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Mark Kenyon Host of Wired to Hunt – He knows how to hunt whitetails
Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. And ladies and gentlemen, we are very fortunate to have a gentleman named Mark Kenyon. Now, Mark is founder and full-time managing editor of Wired To Hunt, both the blog and the podcast. He’s also the digital content manager, director at National Deer Alliance. And in April of 2015, he was on the cover of Outdoor Life Magazine as the new media star in the outdoor industries. Mark was also named the 2014 Quality the Deer Management Association Communicator of the Year. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark: Thank you so much, Bruce. I’m excited to be here.
Bruce: Well, we’re excited to have you here. And let’s just jump right into the fact of you gaining influence in building a substantial media career in the outdoor industry at I’m going to call it a younger age, as we talked in the warm up. I’m a little bit older than you are.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, a little bit.
Bruce: A little bit. So let’s jump right in and let’s talk about that.
Mark: Yeah. I’ve been very, very blessed and fortunate to be able to do what I’m doing now, like you said, at a pretty young age. I’m 28 years old now, and my full-time career unbelievably is to talk about and write about hunting in the outdoors, which has been my dream for a long time.
And it’s a long story that you probably don’t want to hear, but long story short, I was able to move from a career in the technology industry, to now running Wired To Hunt and the Wired To Hunt Podcast full-time, and now also writing for most of the different hunting magazines out there and all of that. So it’s something that took, as anyone might imagine, a lot, a lot of time and energy.
I really dove into Wired To Hunt in the fall of 2009, and I decided, at that point, I just started my full-time career just out of college,
I really dove into Wired To Hunt in the fall of 2009, and I decided, at that point, I just started my full-time career just out of college, and at that point, I decided working a desk job in the technology industry, it’s great, I appreciate it, but it’s not what I’m passionate about. It’s not what I know I’m going to want to do in the long run. So I’m going to double down on Wired To Hunt. I believe that I could build something there, a community and a resource for the next generation of deer hunters.
And pretty much from that time on, from October 2009 until today, I pretty much, every single day of my life, I have been working on something related to that, whether it’s creating, writing articles for the website, or building the website, or working on social media, or writing for magazines, or recording podcast, and doing all these different things, yeah, it just took a lot of time in building relationships, and trying to always be on the forward edge of what’s going on, and trying to find a way to serve my audience. How can I be as beneficial and helpful to the people up there that are paying attention?
I’ve been fortunate that people responded well to it, and have appreciated it, and found it interesting and useful. And here I am today, just very thankful to be able to do what I’m doing now.
And I’ve been fortunate that people responded well to it, and have appreciated it, and found it interesting and useful. And here I am today, just very thankful to be able to do what I’m doing now.
Bruce: Mark, you mentioned a couple of seconds ago about writing different articles. Just share with our listeners, just run through the list of where your articles appear in the media.
Mark: Sure, So of course, I write articles for my own website, WiredToHunt.com. And then also over the past years, I have written for Quality Whitetails Magazine, which is the Quality Deer Management Association’s publication. I’ve written for North American Whitetail, I’ve written for Deer and Deer Hunting, Whitetail News, Field & Stream, and Outdoor Life.
Bruce: Now, do you have a regular article that’s published in Outdoor Life?
Mark: So in Outdoor Life, I regularly contribute to their website, usually weekly, sometimes several times a week. On their website, I’m writing consistently there. When it comes to features in the magazine, that’s more irregular, just more when I’ve got an article idea, or when they specifically have an article they like me to write, then I get that in there. And that’s kind of the same for all the other magazines. That’s all in a freelance basis.
So when I have time to send in queries and article ideas, I do that. I try to keep myself in those magazines as much as possible to stay active there. But the more and more things continue to grow at WiredToHunt, I’ve kind of had to pull back a little bit on my on writing elsewhere, just because I simply just don’t have as much time as I used to, but still trying to continue writing for those publications because they’re terrific resources and it’s fun to be able contribute in that way.
Bruce: Well, the digital company that I write for, and I write Western state profiles, is goHUNT.com, and Chris Porter runs that over there, and the content manager is Brady Miller. I don’t know if…do you know those folks?
Mark: I know Brady a little bit. I don’t know them personally, but I’m familiar with them.
Bruce: Right. So that’s another takeaway, that if you ever want an introduction to them, I’ve been working for them for over two-plus years, or working with them. I’m a contractor or freelancer, whatever. But they’re great people and they’ve got great Western content, which there are whitetails out here, but we’re not part of the QDMA 37 states yet, but we will be.
Mark: Yeah. I’ve heard good things about eastern Colorado.
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