Brian Martin, Extreme Adventure Hunting

Bruce: Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to another episode of White-Tail Rendezvous. This is your host Bruce Hutcheon and we're going to head North of the border to a good friend of mine, Brian Martin, Extreme Adventure Hunting. Brian Martin has been a guide and outfitter for a long time in Canada as well as he's the owner of Asian Mountain Outfitters. Brian travels throughout the world bringing exceptional trophies to exceptional hunters. So, Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian: Thank you, Bruce. It's nice to be here.

Bruce: So let's just jump right into where your hunting tradition came from. Did it come from a family member, your dad, or an uncle? Why is Brian Martin one of the top, when I think, hunters in the world today?

Brian: Probably because when I was a young boy we lived out in the country. We had a farm, the nearest neighbor was two to three miles away and the highlight of my dad's year on the farm and ranch was when his old friends come and go hunting for a week, mule deer hunting on the ranch. And so since I was a little kid I would go along, since I was one or two years old where I could walk I would go with them on the hunts. And so [inaudible 00:01:20] so I had to sit in the truck, other times I was able to go along. We've got some big canyons out there but I always remember that was good times. My dad, one of his hunters who came out with him was one of his college professors when he took [inaudible 00:01:33] wildlife at Oregon State University. He would come out and then my uncle would always come out and then one of his good friends that owned a sporting goods store would come out. And there'd be about four or five people plus my immediate family, my mom and dad and then sometimes my dad's brother-in-law would hunt with us.

But normally it was just about five of us. And as I got older I would always [inaudible 00:01:57] and walk and [inaudible 00:01:57] bush. But I started doing a lot of hunting [inaudible 00:02:01] by international hunting through my dad's old hunting magazines. He had a huge collection of Outdoor Life and [inaudible 00:02:08] but mainly Outdoor Life Magazines. That's back when Jack O'Connor and [inaudible 00:02:14] and Klineburger and these guys are writing about hunting in Asia and hunting Africa and hunting through the seasons and brown bear. And so I would read every magazine he had and he had literally, I would say 150 to 200 of them, maybe more. Probably like 15 to 20 year's worth of magazines he kept and so I always would read those. And then he had also books on hunting in Africa. We used to read stuff by Peter Capstick, we read stuff by John Hunter, and so I would read all that and it was just interesting to me and I always wanted to be a good hunter. And even when I was young I would try and get good products. I remember I was one of the first person that we glassed with binoculars and back then most people on the farms and ranches would just shoot deer and look at them with their rifle scopes.

But my dream was always to go to Alaska, the Yukon, Africa

I remember I saved up a bunch of money when I was between my grade eight and grade nine year, so I was like 14. Saved up a bunch of money to buy like a $250 pair of Redfield Binoculars. And I was the only guy other than my dad that was really using binoculars for hunting. Everybody just used rifle scopes. And I ended up getting spotting scopes and tripods and we tried to spot deer in their beds but we ended up doing, most of the hunting was spot-and-stalk and jump-shoot hunting. In the middle of the day the animals would lay in the big patches of sage brush on the side of the canyons overlooking the John Day River [inaudible 00:03:32], so it's very big, steep country. Now there's big-horn sheep in it so that's kind of how I grew up is doing that. But my dream was always to go to Alaska, the Yukon, Africa. But that was still a good start. It was real hard hunting,