2012 – A Year in Review Part 1

2012 has been a whirlwind year.  Travis and I have been blessed to experience so much throughout the year.  It had it’s ups and downs but was by far the best year of my life.  We put a lot of hard work in this year to make sure we continued to progress as individuals, hunters, filmmakers, photographers, businessmen and generally in all aspects of our lives.  I can say we learned a lot, and we’re looking forward to 2013 as it’s going to be bigger and better than ever!  A lot happened in 2012 and there’s a lot I could say but I’ll try to make it brief and to the point.

2012 started out with us chasing coyotes on the Hi-Line.  Hunting season for the most part was over and the skiing was sub-par so we decided to call for some coyotes with our good friend Tyler McCann.  After two days of poor weather, things finally shaped up and the coyotes started running to the call.  We were able to put 4 on the ground the last day and made a short film called “Valley Gold.”

After that we came back to Missoula and got busy working on putting together our best fishing shots of 2011.  We were able to finish up our 2011 Fish Reel, which I’ll post at the end of Part 2 to compare to this years reel.  After watching all of our footage from the 2011 year we were motivated to go try our luck for the year despite the cold weather.  This would be the earliest I’d fished, and it turned out to be a great day.  My first fish of 2012 was a very respectable brown that broke the tip of my rod.

After that it was mainly school and work.  Of course we had to have some kind of escape and our good friend Jeff Heiskell convinced us to go tackle the Missouri for a day.  It was an awesome float and our first time on the Mo.  We all caught our share of healthy fish and of course the colors during winter/early spring never fail to impress.

We brought the camera along that day and we were able to put together a nice short film that documented the day.

A few short weeks later we were back for two days and this time we found some fish looking up.  We all got our first dry fly takes of the year and all were solid fish.  You can read more about that day here.  Again the camera was in tow and we created the short film “200 East.”

After that we returned home and went back to school.  Between school and work, we had been feverously editing our hunts from 2010 into four episodes.  I’ll spare the details here, but the following links will take you to each episode.  Episode 1 – The Copper Ranch.  Episode 2 – The Haggard Horns Buck.  Episode 3 – The Bull Chase.  Episode 4 – The Bear Creek Bull.

A few weeks later and it was officially spring.  Our mindset had shifted from fishing to hunting and we began to get the bows sighted in and ready for Montana’s spring bear season.

Again we took the time to try to share and spread the stoke and created a short film documenting a few pieces of our what we do to prepare for bear season.  The piece was aptly named “Preparation.”

Soon it was time to lace up the boots and head into the hills in search of bears.  The first four or five days were slow and we failed to find any bears.  It was a good time to get back in shape and retrain the eyes.  Soon the bears began to pop up and we were on them daily.  Travis hadn’t shot a bear before and was ready to make his first year count.  After ten days we finally found a mature bear for Travis to take a shot at.  He was able to put a .300 Win Mag through the vitals and had his first bear on the ground.  You can read the whole story here.

After Travis killed his bear I was on a mission to get one with my bow.  Unfortunately I missed a great chocolate phase black bear and got very close on another couple stalks but was unable to seal the deal.  If you want to see and read more click here.

To wrap up our spring we spent a lot of hours sorting through our all the footage we had accrued during February and March and created a short spring fly fishing film we called “Contrast.”

That led us right into summer and again we were fishing and hunting as usual.  Be checking back for Part 2 which will be up tomorrow and documents our summer and fall of 2012.

-Zack