National Geographic Channel - Band of Grizzly Brothers

Printed on August 27, 2007 National Geographic Channel

Band of Grizzly Brothers

By Greg Chapman

April 27, 2009 5:19 PM

Leslie M. Gaines

Grizzly Creek Films Executive Producer

Expedition Grizzly Premieres Sunday, May 3 2009 at 9p

I am a Floridian--plain and simple. I really don't like cold weather. The built-in alarm clock in my head goes off at 3:57AM, three minutes before Casey's alarm. It is May 9, 2008. I poke my head out from the sleeping bag where Casey, Tom and Rick are snoring in concert. It's cold, maybe just zero degrees and through the frosted cabin window I can see in the bright moonlight it's snowing hard. I try to stay quiet as I step into my flip-flops. Yeah, that's right--flip-flops. I caught the flip-flop bug from the rest of our team. Casey, Tom and Rick wear flip-flops even when it's freezing cold. It must be a Northern thing I mutter to myself as I trudge through a foot of deep snow to the generator, hidden behind the cabin under a blue plastic tarp. One pull of the cord and the Honda sputters to life. I slip slide back to the cabin to make a hearty breakfast of bison sausage and free-range eggs for the team. Casey has already started a fire in the woodstove. My toes appreciate his gesture.

On the production of Expedition Grizzly featuring Casey Anderson I'm the crazy old uncle (Executive Producer) that Casey and Thomas Winston (a Grizzly Creek Films, LLC partner) never had. Our journey began when I invited Tom to help me with a grizzly bear education film I was hired to produce for the Draper Museum of Natural History at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody. On May 5, 2007, Cinco de Mayo, we met at the museum with the Founding Curator, Charles Preston to discuss the project.

As we left Cody the wind started to howl and the snow began falling. On any saner May 5th I'd be barefoot and standing on the poling platform of a flats skiff looking for tarpon in the Gulf of Mexico. I knew I'd lost my mind. To be working where it was snowing in May.

Click here to continue reading Band of Grizzly Brothers...

0 Comments

0 TrackBacks