn't right there's a lot of guys are getting

a lot of trouble all the time who are not putting it out but it's a thing i think that people feel another thing that i think people feel from the other side is um people like to make examples of people you know so when someone gets in trouble for something like that you know especially who's in the public eye they get in trouble for something like that it gets quickly amplified sure where people are very ready to pounce. And in Chris's case, he has a polarizing brand. You loved him or you didn't. He had his catch line, a booyah, when he would shoot a deer. Very passionate about it. You either

loved it or you didn't. And for every viewer feedback I got, people saying they didn't like Chris Brackett, I got 10 that said they loved him. Because people found it offensive. They just didn't like... they didn't connect with him. And so you get the keyboard warriors and they'll go off on him. So when that incident happened, it essentially made all of his detractors right.

And they came out. And I would tell you, it was disappointing. I love this industry. I love the hunting industry the fishing industry and that but we are fast to consume each other when something like that happens and and there were people that seemed to take pleasure out of taking him down and that was heartbreaking i was looking at a thing the other day involving an acquaintance of mine where something no one knows something may or may not have happened

i don't even really looked into it yet but i just heard not a television person just a person that maybe got sideways with the law a little bit and man there's a lot of people rooting that he did hoping that he did right within the industry like just people aware just like the cannibalization and i think that but i think in these cases in some of these cases where, it'd be interesting because there's this other case. Are you willing to talk about an instance that involves an individual whose initials are TV? On our network? Yeah. I don't know who it is right oh yeah can we talk about that yeah sorry i thought you were talking current so

no that's an old one but it's just an interesting case study right and something that winds up uh let's just talk in general terms because i don't know what my, what my limitations are in that situation. So in general terms, it was an, someone made, a person made an accident. Okay. Right.

A person had a, what I, from having done a lot of hunting, a thing that I regard to be something that could happen to anyone. Right. Meaning you, let's just say there's different situations where you see a deer, there's a buck standing there, and you shoot. But you go over, there's two bucks, or two deer, because there's one behind it that you were bedded down up a little rise that you were unaware of. That could happen to anyone.

Right. Or a situation being that here's a buck you shoot the buck goes down all of a sudden the buck stands back up again you shoot again and it's a different the right thing to shoot again but you go over and it's two bucks now in those cases even if you are a hunting celebrity i think in those cases were you to self-report. Right. I feel that you probably wouldn't lose your show. No. You probably wouldn't get skewered. You might even get rewarded is really the wrong term.

But people might recognize the step you took. Right. And decide not to skewer you and try to destroy you. We've had positive cases where that happened you know pig man had an incident in oak in oklahoma um you know first of all game laws are complicated right and i think he was in an area um i don't remember the specifics but you know he ended up i think shooting a hen turkey or something and he wasn't in a unit he had to tell you he had everything he thought he had everything right and he didn't he owned up to it he paid a small fine it was it was an honest mistake whereas you know in some of

these cases you're talking about the cover-up is always worse than the cover it worse than the crime and it's something i learned you know i've never had an encounter like that with uh with a warden but filming wardens for six or seven years, you always got to, you got to, the only answer is to come clean fast and completely. And that's your, because these, these wardens are not out to get you. People make mistakes. They have a lot of latitude in what they can do, but if they know that you're being deceptive, you're done. There's no more sympathy. I mean, you will get whatever it is that you, and 100% of the time, they figure it out. So in some of these cases,

you just have to own up to it because, no, absolutely, people make mistakes. But yes, if it's a case where you blatantly disregarded the law and wasted, that's going to have deep and immediate negative impact. That's what really seems like lead people into a very troubled path is the cover-up. And in that situation, you're making this kind of like quick decision.

You're like, there's a chance if I just hide this right covered up there's a chance nothing happens the man is that seductive right but there's also the chance that everything that the world as i know it could end right and by Right. And by going the route of being like, Mr. Game Warden, I made a mistake. There's going to be, there will be ramification. But total annihilation of oneself isn't probably in the mix. No, we have, in Bowhunter TV, Kurt Wells was in Canada years ago,

and I think a legal moose was like 50 inches and he shot a moose and it was like 49 and three quarters yeah i mean you can't you can't and it was a good shot i think it was a bow shot he was like 40 yards or something and he self-reported and um and paid a fine it's an honest mistake It was, you know, he and the guide, they judged it to be a legal bull, and it wasn't. Same deal. You know, he could have hid that,

but no, he did the right thing, self-reported, made that part of the story. He lost the trophy. I think it's mind- Made it part of the story. Yeah. That's great. It was the story.

You know, that's got to be the story. The story has to be do the right thing. And we actually, in our guidelines, you have to follow the law. But we want to hold our host to a higher standard because we are being watched by everybody. And so we always advise people, you know the rules. You need to follow them. You need to have license. You need to wear blaze orange.

Wear blaze orange. Because right now, law enforcement watches outdoor TV, and they look for violations. We've had cases of that as well. We had a warden tell us, what state were we in, where the guy said, I don't need to be out in the field anymore. I got Facebook. Idaho, maybe? No, it was in Kentucky. Ohucky all right the warden said that yeah game war he just was you know i'm sure partially joking no he's like i don't need to

drive around anymore i got facebook i had uh you know oregon uh state troopers are game wardens and some are supposed to be more game wardens than state troopers, but I had a state trooper in eastern Oregon basically say that that's how he's made. All of his recent buffs were all through social media. Well, and also just going to the local bar. I mean, Montana, the wardens, the successful, the most successful wardens have very good local networks. And so, because they've got 400 square miles they're covering, they can't be everywhere, but they sure hear a lot because most guys who are poaching go to the bar and talk about it. And they're competitive too.

Yeah. And they have their own territories, is what this guy was saying. And so, lot of the information that they'd get would be from other poachers being like, yeah, hey, I found this buck on the side of the road with the Ted cutoff. You going to do something about it? Got a pretty good idea of who it is. Really? Yeah. It's like drug dealers shooting drug dealers.

Exactly. I had another on that same trip. Yeah, it was the same trip where the guy was saying i don't need it i have facebook another thing that he another thing that he said to me that i thought was interesting is he doesn't like suppressors now um and his argument against suppressors is the gunshot is a very important tool for him. And he was saying, when he's bow hunting and it starts getting close to rifle season, he can't finish a night in his tree stand. Because, pew!

And he's like, something about that shot. And he's down out of his tree stand zinging over that, getting in his truck and going in that direction. And that was his criticism of suppressors. Yeah, I've hunted suppressed and I like it. I follow the law and so I'm not trying to. Yeah, they're great. Yeah.

They're great. But I never looked at it from, I look at it from the perspective of it's quiet. But he looks at it from the perspective of he wants to know what's going on on the woods you know and you know they you can still hear them but yes you can't hear it yeah like a like a 30 out six or it was yeah it was the thing that i had it was the thing i had considered on when weighing it and like all these different states are sort of like weighing

what the relationship will be to people being able to use suppressors. I was in Scotland one time, and they were shocked. They were shocked you'd be allowed to not use a suppressor because of what it does to people's ears. I was like, man, you guys use suppressors? You guys don't? It's very different. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Free content, man. People go on YouTube, watch hunting videos all day long and never pay for anything. What's the... Right? What's that spell?

Like, what's that? When you look into your crystal ball, um, what are the business challenges there or the, or what are the, what does it mean for the consumer? Yeah, I think there's room for all, for all of it. I think it's a different product. I consume on my mobile device, I consume short videos, whether they're Facebook or YouTube or what have you, but it's very different than the television that I consume, whether it's hunting or not.

Every producer you work with does short-form content. Right. It depends. We went through this evolution where everybody had to invest in high-definition equipment, hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear, because the idea was we're all going to have 90-inch flat screens. And now, viewers don't seem to care that much. They'll watch crappy video from a cell phone on a cell phone, and it's adequate. So I think... Yeah, that's interesting.

What year was it when... Do you remember the timeline of when... Yeah, it was... Well, I can't remember where I... It was 2008, 2007, so 10 years ago. The evolution, people started moving towards HD. Networks weren't carrying channels in HD. Now everything is pretty much in HD.

But the concept of free, I think free ultimately will hurt the industry. Because if it's not valuable, it will hurt on the high end of quality. Because if I'm Jim Shockey and people don't appreciate the quality that I'm delivering of my TV show because they can watch something for free on YouTube, then advertisers aren't going to support it and then Jim's just not going to do it. So I think free content, free on the internet has a place, but it's also a very crowded marketplace. Our networks are a platform where we have viewers who are trained to turn on the hunting channel, they call it. They just turn it on and they watch hunting. Whereas if I go to YouTube, first of all, you have to find the right and you can you can narrow it down

you can search and do that but you find that you sift through a lot of a lot of garbage to find some of the gold it's dispersed right and it's very i think it'll be very hard um it would be very hard i've got a son who's got a youtube channel right he's got 19 followers. How do you, as a aspiring outdoor talent, build an audience? I mean, television is still by far the best way to reach a mass audience. Facebook recently had their issue with privacy and the data issue they had. So they're spending, I've heard at one point it was a million dollars a day on linear television advertising to regain the trust of their user they have this platform but they go to linear television to reach that audience yeah the super bowl last year did you see who the presenting sponsor of the super bowl was no youtube youtube red so. I didn't know that. Yeah. So they were the presenting sponsor of the Super Bowl. So they see some value in linear television?

I think for any brand to say there's not value in linear television is, I think that's a temporary position. We're already starting to see where digital, the good news is for an advertiser or a brand, there are more and good digital options to get a message out and connect with people. The bad news is it's still not as good as TV and you need all of it. And the best brands have digital, they have print, they have radio, they have billboards, they have TV. We don't always have the luxury in our space to have that whole breadth.

But TV, by far, still delivers. The other thing, it delivers volume and quality and low risk. Because if I have a product and I want to advertise, do a digital ad, I don't know where that ad's appearing. I don't know if it's appearing on appropriate sites or how my brand is being associated with that, unless if you're advertising on our digital platforms where if you have a holster, you know it's appearing on Guns and Ammos, Facebook, or a website.

So I read an article. The national advertising market in all of television is driven by like 200 brands, like Coca-Cola and Unilever brands and all that. And there's very little fraud. I mean, you buy advertising, you measure the results, you know how much you're paying, and it's good. And advertising works. We know advertising works. And in digital, there are tens of thousands of people and the results are highly suspicious. So there's no magic yet. The allure of digital and free is strong because it's in theory cheaper. I just don't think it's as effective. And some of those big brands are going back to TV

because it's more expensive, but it works. And it still works. I think that there's just room for a lot of different things. I think even if you look within our own organization that I'm involved in, well, put it like this. I like to eat very well-prepared, elaborate meals sometimes. And I'll also sometimes eat a gas station hot dog,

particularly when I was in high school and college. Right. I don't be like, man, now that gas station hot dogs have come out um i no longer want to eat an elaborate well-prepared meal because it's just different and so in doing um in doing in making content i look at an episode like like i look at a mediator episode it's 22 minutes where this is not an exaggeration every second was look fought over right every second of it okay and it requires a certain amount of money to do that right that's like its own thing um i also like a funny cell

phone video right but they're just very different and i think right now i'm watching ken burns's vietnam series it takes a lot to put that together right it can't be that that that free like as great as free youtube content is it's just i would hate to live in a world where somehow the pot we were starved of the polished stuff right but i don't think we will become starved of the polished stuff but i think people keep trying to like force this idea or hoping there's this idea that it's just one version the polished version will be abandoned and short of the gorilla version or the gorilla version will be abandoned and short of the polished version that's right there's room for all of it yeah and looking ahead there's a lot of apprehension you know about where it's

coming from when i started out in my career, I was writing for glossy magazines. Which, by the way, have been dead for over 10 years. They were dying when I started. We have 17 magazines that thrive. They're still doing quite well. They've been declaring that death.

A lot has changed there. I remember having a $10,000 travel budget to do a magazine story like a lot of that stuff's changed and so came out of magazines and i went into traditional doing traditional books okay and um they're still thriving book business but then people declared that with amazon the traditional book you know the author publisher relationship is no more That's all going to die. And I used to live with constant apprehension and fear about the future. But then at those times, they hadn't even come up with a podcast yet. I didn't know what a podcast was until I went on one.

I've just gotten to the point now, after a long time of making things, I've just gotten to the point now where I don't have, I've kind of like worked through the fears, and now it's become more of a curiosity. Right. About, huh, I do wonder how all this will sort out, but I do maintain this idea that there will continue

to be and i and i hope and push for it there will continue to be ways to fund um ways to fund the really like not great in a way that i'm not mean great in the way that you're passing a value you're not uh paying for cable anymore you're paying for netflix to like watch highly produced the highly produced good stuff right like i've yet to someone even tell me about like oh yeah go check out that new show on youtube like it just hasn't happened yet all right so So I feel like... The fuck, yeah, because there's like... It's hard to do it for free, right? Well, one thing you see in all those cases, and you look at, you know,

auto by tell was going to kill the car dealers, and, you know, the internet was going to kill print. And it definitely changed. It's gone through a painful process, but all of these businesses had to adapt. And so if you don't adapt to this new technology as a network, if we weren't adapting, yeah, we would lose some relevance. But we are adapting. You look at Comcast and Dish, DirecTV.

Independently, each one of them is investing over a billion dollars in products and services and the customer experience to make TV better. I use my wife as an example. She's not a big fan of paying our cable bill, but we have Xfinity and we have the Xfinity remote that she talks to now. And it's changed the way that she can now, you know, for her, 400 channels was just too much. Now she can, through the remote, get what she wants when she wants it. Video on demand, I think, is becoming more accessible, where you don't have to dive in and search. If I want to watch Meat Eater, I say Meat Eater, and if it's on demand, it's available. So television is evolving, and the technology is driving it.

And as a network, we're committed to being on every device with all of our content wherever you want it. And the whole cord cutting, there's absolutely been a reduction. But we're still at, I think, around 98 million paid cable and satellite homes in the U.S., which is about what it was 10 years ago. So it's off from its peak, but there's still 100 million people. And we all have family, extended family. You know people in your family who still, like my mom, watch a Jeopardy every

day that she can, and that's what she will always do. So there's people still consuming it. There's also a lot of people who've cut the cord and then they start cobbling their own court there. So they do Netflix and they do ESPN and they want Fox news and they want some others. And all of a sudden, instead of paying 150 bucks a month, they're paying 120 or a hundred and they're not, and they're missing something out. So there's cord returners. There's people that are coming back. There's people moving to skinny bundles like we're on Sling and HD for Outdoor Sportsman and World Fishing Network. It's $34 a month. And their video on demand is fantastic. You can watch multiple episodes, not just the current one, and you don't have to watch it at the appointed time. So it's evolving. And I agree. I think you still, the challenge we have as a network, and most people don't understand this

because you don't really care, but the people making decisions about carrying hunting, shooting, and fishing programming, whether it's our network or not, are not into the sport, right? They don't generally care about hunting, shooting, or fishing.

They're mostly lawyers and accountants. We live in a passion-based industry, but they're not? They don't generally care about hunting, shooting, or fishing. They're mostly lawyers and accountants that are- Yeah, we live in a passion-based industry, but they're not- They don't share it. They're in the numbers business. And so we have to fight to maintain our distribution, and we want to try to grow it because we have great content. We want to get it out there. But it's an uphill battle.

If we had 90 million homes in Outdoor Channel instead of 35 million, we could be like History Channel, and we could generate the ad dollars. I mean, just when you have that number, that sure number of homes, your ratings will go up. You can sell more advertising. You get more dollars in there, and then you can invest in that content. So it's kind of a catch-22 where we have 35 million subscribers for outdoor channel um and because of that we don't have um we don't generate enough ad dollars to buy all the content so that's how that time by kind of came full circle back to that time by model do you feel that hunters, like how far behind in the technology thing, how far behind are hunters generally?

I mean, they got to be lagging a little bit, right? Behind like your average American and sort of adoption of new technologies and use of new technologies. Or do you feel that they just keep right in step? Because like they're almost by definition a little bit anachronistic, right? Well, our audiences tend to be older anyhow. Like, you know, average age is probably in the late 40s to mid 50s. Okay. And so that's my age, essentially.

We are users of technology, but we're not drivers of it. So our viewers are, yeah, we're not early adopters, but some of them are. We have our My Outdoor TV package, which is just the library of all of the old episodes. So that has skews to a much younger consumer, but it's also cheaper too. So it's part of someone's skinny bundle for like 10 bucks a month. Got you.

Do you guys premiere people's new episodes on my outdoor tv there's some that we do but for now it's it's mostly we do have some originals that we're starting to run on my outdoor tv but it's mostly um library shows and interestingly enough and you think about your most passionate fans and you're you're a bad example actually because i think there's people to do a lot of binge watching on yours but like for lee and tiffany the crush it's a great hunting show very popular one of the best shows on the network been around for a long long time yeah and they're but their fans don't want you know they do 20 new episodes a year their fans don't

watch every single episode so because that's just not the nature of tv like if they only watch it when they're participating it's sort of only watching September, October, they may only catch three or four episodes a year out of 20. So we have 150 episodes of The Crush in our library. And chances are even their best fans have only seen 10% of their library. So people say, well, yeah, it's old shows. Well, these shows are evergreen. I mean, sometimes the technology changes a little bit, maybe their sponsors change a little bit, but shooting a mule deer with a bow from the ground is the same today as it was 12 years ago. And so it's still, it's evergreen content and we're finding there's a good demand for it. And there again, people ask, why isn't it free?

Well, because it's worth money, and these producers have paid to produce it, so we're licensing libraries from producers and offering it to consumers. So we're packaging it for them in My Outdoor TV. And just like everything, everyone everyone said everything's moving digital. Well, you know, you've learned, as you said, to kind of avoid the fear in that everything's not moving any way, any one direction definitively. But everything is evolving and we're evolving with it as well. And it's just, for me, it's been to one, when you hear about the death of something I now think well probably not and then when new things come in

I just become interested in the new things like I said man I've been being told about I'm doing a magazine piece for Outside right now and I sold my first story to Outside Magazine in 2000. And I was hearing about that, the end of that.

I got a hardcover cookbook with Random House coming out. Spiegel and Grout, an imprint of Random House coming out this November. I've been hearing about how that's all calling it quits for my entire career. Right. And newspapers. I know my former boss wrote for a newspaper for 40 years,

and he likes the ink on his hands Sunday morning reading the paper. So that may be someday going away, but the newspapers, and they've all changed. You could argue that they were maybe too fat magazines were too fat and sort of things you just have to adjust but you can adjust and you can survive and um the content is still good i think the bottom line is whether it's long form tv or short form or you know print and that the content is is uh what. Yeah, it winds up being kind of like a gradual, just a gradual evolution of things,

new things coming up. But remember what we're doing right now, right? This didn't exist. Right. At a time, this didn't exist, and now it's a thing that just, it's growing beyond early adopter phase and it's becoming a thing

that's like part of the american life yeah so i read an article about um some youtubers who were um a guy and i don't remember what his what his thing was to be like he had 5.4 million subscribers to his channel it wasn't in the outdoor space it was something and and And for years, that base just grew and grew and grew. And now those guys are seeing declines. We think of internet as being limitless, but there's only 24 hours in a day. There's only so much time you can do anything, whether it's watch TV or surf the web or do it. So I think there's a natural max and it's possible in this hunting space. That's part of where, when you talk about all this content that's readily available,

there's just too much that no one's going to win. It is at the risk of some of the higher quality content going away, because if I'm a brand and I'm just going to support people doing free content for product and that, that high end is going to go away. But it seems to be that it's not infinite. There's a natural cap. And like in newspapers and that, I think maybe they push that limit. Well, now as technology's evolved it's it's had to scale back so we're that's probably where we're at in tv as well yeah cal what you thinking about fishing yeah i mean all sorts of stuff yeah

fired up about giant moskies oh anytime on the water is a good time. Yeah. But do you have any wrap-ruppers, concluders? Yeah, you know, just, I mean, thinking about all the stuff that was talked about here today, you know, I think you're exactly right. You know, there's plenty of content out there that, speaking of Mitch, sorry, Mitch, you are exactly right, that there's plenty of content out there that I do not associate with, and there's some that I do. My hope is that all the content out there is at least connecting. The real benefit is connecting folks that don't have the amount of access

to the outdoor space that we all do that they're connecting to it and they're they're going to have some hold that land and the outdoors in general in high enough regard to want to see it continue that would be my my best case scenario um but you know i think there is that media would inspire advocacy yeah yeah and uh at least get people to care enough to you know want to make sure it exists even if they're not out playing around in it um you know but but you know i think there's some content out there too that um you're your example of you know it i may not relate to it but there's a lot of folks out there who do like we get for every negative email we get 10 positive ones and um i think there's

some content out there that can be used to sway that 80 of the public that doesn't hunt towards you know a negative opinion on hunting sure and there's content out there that can push that 80 in the positive way right right for me that's an argument for our networks and our guidelines because we are controlling that whereas on on YouTube, you can put, I saw something on YouTube, a guy shot a doe with a 50 BMG, 50 cal, like sniper rifle. And in fact, he missed the doe, but the doe's head exploded from the concussion, or just the, whatever, the bullet passing over its head.

It's like, that has- And he thought that was pretty cool. He thought that was worthy of posting. That would obviously never make air on our network, and none of us would advocate doing that, but it's a free society, so you'll have some of that on the YouTube, whereas we do control that.

But even on OSG stuff, I've seen things, again, that I just don't associate with. And I'm a hunting, fishing dude. And if I don't associate with it, chances are the non-hunters probably are going to be like, probably even question if it's legal, if it's right. You know, so, you know, net, net, not knowing for sure. I just hope that at the end of the day, we're gaining and we're not losing. Yeah.

There's not much of a concluder, just a thought. No, man, I'm digging that concluder, though. I like it. It's thought. It's provocative. And my hope in being on here was to help you understand that we are looking out for that, and we try. We're not perfect, but we have, I think, a pretty good process and a pretty good team in place to try to make sure that we're doing that and keep getting better.

I think the net of the net is hunting television can really help us. It can help expand the sport and help make people better hunters, enjoy it more, want to participate more in it when it's done right. As a network, we take that responsibility very seriously. That's good to hear. We premiered, I don't know, man, 90-some episodes of Meat Eater on Sportsman Channel over a long period of time. I have to tell you, you talked about crossing that line. Somebody watched your monkey brain episode where you ate the monkey brain. Monkey leg.

I thought, didn't you eat a brain? No brain. Someone did. Those boys did. That's Indiana Jones. No, I mean, there was— No, so you ate monkey. Yeah.

Right. So I got a call from a producer, and that producer said, I just watched Steve Rinelli eat a monkey on Sportsman Channel, so I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want to now, as long as somebody can... But I would come in, and I would come in, and it winds up being a very different situation. Not different, but it's like it's uh you're in another country traveling with indigenous peoples who have lived there for thousands of years carrying on a traditional traditional life practice of theirs and you witness them go and kill a monkey which they do

and would be doing in the absence of a camera and you're present for that and then they prepare the monkey and you're served some monkey and you eat the monkey with them and um it's like someone could come and say he ate a monkey or you come be like well let's look at the the context right now yeah in which it was done but sure right sure man um it wasn't lost on me that that was risque is the word it wasn't lost on me that it's like a potentially hot issue but if the context was frat boys being like hey i'll bet you a buck to eat that monkey like shooting monkeys out of a zoo it's like it's just a very different right it's just different so yeah you're if you if you go by the the test and this is a thing i hear from people all the

time where like well what if someone just drops in what What are they going to see? I'm like, okay, if you're the kind of person that just drops in and plucks seconds out of its broader context, you're more likely to find things that are upsetting to you than if you're the kind of person who comes in and takes those seconds and then sets them in their proper place right which is why in our guidelines we talk about um if you know we you can hunt lions you know it's legal but we always recommend you you need to tell the story you need to tell the conservation story or elephants or things like because it's it's controversial and. And then yes, if you take, if you take a sliver of that content, you can make it look really, really bad when in the, in the big picture, you know, we had, um, Jenna Waller from Skullbound on Sportsman's Channel was getting harassed about a show she did. She, and she took, it was, uh, some, some sort of, um, uh, antelope in Africa. Her whole episode was about the preservation of hyenas. If you watch that,

I mean, yes, they hunted, they hunted plains game and she shot some sort of ant, like an impala, I think it was. But that whole, whoever complained about it and they were anti-hunters, and that's probably my concluder that I want to talk about. They ignore all the good, and they just focus on that one little sliver. And I think one of my concluders is that our sport is controversial to many people. And the Cecil the Lion incident and that, I think that moved a lot of people off of neutral, maybe towards the negative. Sure. off of neutral, maybe towards the negative. And, you know, as sportsmen, we have a huge responsibility to, you know, you're not going to, you're not going to, you know, we're not going to engage with PETA and convince them that what we're doing is right. But we do need to make sure that

when someone does drop in, what they see on our networks is they might not participate in it, but they should think that, well, yeah, I understand that. And we're working on our networks is they might not participate in it but they should think that well yeah i understand that and and we're we're working on our conservation summit conservation initiatives a lot of it is you know statistics show that if you know hunting for food is highly acceptable like 71 of the general public accepts hunting for food but hunting for trophies and using like trophy hunting it's like 21 percent and it's such just a it's a goofy semantics right it's yeah so my my concluder is um i've seen in those cases and in the in the cases of you know where the producers had issues um we tend to do a lot of infighting and like the the anti-hunters they don't need to engage with us because in many

cases we're we're our own worst enemy in those situations and and so as a network we want to try to help be a positive force and bring people together and and educate people about our passion and the good things about hunting and and you know it's it's not just the kill and it's another thing i'll say in our guidelines you know we don't say that you need to shoot big animals or you need to – in fact, we never say that. A 200-inch deer on camera doesn't rate any better than a 130-inch deer that Stan Potts shoots. Is that right? No, it doesn't drive ratings.

I think advertisers want that because they want their products to be associated with that. To seem extra successful. Right, exactly. But we're not focused on that. We the more of the authentic experience in that so you know we just want it'd be nice uh part of my goal and be honest to help people understand that we are actively trying to expand hunting and put our best foot forward and put the best content on tv that we can so that we you know we've all got kids we want them to be able to participate at the same level we are

and part of that is being able to get our message out and it comes with a certain amount of risk yeah yeah on that note you have a pulse on like what's going on in the media and talking about the 80%. Do you guys have an idea of how that 80% engages with the stuff that you're putting out there? Where you sometimes reach them or how they find you or how you're trying to reach them? In terms of reach them with? Just however. If that person drops in, right, and just somehow is randomly on Sportsman's channel,

how does that happen? Do you guys know what that looks like? Or do you guys know other channels or other avenues that somehow engages you and the 80%? Yeah, I mean, in terms of tactics and how to draw viewers to our networks and that, we do our own advertising promotion. Yeah, you mentioned Duck Dynasty, right?

Right. It's very expensive, as you know, to launch a show and to market it properly. In fact, the economies of scale in our industry, you can't spend $30 million on marketing a series. If you did a movie, they'll spend $30, $50, $100 million to market that. So that's why we look at a Duck Dynasty who has this established brand to come in. So yes, that was a big part of it.

And it worked. And same with Deadliest Catch. We also do movies on Outdoor Channel. And Friday nights, Saturday nights, people like to watch movies. So we do the movie. But if you watch a movie on Outdoor Channel, you'll see there's trivia.

We use our hosts to actually have outdoor trivia. We're working on some other things. We want to bring in a new viewer and let them know that this is what we're about. We have other really cool content. So you may have found us via the movie or found us via Deadliest Catch, but look at everything else that's around. Got it. Good?

Yeah, that answered my question. But you did in your notes when we were emailing, you mentioned being an advocate for family hunting and whatnot, and earlier we talked about how we're thinking that it's debatable, right, but what hunter numbers are doing right now what uh what's going on with with you guys that uh like or what do you see even if it's not you guys but what do you see what do you feel like is working the best to bring on new hunters do you kind of want to ask why you're not seeing more squirrel hunting is that yeah the yeah the small game versus the big no it's not my question okay okay um we do have squirrel hunting jackie bushman has a squirrel

hunting competition every year nice oh really yeah airgun it's an airgun competition into that yeah but you know what i mean like there's probably a lot of people doing a lot of different things to bring in more hunters to grow the sport and you probably get to kind of see all of it is there something you can point out that you say man that seems to really be working well you know we do we use all of our social media channels and all of our um our print and digital channels to to put the best foot forward for hunting and and bringing kids hunting and that and our ceo he's he advocates to producers to push more of that in your show but we by showing images and um and

really airing hunts that help people understand how they can participate i i have um had an interesting conversation with a guy and i won't say what state he's from because i don't want to i don't want to blow his cover but we were talking about hunting numbers and using licenses as a measure for participation. And what he explained was through contacts with wardens, they said in major metropolitan areas, upwards of 50% of anglers don't buy a license. They just don't, right? But those anglers are buying bait, and they're buying rods and reels and tackle, and they're participating. They're just not buying a leisure. So because of that, they felt in this state, because he worked with the DNR, and it wasn't Montana.

It wasn't Michigan, just so you know. But they felt that. You narrowed down to 48 now. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to get him in trouble. So the numbers of anglers is underreported. Hunting on the other side of the coin, there are like 27 states that are one buck only, but you can party hunt. So guys are buying tags for their wives, their daughter, or their mother, so they can have extra buck tags in their camp, essentially.

But those women aren't participating necessarily. Obviously, some of them are. So they're not buying bows. These guys were doing research on why more people aren't buying crossbows and compound bows is what they were researching. And that was part of it. It was the women are not actually, and so we say, well, look at the number of women who are buying licenses. Well, not a hundred. I'm not saying

that it's like 90% aren't participating. I know there are more women participating in hunting than previously, but they think it's overstated because of that. And the states don't want to do anything about it because they might lose upwards of $500,000 in license sales if they change the rules. And then they lose federal matching funds. So they're kind of – So it's tough to say, oh, you know, there's only 10 million hunters. Well, maybe there is or maybe there's not. But we know it's not as acceptable now. And with social media and some of the other just communication tools that are available,

the Cecil the Lion thing couldn't have happened 15 years ago because that campaign would not have been able to be sustained by the anti-hunters for 30 days. Yeah, the distribution channel wasn't there. Wasn't there, right. So now it's... And you couldn't have popularized the image right i mean we've always had images that have come and we've always had images that have come and and you know and really captured the american imagination and were widely distributed and very

impactful but it just happens in lightning speed and it happens more often right yeah got anything else you want to add yannis no that does it for me you're liking them golf shirts man when you're traveling this is my only one makes you feel like you're uh makes you feel like you're you're cool and comfortable and but but still professional that's your is that is that your feeling? Yeah, exactly. Did you get attacked by a bear or something? It's got claw marks on its leg. It does look like that, doesn't it? When it happened, I was thinking that.

Look at that. Got scratched up by a bear. But I was running through the forest. It's this new, if you're not extreme enough, there's this new thing I came up with called game trail running. So if just trail running is not cool enough up with called uh game trail running so if just trail running is not cool enough you can do game trail running or more extreme than that is no trail running so when the game trail disappears just keep running off through the woods at this moment

i actually wasn't running i was probably just like hiking uphill um heaving trying to get my breath back and yell i stepped on a log that had no more log left in it and just gave out and scratched up my leg. Would have been cooler if you said, yeah, I got attacked by a bear. While running. And you outran him. I have one golf shirt that I just wore the other day

for my 10th wedding anniversary. And I've had that one golf shirt for forever. And it's like if something special happens during the warm months, had that one golf shirt for forever. If something special happens during the warm months, I wear that golf shirt. It's got a lot of holes in it now. That's kind of why I'm curious about your golf shirt. Moth got you?

Just time. It's funny. Time destroys all. I brought you guys golf shirts as a gift. Really? I'm not even lying. So when I hit my 20th anniversary, I'm putting that bad boy on? Are these known as golf shirts?

I always called them polo shirts. Because I think everybody, when we were kids. When I see a shirt, to be frank, when I see a shirt like that, I think that that person likes the golf. Polo shirt. That's what a polo shirt is? Well, because it used to, like, that short sleeve. No, it's a polo shirt if it's got long sleeves.

Don't they wear long sleeves? No, it's a rugby shirt. You're right. That's a polo shirt? But a polo shirt because it's like Kleenex is a tissue. Right, it was Ralph Lauren. It's a polo shirt because Ralph Lauren had the little Polo dude on it. Not because I actually wore them.

I'll sort it out later. Do my own research, thank you. I'll sort this one out after the show. He does have a trout on there, and it's clearly Patagonia, so I don't think that's a golf shirt. I am going to go have an arnold palmer here after this podcast is over to quench my thirst all right well mitch petrie uh thank you very much for coming on the show thanks for having me

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