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Check out my all women’s hunt with “It’s a Calling Outfitters LLC”.

Written by Serr Her. 1/24/2021

As the Executive Producer for Sheila Vue Outdoors I get the unique opportunity to make creative decisions alongside Sheila and join her in her adventures to support, film, edit, and produce each episode.

Every episode has its own challenges and learning lessons. Maybe one of these days Sheila and I can share some behind the scenes videos with you all, so that you can see the challenges of filming in the outdoors. In my opinion the greatest challenge is trying to develop good content with the unpredictability of mother nature.

Those of you who have watched the “Girls’ Guided Goose Hunt” episode on YouTube, have probably noticed that there were a lot of technical difficulties. I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on this hunt and some the challenges I faced, in hopes to help you avoid similar issues in your outdoors filming adventures. Here’s what went wrong and three lessons I walked away with:

Background On This Hunt

Jorge from “It’s a Calling Outfitters LLC” reached out to Sheila saying that their team would like to host an all-women’s hunt and wanted to see if Sheila would be able to coordinate that. It’s A Calling Outfitters is owned by brothers Andrew Herrera and Isaac Rodriguez, and longtime friend Jorge Leon. They guide hunts for geese, ducks, turkey, and pronghorn in the Fort Morgan area. They are the ultimate professionals and fantastic waterfowl experts who have the desire to educate and promote the great outdoors.

“It’s a Calling Outfitters LLC” has also hosted free hunts for veterans of the armed forces and other non-profit organizations. To book a hunt or for more information on “It’s a Calling Outfitters“, call or email them at: itsacalling3@gmail.com, (970) 370-0538.

Sheila invited Amanda Roe, a fellow huntress that she had met on social media. Amanda works for Kifaru International, one of the best hunting gear companies in the world and they also have a great podcast (kifarucast) hosted by owner Aron Snyder. Did I mention it’s a Colorado based company? The other huntress who Sheila invited was my good friend’s daughter and youth hunter, Cynthia Herr.

Neither Cynthia nor Amanda had waterfowl hunted prior to this trip, in fact, Cynthia had never shot a shotgun prior to this hunt. This was not the ideal situation to teach a youth hunter waterfowl hunting ethics, rules, safety, techniques, and how to load and shoot her shotgun, but we did the best we could under the circumstances. My responsibility would include filming and producing this episode while still making sure Cynthia was comfortable with everything that was happening.

Realizing that the girls were new to waterfowl hunting (other than Sheila), Isaac, our guide decided to not call a lot of shots other more experienced hunters might have taken and gave Cynthia every opportunity to shoot first.

What Went Wrong: Equipment Failure

I didn’t bring enough camera gear because I didn’t account for the situation until we were out in the field. I only had my Panasonic GH4 with a 12-35 mm lens and a 40 to 100 mm lens, and two GoPros. Hindsight being 2020, I should have had another camera on a tripod facing the hunters and more GoPros set at different angles within the spread and in the landing zone.

Having one GoPro on Sheila and the other one put in the spread, I quickly noticed that the cold was killing all of the batteries and external battery chargers extremely quickly, and also led to connection issues via wifi from my phone to the GoPros.

What Went Wrong 2.0: Mother Nature

The cold was not the only mother nature element making things hard, but the geese themselves were making things very hard. Even though the wind was consistent, the birds that day just were not doing what they were supposed to. When the geese came down, they were circling by the hundreds and circling clockwise and counterclockwise, so it was hard to find just a few to focus my camera on and track until the birds were literally in our face. Usually, geese land into the wind and into the spread but these birds were not willing to follow the rules. Part of this learning process is just adapting to and making up my decision quick on what I wanted to shoot and capture.

When it wasn’t the cold, or the birds, it was the sun that created problems. Those of you who have hunted geese know that they have very good eyes and are very skittish to the smallest of things including a shiny glare. I was also really worried about my gear glaring back at the birds and often had to tuck my camera in and face it west in the morning and east in the evening. As the day went on I quickly learned that the geese are smart and they care, but when you have hundreds of decoys hiding you, those little things aren’t going to matter as much, so long as you’re not shining like a mirror out there.

I was also trying my best to protect my eyes and the camera display from the sun glare which were impairing my vision, but that’s no excuse, gotta get better equipment for displays and eyepaint and non glare amber sunglasses for the hunt.

And of course as soon as the sun was no longer a problem the wind then presented its own problem. The wind blew pretty consistently all day long and made for recording audio near impossible. Even with lavalier mics connected to the RODE Wireless GO and a dead cat on my RODE boom mic, the wind was just ripping through the equipment. I underestimated how much the wind would affect the final product and overestimated my dead cat and wireless lapels’ ability to filter that wind.

What Went Wrong: Trying To Do Too Much At One Time

Going out with a youth hunter is great – you get to see the joy they have when they get their first kill, you get to teach the future generations of our great sport, and they bring an energy and joy to the group that most veteran hunters lost years ago. But trying to man camera gear with one eye while keeping another eye on Cynthia was not fair to her nor fair to the production of Sheila Vue Outdoors. Cynthia did so good seeing the tough learning curve we had given her.

Sheila knows that I love fishing and hunting too, and I often get caught between the impossible decision of choosing to participate in the hunting and fishing or just focusing on filming. This time, I had my gun as a backup, but my focus wasn’t on trying to film and hunt simultaneously, but instead, I was trying to teach and watch Cynthia while trying to film at the same time, which just didn’t work. 

Three Lessons to take away from this trip:

1.       Always bring more camera gear than you need. I’ve gotten comfortable with bringing fewer amounts of gear and using just three or four cameras to film SVO. This makes hauling gear in the outdoors lighter and easier and less risk of damaging or losing all or the majority of my equipment. But, at the same time that’s why we have insurance. By not bringing all of my gear, I missed out on a lot of great shots I could have taken. It doesn’t hurt to bring the gear and leave it in the truck if I don’t use it, and that should be true for you as well. Make sure you practice with and maximize your assets and don’t be afraid to use your gear.

2.       Be prepared for the craziness of mother nature. You can’t control mother nature, but the things you can control in the elements make sure you do. I needed to be more decisive and I needed to trust my knowledge. The geese probably wouldn’t be able to pinpoint my camera gear in those hundreds of decoys if they didn’t notice four adults and a youth laying out there in ghost blinds. I needed to face the camera and microphones in a direction in which the wind isn’t going to blow directly into the microphones. And I needed to bring enough batteries and battery chargers to ensure I could film the entire hunt.

3.       Don’t try and do too many things at once. I should have taught Cynthia the basics and continued to remind her throughout the hunt and just trust her to Isaac, our guide. Once Isaac took over helping Cynthia, we were able to really concentrate on capturing more on filming and Cynthia was able to have more fun hunting. When I don’t stretch my bandwidth too thin I can actually do a lot of amazing things, it just takes my full attention and focus.

Was this hunt a failure because of these hiccups? Absolutely not. The girls all got to witness geese in their face for the first time and hopefully not their last time. We got all three girls their first geese ever – a youth hunter, a new waterfowl hunter, and the host of the show. We met some great guys that run a solid outfitting operation. And last but not least, we walked away with memories of an amazing experience and that’s what this is really about. At the moment, SVO is not going to be the most professional production you’ll see on the internet, but it will definitely be a production full of passion and love for the outdoors, and we accomplished those things on that day. As for myself, I didn’t go home with a goose but I did go home with some great lessons that will help ensure that future productions are better.