Pretty cool coming from a small town like mine....
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The shooters' shooters
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Matt Bullins (left) videoed a hunt by Josh Greene last November. Greene returned the favor on Bullins' turkey hunt in April. Both hunts will air on The Outdoor Channel.
By Craig Worrell
Taking down the perfect buck or bagging the perfect turkey isn"t easy in the best of circumstances. The degree of difficulty increases greatly with the use of a bow.
Just try doing it in front of a national television audience.
Matt Bullins and Josh Greene did. Or will. Sort of.
Bullins, a 26-year-old state probation and parole officer from *****, and Greene, a 23-year-old HVAC technician from ******, N.C., will have the chance to do so in the coming weeks as a couple of their successful hunts " hunts that they filmed for each other " will air on a new series on The Outdoor Channel.
"Bow Madness," hosted by Drury Outdoors founders Mark and Terry Drury, will include a special segment called "I Shot It With My PSE," in which amateur videographers" hunts are featured. Twelve finalists from across the country were chosen out of a field of entries, and one entry will be featured each week. Viewers can vote online for their favorite and on the 13th week, a winner will be named and will win a prize package worth $10,000.
The videos can be viewed and voted on by logging on to
www.druryoutdoors.com, navigating to the Bow Madness page, then following the link to the I Shot It With My PSE page. The two also have a My Space page with a link to the videos.
That either Bullins" or Greene"s video was chosen as a finalist is pretty remarkable in itself. That each filmed the other"s harvest is downright extraordinary.
"We hunt nonstop," Bullins said. "It"s a lot of time and work. This was the fourth year trying to get on something like this, and this was the first time we"ve been chosen for anything. This is the best chance we"ve had."
Greene"s video, a deer hunt last November in Ohio, will air in week 3 (July 17 at 2 p.m. and July 18 at 10 p.m.). By Bullins" own admission it was a better hunt than his own, with a big buck and plenty of emotion.
Bullins" segment, a turkey hunt in Alleghany County in April, will appear in week 8 (Aug. 20 at 2 p.m. and Aug. 21 at 10 p.m.).
Bullins" hunt was a better edit, bowhunting turkey on the ground with no blind, and filming it.
"We had to edit everything," Bullins said. "They took a five-minute DVD, and the staff chose the 12 they wanted to be on the show and the contacted us to let us know. Fortunately we were both lucky enough to make it."
One would think that the hunter would have the more difficult of the two tasks, but Bullins said the cameraman"s job was the tougher of the two.
"It"s very, very hard, what they"re wanting to see," he said. "Different camera angles, sponsorship, as far as the equipment you use, different broadheads, you have to have different shots and angles, the footage has to be what they call 100 percent, it has to be a certain degree to the animal, you do cutaways, it"s very hard. It"s hard in itself just hunting one-on-one but when you add a cameraman to it, and what they"re requiring you to do, top-shelf stuff, it"s hard."
Using a Canon high-definition camera worth upwards of $5,000 helps, as does a top-notch editing process. But the key is having the drive.
"We found a passion for it," said Bullins, who has known Greene for a dozen years. The two have been hunting partners for about seven years. "Hunting is great, and we spent a lot of time together in the same section of the woods, and we decided to step it up a notch, see if we could go this route. We just can"t get enough of it, trying to come up with new ideas, new camera angles, new patterns, just come up with something nobody else has seen. We"ll keep doing it, whether we win or lose. We just love it."
The two aren"t the first area hunters to find themselves on TV, following the footsteps of Chris Ward and Erik Hale, who are pro staffers with Drury Outdoors. Two-time producers of the year, they will have a segment aired on week 7, and it"s a goal the two first-timers hope to achieve.
"If we were to be picked up by a pro team, like Drury or someone else, then we could do it professionally," Bullins said, "but right new we"re just amateurs. We"ve always had the goal of making it professionally, whether we get any free stuff or win anything or not, to be pro staff members was our goal. We"re one step closer than we were."
Should they make it that far, they hopefully will have the amateur mistakes for the most part behind them.
"You mess up all the time," Bullins admitted. "You double-punch the record button, take a bad shot angle, too much sunlight, not enough, too blurry, it"s so difficult to do. You spook [the game] all the time. Of course Josh always claims it"s my fault if that happens. It looks so easy, videoing a hunt, but it"s so tough to do."
No kidding. The hunter has got to make the shot count, because nobody"s going to give you a re-take. But the cameraman controls the hunt. The cameraman has to have the right angle, capture the right look. He has to consider the lighting, how the shot will appear onscreen. Heck, he even tells the shooter when to let fly.
"If the cameraman isn"t able to get it on video, you"ve just got to pass it up," Bullins said. "If you see a record deer or turkey and the cameraman doesn"t have it, you"ve just got to let it go. You may never see it again, but with video, that"s the deal."
That"s happened to Bullins and Greene more than once, passing up a good opportunity to kill a nice buck just because they couldn"t get it on video.
Good thing this show isn"t live.
Only thing is, The guy at the PSE shop that i always talk about on here.... this will all go to his head...LOL which is why I dont shop there.
I can here him now, " you have to shoot PSE to get on TV...."
Article from my Local newspaper....
