Randy,
Does the new business plan allow for filming more on National Forest? I know that film permits costs are a huge impact to operational expenses. With the mindset of hunting on public land most of the OYOA you're limiting to BLM or state land and I think that's because of your filming permit. I venture to guess that's affected the success of filling your tag where if you had a permit for the NF in the same hunting zone/unit you might have been able to be on more game animals. The regular hunter has free access to these lands and it'd be nice to be able to capture that on film. I have never understood filming permits and the pricing structure of them.
I hope that with the new format there will be DVD's out so that we can take the show everywhere, even to hunting camp.
We do a lot of filming on National Forest. This last year, we did an AZ elk hunt, NV archery deer, MT mule deer, NM elk and will do MT bison, all on NF lands. The remainder are on BLM or state lands. I would say that we do about half our hunts on NF and the other half primarily on BLM.
BLM charges us a similar fee to the NF. BLM permitting is easier, for whatever reason, I don't understand. Getting a NF permit can flat out be a serious PITA.
Forests in regions outside Region 1 (based in Missoula) are far easier to work with than those in Region 1. A Nevada forest actually allowed us to film iin their wilderness area this year. They stated we were the first show they ever permitted to film in the Ruby/East Humboldt Wilderness areas. The person in charge at that forest is a hunter and liked our proposal. Wish I could get the other Forests to go along with that idea. Still never been able to get a permit for the Maroon Bells Wilderness, The Raggeds, or other wildernesses in Colorado, even though I see a lot of other shows filming in those places. Oh well.
As far as DVDs, the new stuff will also be out on DVD.