Wild man Coyote Peterson sat down with Outdoors.com to give us a behind-the-scenes look at some of his most interesting and controversial episodes. From confronting dangerous animals to cutting off rhino horns with chainsaws, here are the juicy details behind some of the best episodes of Brave Wilderness.
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Getting Close to a Wolverine . . . And Touching a Grown Man’s Feet?
Outdoors.com: What happened behind the scenes in “Wolverine Face-Off”?
Coyote Peterson: “Wolverine Face-Off” was produced in 2016. And when we did that episode, there was a huge miscommunication between my team and Steve Kroschel, the wolverine expert that we worked with in Alaska. And trust me, when I say the miscommunication was on his side. He is a kookie, fantastic, wonderful man, and I’m happy to call him my friend, but we got to Alaska, and he was like, “Oh, you can’t get in an enclosure and work with a wolverine. I thought you wanted to take photographs of it.” We’re like, “We make videos. Steve, we sent you examples of the kind of video we want to make.” He clearly didn’t watch those things. So he put me through an intense, essentially three days in the wilderness. In the video, we make it seem a little bit shorter, but he put me through three intensive days of training for what I needed to go through to ultimately be able to get into that enclosure with the wolverine by learning from the specialists.
In the wolverine episode, everything we had to do behind the scenes was crazy. I mean, it was like making a mini-movie. That experience was why it was so meaningful for me to ultimately work up to being able to enter an enclosure with that animal. It was very intense and I had to walk around barefoot in Alaska, in total like three or four days. I was not allowed to put shoes on, seriously. Steve made me get grounded, which is something that he believes in, getting grounded to the planet. I had to connect with Alaska before I could work with this wolverine. So my feet got messed up in the process of doing this. Steve doesn’t wear shoes, in rain, snow, scorching heat. Now the bottom of his feet are like a hobbit’s feet. They’re like leather, it’s crazy. I touched them. It’s bizarre.
Cutting off an Endangered Rhino’s Horn—for Conservation
Outdoors.com: Tell us another behind-the-scenes story from one of your most memorable episodes.
Coyote Peterson: Another incredibly special one is “I Cut Off a Rhino’s Horn,” which we did in South Africa on black and white rhinos to promote the conservation of that species. I got to be part of a dehorning process for a white rhino, which is a medical thing that they do to protect the rhinos. I hated us having to do that, but it was necessary to protect them against poachers. The behind-the-scenes elements of that were extremely intense. Vehicles, helicopters, tranquilizers, people all around tracking, guns, massive teams moving around, rhinos.
These rhinos live in the dense shrublands of South Africa. I mean, that was just an absolute monster of a production. And the episode is phenomenal. Sometimes these bigger conservation episodes are not quite as celebrated or don’t get as many views as the extreme stuff like bites and stings, but for us, they’re the most important, and the message that came out of that episode continues to push the conversation forward and the fight against poaching of rhinos and all animals.
We Built a Rig, Planet-Earth-Style Just to Film This Episode
Outdoors.com: What’s another unique episode?
Coyote Peterson: The [Jaguar vs. Caiman – Ultimate Showdown!] episode shows just how much work we had to do. He had to build a special camera rig that went on a boat to be able to film jaguars for that entire episode. And if you go back in and watch the episode, Jaguar vs. Cayman, you’ll see. Well, you probably won’t see. We give a little bit of behind-the-scenes insight into the rig that we had to build to capture these moments. My cinematography team did something, Planet Earth-style, and for us that was an incredible challenge. The episode is absolutely fantastic. Again a very deep conservation-centric story but a lot of great adventure came out of it as well.
