Local hunters are gaining celebrity status as they prepare to debut their first series on national television.
After months of filming, the hunting group Coyote Country, which includes Bonnyville's Leo and Susan Paquin, is just days away from being on air. Along with fellow team members Martin Tailleur and Mitch Visser, as the winners of The Search they were given the opportunity to shoot 13-episodes to be shown on WildTV.
“To see it all come together, it was like ‘wow, we did that,'” said Leo, noting that their episodes will showcase hunts throughout the province.
“All of the footage was filmed within Alberta, but we tried to cover different part of the province. We hunted big horn sheep in the Rocky Mountains near Grande Cache, and hunted down in Lethbridge. We tried to cover all areas of Alberta while getting a diversity of animals.”
Despite their name, only five of the 13 episodes are actually coyote hunts. The remainder capture the group after wood bison, big horned sheep, black bear, ring neck pheasants, and even sturgeon in the North Saskatchewan River.
“For me, (the highlight) would be my whitetail hunt that I filmed by myself. It actually happened to be my first big game animal and using a bow. Having to film and capture everything while hunting by myself was quite a challenge,” said Susan. “It was quite exciting and I'm happy to have accomplished that. It should be a very good memory.”
The journey to realizing their dream of having Coyote Country as a television show started back in 2014. After submitting a video of their hunts to the producer of The Search, in July they were notified that they made the cut.
From there, Coyote Country and eight other hunting groups from across North America were show on Wild TV's show for viewers to vote on. Thanks to the overwhelming support of their fans in the Lakeland, the local group was victorious.
Starting out with a spring bear hunt in 2015, and starting up again in late August that year, they have been hard at work creating a Coyote Country TV show.
The group of four have completed all of the filming themselves, as well as 90 per cent of the editing, only hiring a company to put the finishing touches on the footage.
“What was shocking was when you sit down after hunting season and start doing the editing. We didn't keep track of every hour, but we easily spent over 500 hours of editing on the 13 episodes,” said Leo.
He added, “The editing part is very time consuming, but at the end it's rewarding because you're trying to put a story together in each of the episodes. It's more than just trying to film a hunt, you're trying to put a story together.”
Coyote Country will debut on WildTV on June 28 at 1:30 a.m., July 1 at 10:30 p.m., and July 3 at 5 a.m.
Pleased to see their hard work come to fruition, the members of Coyote Country are anxious to see what response will be like – but they're not the ones who are most excited.
“I think some of our family is much more excited that us. Our parents are pretty excited. It's not so much about being on TV for me, it's about getting the story out there and showing what we do in the field,” expressed Leo.
Now that it's all said and done, Coyote Country is glad have finally reached their goal of having their own TV show. Moving forward, they're not exactly sure what the future holds, but they're excited to see what comes next.
“It was exciting; it's definitely something you could put a notch that you've done it,” said Susan.
Leo added, “I think we're just going to take it in little steps for now. We've been approached a few times now by a U.S. network so we're currently looking for sponsorship on that possibility. This would be for 2017, so we'll see how well we're received during our first season in Canada and go from there.”
For more information on Coyote Country, go to www.coyotecountry.ca.
