John O'Dell - Spring 2009 Update

Well it’s been a busy spring so far. Dave and I were lucky enough to be invited to go down to sunny South Florida in late March to hunt Osceola turkeys with our good friend Scott Crippen who owns White’s Tackle in Fort Pierce FL. Having hunted with Scott in the past I knew that Dave and I were going to have a fun time in FL and we were in for a great hunt! Well the hunt was very successful with Dave and I both harvesting great turkeys and capturing some good video along with some great memories. My Osceola was actually my best one so far. We are already planning to head back down south next spring for some more Osceola hunting with Scott. For more details on the hunt check out the March section of the journal page.

Following our turkey hunt in South FL I took the family on our annual pilgrimage to the Sunshine State for spring break in Mid April. We were headed to beautiful Fort Myers Beach. We really look forward to this trip every year as Suzy, the kids, and I get to spend lots of time together looking for shells, swimming in the ocean/pool by the ocean, and fishing off the beach. This year was one to remember for great fishing as Madison caught her first ever slot snook at 28.5” and Jacob caught his first snook ever which we released right after this photo was taken. We caught 14 snook total as well as many other species of fish including a giant sting ray. We saw lots of dolphins and just had a great time relaxing and hanging out together on the beach.

May has finally arrived and Dave have just returned from a trip to hunt with our good friend James Coppedge of Pack-n-horns Outfitters in New Mexico. He and Curt Richey had a great turkey hunt with James and most importantly they saw and filmed lots of mule deer and elk. They also found some nice sheds. Dave and I both have NM tags for mule deer and elk this year to hunt with James so to say that we are pumped for this fall is a huge understatement!

On May 2nd I was finally able to do some more turkey hunting and Dave had done his homework. He took me to one of our favorite farms and long story shot even though the toms were pretty henned up I was able to harvest a giant gobbler that was just less than 28 lbs and had 1.5” spurs. The giant gobbler was a true movie star and made for a very memorable hunt. I have been extremely fortunate this year in that I have only turkey hunted two mornings and I have been able to take two turkeys with 1.5” or better spurs!
In two weeks we are headed to Central FL for a hunt to spot and stalk wild hogs with our PSE’s for an upcoming episode of Bow Madness. Rick Malik, Dave Reisner, and I will be hunting with our good friend Bobby Mathews. The ranch that we will be hunting is truly incredible and we are all looking forward to the hunt.

Until next time safe hunting and take care!

John

Mark & Terry Drury - Commercials & Radio Ints

Hey Everybody,

Hope all is well! Hopefully those turkeys are working better for you guys then they have been for us. It has been a tough couple of weeks in our Missouri Turkey Camp. Rainy, windy weather has really cramped our style this spring! We have managed to get a few birds along the way, but it has been pretty tough!

Well, we wanted to send out an update and let everyone know what we have been up to the last month or so. When turkey season rolls around it always seems as though we end up shooting a couple of commercial spots for our sponsors during this time as well. It is really good timing because everyday in Missouri the season ends at 1 pm so we can shoot for the remainder of the day. We had a Mossy Oak spot, an Energizer spot and a few misc. items for Scent Blocker and Bow Madness to shoot.

This year we have a brand new sponsor in Energizer Night Strike Lights and Energizer Lithium Batteries. We are very excited to be teamed up with them and they have a pretty spectacular product hitting the shelves this summer around the end of July. They asked us to shoot a commercial for them to air inside our show. It was a big deal for us and we wanted to make sure and produce it right so we rented a production truck from a local company out of St. Louis and two of the editors drove it up to the farm to get ready for the shoot!

Once they showed up we knew that the weather probably wasn't going to cooperate with our plans of shooting it on Monday and Tuesday so we set up Sunday afternoon and got ready to shoot once the sun went down. We ended up getting 3 trucks stuck, a trailer and we broke the winch on our Bad Boy Buggie (after the buggy pulled one of the trucks out luckily!). It was so muddy on the property we were shooting on! We were fortunate that Coon Dog, Aaron Bennett and the production crew of Colin Hartin, Mike Johnson and Matt Drury were there to help get everything ready.

This shoot was so different for us because we had to film a night scene, but yet light it well enough that you could see the product being showcased. It was neat to see our production crew do their thing and we were very proud of how hard all the guys worked to make it go smoothly! Now it is time for the post production house (Media Grabbers) to put the final touches on it and really make it shine.

Outside of that we also just got done shooting a Reconyx commercial in our studio with good friends Greg Miller and Dan Perez. Jeff Simpson from Fence Post Media came in to shoot the green screens of these guys. Jeff's company does great work and we are looking forward to seeing the finished product on this spot as well!

We have also put up a link to a radio spots that we have done on the American Outdoorsman show (You need itunes to listen). Check it out!

Safe hunting out there! -Mark & Terry Drury