THE CAMPBELL ILLINOIS HUNTING SHOW

A New Jersey filming team etched out a narrow victory in the first ever whitetail deer hunting and filming challenge recently completed in Southern Illinois. Ten teams from across the country, matching their skills in filming hunts, gathered the 1st five days of October at the outfitting facilities of Campbell Illinois Whitetails to compete for over $30,000 in prizes. The complete competition is to air on the Campbell Illinois Outdoors TV Show on Fox Sports Net and The Sportsman Channel in January 2004.

The Challenge was a team event, each team made up of one cameraman and one hunter, filming deer hunts during the opening of Illinois' archery season. The New Jersey duo of John Degraw, the hunting member of the team and cameraman Matt Broncatello narrowly edged out Kurt Parker of Tennessee, hunter and his cameraman, Grayling Akers from Illinois by a score of 304 to 302.5.

The video footage is judged based on required increments of content. "The competition was very close with six different teams holding the lead at some point in the Challenge" said Aaron Coston, one of the editors judging the contest. "If the second place team had eight more seconds of video footage on their doe hunt they would have won. That eight seconds resulted in over a $10,000 swing in prizes from first to second place", he added. Mike Bowie, Virginia and Todd Bricker of Indiana finished third with Ed Weeks, New York and Kenneth Childres, Arkansas finishing fourth.

The Campbell Whitetail Challenge, named after its originator, John Campbell who wrote and copyrighted the rules to the competition, included team members from eleven different states and featured outdoor cameramen whose works include footage that has aired on ESPN, TNN, OLN, FOX SPORTS NETWORK, THE HISTORY CHANNEL, THE OUTDOOR CHANNEL, THE SPORTSMAN'S CHANNEL, PBS STATIONS, and various local networks and video productions.

"This is huge for me!" exclaimed Broncatello. "The other cameramen here are already established in the industry. For someone like me wanting a career in outdoor videoing this could be huge!" An irony was that Broncatello, only 20 years, was the youngest and most inexperienced cameraman in the Challenge. And he won the competition with a borrowed Canon GL2 camera. That camera, with a retail price of around $2,600 was also the least expensive camera used by any in the competition. Some of the equipment being used cost over ten times as much, he said.

"Most of the viewers of wildlife hunting shows and videos have no idea how much of a challenge (hence the name of the competition) it is to successfully film a hunt for free-ranging animals in the wild", stated Campbell, host of the Campbell Illinois Outdoors TV Show. "This competition highlights the skills of the cameramen who help bring the 'outdoors' indoors to millions of viewers."

Scheduled for early January, is a Celebrity Whitetail Challenge that matches some of the best known hunting celebrities from across the county and their selected cameramen, competing for fun and charity, benefiting organizations like Sportsmen Against Hunger and Whitetails Unlimited. This will also be aired on Fox Sports Net and the Sportsman Channel.

With the first Campbell Whitetail Challenge such a success, qualifiers are already planned to feed into the 2004 Championship Round. Campbell foresees that the future could include a series of filming challenges across the country with teams, sponsored by various companies, competing for point standings on a "Whitetail Circuit". Plans also call for challenge events for wild turkeys. More information can be found at www.cwccircuit.com

Prizes for the Campbell Whitetail Challenge where provided by:
Hawgs Ltd.
Cabela's
Mossberg
Dinli ATV
Little Big Horn Outfitters
Renzo's
Elimitrax
Campbell Whitetail Circuit
Be sure to check out our new E-Brochure and feel free to pass it on: http://216.190.203.19/campbell

You can also learn more about Campbell Illinois Outdoors at: http://illinoisdeerhunting.com/index.html

If you have any questions regarding Advertising or Product Sponsorship with the
Campbell Illinois Outdoors Hunting Show on Fox Sports or the Sportsman's Channel,
Please feel free to contact John Stabley at 877-832-3971 Ext. 1 or email John
at jstabley@spgdirect.com






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