#122 Donnie Vincent - Driven By Nature
Donnie Vincent - Explorer, Biologist, Conservationist, Sportsman, Film Creator.
Driven by nature, Donnie has consistently let the outdoors and his passion for adventure be the compass for his life. The wide-open expanses of the world’s most remote territories dominate his thoughts and conversations. Deep in the heart of the wildest of terrain is where Donnie thrives. On his expeditions into remote wilds, in the lands where seemingly no one lives, he finds a wilderness and peacefulness that is all his own. The premier example of explorer, biologist, conservationist, and sportsman, Donnie takes a wider view of the topics he tackles while in the field, because to him, this is all a story worth telling. A story of ancestral heritage, native respect and the desire to live strongly, empowering us all to open our minds to the bigger picture and inspiring us to find our own adventure. Tune in as Donnie Vincent joins Bobby Marshall to discuss wildlife conservation, hunting shows, animal behavior, wildlife, cinematography, Colorado, and much more.
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Donnie Vincent - Driven By Nature
Our guest for this episode has been a bucket list guest for me since day one of starting the show. It was an honor and privilege to have Donnie Vincent in the studio. This was a great conversation. I hold Donnie in the hunting community in the highest regard of how he portrays hunting through his filmmaking, his studies in wildlife biology and much more. Donnie is an amazing human doing amazing things. I enjoyed spending a little bit of time with him. Enjoy the conversation.
Welcome to Colorado. Thank you for joining us and making the drive. You drove across half the damn state pretty much.
The landscape changed. It's crazy how much the landscape can change.
It's pretty wild. What blows me away and you being a biologist, you probably understand it, is the number of species that change from the plains to mountain goats. If you drive another 45 minutes from where you're staying, you're here. If you drive another 45 minutes, you're at 14,000 feet. In the summer, you can drive that far.
It’s crazy. I was telling you and texting you that on this trip, I have my seven-year-old with me. The Jeep that we rented gave us wind alerts because where we were, it was blowing 65. It was something like that. It was cool. We saw some interesting weather phenomena when we were driving.
Colorado is great for it.
It was insane. We were driving through tornadoes but they weren't tornadoes. They were dust devils but the size of skyscrapers. They were massive dust devils. It was cool to see. It was windy and the Jeep was giving us wind warnings. It was giving us avalanche warnings. I was messing with him a little bit because where we were was yellow grass and rattlesnakes as far as the eye can see. It was cattle, yellow grass, sagebrush and tumbleweed as far as you can see. I was telling him, “Avalanches, that's not going to be good.” I'm looking around and I see him looking around. He's like, “Where is the snow going to come from?”
It could be a mountain. You might catch a glimpse of it from that far.
He kept twisting around back and forth like, “Where are the avalanches going to come from?” It was good. I appreciate the offer. I enjoy doing shows with people. I enjoy talking, telling my story, telling stories in general and meeting new people. I enjoy doing shows with people the 1st time but it seems like I enjoy doing shows with people the 2nd time, 3rd time and things like that.
That's what I've figured out here. When I started this thing, I wanted it to be a community so I try to only vet my guests. You were one of the first people that came to mind when I first started this thing. We're a couple of years in so this is a bucket list episode for me. I know the reason why. I love your approach to the outdoors and portraying its beauty, the cinematography and your approach to showing how you portray hunting. Your values for hunting as well are amazing. Cheers to that.
Thank you.
Since we started the show, we've had multiple guests come back in. We've built this little community where we have recurring guests. It's so cool. The first one is getting to know each other. It turns into the normal episode of, “Where'd you grow up?” It's almost a bit like an interview. You do that 2nd or 3rd one and it's like you're lifelong friends because you build this common bond here. Having a show, for me and I beat this up all the time, is the genuine way to sit down and have a conversation unless you're in the middle of the backcountry. I don't have these conversations other than with my hunting buddies or people that I've had a show with. There are so many interruptions and distractions. It's the modern world that we're living in.
Podcasting is a genuine way to sit down and have a conversation these days, unless you're in the middle of the backcountry.
I said this to you before we started and I believe this. Doing this should be illegal unless they’re face-to-face. I do most of mine by Zoom or whatever is popular. There’s Google. They're terrible. It's tough. I see the person through the screen and wonder, “Are they wearing pants? Is this one of those things where they threw on their white t-shirt or PSE Archery t-shirt to interview me?” They have an antler behind them and it's a wood wall. You have your studio and stuff. This is so much better.
It's cool to walk in here and have a feeling there's a connection. The problem with us, especially doing virtual, is we're up here in the mountains. We have the best internet that money can buy up here but it's not that good, honestly. There’s a little bit of a lag in the connection. We use the most professional platform you can but still, something is missing. Although, I love watching Jack Carr's Danger Close and I caught you on that. He does a good job. The guys at Ironclad do an amazing job. They've worked with some friends of mine and stuff. They're doing it right. That was a great episode or at least it was edited to be great.
They can be good. I've had some good ones. I've had some impromptu ones that are, quite honestly, with a phone. I’ve had ones where the conversations went smoothly because the person asked me questions that it elicited where my mind was going to go to a particular place and found a story that I wanted to tell or hadn't told and did so. I say that it should be illegal unless we're in person but the truth is also that if I had a conversation with Rogan, Tom Brokaw or someone like that in an unprofessional setting, it would probably still be a good conversation. Rogan reached out to me to do his.
Had you been on a podcast prior to that?
I had done a bunch of smaller ones.
That was before 2018.
It was right before all the mess. He reached out to me. He got my cell from someone. He texted me and said, “This is Joe. This is my cell phone. The next time you're in LA, I'd love to have you on the podcast.” I texted him back and said, “I'm never in LA. We should schedule it if you want to do the podcast because me strolling into LA is not going to happen.”
I don't go there unless I have to.
I'm honored. I used to have an agent with William Morris Endeavor. I had a cool experience there. I was doing a bunch of stuff with Discovery and things like that. Those guys would fly me into LA to come to meetings with them and they would pitch different TV shows and stuff for me to do. Over the course of probably two years, I turned every TV show down that they offered me and then they stopped. They said, “If you're going to keep turning them down, then we have to go catch a fish we can fry.”
I grew up in a bow-hunting family that very much has a traditional approach to it. It’s not traditional in the archery sense, even though some of them do traditionally hunt but more about the ethics, using as many of the animals as you can, packing out and making sure the meat stays super clean. It’s caring for something once it happens and also being immersed in the experience. They taught me the experience of it. That's why I connected with you so well and to what you do.
I'm glad that you didn't go down that road. I hate to say it. When I turn on the Sportsman channel, it disgusts me. I cannot watch it. I'm not knocking anybody that's in that space but I can't watch the shows. They feel foreign or fake. Some of these people don't have the same beliefs that I do, which brings me to my next point. We're so divided between hunters and non-hunters. Also, in the hunting community, there's so much criticism that goes on. Here I am being one of those critics.
It's hard not to. We talk about being together and having unity but in anything you do, there's going to be decisiveness. Just because you’re a hunter and someone else is a hunter or allegedly a hunter doesn’t mean that you need to back all of their ethics, their morals and how they go about things. The stuff that WME wanted me to do was with the History Channel, Discovery and that type of stuff, they wanted me to find Bigfoot. I'm not knocking it. I'm sure it'd be fun but every year, I get an email from Alone. Every year, Alone wants me to go on and try to be a contestant. It's very flattering.
In anything you do, there's going to be decisiveness. Just because you're a hunter and someone else is a hunter, or allegedly a hunter, doesn't mean that you need to agree with all of their ethics, morals, and how they go about things.
In one of these projects, Discovery or the History Channel wanted me to live for six months in a place in the Northwest Territories. It's called the Valley of the Headless Men. Don't quote me on this but there are something like 30 murders in this valley in real life. There were people decapitated. They said, “We want you to go and camp in this area for 6 months or 7 months. Would you do that?” I said, “Absolutely.”
I know the math doesn't add up but they said, “Legend has it that there is a half man, half bear and half beast that is decapitating all of these men. Will you go camp?” I said, “Can guys talk to the province up there? Will I be able to kill caribou or Dall sheep to have meat?” They said, “Yes. We'll figure all that stuff out.” I said, “That's fantastic. I'll do it.” They said, “Occasionally, we want an episode to have an engagement and some encounter with this thing.”
It’s a staged encounter.
I'd have to hear a scream at night or find a track that didn't make sense. I was like, “I'm out.” I was like, “I'll go camp there and tell a spooky story every night around the fire and say, ‘I haven't seen anything yet,’ or, “I found a dead moose today that was eviscerated. It looked like a grizzly bear did it but you never can tell.’” I'm willing to go that far but I'm not willing to Blair Witch an entire TV show.
That being by the wayside, fast forward to what you were saying about the Sportsman Channel and the Outdoor Channel, seemingly, I don't have a lot in common and it sounds like you don't either, with a lot of the people that do those shows. Also, those networks put those hunters in a difficult position. I've even met with them. Many times, they have asked me, “How do we get your work on the Outdoor Channel? How do we get you on the Sportsman Channel?” All of my films have aired on both channels a few times.
They’ve done a Friday night movie night where they’ve played The River’s Divide uninterrupted. There were no commercials. They’ve played it in its entirety and then it’ll play all the commercials and stuff afterward. The guy, honestly, from the Outdoor Channel emailed me and said, “I wish more Mondays were like this.” All of the emails that I received from the entire weekend were like, “Please do more of this. Please find more content like this.” He said it was the first Monday he had ever shown up to work and had positive emails.
When I went in there to meet with these guys, the higher-ups looked me in the face and said, “We love your work. We wish you understood and got it. You don't but we wish you did.” One time, I was in a meeting and the guy's like, “We love your work but you don't get it. It's not about hunting, cinematography, story, photos and wardrobe. It's about marketing dollars and commercial dollars.”
Jim Shockey happened to be in there. I don't know Jim personally but I hold Jim in very high regard for who he is and his ethics. The guy has pushed the envelope beyond belief. He’s very well-spoken. He’s a fantastic ambassador. I don't know much about him because we haven't spent any time and space together. This guy pointed at Jim and was like, “He gets it. He’s pushing his economics.”
Whether Jim was part of that conversation or not, that is where the pitfall would come to where they put those guys in a difficult position. It’s because of TV, social media and popularity that a lot of these people that end up on those shows aren't hunters or don't understand what hunting is or what it could be to them. Slowing everything down instead of speeding everything up. Not just going to promote an outfitter.
Because of TV, social media, or popularity, a lot of people who end up on hunting shows aren't really hunters or don't really understand what hunting is.
Not going to kill a deer to drop it off at the butcher to get back in your jacked-up, pick-up and drive to the next hunt. It's breaking that animal down. It's going through all the guts and figuring out, “These are the kidneys. This is what the kidneys look like in a white-tailed deer. This kidney has malformed a little bit. There is a laceration on this deer's liver. Everything looks so perfect and in order.” You can see where my broadhead went in.
It’s truly doing almost an autopsy or a necropsy on this deer and then figuring out the mechanics of this animal and its evolutionary adaptations. It’s having the dried blood on your hands and reliving the morning with a friend and that whole peaceful slowdown. That’s what they’re not afforded to experience in the 22 minutes of filming.
I couldn't agree more with you. That's what makes me connected to your films. It was amazing how I ran across you, honestly, for the first time because I don't follow hunting and stuff. It's always been in my background since I was a super young kid. My family's blue-collar. They would get off of work and hunt. They weren't trying to have hunting shows or any of that, although some of them had some write-ups some magazines and stuff like that and are in Pope and Young and some of these awesome achievements that they've had.
They've been approached by Cabela’s like, “We'll give you X amount of dollars for this mule deer,” and the answer was not. It was like, “This is mine. Even if you build me a replica, I want this one.” That's pretty cool that they've stuck to their roots. One of the places that we've been going to since I was a young boy was Rocky Mountain Specialty Gear with Clums. They've been family friends for a long time. When I moved back to Colorado and walked in, they had this gigantic banner. I can't remember what the company is but you were on the banner.
It’s PSE.
It says Donnie Vincent at the bottom of it. It's on the archery range. I don't know if you've been in there since then. Tom was giving me a lesson that I didn't ask for but I was getting a lesson so I loved it. He's got me dialed in on the shooting too with the whole archery mechanics. That whole side of Tom is great. He is the salt of the earth and a great human being. We’ve had him on the show. I can't wait to have him back. We walked in and I'm like, “If Tom thinks enough of Donnie to have him this gigantic banner taken up half the wall, I better check this guy out.” Maybe River's Divide was the first. Is that the whitetail hunt?
Yes.
That was the first one I saw. Laps went by and somehow, you popped up in a YouTube feed or something. It was Who We Are. Is that the name of the film?
Yes.
I watched that. That was hook line and sinker for me with you. I forgot about the River's Divide. I love that film. I went back and watched it when I figured out that you were coming in. I downloaded a couple of others too that I hadn't seen. The Other Side was amazing.
It’s a bear film.
Was that shown in theaters?
Yeah. It was shown in the premiere. I need to do a better job of this because it was fun. The premiere was in Fort Collins.
I wish I would've gone to that.
There’s a theater/beer pub in Fort Collins. It’s this cool space. It was a standing room only. I didn't even want to walk in the door. I got there and ran into Kyle Nickolite, my director. I was like, “How's it going?” He's like, “It’s packed beyond belief in there.” I was like, “I don't want to go in.” He's like, “I don't know how you're going to do this.”
You need security at that point or something.
We went in there. It was cool. I need to do more theaters. Every time we've played in a theater, it's been standing-room only.
That's so amazing. I would pay to go see your film twice.
I appreciate that.
I don't think I've done that since Happy Gilmore when I was in high school.
That is an excellent film.
I urge you. Whether you're a hunter or not, if you're reading this, at least go watch Who We Are. It's a six-minute film. The cinematography in it is amazing. One of the coolest things is the way that you do these overhead shots. I don't know if they're from a drone or jib.
It’s both. Back then in Who We Are, it's either a jib or me holding onto a guy's belt and hanging him over a cliff. It was 1 of the 2. That was our original drone. It was like, “You hang over and I'll hold onto you. We’ll then pull the whole work back.”
I'm a photographer so I can appreciate cinematography. One of my favorite films of all time is Francis Ford Coppola's Black Stallion. The cinematography in that is so cool in the way that they slow it down where they show the side of the boat and the wave is hitting it. You're like, “What am I looking at here?” It takes you a minute to realize that that's the opener for the film.
The amount of information that you're getting in that frame is crazy.
It’s so graphic and that's a simple shot. That's somebody holding a camera over the front end of the boat as it hits the water. It’s so cool. Your entire films are like that. I love the way that you start River's Divide. There's an overhead shot where you put a camera in the rafters and you back a Toyota pickup or something.
It was a Tacoma.
I'm a Toyota fan. I grew up on those. I still drive a Tundra. That backs in. It's you unloading your gear into this barn and getting set up for the steer hunt. You go through this whole 4-year period in 1.5 hours or however long that film is.
It's under an hour.
The very last shot is that pickup pulling in with Steve in the back. I thought that was so cool. Those little things and nuances that you do in the films are what make me appreciate it. It also shows the other side of hunting. I feel like on the Sportsman Channel, whatever it is or Outdoor Channel, it seems like it's a lot of the perfect scenario. It has kill shots of a 360 bull that was in this area. It’s twenty minutes, cut to tape or whatever it is.
I don't want to spoil anything so I'm not going to say the film. I was watching a film. This hunt wasn't successful at the end of it but it was like, “What I got out of this was I got to spend 40 days in the Arctic Circle. I've seen an amazing country.” I love that approach because not all hunters are successful and I'm one of those.
I ran into this guy one time. I don't remember his name. He was on the Outdoor Channel for years. This is early on in my career. He saw our camera in the airport and he was like, “Are you guys going to film?” He pointed to the other guy he was with and was like, “We're going on our 13th or 14th successful hunt in a row on camera.”
To me, I was like, “I'm sure we'll start a string like that,” but that hasn't been the case at all in the way we go, how we hunt and what we're looking for. If it was shooting any animal, we could be pretty successful at shooting any animal. Filming the way that we do and getting the shots that we do is so time-intensive. It's setting up the shot, visualizing the shot and telling the story. We're trying to figure out the cinematics of it and what the story is going to be.
For instance, when we pulled into the barn for Steve, we have my little Tacoma. We were looking at the whole thing and William Altman who did that shot was like, “For the spatiality of it, why don't I climb up in the rafters, put on a little gorilla arm thing and point the camera straight down? Everything will be parallels.” I was like, “That's great,” so we did that.
We’re trying to film everything in that manner. We’re then circling back around and figuring it out. We didn't know that we were going to hang Steven there and then back in with him and hang him up. That's how it went. The writing and everything are truly who we are, which is why we did that Who We Are piece.
That was for National Geographic. They wanted us to do a TV show for them but they were against hunting. They said, “Why do you want to do a hunting show?” I said, “I don't have to do a hunting show but I would love to do a show with hunters, hunting or tribes. I want to celebrate the original humans of hunters and gatherers. There are still people, plenty of them, that live like this.” Even ranchers and some people like that fall under that.
Especially out here because a lot of them turn into outfitters. It’s a dual purpose. It's a way to keep the ranch afloat because if they were doing it from ranching, it wouldn’t suffice.
Even how they're tending their cows. They're hopping on horseback or whatever they're doing. For instance, I was down in Lamar, Colorado. I saw plenty of ranches in the ranch that I was on raising cattle, in my opinion, the right way. Wild herds were grazing over vast areas but also down there was a stockyard that you couldn't fit another cow on this. They walk on their feces all day.
It's all concrete so they can clean it easier, right?
Yeah. You drive past any of these ranches and it's beautiful. Not only does it look disgusting but it smells disgusting. What I wanted to do a TV show about was humans. I wanted to do some original elements in it. They said, “We don't agree with hunting but will you put together a raw 5, 6 or 7-minute? Don't edit it. We don't care how pretty it is. Will you put together this raw sentiment of why it is that you hunt and then send it over to us?” I said, “That’s great.” We did Who We Are and they were like, “We are never going to release it ever.” We got into an argument about it. Kyle Nickolite is my business partner at SICMANTA.
It's got 2.2 million views. That's amazing.
It's been cool. We sent it to Nat Geo and they weren't into it but everyone else seemed to dig it.
I love it. I've shown it to a few people. As soon as Jeremy walked in the door, I was like, “You got to check this out. Donnie is coming in.”
I appreciate that.
It makes me feel good and confident as a hunter showing this to somebody. If they’re a non-hunter or maybe they didn’t grow up around it or maybe they’re a straight vegan, an animal rights activist or something like that, the first thing that they do is stereotype you as a bloodthirsty killing machine that you’re out there to murder everything. You might as well be a serial killer.
Human beings, if I could draw a line in the sand, we are ridiculous. We are full on Cartoon Network. I don't want to be too judgmental but where we came from prior to agriculture and then where we are post-agriculture and the beliefs that people have or that they think that they have, there are elements of it that are very easy to see. For instance, an animal rights activist. We all love animals.
I'm an animal rights activist in my mind. I don't want those cows standing on a concrete pad in their feces. When they’re slaughtered, they're trucked in a trailer to someplace where they get drugged through their feces to be processed.
It's sad and horrible to see. I had a pit in my stomach every time I drove past that. I crossed the river and a whole herd of cattle was crossing the river with me. It was beautiful. It reminds me of the Old West. There were markers where I was hiking in the original Santa Fe Trail from the late 1800s. There were markers there saying, “You're on the Santa Fe Trail.” The cattle were going and I was thinking about the settlers and how badass these people were with the men, women and children. These people are unbelievable.
When I drive past the feedlot, it makes my guts turn inside out. I wonder, “Who works there? How could you even work there? How can you show up there every day and hold your head high?” It doesn't matter. Who we are as people with dietary concerns and political views and that are pushing all these different agendas drives me insane what we were, who we were and then whom we're becoming. When people are anti-hunters, I think, quite honestly, “The only reason you are here is that somebody that you come from knew how to hunt. Otherwise, your section of the tribe didn't make it. Your DNA didn't make it.”
The only reason you are here is because somebody in your genealogy knew how to hunt. Otherwise, your section of the tribe didn't make it. Your DNA didn't make it.
It’s funny that we segregate off of pigment in our skin. It has nothing more than almost a relationship to do with how close you are to the equator and how far away you move away from the equator to how dark your skin is or how light your skin is. Yet, we've built up all these stereotypes, falsities and things that hold no water at all.
We have the same thing as 10,000 original humans. For the most part, all of them were badasses. They were lean and mean fighting machines that would kill and eat anything that they could get their hands on in a systematic fashion. We have anti-hunters. I almost want to say, “You should maybe hit yourself in the head with a hatchet many times. You owe your life to that of your ancestry who were badasses and went the extra mile to make you.” It's called natural selection or differential reproductive success.
A baby zebra doesn't look back and say, “I hate the fact that we have hooves. I hate the fact that we have manes and we are striped. My uncle over there eats grass on this side of the Serengeti. There's very little grass over there. I can't believe he eats over there. I'm ashamed to be a zebra as he is.” It doesn't make any sense at all in the animal kingdom. We are afforded these opinions only off of being fat, uneducated slobs.
We are provided with medical assistance. If I stab you, an ambulance is going to be here in fifteen minutes. A long time ago, that wasn't the case. You either fixed yourself or bled out. We went on about our lives. We're pampered too. Let's say you had to walk into a house with a serial killer in it. Let's say 2 or 3 are in there. It's pitch black. It's raining outside. You have no tools. You have the shirt on your back and your pants. You have to navigate this house and get out the other side
You have no rules. There are no rules. If one of these guys attacks you, you will bite his anything. You will rip his throat out. You will use your fingernails, your teeth or any manner you can to kill and move past this individual to get out the back door of this house. If you go into that same scenario with multiple police officers and you’re armed and you have lights, guards, Flak vests on and all these protections, you can suddenly have opinions on this whole thing that's going on. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If you had to fight for yourself or fend for yourself and your family, there would be no specialty diets or animal rights activists. There would be none of it. It’s all afforded. You don't have to be a pig about it but it's whatever's available.
If you had to fight and fend for yourself and that of your family, there would be no specialty diets.
I have a theory going down the same path. These theories align. I truly believe that adversity 100% builds bonds. My family grew up poor. There wasn't a whole lot of money. We bonded together to make that happen. I very easily could have said, “I'm not doing that. I'm going to leave and go,” but there was a bond there.
In the hunting that I've done with family members, there is a bond when you get a bull down and you’re like, “We shouldn't have shot this thing. It’s too far back. We got to hustle. We got to phone in some friends,” or something. I don't think that normal people in their day-to-day life that go down to the Shell station, pick up their coffee, go to their cubicle, come home, watch Family Guy or whatever it is, wake up the next day and do that all over again are like, “It’s the weekend. Let's go for a hike.” That's great but there's no adversity there or hardship.
I’m not saying that everybody grows up like this. The majority of the population, if you've traveled around the world, is pretty impoverished compared to America. We are one of the wealthiest. Even the poorest people here are one of the wealthiest. It's pretty amazing that you can go sit on a straight corner with a cardboard sign and make money. You can make a living.
I'm not knocking anybody that chooses to live like that either but many years ago, there was still some serious adversity. It’s not even that many years ago. Think about what people went through during the Great Depression. It's been too long since we've had something like that if you're not putting yourself in your adversity and with those people. That's why firefighters have such a strong bond. They see kids drown. I have personal friends that are firefighters. I come from a firefighter family. I have family members that are in the fire department. They pull up to car accidents. It's not just firefighting. They're always in a group. Those guys have these unbelievable bonds.
I know a lot of former operators, team members and military people. They have that bond. Outdoorsmen have that bond as well. With all my roadie buddies, that's what I went and did. That's how I got to travel and see the world. I was traveling around with rock bands. A lot of people think you're backstage pounding Jack Daniels, hanging out with rock stars and doing blow but it's not. You're working eighteen hours a day, loading trucks and unloading trucks. You might as well be a carny at that point.
The people that are in that industry have sacrificed so much to be in that industry or have a passion for it. There's some suffering that goes on. When you're touring through Europe and you’re in Germany and it is 2:00 AM after the show and you have to load trucks in a parking lot, it's fucking cold. People are getting frostbite and stuff. They’re like, “Why is my finger black?” Growing up here, I'm like, “That’s frostbite. You should have worn gloves at least.” People get nicknames. There's a bit of hazing. You have to call somebody by their pronouns or you're bastardized.
There's something to having some adversity. Whether you're putting yourself into a CrossFit gym, the outdoors, a fly fishing group, a car group, a mountain biking group or whatever it is, go out and find some adversity because that builds bonds. I can't speak for the military because I never have served or anything like that but I'll speak for the roadie world. I didn't care if the guy standing next to me was Black or Hispanic. We're all in this together.
No one cares.
We've all suffered the same. Maybe we're not getting the same paycheck but it has nothing to do with it. It comes down to how good you are at your job and how well you get along with people in those industries. Especially even in firefighting, the best firefighters don't always make it onto a department. There's a psychological part that goes into it too that’s about how well you get along with people. As much as we can, there's got to be some suffering. Also, providing for yourself or having to provide for yourself. What's the percentage of hunters in the population of America? This is something Jeremy might have to look up but it's less than 3% or 4%.
It’d be something like that.
3% to 4% of those people would have a chance if they were in the right environment and if they have the right tools. That's why I can appreciate people like you that put themselves out there and in these crazy situations in the Arctic Circle and stuff. I have a buddy, Donny Dust. It’s another Donny. I don't know if you're familiar with him.
I’m not. He sent me a message a while back but I've never met him.
He is an amazing human. He was in. He's built all these stone tools. He's gone back to the primitive way of life. He grew up hunting and fishing. I believe he grew up here in Colorado. He went into the Marine Corps for a while. He's a big-time rock climber. He has all the badass gear like $500 sleeping bags and all the rock climbing gear you could imagine. That stuff's not cheap.
At one point, I don't know what made him do this but he went down and gave it to some homeless guys. He was like, “That's not why I'm doing this. I'm going to go back to foraging.” He's made his whole career and life around that. He is building stone tools and stuff. A new survey by the US Fish and Wild Service is 5% of 16 years and older hunt. I don't even think you can legally hunt in Colorado until you're twelve or older so that makes sense.
There are a lot of states that are dropping. Years ago, it declined as expected and accelerated over the next decade.
That’s from 2018.
We've seen an increase since COVID. I've seen it here in Colorado. I hunt a lot of public lands and over-the-counter because it's hard to draw to get into some of these areas. It's sad. I can't even draw to get into my backyard when I shot my first elk. It's a 6-year or 8-year process, which I'm okay with as long as we still have elk.
You have to conserve the resource. That's the thing that a lot of people don't understand. Very often or most often, these people are looking at these populations. The travesty in my mind is the lack of habitat, how much we encroach and how much infrastructure we continue to build as humans. I'm in a hotel. I'm as guilty as the next guy. I am not pitching a tent and sleeping underneath the airport where I'm flying out. I’m staying in a hotel. I was thinking about so much garbage. When I was driving near the airport, I couldn't believe how messy it was.
I hate to say this. I apologize to anybody that lives out there. Once you get East of Downtown Denver, I don't even consider that Colorado anymore. I know that's bad. Colorado, to me, growing up here, we always went West. We were always back in the Western slope, like Flat Tops Wilderness or Wind River. That's where I grew up as a kid here in Georgetown and all over the mountains like Idaho Spring and all these mining towns.
People ask me all the time why I don't elk hunt. I don't elk hunt because there are too many people. It's my thing. I like to go past where the people are. I like to go to areas that are so dangerous and desolate that people don't want to go there. That's where I like to be.
I can appreciate that. I don't get a whole lot of time to hunt. Me growing up here, I love elk hunting so much and archery.
I saw a herd and it gave me goosebumps.
It's so awesome living right here too because the herds here are domesticated. It's crazy because the bulls come in a couple of days before archery season starts and they become golfers. There's a golf course on the other side of the lake. They're on that and I live close to that. We have a mountain home. You don't need air conditioning up here. If it's hot, you open the windows at night and then close them in the morning. It keeps the house cool enough.
At 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM in September, you get woken up by elk. It'll be right outside your window. We’re on the second story right off the golf course. They start chasing satellites around. Even though they are domesticated elk, I feel like they're almost more in their natural environment because there's no pressure from hunters. There might be some pressure from photographers or golfers.
They behave like elk.
That's what I remember growing up as a kid. That's where my passion is for elk. It’s going into a valley in Wind River, hearing bugles rip like crazy, being in the middle of it or getting pissed on by a bull because it came in closer than you wanted it to. It’s the rut and that whole thing. It's hard for me because I don't get a whole lot of time to hunt with family because of obligations, this and the production life. I try to spend it here because I enjoy that. I try to spend it with family, too. I would love to get up to Alaska and at least do a caribou or something.
It's a special place, especially watching the caribou migrator or a big bull moose, which is like an elk. I've done a couple of elk hunts but I did my first real elk hunt a couple of years ago in Nevada. I hiked into this wilderness area and camped. I almost said by myself but I was with my crew. It was me and two other guys.
It was cool. We hiked up into this big box canyon. I'd never even seen a box canyon. I've read that word or phrase in many Jack O'Connor books and him hunting Arizona. He was talking about mules, desert sheep and big horn sheep in box canyons. I got myself into a box canyon and I was like, “Here's a canyon that is shaped like a box. This is cool to see.” We went up there and camped in there on the sign. We didn't have any intel.
Lo and behold, we're laying in the tent. It was probably midnight, maybe 10:00 PM. Bulls were ripping around us. I thought, “I know why dudes do this.” They’re incredible animals. We have to pick and choose where we’re going to go and when we’re going to go. September is 30 days. August is 30 days. October's 30 days. Our time slips by for family and even other obligations like seeing a friend and having a cup of coffee or having dinner with a girlfriend or a wife.
Time slips right on by. Family and even other obligations, like seeing a friend and having a cup of coffee or having dinner with a girlfriend or wife, are the most valuable things.
It's the most valuable thing.
By and large, it's irreplaceable. It can't be chased by money. It’s the game. It's what this is all about.
I'm so excited too because I appreciate people that understand that. I want to be respectful of yours too so I appreciate you coming up here.
I'm happy too.
You messaged me and were like, “My kid's with me. Is that cool?” I don't remember exactly what you said but I was like, “This is awesome.” I love that you're taking him with you. I've done a lot. I've been to all these places but I want my kids to experience it. That's one reason. In having my rock and roll career, there was no stopping. Touring was year-round if you were lucky. You went. I got to go to some amazing places and worked for some amazing people but it didn't start that way. It was a grind. It dipped into me not hunting anymore.
I miss that element but I was still living at the beach, doing a bit of spearfishing and a lot of standup paddling and being out. That was my connection to nature there. When I lived in LA, I could live more than two blocks off the water or I was going to come home. That was the deal. I didn't spend a whole lot of time there because we were traveling so much.
It was full circle for me when I started having kids. I was like, “I got to get them out of here.” I love seeing girls in bikinis. I love being on the beach cruiser and going bar to bar but it was too perfect. I started thinking back to adversity. I was like, “Where did I face the most adversity?” It was always on a backpacking trip or in the wilderness hunting. Those were the biggest struggles for me mentally and physically, not playing high school sports. It’s not that those aren't.
Shooting a big game animal is a different thing. If you get into predator hunting or you've ever been on a predator hunt, that's a whole other level. I've only done that here in Colorado. I did some bird hunting outside of Colorado. I can't even imagine spending that time in the Arctic Circle and dealing with some of the stuff that you've done and portrayed in your films. Going back to that full circle is like, “I want my kids to be able to experience some adversity.”
I've said this before on the show but I'm going to going to keep beating this into people. I'm sorry if you've read this before but I believe it puts a value on life by taking a large animal or something. It's an emotional rollercoaster. It’s seeing something bleed out in front of you or maybe it wasn't the best shot. It’s facing that adversity. Any hunter's gone through that. I know I have. It’s the whole process of excitement because you’ve spent seven days in the backcountry. You’ve gone seven days elk hunting and then you finally got one. It’s that adrenaline dump of when it does happen and then the stress of like, “It's going to be 80 degrees tomorrow.” The work begins then.
I have experienced that. I don't know if I've ever had a race against the weather in that. I've had races against the weather in other ways where it's going to blow 100. I've had that a couple of times in Alaska. Probably four times in my life, I've had pilots message me on my inReach and say, “It’s going to blow 100 tomorrow. I'm going to be at your camp in an hour. Be off the mountain, be packed and be on my plane or I have to leave you in a very dangerous situation for many days. We're going to get huge snow.”
I was in Russia years ago. There were two guys I was with. One spoke zero English. One spoke a little English. It was sheep hunting. It was the 12th day of a 10-day hunt. I was already past the ten days. I said, “How long can I stay?” They said, “We don't care. You can stay until we get pushed out of here.” They then said, “It’s going to snow tomorrow. Can you stay through the snow and then we'll resume sheep hunting afterward?” I said, “How much is it going to snow?” He said, “10 to 12 feet.”
This group that I was hunting with had either a client and a guide or just a guide. Maybe it was both of them. They lost their lives the hunt before me because of exposure. I said, “We can't be in these mountains. If it's going to snow 10 and 12 feet, we can't be here. We have to get out and then come back in. Our tent isn't going to handle this. If it's going to snow that much or it's going to snow too fast for us, we'll be doing maintenance nonstop.”
Luckily, that night, I killed a hammer of a ram in the last glimmering light of that last day. We were able to get in a helicopter and get out of there. I've had those time types of constraints. I've had grizzly bears take my kill. Oddly enough, the wolverines take my kill. That adversity that you're talking about being uncomfortable and being overwhelmed by bugs or rain, I've had many hunts.
Bugs are so bad. That's the worst thing for me. Watching that film, The Other Side, was that the one where you guys had the mosquito nets on half the film?
Yeah.
I was itching watching that and thinking about it.
Maybe one of the most perfect days I've ever had in my life or seemingly is I was in the Arctic. It was springtime. It was me, William Altman and Lance Kronberger. It was probably 70 degrees or maybe 75 degrees. It was hazy. There was almost full sunlight all day. I was grizzly bear hunting in a bright green t-shirt and pants. I said to Lance, “What an amazing day. This is maybe 1 of the 10 most perfect days I've ever experienced in my life.” He said, “Wait until tomorrow.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I can see it. All of the bugs are hatching,” and it did. The next day, we had to run to pee. We honestly had to run around to pee. You couldn't stand to pee.
We had to come up with a strategy to get in the tent. We would run past the tent, undo the zippers a little bit and would keep running. One of us would run around and then the other one would dive into the tent and seal it up. You run around and then the other guy would open up and you’d dive in. It was all strategy. In the first hour, you think, “I can't do this. I don't want to do this.” You realize 1 hour turns into 1 day and 1 day turns into 10 days and then you think, “It's no problem.”
William Altman was filming this. I wasn't filming myself. I've told this story before but William freaked out because we had two boar grizzly bears cording a sow. In the bushes right next to me, there was an 8.5-foot or a 9.5-foot big bear. It was the biggest grizzly bear I'd ever seen in my life. They were within 20 yards of us right here in those bushes with this sow, which they'll kill for.
We are down there and we didn't have a gun. We couldn't hear the bears because of the mosquitoes. We were having a difficult time orienting where the noise was coming from because the buzz was so loud. William was pretty anxious about it. I was so focused on trying to find brown fur in the alders that I wasn't thinking about the danger and he flipped out.
It all boils down to exactly what you were talking about before. It's time outside. I've been in Colorado for two days. I came here to do some work down on a ranch that I was going to hunt. I hunted it years ago. I was coming to grab some of my stuff off the ranch. I'll probably hunt the ranch again because it's amazing. I've been here for two days. All I did was I flew into Denver with my son, drove down to Lamar, spent a day and a half there and then drove back up to here to do the episode with you.
It's an adventure. It’s probably 400 miles of driving or something like that easily.
I saw the largest dust devils I've ever seen in my entire life. I've traveled nonstop since I was in my late teens because I traveled full-time as a biologist. I've never seen dust devils like this ever in my life. Grayson and I pulled the car over probably 5 times on the freeway because these things were probably 200 to 300 feet tall.
One of them looked legitimately like a tornado. The only reason I knew it wasn't a tornado is that there were no clouds above it. It was large debris circling. It took my breath away to see it. I was hearing him giggle in the back of the Jeep when it looks like we were being overtaken by these animals called tumbleweeds as they come into the freeway by the hundreds.
We saw a huge flock of turkeys with several strutting Tom. He was asking me about all these different species of birds that we were seeing that we don't see at home and different ducks that we'd seen. Two days in Colorado from the freeway and driving up here, I saw a herd of elk. That gave me goosebumps because when I was coming up the hill, I see all these ponderosa pines.
I was picturing what it was like to come up here when there was nothing here or a few little mining buildings and this was a dirt road. I wonder what it was like when we had to ride a wagon up here or ride a horse up here and then see a big bull elk, a big mule or an antelope. I showed him his first antelope. I saw a large bull. He didn't have any antlers but he was a massive-bodied bull. I can picture that stuff without the buildings. I can see right around. All the buildings and the people are a chilling fence for me.
Some of the areas around here have been preserved, which is cool, whether it's been bought by Denver Mountain Parks or Jefferson County Open Space. One of the main reasons I moved back here is there's a major connection to here because we go twelve generations deep right here. That meadow used to be the family ranch. The barns that are up there and the stone house that's the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce were built by one of my grandfathers. They own from Black Hawk to right where you get off on I-70 right there and come down the hill. There's the big meadow with all the barns in it.
There's that connection. My kids go to the same elementary school that twelve generations did. It’s not 12 generations but 9. In the original schoolhouses, there are little hand-hewn logs that are 8x10 things. That's in the bus turnaround. It's a historic building. There's a whole other school built on the outside of it. I went to elementary school there.
There's an appreciation for that too coming from ancestral. Whether you're Irish, African-American or African, there's all this history. Knowing what your roots are like and where you came from and then reconnecting with that feels like home. I took it for granted growing up young but I'm so fortunate that it was here. That was an everyday thing. It’s changed a lot, like a ton. There weren't all these homes everywhere. There wasn't a Walmart, McDonald's that you passed and 2 or 3 Starbucks. It is very cool that some of that is still preserved. It's an open space so anybody can go and experience it. You can't hunt on some of it.
There are still wilderness areas that we've gone generations deep. Where I shot my first elk has gone generations deep, which is cool too. Whether you grew up that way or not, you can start that new trend. You can get outside and experience some of this stuff. I urge people. If you haven't done it before, hire a guide. You can learn very fast.
I've had a few people write me. This young lady was writing me. She said she has her heart set on either Colorado or Wyoming. She has her heart set on going into the backcountry by herself, shooting an elk and quartering it up. She's written me and said, “Where do you find elk? How do you find elk? Where's a good spot to go in Colorado?” I have no idea. I have hunted elk in Colorado a few times but I have to either go with somebody that knows what they’re doing or do my research. It’s difficult to do because people want to keep their spots to themselves so I told her, “Please don't.”
Wildlife Conservation: When you go elk hunting, don't go out alone. You have to do your research and go with somebody who knows what they're doing.
There is a young lady out of Wyoming. I met her. I don't recall her name, unfortunately, but I met her at a film premiere in Lander, Wyoming. She's Miss Wyoming. Her father and brothers run pack horse trips up in the mountains. She does an all-woman trip a few times a year where she takes everyone. I told this lady, “You shouldn’t go do something like that,” or whatever because it's dangerous. You get up there and get turned around.
A lot of people talk about being lost but I have been lost in wintertime and fallen through the ice on a lake. There are 3 feet of snow and I have, quite honestly, no idea which direction to walk. I’ve walked all of the directions because I felt good about something for a short amount of time. I had this panic and walked for two days straight. I then finally found my way out. You do something like that in the wrong place and you're going to lose your life.
I've been caught in some crazy situations myself. I've been lost at a place that I've been to hundreds of times. When the weather moves in or fog, it’s a whole other ballgame. I strongly urge people, “Go take a class. There are plenty of survival schools and all these people that teach.” We've had a ton of these guys on. At least the basics of map and compass, not GPS, are super important.
There are millions of different maps that you can go and buy. All these National Geographic topo maps have all the wilderness trails on them and where you might cross a trail. It's topographical so you can pick out geological features and recognize them. It’s learning that skillset. If you want to take it a step further, like shooting an azimuth and getting coordinates, then you can do it from aptitude and longitude without a GPS. This is not electronics.
You can do this true navigation. That is probably one of the most valuable skills, whether you have an inReach or not, to give somebody your true coordinates if your Garmin's not working, your spot or your lines of communication when you're in the backcountry and you need to be rescued or somebody needs to be rescued. What if your kid needs something?
What if your pilot crashes on the way out and loses his life? He's the only one that knows where you are.
I would urge anybody to start there. I'm so fortunate because I grew up and was taught this stuff as a kid by my uncles. I didn't grow up with a dad. My dad was a piece of work. I don't even know what he was into because we didn't have that relationship. He never hunted but thank God I had grandfathers, uncles, cousins and all the stuff that this is what they were into. I was able to learn from them. Some of them were outfitters at a certain point. I didn't just learn here in Colorado. One of my uncles still lives up in Northern Montana right up around the Canadian border at Glacier National Park. That's an amazing country and a whole other type of country to navigate.
I was fortunate to have that too. When I feel comfortable here, I travel up there and it's a whole other level. I would urge anybody to start right there with at least basic navigation skills and then get a map. At a lot of these trailheads or wilderness areas sometimes, there's a map right at the trailhead. They're provided by the state. Some of them aren't big but there are some open spaces. They're topographical. They're great.
Look around. I've done a lot of trips where I'll hike into an area and I'm looking. I don't even have a map or a compass but I'm hiking. I’m honest with myself. I’m like, “I'm willing to go to the valley between these two peaks.” As I'm going, I keep turning around because when I turn around to leave, it's not going to look anything like I'm coming in.
I keep turning like, “The lake is down here.” I'm recognizing I can see the full breadth of the lake. I then hike further up, turn around and say, “I can see 1/2 the lake. I can see 1/3 of the lake. I can't see the lake anymore but I can see the stream that's running into it.” On my way out, I'm going to come down the side. I’m like, “I can see the stream. There's the first 1/3 of the lake. I'm on the right track. There's the second 1/3. There's the entire lake. I'm certainly getting close to the trailhead.” I’m figuring my way out. It's a way to pick it apart.
It's great if you have your kids and you're taking them on a hike to teach exactly what you said. That's how I first learned. It's being aware of your surroundings. I lost my train of thought because you took me down memory lane right there. Hire an outfitter. I was fortunate enough to grow up with those influences. You'll cut so many corners. The reason why I'm a good hunter is strictly attributed to those guys teaching me some basic skills.
I try not to let other shows influence me. I didn't want to go back and listen to a bunch. I'm sure you've been asked this question a million times but what got you into this? What got you into traveling to the Arctic Circle and that whole thing? Going down that biology road, there are so many rabbit holes that we can dive down but what are the basics? It always is puzzling to me how somebody grew up. How did you end up in this situation?
I've caught myself going down in two different directions. Oftentimes, I've told people that I didn't grow up in a hunting household, which is true. However, there were elements of the home that I grew up in where there was certainly a kit that a hunter would own. My father owned a kit is how I’ll say it. He had a wooden gun cabinet. He had half a dozen guns. He had a 12-gauge, 22s, 410s and things like that. He had a 243 bolt action rifle.
He had this old wooden bookcase. It was a great bookcase. Since I understand who we were as people, where we came from, how we evolved and how natural selection works, I understand this must live in my DNA. When I was coming up, I didn't understand it until there was a young lady from National Geographic. We were having coffee and she said, “Why is it that you hunt?” I said, “It’s super easy.”
Understanding who we are as people, where we came from, how we evolved, and how natural selection works, we realize that hunting must live in our DNA.
I sat there across from her and thought to myself, “I don't know why I hunt. I don't know why because I don't have to hunt for food. I can go to the grocery store like everyone else.” Plus, I was a young man then. You can go camping. It’s super expensive to go big horn sheep hunting but it’s free to go camp next to big horn sheep. That's when I started looking into what it is to be a human being and where it is that we come from in our ancestry.
When I was growing up with my dad, everything wildlife and wild was super romantic to me. Even looking at the wood on my dad's guns was romantic to me. The wood gun case was romantic to me. I wish they still had this stuff. My grandfather, my dad's dad, was not a hunter but he was an awesome saltwater fisherman. I grew up in Connecticut. I shouldn't even say he was an awesome fisherman because I have no idea what type of fisherman he was but he loved to go fishing with his family. They would go out and catch bluefish, black bass and all this stuff. He loved to be on the water, which is the same thing as hunting. There are so many things that are like hunting but fall into a different category.
My grandparents bought my dad a book subscription to Outdoor Life. It was not a magazine subscription but a book subscription. Back then, Outdoor Life had fantastic editors and authors. Namely, the one that I quote the most is Jack O'Connor who's a famous gun writer for Outdoor Life. He was Chief Editor for Outdoor Life for ten years or something like that. He's an extremely gifted writer. He was a literary professor at the University of Arizona.
I started reading all of these books. They were romantic as hell and told the truth. He talked about traveling from Arizona and the wild game. He described these animals perfectly. He talked about, “This ram had a plump belly. This ram had colic. For some reason, this stone sheep had flex of gray.” He described these things because he was in love with them too.
Were these actual books or was it a magazine to print?
These were books. These are big and heavy. Some of them are huge.
It’s almost like an encyclopedia for the outdoors. I never experienced those but I always had the Outdoor Life magazines.
I’m the same. I didn't have those when I was growing up. My dad probably went hunting five times when I was growing up or something like that. He'd go off with friends so nothing came from it like that. Maybe I got it from these books. I read these things. I wanted to go and explore as I did here. It’s the simplest of things.
I watched a meadowlark sitting on a fence post, displaying and calling. He was trying to attract a female or even announcing that he made it another night and that the sun is coming up. That stuff moves me. From seeing all these different things, I wanted to go. Originally, I'm certain it was man versus wild. I had this like, “I'm going to go bear hunting.” I remember my first big trip to Alaska. I thought to myself, “I'm going to go bear hunting. I'm going to kill a big bear and I'm going to kill my bear with one shot. That's what I'm going to do.”
Is there some mentorship from Fred Bear or any of these guys for stuff like that?
For sure. Some of those books were written by Fred Bear. Even though I shot a bow a little bit when I was a kid, I wanted to be a rifleman. An element in some of these books, oddly enough, that my dad had was war. He had some fantastic books on war. There were these fantastic paintings of these ships being bombed, Pearl Harbor and all these things.
I don't know why I didn't go into the military or the Special Forces or try to get into a group because that stuff speaks to me. Fighting for people that can't fight for themselves speaks to me but I don't know why I didn't go that route. I don't have a good excuse other than my mind didn't go there and I didn't have a good mentor that said, “You'd be a good fighter. Go in this direction.”
I was in love with the idea of wildlife and the idea of going. I wanted to see it. The more I saw and experienced it, the more I was drawn to it. I get letters from people all the time. They say, “I'm obsessed with hunting.” In Sitka, they say, “I'm sick for it.” People write me and say, “How can I get a job like you're doing? How can I come and work for you? I'm obsessed with hunting.” I think to myself, “I'm not obsessed with hunting. I'm obsessed with wildlife, wild places, weather and seeing different things.”
If somebody told me, “You are done hunting. You, Donnie Vincent, can never hunt again,” then okay. If I'm still going to get clean and healthy meat either from rancher friends of mine or hunting friends of mine, I could easily not ever hunt again. Would I miss it? Yeah. There'd be a gaping hole in who I am and what I love to do. I see outdoor photographers sometimes write with the idea or in the semblance that they are anti-hunters. It drives me insane.
It drives me insane too. Some of these guys that I like to support like Jason Loftus, whom we've had on the show, is a bow hunter himself. I love the way that he portrays elk and animals. Some of the photos that he takes are mind-blowingly amazing. @UntamedImagesByJL on Instagram is an incredible page.
It's a celebration and appreciation for that animal. Even though he's a hunter, he still has this massive appreciation for the animal. To see a photographer turn around, go the exact opposite direction and bastardize hunting, where we've come from and all those points that you brought up and some of the points that you brought up in your films drive me insane. Photographers like Jason spends a vast amount of time outdoors.
He has to. You don't see this stuff unless you do.
I spend more time understanding animal behavior from photographing than I do hunting. Since you’re hunting, the animals are more scarce. That's where I was getting back to seeing them on the golf course. I feel like they're in their natural state. You can understand animal behavior. You're trying to catch, anticipate and get in front of them. You’re trying to get that shot with their antlers laid back or their nostrils flaring. It’s anticipating and spending real tie immersed in them. I don't see how somebody could be numb to the actual concepts of true conservation and not understand it by spending that much time in the wilderness.
This is amazing work but I saw this guy one time. He took some great photos of some wolves on Vancouver Island. He wrote, “If I was a moron hunter, I would've killed these wolves.” I was offended by that because I have spent a crazy amount of time with wolves in the outdoors as a biologist. I've also been around them so much as a hunter. I've seen them many times with a wolf tag in my pocket. I've never shot a wolf. I'm not against wolf hunting in the least but I hadn't been in the position yet where I pulled the trigger myself.
He made a blanket statement and all these people below him, all these tree huggers, were jumping on his comments. They were like, “Yeah.” It blew my mind. That's where my mind goes. Even seeing these images is a celebration of what wildlife is. It’s seeing these animals and behaving like these animals. That stuff inspires me.
The reason I hunt is it's my way of navigating through the wilderness or wild areas. I want to have my boat or rifle with me. I want to see the animals. It’s one of the reasons why I focus on taking specific animals. It’s because I want to see lots of animals. I want to pick them apart and maybe find the biggest bull elk I can find. I want to work on my craft, set up and take his life swiftly.
Going down there, skinning him, feeling the blood on my hands and cooking it later over the fire makes me feel exorbitantly alive. It's not that I have to take a life to fill my full but it's important that we do these things and understand the significance of taking a life, what it feels like, what it looks like, what it means to the world and what animals we're removing. I'm making some blanket statements here but grizzly bear hunting being shut down in DC was shut down by foolish people. Most of them will never see a grizzly bear because they're sitting in their apartments.
It's important that we understand the significance of taking a life—what it feels like, what it looks like, what it means to the world, and what animals we're removing.
I'm going to name some things so that people have an association but I don't mean this exactly. For instance, people will watch Planet Earth and will think to themselves, “These guys must love wildlife. These guys must take these shots to the next level. Look at what they're capturing and doing.” I’m picking on Planet Earth but I know a guy that went and filmed snow leopards in the Himalayas. I was talking to him. We were on a backpacking trip. He didn't bring some very important gear on this backpacking trip and we chuckled about it.
We were fine. It was a little bit chilly but everything was fine. I gave him a lot of my gear, surplus stuff that I brought. We were laughing about it and I said to him, “How funny. I assumed that you would bring this gear.” He said, “How funny that I assumed that I didn't have to bring this gear.” We were chuckling at our lack of communication.
I said, “You went and filmed snow leopards in the Himalayas.” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “How was that? Didn't you have to have all this gear when you did that?” He's like, “No. I slept in a hotel every single night, took a hot shower every single morning, had hot meals delivered to me and had hot lunches. The snow leopards are right on the edge of town. It’s stacked with photographers and people filming this.”
They make it one of the most elusive animals to photograph.
He spoke to this and I wasn't there. I don't have the story. I'm sure there's a little bit of telephone game here but one of the leopards fell over to death or something happened while he was there. Some of the locals were blaming the harassment of wildlife photographers and filmmakers for pressuring these animals. They couldn't hunt to speak to the elk on your golf course. They couldn't hunt the way they wanted to because they were limited because of the intrusion of people. Right there, often, people that are strolling through REI or Trader Joe's are giving you a coarse eye of what you're doing and how you're doing it but they’re impacting wildlife differently. It may be even in more negative way.
The frequency of it even affected the elk herds here.
I've seen this in Alaska when I was hiking in a mountain valley to go hunt Dall sheep. A friend of mine had drawn a tag in a hunting area. It was called a walk-in area. We had to hike 17 miles before we could legally start hunting. We saw some huge bull moose in this area and I've seen some giants. These were 75-inch bulls I'm talking about. I'm looking at these things. I started glassing with my binos and looking. They’re surrounded by photographers with these huge lenses. If I bump into one of these things in the wilderness, we're doing the same thing.
It gets crazy even right here with the photographers that go out. I go out with a small group. We’re good about not tagging and that sort of thing. They already hate me enough for the show where I drop it. It's hard in conversation not to drop spots every once in a while but I'm not giving people specific locations. There is so much frequency, especially on the weekends. I don't even go because I might get in a fistfight. I'm not a guy to get in a fistfight. There's a reason why I go to jiu-jitsu and all this stuff. It's to release all that tension. People will yell, scream and honk horns. It gets crazy around here. It's always on a weekend.
You might have a hunter who books an airplane, flies 200 miles North of the Arctic Circle, sets up his pop tent and goes about by foot the whole time. He finds a caribou bull he wants to kill and arrows it. The animal goes down and he skins the whole thing out. He takes every ounce of meat including the heart and liver, hikes back to his camp, has a little fire and a cup of coffee for celebration and cooks some fresh steaks.
He loads it all on an airplane at the end of ten days and flies home. That's the animal that he eats that winter. He gets a bad name because he's a hunter whereas what we described with most wildlife photographers. I'm not saying anything about them. I'm saying in that particular instance that I was talking about the snow leopard. It was sold as a raw, wild and elegant piece of footage when it was 30 guys lined up trying to watch this cat hunt, affecting her and whatever else. I get sensitive to it like that guy that shot those wolves on Vancouver Island.
Those people should walk everywhere too. If you're here for 10 years, there's a 100% chance that you're going to have a collision with wildlife, whether it's a mountain lion, a bear, a deer or elk. It's constant around here because there are so many roads. You should walk everywhere then if you're anti-hunting. You're probably screwing up the system more than protecting it by driving your car. I know that Game & Fish accounts for those numbers but still, it’s hypocritical.
All of us have a footprint. You see the numbers on veganism, the crops of soy and corn, to each their own. Some of the hunters that I've met in my life have been the most soulful and connected. They’d be the first ones to give up hunting.
No spoiler alerts here. I can't remember exactly what film it was but I remember you were on a caribou hunt. You guys were hunting from a boat.
It is available on YouTube for free.
We did that film for Benelli.
It’s an amazing film. I forgot about that. You go into the old military base there. It's much more than hunting. You're out there on a caribou hunt and come across a fishing net or some rope.
It was a fishing net rope.
There was a caribou caught in it. I remember your exact words and your urgency. You’re not soft-spoken but you have a demeanor about you in your films when you're talking. Your demeanor changed. It was like, “Somebody, give me a knife right now.” Here you are, hunting this very animal that you're freeing from a bad situation because you don't want to see it suffer.
I got a lot of flack from that. It was not flacked for saving the caribou but they told us, “There’s a good chance that we can capsize this Zodiac going to this beach. Have all of your stuff put away. When you're going in, hold onto the camera. Donnie, hold onto your rifle and backpack.” My knives were put away but Scott, the guy that was running me in, had his knife on his hip.
The reason I was urgent is that at first, I was looking at it thinking, “He’s all wrapped up. We'll try to get him free,” but then when I got up there, he was chin strapping himself. He was cutting off his carotid arteries and trachea. He was very near the end of his life so I had to cut that rope first without cutting his carotid artery if they lie right on the other side.
The first thing that I thought of was, “Could you imagine stabbing yourself or cutting yourself back? “
He almost got us a couple of times. His back points were going past my eye socket.
It’s not even that with your knife but if he bumps into you the wrong way. There are a lot of people that injure themselves in the backcountry field dressing. It can get pretty serious.
Do you want to know of freaky story? I don't even know if I should tell but right here where this caribou is and I'm not celebrating this in any form or fashion but there's a corpse of a man laying here. A ship sank.
Is that rope maybe from that?
No. There is a rope like that everywhere on the beach. This bull was getting ready to rut so he was rubbing his antlers.
Bulls here get stuck in kids' swing sets all the time.
I know a guy that was on this part of the island. There’s a life raft and a dead man. They’ll get him when the swell comes down.
That is crazy. I've never been to the Bering Sea but I have some family members that have gone up there and fished. They were crab fishermen and stuff like that. They've told me some pretty crazy stories.
It's gnarly. We saw stuff on this day that I don't know if I thought I was going to lose my life. I've been scared many times during our filming but this day was the scariest thing. Some of the cliffs that I've had to cross had ice on them.
The majority of hunters fall to their death or get struck by lightning.
It was where Cam's friend fell to his death. I had to cross some cliffs in there during a winter archery Dall sheep hunt. It was 500 feet or 1,000 feet straight down.
For people that are reading this, you freed the caribou after probably 15 to 20 active minutes of somebody holding antlers and you cutting with a knife and holding antlers. It was a bit of a fight. You free this caribou and it was sent back to nature.
He was off to races.
We're running a little short on time. One of the main things I wanted to ask you is that we've gone through a ton of wolf controversy here in the state of Colorado. I did three full episodes on it before it even made it to the actual ballot box. I was trying to have both sides on and be as fair as I could. I only got 1 side to come on in those 3 episodes.
We got duped even on the conservative side. I was asking for biologists only. They switched guests on me at the last minute. It was one of those deals where it was like, “So-and-so isn't available but here, he's coming up.” The next thing I know, I'm talking to a politician and not a biologist. The conversation went great. We had a conversation before I hit record too. That whole thing went down.
We voted for wolves to be here in Colorado. I don't know if people know this but wolves have been migrating in already from the Yellowstone area. It's a great habitat for them. It's crazy because we have a lot of hunters in here. A lot of them are new to hunting. Some of them have been hunting for a long time. Nobody's had to deal with wolves unless they've been in BC or some of these other spots.
I don't feel like they've had interactions with wolves. I've tried as a photographer. I've gone to Yellowstone and tried to go find wolves. Let me tell you. It was 8 days of finding 1 wolf that I saw come out of the tree line for about 30 seconds. He was so far away. If I hadn't had a 1,200-millimeter lens, I don't think I would've got a worthy shot. It was mind-blowing.
I saw bears, foxes, balded eagles and all these other species, which was great. I wasn't butthurt about it. I got all these amazing photographs that I wouldn't have gotten if I wasn't out looking for wolves but I did that trip specifically to go look for wolves. It’s a very elusive animal. It's like going to look for a mountain lion in my opinion and from what I've seen.
I wanted to ask you this because we have so many people that have all these opinions. I feel like out of all those people, you being a biologist, working for Alaska Game & Fish at one point and having as much interaction as you've had in the Arctic Circle, BC and those Northern Territories that you’ve been around them a ton, I wanted to get your take on it. One of the biggest concerns that I have is the population here compared to some of these other areas where wolves do have this amazing habitat. There are seven million people in the state of Colorado. Wyoming is 700,000 or something. We're talking about a huge difference in frequency.
I'm embarrassed to admit this but did the vote got approved to reintroduce them?
Yeah. I apologize for this but CPW or Colorado Parks and Wildlife came up with an action plan that was approved. It's going to be about 32 packs or it might be 4 packs of 30 different wolves. I want to say that there are twelve that are collared that are here already and that have migrated in. I don't think the packs are going to be 30. They're going to split at 15 and 15. They’re going to drop them in two different areas is what I heard. They're dropping them right in the middle of the state, which is the Continental Divide. It is right outside here if you drove West for 40 minutes.
What are the people housing like on the roads and such?
You have the I-70, which is a main artery for the United States.
They're not going to do well here.
They're going to drop them close to the Vail corridor. You're talking about a ski resort.
Some people might think that people are going to start being killed. That's not going to happen. The wolves don't behave in such a manner. For the most part, there's only been 1 or 2 documented. I've been surrounded by wolves within 20 yards probably 5 times, 6 times or something like that. I've been cautious of the engagement but I've never felt in any danger at all.
This is going to go probably much worse than people anticipate. It's going to be hard on your ungulate populations and all of the other populations as well down to horny toads to snakes, to ground-dwelling birds. That’s because if they can't catch the large ungulates, then they're going to have to prey on dogs and cats. They're not going to kill children.
We lost a couple of dogs already in Jackson County from the wolves that have migrated. They lost three dogs.
Killed by wolves?
Yeah.
That's what they're going to eat because catching a German shepherd takes 1/100th of the effort to catch a calf elk.
If you've grown up here, we’ve lost several dogs to coyotes. They'll send out a satellite coyote that's like, “Do you want to play?” Your dog chases them right into the pack.
If you have three or more, it's going to be a tough thing. I'm not educated on it. I would imagine this got approved by the granola crowd because they want photographs of wolves. They want your little sea emblem to have a howling wolf in the middle for the gift stores so people can say, “I skied in Colorado and I saw a wolf next to Vail. I'm in real wilderness. It's a real wilderness wolf.”
I can't remember what it is but there's a documentary that was put out on YouTube. It's how the wolves changed Yellowstone. It's the same narrator from one of those major wildlife shows that you mentioned.
David Attenborough or something like that?
I don't know. I'm not saying wolves are bad either but there’s a place for them.
They need huge wilderness and to be controlled. I'm going on a predator hunt in Alaska. If you kill a brown bear in Alaska, you can't hunt brown bears for another four years. If you kill 1 brown bear, you have to take 4 years off. I’m going to an area of Alaska in April 2023 to hunt brown bears. Rarely do I go on a hunt where I say, “I’m going on a hunt to kill an animal.” Sometimes, when I'm hunting whitetail does, I say, “I'm going out tonight to try and kill whitetail does. The first whitetail doe that comes by is getting an arrow. The second whitetail doe that comes by tonight is also getting an arrow. The third one is also going to get an arrow as well if I have legal tags.”
I'm going on a brown bear hunt in spring 2023 in Western Alaska that is in a predator area. It’s in an area in which if I kill a brown bear, I can continue to hunt brown bears in successful years because it doesn't count towards my four-year layoff. They need bears and wolves killed in this area because they’re preying on caribou and moose.
The gentleman that I'm going to hunt with hunts wolves. I've flown with him a couple of times. He's talked to me in his headset about wolves. You can hear the glimmer in his voice. You can hear his inflection go up when he talks about the wolf. You can hear the admiration that he has for these animals. That same man shoots wolves out of his airplane. He flies his Super Cub by his knees and kills wolves out of his airplane window with a 12-gauge shotgun all winter long. He does it for the state.
They need to be regulated. They're very successful keystone predators. I can't speak intelligently about how the Yellowstone project has gone. I would have to look more into it. There are a lot of political motivations there but bring them into Colorado. Being uneducated about the actual system here, it feels like the system is too small for wolves, in my opinion.
It feels like there are too many people here. I can almost guarantee you that it got approved by people that are looking for tourism dollars. They haven't given 1 ounce of recognition, respect or interest in the actual wolf. The fact that these wolves are going to have to come into areas where people are, which is terrifying for a wolf and killing a house pet to eat is horrifying for a wolf.
These wolves that killed a dog, it’s true. That’s a fact. These wolves that killed a dog didn't want to do this. They'd much rather eat elk. If they're going to kill a dog, they'd much rather kill a wolf from another pack. They're very territorial. These packs are going to decimate one another. If they cross over, there's going to be a war. They’ll kill one another. A lot of this stuff gets passed for tourism dollars.
They're looking for the population to grow here. They've changed some hunting areas that are pristine elk country to support those wolves. I hope that we're doing the right thing and it's not ruining Colorado for what I know it as and what I grew up with. I understand the argument that they were here one time. I also understand that there are seven million people here.
It's crazy. There's a city in Lakewood, which is a suburb of Colorado. It’s a little suburb. That's the population of the entire state of Wyoming, to put it in perspective. There's going to be conflict, whether it's on the highways or people losing their pets. There are a ton of ranchers that are in the Flat Tops Wilderness. I want to say it is 110,000 acres of crazy wilderness. Next to the Bob Marshall, it's 2nd or 3rd.
It's going to create conflict, for sure.
It’s 235,000 acres. There are a lot of sheep ranchers that are up there too. They're going to have to deal with that. There's a tremendous impact, not only on hunting but on wildlife in general. One of the things that I struggle with is growing up here, we never had moose as a kid. The moose population is finally thriving here enough to where they can be hunted. It's so cool to see them. They're majestic animals. It's incredible that they're here. I understand that. We've done it with other species like the lynx. It was a good fit here. There are big horn sheep. There are all those efforts. I feel like we're going in the opposite direction by putting another apex predator here. We already have enough mountain lions. The coyotes are big enough.
The coyotes do very well here. They’re symbiotic. It’s the same with lions. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I almost wish this is a pie in the sky. I almost wish when you are able to vote on these things, you have to list off your street credit, education and experience. If there's a house husband in Boulder who has got his Nano Puff from Patagonia, drives his Subaru, drinks his dark beer next to his bonfire outside of his house, tends to flip on the Nature channel, rock climbs twice a year and mountain bikes and then when he sits down on the ballot, he is like, “Wolves? For sure. I love wildlife. Wolves are going to love it here. I love it here,” that's an empty bucket.
If you have an educated biologist, a wolf biologist or an ungulate biologist that says, “We have a corner of the state that is about 500,000 acres and has a minimal human population. There is going to be some conflict with ranchers there but we have any other populations that we think would support 1 or 2 packs out there.” I'm going to vote yes because it could work or I'm going to vote, “Maybe we need to look at this again in five years,” or something like that. Maybe there are three checks on this ballot. It’s the people that shut down grizzly bear hunting. Those people don't even leave the city.
The people who shut down grizzly bear hunting don't even leave the city. The closest thing they do to being around wildlife is turn on their TV.
They don't have to deal with grizzly bears.
The closest thing they do to being around wildlife is turn on their TV. It's not that they don't have to deal with grizzly bears. Although I appreciate your point. It’s that they don't even know what a grizzly bear is. They don't know what the habitat looks like where the grizzly bear lives, what he does and what he's doing. I'll guarantee you. If I took a vegan to the Arctic Circle for 30 days and said, “Bring all your vegan food. Let's go hike around. I'm going to kill a caribou. If you feel up to it, you can also kill a caribou. Even if you don't want to, maybe you'll eat some of my caribou back at camp,” I'd be shocked if I didn't sway these people.
I'll give you a for instance and it has changed. We have wolves in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We have a lot of them. Wisconsin has a wolf quota. I forget what it is. Let's say it's 200 wolves a year. They reached that quota in five days of hunting. They opened a hunting and then within a few days, it was closed. They run them with dogs and do all this stuff.
In downtown Minneapolis, I would drive past this billboard all the time. I've talked about this before. It has changed. They had to close a wolf-hunting billboard in downtown Minneapolis with a photo of a coyote on it. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The wolf people bought a billboard and put a picture of a coyote on it because they don't know the difference between a wolf and a coyote or whoever approved that image to go up there. When you do a billboard, several people are going to have to look at this image and look at it on a computer.
You would think there's an approval process, especially if you're lobbying for something.
It was for wolves. That's my point. It's a yes no matter what. I don't care what. I heard Forrest Galante who's a biologist that I admire deeply talking about how they're going to bring back woolly mammoths. He's like, “This is incredible.” I'm also on that side but thinking, “What does that mean evolutionary-wise?” I hate to quote Jurassic Park but those animals had their chance and they were selected.
That’s like, “Where does it stop? What are you going to bring back next? The saber tooth tiger?”
It's all for humans.
We did hours.
How did your interviews go?
They went amazingly.
For what? People’s minds, where did they go?
Our consensus and the message that I wanted to convey at the end of that was education mainly for myself. This show has been solely out of greed. Any question I've asked you is solely because I want to know about it. It's not like I have a panel of questions or I have audience members calling in or anything like that. This is my greed.
I was new at starting a show. These were early episodes like 12, 13 or 14. I was trying to be fair and honest because I am political as well, even though I'm right-leaning and align more with that than I do maybe the left. Not to even go down politics but I've tried to be biased in that and not bring that up here on the show. I have certain things that I've talked about.
I felt like, biologically though, there shouldn't be anything biologically at the ballot box. That was my message and what I took from it. We pay experts to be biologists for the state of Colorado. Why are we not listening to these people? Why are we allowed to go check a box of yes or no that could determine the fate of so many people?
The animals themselves. What about the wolves? The wolves are going to be under tremendous pressure.
That was our second point. It was crazy. A senator brought this up. He's like, “Is it fair to the wolf? You're taking them out of their habitat.” I'm assuming that they're coming from BC or someplace. That's the other thing. Nobody shared where they were getting these wolves from. Are they coming from a zoo? No. These are going to be wild wolves. They're going to have to be pulled from someplace where they have no human interaction and dropped into a state where there are seven million people, several major highways, wildlife fences and domesticated elk. It's scary but we voted yes. They're here. I’m going to embrace it as much as I can. I hope that we're doing it the right way.
We've already seen it happen here with spring bear hunting. You used to be able to bait spring bears and run dogs on bears. That was another thing, to put it in perspective, that went to the ballot box. It was voted yes to stop spring bear hunting. Colorado Parks and Wildlife will almost give you a bear tag for any game unit anywhere because we are overpopulated. It's already hurting the ungulates. I worry that we're already on this drastic decline that way.
Those are calf killers. Bears do so well with calves.
Bears are not easy to hunt without dogs or bait. If we get a big snow, you might have two weeks out of that month to hunt them before they start their hibernation process.
Wildlife Conservation: Bears are not easy to hunt without dogs or bait. If you're hunting them in the fall and there’s a lot of snow, you might have two weeks out of that month to actually hunt them before they start their hibernation process.
Even once you get a hard frost, those guys sleep all day. As soon as they get a hard frost, those dudes want to sleep all day and eat all night.
I thought you were going to tell me something rosy about the wolves.
The wolves are amazing. For instance, I drew a moose tag in Alaska. I should have done my homework. I was hunting moose. It is probably the best moose hunt I've ever been to in my life. I didn't kill a bull but I could have killed several giant, hammer, old, massive bulls. One thing would happen and then it was a pitfall of errors. A couple of them were wolves. Some of the footage you saw on Who We Are, that's me running into a pack of wolves. I'm assuming we're stalking the same moose or at least they're going out for their evening hunt and I'm bumping right into them.
Either they're looking at me as food for a split second that they're like, “What's this right here,” or they were looking at me like, “We haven't seen a person on here.” If they saw a lot of people, they would've dashed as soon as they saw me. When they saw me, they came in and circled me and then they left very casually. I ran into them ten minutes later.
Do you think it was more of a curiosity thing?
Yeah. I don't think they're looking at me as a food product. If you have to find your food, you raise an eye like, “There’s something that is made out of meat. I don't know what it is yet.” They lift their heads up but even when they were walking behind me, I didn't feel any danger at all. I had a wolf tag in my pocket. One of the photographers that were with me said, “Are you going to kill one? There are a couple of handsome ones right there. There are white ones, a black one and several big gray ones. I said, “No. I don't know what's going on here with the wolves. I have no idea.”
I didn't educate myself on it. I educated myself on the moose and the caribou but not the wolves. I had a wolf tag. I don't know why I did but I did. When the pilot was picking me up, I said, “We saw a lot of wolves.” He's like, “Did you kill any?” I said, “No. I didn't know what was going on with the wolves here.” He's like, “They're doing well here. We could stand to lose a couple of wolves here in this valley.” I was like, “If I have known that going in, I probably would've arrowed 1 or 2 of those wolves,” but I didn't. I wasn't going to jump the gun.
I have a lot of admiration for wolves. I've seen them a lot. I've been around them a lot. They get voted in for the wrong reasons. Yellowstone was probably a great place to put them. It’s this big, huge wild area. People are coming to see wildlife. Some rangers are keeping people away from the wildlife, for the most part.
There's no hunting that's taking place. It makes sense. They have another apex predator.
They're going to make a mistake here in Colorado if they don't allow hunting for the wolves.
I agree 100%. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has said it blatantly on this show. if you can't manage predators, then we cannot be successful.
It's one side of a seesaw. If you have a kid sitting on one side and there's no other kid, then what are we talking about here? People think these things will tend into Shangri-La or balance but there's imbalance all the time. There's a lot of fury in nature. There are a lot of ebbs and flows. There are population booms. There's starvation and massive storms. There are thin ice years when animals are trying to cross lakes and fall through.
Humans are a part of that as well. They have been for thousands of years.
We've been there since the first day and since human beings have existed.
It’s going right back to what you say all the time. I love that. We're coming up in two hours. This has been awesome. I would love to have you back anytime. I'm a big fan proponent of you and the way that you portray hunting. If we can ever do anything to help you out, please hit me up. If you ever need a spot while you're here to record a voiceover or you want to come and hang out, hit me up. We don't even have to record an episode.
I appreciate it.
You’re always welcome. I appreciate your time. Before we jump off, what's new? What's coming out? Do you have any films coming out in 2024? Are you working on anything?
We do. We have two sides to our business. We have a commercial side and a film side. We've been focusing a lot on the commercial side because we have enough clients that are keeping us busy. As a company, we are going to start diversifying our energies to do both. We want to come out with a short film series of stuff that we're going to be launching on YouTube.
We're going to go back to some of our original stuff. I re-watched the very first thing we ever filmed. It's a 40-minute archery sheep hunt in Alaska. Nobody has ever seen anything from it other than a couple of photos. We filmed and edited the whole thing. We never released it. We're going to go back and sit down at a table. The guys are going to film me retelling some of these old stories that we have filmed and then we're going to interject footage into them and tell some of these stories coming up. We’ll start doing some of our film work along with our commercial clients. Our body of work's going to grow. It’s DonnieVincent.com. I also have Instagram and all that stuff.
Check out the YouTube channel. There is a ton of free stuff on there. I urge people to go out and purchase. I purchased every one of your films that are available. That's how good they are. They are movie quality. I would love to see them on the biggest screen possible. I'm still on that from Jack. He put it in perspective. Jack Carr of Danger Close, go and listen to that podcast. I love Jack and what he's doing. I love what you're doing, Donnie. I appreciate your time and for coming up. You’re welcome back anytime.
It’s very gracious of you to have me on.
Thanks. I appreciate you.
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About Donnie Vincent
Donnie Vincent - Explorer, Biologist, Conservationist, Sportsman, Film Creator.
Driven by nature, Donnie has consistently let the outdoors and his passion for adventure be the compass for his life. The wide-open expanses of the world’s most remote territories dominate his thoughts and conversations. Deep in the heart of the wildest of terrain is where Donnie thrives. On his expeditions into remote wilds, in the lands where seemingly no one lives, he finds a wilderness and peacefulness that is all his own.
The premier example of explorer, biologist, conservationist, and sportsman, Donnie takes a wider view of the topics he tackles while in the field, because to him, this is all a story worth telling. A story of ancestral heritage, native respect and the desire to live strongly, empowering us all to open our minds to the bigger picture and inspiring us to find our own adventure.