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Coyote Peterson is a natural-born lover of wildlife. At the age of seven he wrangled his first 40 lb snapping turtle; by the time he was 10, he’d caught his first rattlesnake. Coyote is all grown up now, and his love for wildlife has only grown over time as well. He is a field herpetologist, independent filmmaker and television host on a mission to capture some of the most intense wildlife animal photography the world has ever seen. Inspired by predecessors including Marty Stouffer, Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin and Bear Grylls, Coyote is the host of two new animal adventure shows Swamp Monsters and Brave Wilderness and is also one of the newest additions to the Drift sponsorship lineup. Armed with the knowledge that there won’t be a second chance to capture these unique encounters on film, Coyote’s motto is to “Get yourself close and get the cameras even closer, the best shots come at the biggest risks!” We wanted to find out how the Drift HD170 Stealth is helping Coyote get closer than ever to the wildlife he loves and recording footage you would have never thought possible.

Drift Innovation: What is the biggest thrill you’ve ever experienced with an animal?

Coyote Peterson: The real life-changing event for me was the huge snapping turtle I caught when I was about seven years old. It took many attempts over the course of two summers to catch the turtle, but when my day finally came it happened in waist-deep water. I dove in after the beast and the turtle weighed at least half as much as I did, so it was a pretty big animal to catch. That was definitely my most memorable moment as it really set the course for my future; however, I have actually been plagued with recurring nightmares about snapping turtles ever since!

The coolest experience I’ve had was with an alligator snapping turtle we caught in the Everglades this summer. I’d never encountered one in the wild before and to catch something that big was definitely the highlight of my animal catching career so far. We kind of stumbled upon it as we were actually filming a shot with binoculars for another sponsor. As we were standing around I saw a nose sticking up in the water, popped up my binoculars and immediately knew we had something. I said to the camera team “guys I think we have a nose sticking up here!” The camera guys said “great, let’s set up a shot” but there was no time. The nose dropped below the surface and I took off running.  The camera crew scrambled and ran after me. The water didn’t look deep, but when I jumped in I immediately found myself in water that was about chest deep and my stomach lurched.  Let me remind you that this is the Everglades – there are alligators everywhere and they are drawn to splashing, so when you find yourself in over your head, well the adrenaline really starts to pump! I reached down to feel for the turtle and to my surprise accidentally stuck my hand right into its mouth.  I felt his tongue and immediately pulled my hand out hollering to the cameras “I just had my hand in it’s mouth!” Struggling against the mud and plants I managed to grab the back of its shell. When I surfaced, the turtle was absolutely enormous. We had to build a contraption just to weight it – 83 lbs – without a doubt a true swamp monster! The alligator snapping turtle is one of the rarest things you can come across in the wild, so it was definitely a real thrill.

D.I.: As a professional filmmaker, you obviously have sampled lots of different filming equipment. Why do the Drift cameras stand out as one of your “go-to” cameras of choice in documenting animals in the wild?

C.P.: The thing I really love about filming with the Drift cameras is that you don’t have to think about the Drift cameras. You don’t have to worry about getting mud on them or getting them wet like you do with other camera equipment. They are also so compact and versatile and have such a great lens that you know you will always get the shot, no matter what happens. The footage you can get combined with the small size and weight of the cameras really allows you to go anywhere and do anything, which is great when we are out filming. I always carry it around with me on the end of a stick, or mount it onto something that I build from elements of the environment. It is the camera we always rely on to get the shot that you just didn’t think was possible.

Swamp Monsters POV Video – Drift HD170 Stealth from Drift on Vimeo.

D.I.: What do you find is the best use for the Drift cameras when filming for a show like Swamp Monsters or Brave Wilderness? Do you use them in filming active engagements with animals and reptiles? Or, are they better served set up on a site to record animals moving about without being aware of human presence?

C.P.:  I think it goes both ways, and really we use the Drift in all aspects of our filming. Since the Drift camera happens to be right there on me, most of the time it is easily accessible so it can be up and running right away in the heat of a capture. Sometimes when we encounter or capture an animal things happen so fast that at times not all of the cameras are running. Many times it has been the Drift camera that is up and ready to go, getting the crazy running shots as I chase after animals.

Once a capture is made – or an animal is trapped in a sense that it can’t get away, and we’ve already filmed the segment about it, we are able to really get up close and personal with the Drift for those crazy up-close shots. This summer a rattlesnake attacked the camera we got some really great shots where you could see the agitated snake and then in a split second it would strike and bite the camera, spraying venom all over the place. It was totally an insane moment because if that camera had been in my hand and not mounted on a stick, I would have been on a life flight helicopter on the way to the hospital. The versatility of the Drift has us brainstorming future unique shots with different animals. It will always be the Drift that is the camera capturing those mind boggling shots of animals attacking that puts people on the edge of their seats and leaves them wondering, ‘how the heck did they pull that one off?!’

One of the coolest things we did this summer was attach a Drift camera to the back of a snapping turtle and let it swim around. It was really unique to get a perspective from the turtle’s point of view. You could just see a bit of the shell in the foreground, and its head as it came up for air. It would look around and then slowly slink its nose back down below the surface and take off. It was pretty cool until the turtle began to disappear into the murky abyss with the camera on its back and I had to run to recapture the animal before it – and the footage – were lost into the swamp!

D.I.: What are the most important features on the Drift HD to you as a professional filmmaker working predominantly in remote locations?

C.P.: Battery life is very important and on the Drift it is really amazing, I was blown away with how long it lasts. This summer we filmed with two of the Stealths and the big battery pack in the Stealth would last for a full day of shooting. It does take a solid overnight to get fully charged, but it is really great to have that kind of longevity and reliability in a battery.

The wide angle aspects you can get with the lens are pretty amazing on the Drift as well; I never failed to be impressed with the footage we captured. I also really love the size and shape of the Drift – it’s very easy to hold and unlike many of the other square cameras on the market, with this you can just hold it in one hand comfortably, tuck it back up into your sleeve and be on the move in no time.

But, I think my favorite feature of the Drift is the ability to adjust the exposure. We film predominantly in the early morning and evening hours when animals are most active, so having the ability to change and adjust exposure with the constantly changing lighting conditions is huge. It is also very easy to go into night mode. Not only that, but the quality of recording you get in the night mode is unbelievable for such a little camera – it looks clear as day for the most part when most HD video cameras experience a lot of “video noise” in low light conditions. Drift really is the best small HD camera on the market, especially in low light situations. You guys really are light years ahead of the competition, I don’t know how you are doing it, but I’m sure other companies and brands are plenty jealous!

D.I.: What is the coolest still-frame shot you’ve gotten from film shot on the Drift?

C.P.: There are a lot of images I’ve gotten but one of the coolest was from inside the mouth of a 55 lb snapping turtle this summer. This turtle just clamped down on the camera, which was almost full-on in its mouth.  The focus was pulling in and out because of the short focal depth and you could see the turtle breathing – it was a really scientific looking shot of the inside of a turtle’s mouth and down the throat. Kinda gross looking, but definitely very cool.

We also got a couple of really cool still frames from the rattlesnake that attacked the camera. I also love to take still frames from the underwater footage – when there is nothing for scale and you see a giant turtle moving around in the water it really looks like a dinosaur, or in our case, a swamp monster!

D.I.: What is the most unique camera setup you’ve constructed to capture an animal on film?

C.P.:  Every time we go out it’s something new.  One thing I always do is build something from the elements I find in the environment to film the crew and myself and the direction I’m traveling with the Drift camera. It’s this really cool wide angle shot that usually looks down the length of a tree branch, and you see me and the cameras and crew following behind.

We also built a remote-control camera car to mount the Drift onto in order to follow animals around.  It was really cool and looked kind of like a Mars rover or something. We chased a Gila monster with it in Arizona and tried to chase down a roadrunner but alas – just as it is depicted in the cartoons, the road runner always outdoes the Coyote! Haha, yeah, bad joke, but damn those things are fast!

What we’d love to do sometime is mount the Drift on a remote-control car and disguise it as something like elephant dung and slowly inch the car forward into a pride of lions eating a fresh gazelle or zebra kill so that the camera can get right up into the carnage that is going on. It would be pretty gnarly to get some blood and guts splashing on the lens and even have the animals step on or bat away the camera in the heat of it all. Contraptions like that are in the works for getting the cameras closer than anyone has ever been to some of these animals, and it is the Drift cameras that are going to be getting these incredible shots for the show.

D.I.: Going back to the rattlesnake assault on the Drift during your recent Arizona Expedition earlier this month, how did the camera survive that venomous attack?

C.P.:  The camera survived no problem, despite how badly the snake wanted to kill it! Even though it was soaked in venom, it fortunately is not susceptible to the toxins. The camera does have a few scratches and puncture marks on it now, but we got it all cleaned up quickly.

The Drift cameras actually took quite a beating this summer, and the only thing I was able to break was the underwater housing. And technically, I didn’t break it, a 35 lb really mad snapping turtle did, cracking the water lens right down the middle! So while the housing didn’t survive the jaws of a snapping turtle, the camera did!

I actually had a Drift in the jaws of a hyena this summer, notorious for having the most powerful bite of any land mammal – these guys literally eat bones. The Drift got gnawed on a little bit and it came out just fine; I guess it didn’t taste enough like zebra meat. I also accidentally dropped another one off a cliff in Arizona, it bounced at least 35 feet down into a rock strewn ravine. We were just hoping the memory card would survive, so imagine how surprised we were that the camera did, too!  A few scratches, but those just add character!

D.I.: What animal do you one day hope to get close to and document?

C.P.: A wolverine. I’ve been obsessed with wolverines since I was in first grade. It is one of the most aggressive animals on the face of the planet. They are nomadic so it’s very hard to track them and doing so will be an incredible challenge for myself and the team. If we are able to pull it off and actually track and catch one, it’s going to be like dealing with a tornado of claws and teeth in a box. They will fight bears, drive packs of wolves from a kill, and chase mountain lions up trees. They are notorious for attacking prey much larger than themselves and I am confident that if I come face to face with one and get a Drift camera near its snarling jaws, there will be no exceptions made – and that would be one hell of a good shot!

D.I.: What is your advice for an untrained civilian wildlife lover that wants to capture film of animals in the wild?

C.P.:  I’d never recommend that anyone try and get as close to the animals as I do. I have spent most of my life around animals – capturing and handling them, and still I don’t even always have all the answers or right moves. This summer alone I was bitten by several animals including a 300 lb alligator that nearly ripped my finger off! So you really can’t predict what is going to happen. People want the immediate gratification of fast paced television, but in all reality that’s not how it works. It requires a lot of time, patience and the incredible practice of silence. My advice for someone who wants to get incredible wildlife shots is to get a good zoom lens, go out to their nearest metro park or state forest, find a place to sit and be patient. This is the best way to see animals – let them come to you. Often times it is the chance encounter, and only the chance encounter that most people ever see an animal. Keep your camera on and your finger on the shutter button. You can always recharge a battery, but you might only have a mountain lion cross your path for a split second so you have to be ready for these moments. They will probably be a once in a lifetime glimpse, and if you are lucky you might capture that incredible shot!

D.I.: When and where can we tune in to see Swamp Monsters or Brave Wilderness?

C.P.: Swamp Monsters and Brave Wilderness are not official TV shows yet. We have raised private financing to develop both concepts independent of a network, which was an incredible challenge but also an incredible experience and learning tool. We just wrapped filming earlier this month with our trip to Arizona, and all of the footage we shot will be cut into reels that we will be shopping to networks this fall. The reels will sort of be like an extended movie trailer but for a TV series. It’s a whole bunch of highlight shots and mini sequences that will exemplify the design of the series. In a perfect world we would love to land one of these ideas with Discovery, Animal Planet, or National Geographic.  No matter what happens, we feel pretty confident that they will find a home somewhere!

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Swamp Monsters follows Coyote Peterson-adventurer, field zoologist, filmmaker- and an ambitious team as they follow a trail of folklore, photographic evidence, and scientific facts across the eastern half of the United States in search of both a World Record Common and Alligator Snapping Turtle.  Working with renowned field herpetologists, armed with the latest advances in tracking sonar and camera technology, basic survival tools and pure ambition, the team goes neck deep into the harshest wetland environments known to man as they track down legendary turtles of epic proportions. Alongside the unforgiving environments the team also faces a plethora of biological landmines…from aggressive aquatic mammals and venomous snakes to man-eating alligators.  The dangers are extreme and the adventures action- packed. This is truly a modern day White Whale story.  To find, capture and dare we say…release, a World Record Snapping Turtle.  There will be mud…this, is SWAMP MONSTERS!

Brave Wilderness follows adventurer, field zoologist, and filmmaker Coyote Peterson and his crew into the harshest environments on the planet as they use primitive means and basic survival equipment to track, capture and document the most dangerous, elusive and misunderstood animals known to man.  Pressing full on into the unknown of the world’s densest jungles, unforgiving deserts and deepest oceans to search out nature’s living nightmares, it is clear that the stunts and risks are genuine as Peterson and his team risk life and limb to provide an up-close and personal look at countless biological landmines.  Peterson uses innovative techniques to construct a variety of primitive ‘no-harm’ traps that will allow both him and the cameras closer than anyone has ever been.  His organic methods of tracking and safely trapping animals, combined with cutting edge film-making are both risky and ambitious, ultimately serving as a learning tool of what to do and NOT do if these animals are ever encountered in the wild. Welcome to the most dangerous show on television…This… is BRAVE WILDERNESS!