Big Deer, MT

I just got back from filming a coyote hunt out in Eastern Montana. The show is called "Big Deer." Word to the wise - Don't shoot coyotes out of the car! This is what happens.  If you look through the scope, but don't see where the barrel is pointed, you might just shoot your mirror out.

I had about a nine hour drive to get out there and on the way realized that this is one of the first shows I've done in Montana. Crazy!!! I have to admit, it's awesome staying in Montana for a hunting show. Even though it was eastern Montana it was great terrain and good people. I always thought Eastern Montana was flat, but it still has some pretty gnarly terrain, and our guides hiked our butts off.

After about 10 minutes in our first location we had a coyote sneak up on us 50 yards away. They didn't wait for me to give them the "OK" to shoot and fired right away. I was lucky and got the camera on the coyote just in time. The rest of the trip we hiked all over the place looking for coyotes and saw several, but they were either too far away or the guides missed the shot. We did have good weather and it was great getting out and hiking the Montana mountains.

I filmed most of the show on the Canon 5d Mark II, which worked out really well. I also lugged around a sony camera with a long lens for filming the coyotes. It was tough moving the audio gear back and forth between the cameras, so I just ended up running both cameras most of the time. That way I had great audio on at least one of the cameras.
The last day we finally had another coyote encounter. It made for a really long day because we were up at 4:30am, hunted until around 1pm, and then I had a nine hour drive back to Missoula. I got back just in time for another shoot to start at eight in the morning.

The next shoot is a feature film called "Bella Vista". It should be a good change from hunting shows and most of it is shot in Missoula : )