find, from reruns of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom to the late great Steve Irwin’s Crocodile Hunter; if it had animals and adventure, I was glued to it. Although I loved watching and learning about all the animals, I was becoming equally fascinated with the hosts of these great TV shows. I marveled at how they could capture these amazing encounters on camera and project them directly to my television.
It was in these moments that I had the realization that this was exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be the guy who was catching the animals, talking to the camera, and educating the audience. From those early days, I told my Mom that I wanted to have my own reptile show some day. I wanted to be the one to show other people this incredible world that I had come to love and respect. She smiled and told me, “You can do anything you want… never give up on your dreams.”
So, as I moved onto high school and then college, I began studying the art of filmmaking, particularly from the writing, directing, and producing standpoint. I knew that if I ever wanted to become a host in front of the camera that I first had to understand how the shows were made from behind the camera. I watched my favorite series over and over, studying the scripts, shots, and directing style. I convinced my friends to start producing with me and we began writing our own scripts, which soon led to filming our own test pilots, which are amusingly called “sizzle reels.” For years, we developed our skill sets and honed what we felt was great animal adventure entertainment. Then, when the time was absolutely right, we launched our YouTube channel and Brave Wilderness was born.
Breaking Trail, Dragon Tails, Beyond the Tide, Coyote’s Backyard, and On Location: these shows became the backbone of the Brave Wilderness channel. As I sit here preparing to write my first book chronicling some of my bravest adventures to date, I feel incredibly fortunate to have been given the chance to live this journey.
People often ask, “How did you became an animal adventure show host?” The truth is, I did it by combining the inspiration that I gained from my predecessors, a self-taught knowledge of wildlife, and my formal education in filmmaking. Plus some incredible friends and family, a whole lot of trial and error, countless bites, bumps, bruises and the unrelenting belief that I could actually make a living pursuing my own imagination! I truly am a living embodiment of the old saying “If you can dream it, you can do it.” It is this belief in one’s self that I hope to pass on to anyone who takes an interest in my story.
To the Coyote Pack…
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. The Brave Wilderness team and I could not do this without you; the reader, the viewer… the member of the pack. You know who you are, and believe me when I say you are an incredibly important part of this team and this journey. It’s an expedition that we are all on together, and right now I am honored and humbled to be the one who is leading the adventure. But you never know, one day it might be you who is writing a book just like this, born from the inspiration you found in our work, as we continue to bring animal education and entertainment to the world through Brave Wilderness.
Thank you for reading, you have my promise that every chapter is going to be an action-packed animal adventure!
Be Brave, Stay Wild!
Coyote
A ll great stories start at the beginning, and in this case our beginning happens to be on a warm summer evening when I was eight years old. They call this time of day “golden hour” because as the sun cascades through the tree branches, it breaks apart into warm light, illuminating the meadow grasses and causing the landscape to radiate a beautiful golden hue. Golden hour is the perfect time of day to encounter animals.
As I yanked on my rubber muck boots and cut through the glowing grasses, my stride was fixed on quickly making it down to the lake. Welcome to my backyard. Now keep in mind, my backyard was no ordinary backyard with a mowed lawn, a picket fence, and a sand box. My backyard was an epic expanse of untamed wilderness composed of endless forests, rolling meadows, winding creeks, and one enormous lake at the center of it all.
Crickets orchestrated my soundtrack, and as I drew closer to the water’s edge, the echoing sound of the evening’s first bullfrogs croaked out with an unmistak-able deep bellow, a surefire sign that the wetland ecosystem was alive with activity. Water snakes skittered along the embankments searching for prey, muskrats breached the surface of the water dancing in the flickering light, and a great blue heron stealthily stalked for fish in the shallows. I stopped at the edge of the lake as my boots squished into the primordial mud and I closed my eyes. I felt a moment of peace as I connected with the wild and whispered to myself.
“Let today… be the day… that I am brave enough to face The Dragon.”
The Dragon. As an eight-year-old boy, nothing captures your imagination more than believing that dragons DO EXIST and that you have the bravery deep down inside to actually capture one. Capture a dragon? Wait a minute. Capture… a DRAGON? Yes, you heard me right.
Follow me for a moment – close your eyes, and as you leave your human body to become one with nature, pretend that you are a fish or a frog. Now dive beneath the water’s surface and into the aquatic world of this giant lake. You are swimming under the weed beds and dodging around lily pad stems through a complicated maze of unknown wonders. Then, all of a sudden you round an old rotting log on the basin of the lake and WHAM! In a flash of power your world blooms white – and before you even know what has happened, you have been eaten by a Snapping Turtle!
Now open your eyes. Phew! Good thing you are still human!
These reptiles, the Common Snapping Turtles, are armed with a massive bone-crushing beak and razor-sharp claws, defended with a gnarled algae-covered shell and a long, spiked tail, and prehistorically painted with camouflage that makes them almost invisible to the untrained eye. They are without question the last true dragons that call our wetlands home, and today I was going to capture one… the biggest one in this lake… or at least that is what I told myself as I snapped back into reality and realized that my boots had sunk nearly knee-deep in the mud!
“Dang! Stuck again!”
I toppled backwards butt-first and landed on the embankment, and after pulling with all my might, I finally freed my feet enough to stand up. Clunky start, but I dusted myself off and slowly began to creep along the edge of the lake.
Shadows and stealth are what make the snapping turtle so lethal. You see, if you’re a member of an unsuspecting prey species and you are being hunted by a predator who knows how to use the shadows to its advantage… there is a good chance you will become a meal. How does that work, you ask? Well, most prey species feed under the illumination of light, while the shadows keep the predators hidden, allowing them to stalk up stealthily below their prey while staying completely unnoticed. Then as soon as the unsuspecting target gets close to the edge, where the shadows meet the light… SNAAAAP! Dinner is served.
In this scenario, I considered myself the predator and the snapping turtle my prey. Trust me when I say that only an eight-year-old Coyote would have such a thought. Looking back at this experience now, I am pretty sure I was nowhere near predator status in these early adventures. However, the goal was to use golden hour to my advantage