Clayton and I have returned from the last leg of the Campbell Outdoor Challenge: Top Outdoor Producer. It was seriously the craziest week of hunting and filming in my life. Here’s a rundown of a typical day…
Wake up a 4:30ish and hunt the morning. Mid-Day get down and complete production elements. Hunt the evening. Then return to the lodge to eat dinner, shoot interviews for the challenge, and film results for the challenge. Last we would shoot more production shots if we needed or started to comb through our best shots of the day. This was a long process to try and pick what the judges would like. It usually took a couple of hours. Notice I still haven’t mentioned sleeping yet and this is where it gets interesting. The first 3 days we got maybe 4 hours of sleep each night which isn’t a whole lot in my books! Then things got even more intense the last 4 days of the challenge with teams wanting to win so bad. On average during the last four days of the challenge we got 1.5 hours of sleep. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We pushed ourselves to limits I didn’t think were possible and basically didn’t sleep. We did get a few cat naps in here and there while on the stand but nothing that amounted to anything because the one opportunity we were looking for could happen at any second.
Here’s what happened on the hunt…Clayton hunted the first four days of the challenge with a bow. We saw several shooters but never had an opportunity to let an arrow fly. The last three days of the challenge consisted of gun hunting so I packed in my Poppa’s muzzleloader. My only opportunity occurred on the very last night of the challenge when a big ol’ 8 point decided to run by our tower blind. It was such a relief to get a buck on the last day. It was certainly a week to remember and Clayton and I feel very blessed for the opportunity to hunt with Campbell Illiniois Whitetails and to participate in the Campbell Outdoor Challenge.
