ATHABASCA — A team of local outdoorsmen will soon be sharing their hunting and fishing adventures, many of which take place in the Athabasca region, with a much larger audience after recently inking a TV deal with the Sportsman Channel.
Doubled Down Outdoors won the Athabasca District Chamber of Commerce New Business of the Year Award in 2021, and have recently completed four episodes of their first of what they hope will be many seasons on television. The production company was started by Ryan Tomuschat, 21, with his friend Mark Thompson, 23, in 2020 with the goal of producing an outdoors-themed TV show to shop to various networks.
“I've been hunting my whole life and I always wanted to take it to the next level,” Tomuschat said in a Jan. 21 interview. “I always thought it would be cool to share what we do with a really large scale of people. That's why I really pushed to land a TV deal someday, which is what we ended up doing.”
The hunters, along with friends and fellow hunters Devin Skipton and Jeremy Hayward, who doubles as the camera operator, have four episodes complete and want to finish at least two more before the launch date of July 1.
“The show is going to be called Doubled Down Outdoors,” said Tomuschat. “We agreed to four episodes and right now we’re on track for six.”
It's a small production crew with Tomuschat as both producer and editor, compressing hours upon hours of footage into 21-minute episodes with Hayward running the camera.
“We film everything ourselves, which is what a lot of hunting shows do,” he said. “I do all of the editing for the show myself so I kind of call myself the producer. I pretty much plan everything out.”
Each 30-minute episode, with commercials, will take the viewer from before the hunt even starts right through to how to properly process the animal and Tomuschat puts each one together after combing through those many hours of footage.
“We’re solely doing this because we enjoy hunting ourselves and we want to share the experience with as many people as we can,” he said, adding they are not a guiding company but will take friends out hunting on occasion.
The other side of the TV business is funding and sponsorships, but that’s where local businesses Cheap Seats and Koch Ford come into play.
“Koch Ford in Athabasca gave us a truck, which was just insane,” he said. “Those guys are awesome.”
They also have sponsors in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the United States.
“All of our merchandise is made at Morningstar Ink in Athabasca and sold through them and through Cheap Seats, they carry all of our stock as well.”
Cheap Seats may not be able to offer the guys a brand-new boat to use, but Tomuschat is grateful for what they do offer.
“Cheap Seats, who have actually bent over backwards for us, are absolutely incredible,” he said. “They've helped us out a lot.”
And the sponsorship and clothing sales are needed until, and if, the show gets a decent following because they won’t be getting paid by the Sportsman Channel. Doubled Down pays for every episode they shoot themselves.
“We don't get paid from the Sportsman Channel in our first season directly,” said Tomuschat. “But once our first season is good, and hopefully it's a success, then bigger sponsorships will start rolling in because the majority of the money that we make is off of sponsorships, it's not the actual TV channel.”
The crew travels the province for the episodes, but Tomuschat noted Athabascans will recognize where some of the footage was filmed.
“It's been a hell of a ride. I will say that it's been a lot of hours committed to critiquing the editing,” he said. “It's very, very different hunting with a camera over your shoulder because you don't think about that when you're hunting. You're just trying to enjoy it but now you're thinking of it like, 'If someone was watching this, what would they want to see?'”
The show, Doubled Down Outdoors, will debut on the Sportsman Channel on Canada Day.
