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“BuckNuts.”

Welcome to another episode of “Whitetail Rendezvous.” This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. Today, I have Eddie McFarland from “BuckNuts.” Eddie, welcome.

Eddie: Great to have a chance to talk to you and hopefully, we’re getting out there and getting some information to everyone listening today.

Bruce: Eddie, let’s start right off and tell us about “BuckNuts.”

Eddie: I’ve been involved in the outdoor industry from a videographer and field producer standpoint for about seven or eight years now and during that time, I always wanted to try to start my own project. A couple of years ago, I just decided it was time. So I split with a good friend of mine that I was working with, Kyle Wieter with Adrenaline Junkies. I started “The BuckNuts” and my vision of what the program would be was evolving at that point. I went through some personal stuff and everything just kind of fell into place and I saw what I wanted the show to be about. Certainly about God, family and friends and the hard work that it takes to be able to do what we do.

We’re not doing for it a living. We’re not doing it to get rich and famous. We’ve all got 9:00 to 5:00 jobs and we’ve got to earn a paycheck, but when we’ve got that spare time, we’re out there doing what we love.

Bruce: Let’s unpack what you just said a little bit more. You said it was hard to get started, to get some traction, because there’s a lot of listeners that would like to be where you are in the outdoor industry. What are some of the mistakes that you made in the beginning and what are you so happy about today that you made that decision?

Eddie: The biggest challenge or the biggest obstacle is just making up your mind that you’re going to do it. You don’t have to put yourself out there financially. You do have to take some risks and you have to have some financial commitment for it. It’s basically just not saying “no” because it is an extremely competitive . . . Money drives the industry. It seems like a huge, large industry, but it really isn’t. So every dollar that sponsors have out there is extremely competitive. You’ve just got to keep networking, keep talking to people and hopefully, you can get someone who’ll cover your costs.

I know plenty of guys that are putting on shows right now and they’re either losing money or breaking even. It’s fine if you break even. I certainly am not in a position and I know most people aren’t in a position to have a hobby where you spend that much money to have a TV show.

Bruce: Where does your show air on the TV?

Eddie: Right now, we’re negotiating. We’ve had a couple different airtime contracts and we’ve pushed them back due to not having that title sponsor to cover the airtime and we’re still looking for that to be honest. We had . . . We’re negotiating different airtimes on Pursuit Channel. We were going to go with two networks, one being Pursuit and one being NBC Sports. But I think we’re going to just back off and go with Pursuit. Get more bang for our buck in that direction.

we’re shooting for midweek, prime-time spots.

As far as air times, we’re shooting for midweek, prime-time spots. We’ve had those airtime contracts in our possession. We just had to push it back to third and fourth quarter for 2016.

Bruce: Looking at . . . go ahead.

Eddie: Basically, you could see us on air in July of 2016. We’ll be filming additional footage this fall and then that’ll hit the editing room and be ready to air in 2016.

Bruce: Tell people about the crew at “BuckNuts.”

pretty diverse crew, some guys and gals that have had industry experience

Eddie: We’ve got a pretty diverse crew, some guys and gals that have had industry experience. They’re not green, if you will. They’ve filmed and hunted on other shows before. We’ve got some new people, too. It’s what you bring to the table. I’m not saying that we’re recruiting now, but we’re always on the lookout for somebody that kind of fits the bill. What that means is we want somebody that is going to be . . . the same principles as us, the same beliefs and it’s never easy, it’s never handed to you. You’ve got to work at it.

Most everyone that’s on the crew or I should say everyone that’s on the crew, we don’t have these huge, large tracts of land that we manage. It’s a little acreage here, a little acreage there and a lot of it is by permission. It’s trying to pull everything together and get it done. You’re not just showing up for a kill, basically, and that’s what we want to portray. It really is about the hunters and about the people that are in front of the camera, as well as the people behind the camera because they’re part of the team and they’ll be rotating hunts. So it’s about that team and we really want to put forth . . . “This is who we are and this is why you want to watch it. By the way, yeah, we’re going to kill some really big whitetail in the process.” Make them secondary.