I don’t call myself an expert in filmmaking.

However, I have spent over 10 years reading and learning about cameras and video editing, and at this point have used that knowledge to create hundreds of hunting and hunting-related videos that have garnered millions of views. I’ve worked with big hunting brands and some of the biggest names in hunting.

Here’s how I first got interested in making hunting films:

Right before I moved my young family to New Zealand in August 2009, I bought a Nikon DSLR. I was working with a semi-professional photographer, which rekindled my interest in photography. After I got to New Zealand, I used the Nikon to capture a short clip of my daughter, and I posted it to Facebook. A number of friends commented on the video’s color and depth. This got me interested in the camera as a video camera.

Right around that time, Canon released the 5Diii, the first DSLR to capture full HD video. It was the camera that changed the world, and definitely changed me, even though I never owned one.

Instead, I found Vimeo. And I found myself spending all my spare time knee-deep in New Zealand streams throwing terrestrials to rising trout.

On Vimeo, I found a video called “Trout Is All” by Rolf Nylander, and possibilities exploded in my mind. The video is a montage of a camping and fishing trip. The color is what caught me.

Similarly, when I was a freshman in college, I would frequent the big box bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble. While perusing coffee books one evening, I stumbled upon a photography book by Galen Rowell, and his image of Evolution Lake in the high Sierras also caught me, and set me on a path to chasing the beauty of wild places.

I started buying cameras. I pirated a copy of Final Cut Pro 7 and learned how to edit. I wanted to make fishing videos similar to Rolf Nylander.

I moved back to Arizona a few years later, and well, there’s not a lot of water in the state for fly fishing. But we do have hunting, and hunting was another passion. So I decided to switch my focus to capturing the beauty of the mountains and animals we chase, while telling the stories of our hunts. I was inspired by the work Mammoth Media on the early Heartland Bowhunter seasons, and Jeff Simpson’s Short Season before he and Donnie Vincent split up.

I created The Mountain Project with my friend Chase Christopher. And millions of views later, here we are.

So my goal over the next year is:

To share what I’ve learned about filming and editing hunts to help others learn to tell better hunting stories. I will regularly publish content on cameras, the principles of photography, videography, and filmmaking that I’ve found useful in capturing hunts. I will write about editing video to tell concise stories that keep viewers engaged. And how building a hunting YouTube channel is different than simply making hunting films.