Hunting whitetails in Texas can be extremely difficult – but not for Matt Moore, founder of the Mt. Enterprise-based company Closing the Distance. From shooting his first buck at 11 with a trusty 30-30, Matt now shares his passion for critters on-camera. Closing the Distance always makes sure that hunters get all the rush without any of the harmful side effects. Imagine a nine-inch cow-horn spike on Thanksgiving morning, with your rifle slung across your shoulder. This is how Matt Moore of Closing the Distance finds deer hunting: a high he can't get enough of, plus a reliable source of venison stew for his family.
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Closing The Distance: Hunting Secrets With Matt Moore
Joining us on our show is Matt Moore. Matt is the Founder, Producer and Host of Closing the Distance TV. Matt's been at the game quite a long time since 1997. He and his staff member, Johnny Risinger, started Closing The Distance. They began airing in 2000. What's so special about Closing The Distance? One, the best part of the show for Matt is Moment of Truth segment of the show. You’ve got to watch the show to figure it out; deer management. Do we need to kill those? What bucks should we move from the property? When does a buck reach full antler potential? Finally, stress periods in deer. What time of year is that and what we can do to help mitigate that? Finally, ethical shot placement. Matt Moore has got a great show coming up. We're heading down to Texas, Enterprise to be exact, and we're going to connect with Matt Moore. Matt is the owner, producer, and everything at Closing The Distance TV. Matt, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Bruce. Everything's good down here in Texas.
Yes, it is. We talked a little bit and I have never shot a whitetail in Texas. Sometime along the line, I hope to get there and see what kind of deer you guys got.
Texas has always been management minded. Not everybody but a lot of the hunters, they'll try to get some age on the deer herd and see what the full potential is. It's pretty fun.
I look at you and you're starting Closing The Distance back in '97?
Yes, we'd started the company then. We stand for three years just getting to put this together and we actually started airing on the Outdoor Channel in January of 2000. This is our 17th year so it's been a lot of fun over the last seventeen years to see the industry change and grow. Back then we had to tell everybody what the Outdoor Channel was. It's just a total change in the industry for sure with all the networks and television media. It's really neat to know the history of doing it so long.
Why did you and Johnny Risinger start it?
I had bought out a deer scent business and it was basically just a mail order business. We had a few dealers. We sold deer scent, lures, and the bulk. We sold a lot of big pipe sizes and gallon sizes and we had contracts with some deer farms that collected urine. We sold it to other people who privately labeled it. We started the production part of it. I wanted to film a video to show the deer scent product being used in the field. We have made a video about that and some sponsors just saw it and said, "Jeff's footage and information is better than what's on TV. Start a TV show." How do you do that? What's the TV show? We started filming and getting ready for that and Johnny obviously had helped me out a lot with it and it just started off of a need to help advertise the company called Whitetail Product, is what it was. It started from there.
Talk about the camera gears you had back there as opposed to what we've got today?
It's totally different everything. Back when we we're just starting in '96, '97 in that timeframe, the digital format had just hit the market and everybody else was using the big Beta cameras and the digital MiniDV.
