Voice of Rough Run: Travis Turk

Travis Turk - Rough Run narrator

When your goal is to put together a show that has the look and feel of anything on broadcast TV, it's important that you do not skimp when it comes to the quality of certain areas.  One of those areas that you absolutely do not want to shortchange is your narrator and we have one of the best, Travis Turk.

If you couldn't tell from his voice, Travis does not have to fake the southern accent we need for this program.   Travis works out of Old Hickory, Tennessee.  Anybody from a place called Old Hickory, Tennessee can't be all bad so we consider ourselves lucky to have Travis on board the show.

Check out Travis' website at www.travisturk.com and take a listen to all of the projects he has been a part of and you might not be surprised if you had heard Travis on TV somewhere else.

One of the joys of the internet age is that we can write a script, email it to Travis, and a day later a wonderful, magical audio file will arrive the next day with perfectly golden tones of a real voice man.

Here's a fun exercise.  When we edit our shows together, your humble producer Jeff (not Davis, the other one) will record his own voice to fill-in the spaces, this is called a "scratch track".  The purpose of the scratch track is to get the verbiage just right before we email the script to Travis.  That way, we can noodle with the words until they are just right before we send them out.  Listen to the difference between amateur audio and real voice work:

Rough Run Maps & Directions

When you are not familiar with an area, it's hard to know the difference between Round Knob and Dunkle Knob and Brushy Knob OR Rough Run versus Road Run versus Stony Run.  It all becomes a bit of gibberish if you didn't grow up running all these ridges.  One of the beauty's of the internet age is access to some pretty specific trivia and one of the the things we found was a USGS map of Fort Seybert.

Not the most up-to-date maps (above) but when it
comes to topography, it is still going to work.

We found that if we carried an extra dog collar, learned how to use our Garmin, we could always know where we were.  With our maps, we could tell what everybody was talking about.  It was not a full-proof system but when the closest you ever got to a forest was watching Robin Hood movies, you needed something!

Here is Ft. Seybert with the old bridge configuration.

The cool thing about the USGS maps (available for free at http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod/maps.html) is that it includes topography (helps us know where the ridges are), forest roads (helps us know where we're headed), and streams/rivers.  Some of the roads are a bit different and the area has grown, but the maps are a nice frame of reference if you've never traveled these ridges, 'hollers', or forest roads before.  We took these free maps to Kinkos and printed out some big copies (black-and-white is way cheaper by the way!)

Rough Run the creek and Rough Run the road.

Maps are no substitute for knowing the terrain and we certainly had a bit of a time interpreting "remember that place where we struck that time for Bobby's bear…" but a good map, a flashlight, and a basic sense of bearings will get you around Rough Run.  Getting around safely is another issue.  Particularly when you have  a fear of copperheads and all the rocks are loose!

"Big Nuts" and the Birth of an Obsession

The Rough Run Show started out as an idea that took some convincing.  We were not sure a show about a bunch of bear hunters would be very interesting and we certainly had no idea how one hunts bears.  So local bear hunting expert Jeff Davis invited us out to West Virginia to take a look.  Wow.

Why did we choose the Rough Run boys to film?  Big Nuts!   

The production crew arrived in Fort Seybert tired and worn out from a cross-country flight and the four hour drive from the airport but Jeff insisted, "Let's go tonight."  In the off season, the hunters are allowed to train their dogs and tree bear, only to release them when done.  It's a nice way of keeping the dogs sharp and it also gives the guys an idea of what bears are around and what they are doing.  Typically, the boys hunt in the evening, because the temperature is better for the dogs to run at night, to avoid overheating.  

"Big Nuts" on Squiggy's trail camera (above).

The first night we arrived, Jeff pulled us into his white pick-up truck and off we went.  Rough Run Boy Mark "Squiggy" Swigunski had a line on what seemed to be a big bear.  Squiggy had a trail camera set-up near the corn field behind his house and had caught site of a big black bear venturing by on the way to eat every night.  This corn field is where Jeff took us.  

On this night, a couple of jaded Los Angeles desk jockeys saw their first dog box, they heard dogs "blowing up" for the first time, saw hounds being dropped onto a track, they watched the Garmin's & walkies being used like a musical instruments, and they got to see a black bear sitting in a tree.  All within minutes.  "This is not typical," said Jeff referencing the speed of the treeing and how close it was to the road.  Plus, the bear was perched a mere 10 feet in the tree!  The production team was convinced.  

"Big Nuts" looking down from the tree (above, below right)

 Jeff was very proud of his dogs and gloated that he was able to have a bear treed for us so quickly.  He assured us, it does not happen that easy very often.  When we reached the tree, the bear was enormous, 300-350 lbs.  Being our first bear, it looked huge.  Jeff did agree that it was very large, but also noticed it was a male.  Since the bear was only 10 feet up in a tree, it was very easy to see, yet since it was dark, it was hard to film.  Armed with only our cell phones (please excuse the poor quality images), we started filming and snapping pictures furiously.  What we noticed was the bear was turned butt-end toward us.  And let's just say, you could tell it was a male!  

Our resident taxidermist John Mentus shouts out, "Look at the nuts on him.  We'll call him Big Nuts."  The name stuck.

That night was significant because it cemented for us our desire to come to Ft. Seybert and shoot Rough Run.  It was also the night Jeff Davis began his obsession with tracking down Big Nuts.  This formed the basis for our episode entitled "The Whale" (premieres Sunday at www.roughrun.com).  

Thanks, Big Nuts

A Dog's Life: CRACKER

Full Name: ROUGH RUN'S BIG GAME CRACKER
Breed:  Albert Black-and-Tan
Age:  9 years old in November
The Scoop:  Son of the legendary hound "Three Time Albert" and the brother of Ghost.  Excellent pedigree but getting a touch old.  Always ready to jump in the dog box.  Cracker and the up-and-coming Mingo are mating this spring for a super-litter.

The Story:  When Jeff first got Cracker, the pack went training on Saturday night and the dogs were in the forest late.  Way, way too late, the signal comes in at 11:00pm that Cracker has a bear treed.  It was too late and too far, so goes back on Sunday but the signal is gone and there is no sign of Cracker.  On Monday night, Jeff goes back into the forest and finally gets a signal.  There sits Cracker at the bottom of the tree staring up at a black bear, three days later and still on watch!

A Dog's Life: JACK

Full Name: DIAMOND JACK
Breed:  Albert Black-and-Tan
Age:  6 years old in November
The Scoop:  Little mates of Jill (obviously).  Gutsy, gritty, no-quit Jack will run chases up to 15 miles.  Jack does not quit.  Ever.

A Dog's Life: GHOST

Full Name: THUNDER MOUNTAIN GHOST
Breed:  Albert Black-and-Tan
Age:  8 years old
The Scoop:  Very significant pedigree, the son of the legendary "Three Time Albert".  He and Cracker are brothers.

Annual Rough Run Party

There's a tradition down in Rough Run.  Every year, sometime between the early bear hunt and the December bear hunt that the Rough Run Boys get together and have an old-fashioned, down home reunion/party.  The event takes place at Jerry Senior's place right at the entrance to Rough Run and includes lots of cookin', dancin', a little moonshinin' (don't tell anybody about that) and a whole lot of people having a great time.

(L to R) Producer TA Rhodes, Brenda Thorn, Jeff Davis,
Mike Adams, Scooter Davis, Squiggy Swigunski,
Terry Mitchell, Videographer Rebecca Carpenter,
Jerry Davis Sr, John Mentus, Jimmy Davis,
Producer/Videographer Jordan Rhodes

Jerry and his wife Shelia host the shindig and everybody makes a point to stop by.  It's one of those traditions that would be easy to make light of or dismiss as not important.  But when you live in a place where there aren't a ton of people and you have to go out of your way to run into someone, a party like this is important.  

Down in Rough Run / Ft. Seybert / Franklin, there's this whole culture of waving to someone you pass.  When you drive by the house of someone you know or you pass them on the highway, you wave.  It's part of the way things happen.  In New York or Los Angeles, you do everything you can to avoid eye contact, but in West Virginia you engage your fellow man.  So if you pass someone on the road and you don't wave, that could be interpreted in the wrong way.  A 'non-wave' has ramifications.  A 'half-hearted' wave is going to invite a discussion.  The politics of the wave is no small thing.

Which brings us  back to the annual Rough Run get-together at Jerry's house.  When everyone decides to get together, it means something.  When Jerry has the grill fired up to full-blast and Scooter is picking the banjo and Mike Adams & Cathy make the trip over from Brandywine, it means something.  When John Mentus and Danny Longo decide to stay an extra day, it means something.

So when you come to Rough Run and Jerry asks you to come on over to the party at the house, make the time, bring some deviled eggs, and get ready to have the time of your life.