Take a look at the Jim Shockey’s blog and see what happened to his cameraman on a recent trip to Peru! Thank goodness he is still alive, it could have turned out much worse!!!

Click on his Peru stories to see what happens!

http://www.jimshockey.com/Blog/

I’m always excited about hitting the road and I love traveling the country filming hunts for your viewing pleasure. But it’s not always the glamorus job you think it is.  The worst part about the job is being away from my wife and two kids.  Believe it or not they actually miss me when I’m gone.  That’s why I try not to schedule any trips longer than two weeks long. Unfortunately this year I have signed up for 2 trips that will be three weeks long. I don’t think the wife will kick me out of the house, but I guess we will find out very soon.

LONG DAYS  – For me, the most tiring part is the long days put in while I’m on the road. We usually get up between 3 & 4 a.m. and do not usually get to bed until 11p.m. or midnight.  A week or two of doing that will wear anybody out. After those trips where I don’t get much sleep I usually come in and “hibernate” for a couple of days trying to catch up on some sleep. The problem I run into when I get home, is that my 4-year-old and 9-year-old are expecting Daddy’s undivided attention. They don’t understand that Daddy has been hard at work while he’s been gone and needs the rest.

The Elements - It seems weather is always a factor when you’re hunting, but my two most memorable hunts have been within the past year. Two weeks ago I was in South Carolina with Ben of Bass Pro’s Next Generation show. We were down there for the opening of deer season. I was very excited about getting an early start this year until I got down to New Zion, SC. They were having record highs while we were there. Of the five days we hunting, it was over 100 degrees four of those days. I would break out in a sweat just climbing in the stand and stay wet the rest of the evening.                            Then there was last Thanksgiving when Allen Treadwell and myself went to Saskatchewan for a Whitetail hunt. The first day was not that bad. Highs were in the upper teens and we sat in two lockon tree stands and hunted the elements. It all went down hill after that.  A cold front came in and the temperatures fell drastically. Allen shot his whitetail the afternoon of Thanksgiving. When we woke up that morning it was -36 degrees and the wind was blowing 12 MPH. That day is by far the coldest I have ever been. We had the luxury of sitting in a box blind with the windows closed and a propane heater. The bad part was that it was 5 degrees inside the stand with the heater going. It was so cold that we had to thaw out our water before we could drink it and basically put our sandwiches on the heater to thaw them out before we could eat. But as Jerry Martin says, ”We were making memories!”

Lugging the Equipment –  The part I hate the most about the job is lugging all the equipment around. Once I load up my pack with spare batteries, tripod, supplies and video equipment I am usually toting around 65-75 pounds. Now I’m no big guy, but the Marines helped prepare me for this part of the job. Yes I have packed this equipment in such beautiful places as Alaska, Canada and Mexico.  It has not always been an easy hike, but I have managed to tote my gear myself with no help and I’m proud of that fact.

The Part I Hate the Most – What I hate the most about the job is getting the equipment in and out of treestands. Usually it is dark when I’m getting into a stand in a new place for the first time. The hunters don’t want you shining lights and I try to make minimal noise. The ultimate worst part of this is that I did not get to hang my stand and that someone else did. These outfitters usually make sure that the Pro Hunter can get into his stand with no problem, but the camera stand usually gets hung quickly and never gets stepped into by the person that is hanging the stand.

 Still, I love my job and would not trade it for anything!