Hi there, I'm Brian Husky, a photographer, filmmaker, and just a general outdoor ding-dong here in Boise, Idaho. At this point, many of you that are listening are probably buddies of mine, but from the new folks that have stumbled in here, here's a little intro to get a feel for who I am and what to expect from this podcast. First off, seriously, thank you for listening. The response to this series will have a lot to do with if or how much effort I'm going to put into this podcasting endeavor.
I mean, let's be honest, people have to like this in order to make it worth continuing. So if something accidentally ends up actually being worth your time, please pass it along to anyone you think may also dig what we're doing here. I'd appreciate it. Thank you.
So my earliest memories are with my dad as he fished the Ammon and Steelhead Rivers on the coast of Oregon. From Tillamook, we moved to Bend in 1985, and that's where I lived until 2000. After high school and Bend, I went to Central Oregon Community College, I worked construction, and then eventually I got into the cottage industry of composite aircraft that boomed out of Redmond in the 90s. So during my childhood and teen years, I fell into three main passions, hunting, fishing, and riding and racing, anything with two wheels.
My hunting pursuits centered around deer and elk, along with a pretty decent effort and predator calling. That actually evolved and simmered into a more of a refinement for archery hunting elk specifically. My experience with predator calling really led me into some quick success calling and studying the elk herds in Central Oregon over to the eastern part of the state. Focused around the Deschutes River, my fishing also evolved from basic tackle into fly fishing, something my dad really enjoyed, but he split his time equally between fly and traditional tackle and gear.
He never really had proper fly fishing too dialed in though, many of our outings were a a bit amateur. But making friends with the legitimate steelhead guides got me on the fast track with all things fly, and traveling all over the state in search of steelhead quickly became routine. The first legit fly rod that I bought was a 10 foot 7 weight Scott ARC snatched from a pro form by then rep Brian O'Keefe. My roommate Adam picked up a spay rod too, I think that same year, 96 I'm pretty sure.
So we were taking advantage of spay casting and having a blast with that, both on single and double handed rods before it became so popular. In 2000 I moved to Boise, because of the three things that I just mentioned, all of which were easily had along with an actual city that provided a lot of the things of the young adult like myself was after. I wasn't Boise for less than a week when I realized I never wanted to leave, it just feels like home. But a bit of an extra gap away from many steelhead rivers, I started to dial in trout fishing, and something of a makeshift career in photography and filmmaking sprang from early digital cameras and ample subjects to shoot.
In bikes. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time on two wheels over the years. I went nuts for it as soon as the training wheels came off, and honestly it's still a major part of my life. Same goes for racing.
Now I was racing in ADCC, Kawasaki, and the China Hat and Milliken Valley area as these depend in the mid 80s as a little kid. Years later I fell in love with mountain bikes and racing. I traveled all over Oregon and California too, with good friends whose entire family traveled to race. Carl was ultra fast, committed himself to racing and is still dominating a stunning career as a pro.
Moto routes run deep however, and my love for incredible freedom, horsepower, and tempo pulled me into off-road enduro and motocross racing. So over recent years though, the ease and simplicity of cycling is taken back over, and I've stayed active training for and racing various cross-country and cycle-cross series here around Boise. So that's a bit about me and some snapshots of what I'll blab about here. You may have seen some of my videos or short films in the Drake Film Awards, the Full Draw Film Tour, the Hunting Film Tour, or the Fly Fishing Film Tour, most notably Dock of the Drapes.
Finally I'm committing a lot of my time to keep them wet fishing, a brand and organization that's working to better link the respective angling and fisheries research communities. And top of this list without a doubt is the fact that I'm a brand new father. Well, I'm six months into it at this point. My kick ass, yes, she seriously is kick ass.
I'm not just saying that. Wife is a true professional between us and has built an impressive career in the motocross industry, which makes me, and quite frankly works out really well, as stay at home dad with our little kiddo. You can hear him playing with his toys and babbling in the background there. So there's certainly a chance some things will pop up here that are relevant to parenthood, maybe a bit unconventional as dragging him along for these ventures will certainly bring things to mind that I may touch on.
So I am not a podcast listener, but I think this is going to work. As a filmmaker, the writing and narration components of storytelling are a blast, and I'm known as a long-winded but enthusiastic storyteller. Each fall or following trips, I'd vene a bunch of thoughts along with photos into emails. My hunting emails, I called Rhett Reports, began to earn some inspiring responses from the readers who really got into them.
A couple even became features of First Light Hunting's Campfire Blog Series. So much happened in this past fall that as I sat and began typing this year's Rhett Report, page after page accumulated quickly. And I wasn't even close to the crescendo yet. And to editing it would take to make my writing readable, it was overwhelming.
And I thought to myself one night, hey, I could just naring this and make it much easier for people to listen to than actually trying to read in an email so long. And I really love the recording process, reminiscent of so many of my other films. So all in all, this is stuff that I absolutely love to do. So with that, the 2017 Rhett Report is becoming my inaugural podcast series.
No bells or whistles and music bumpers or ads just strip down storytelling from a dude who gets pretty amped up talking about this stuff. We have to polish some rough edges along the way. No worries. I'll tighten things up as needed.
But for now, this is how I'm giving podcasts to try. Thanks for coming along.