Welcome to HuntGauge.com, a website about Hunting Videos.  Here you will find the Who, What and Why of Hunt Gauge.

Who is Hunt Gauge?

I’m a passionate, amateur-Hunter, who lives, breathes and hunts on the African continent. I like to watch Hunting Videos (HVs) online. You can refer to me as the Hunt Gauge Guy. In recent years, I’ve noticed an exciting revival in the way that HVs are being made and the different stories they tell of the modern day Hunter, Huntress and Hunting Community.

Africa is where it’s at for me so I tend to be interested in hunting on the African continent.  Africa has many countries, different cultures, a plethora of huntable game species and diverse habitats to explore, yet there aren’t that many HVs to showcase this.  I would guess that for every HV made on the African continent there are at least 10 times more HVs made in other places of the world, including North America and Europe. So I thought it would be a good idea to initially focus on African-related HVs only on this blog.

I’ve started this blog as a way to capture, organise and explore my thoughts on this subject area and would like to invite you to explore with me and comment on the website where you feel you have something valuable to add.

What is Hunt Gauge? Maybe a Venn diagram can answer this.

If you’ve ever searched for something online related to movies, series or documentaries, you would probably find the answer you were looking for on the Internet Movie Database website (IMDb). Hunt Gauge aims to be similar to IMDb but for Hunting Videos.

It would be great if at some stage in the future this website could become more community-driven, but at the moment it just me, myself and the Hunt Gauge Guy contributing.  I watch Hunting Videos, I tell you where I watched them online, and gauge them so that they make sense when curated on this website.

So what’s the big fuss about Hunting Videos?

All members of the Hunting Community, both amateurs and professionals, have seen or have made use of HVs as a way of informing and educating themselves, preserving their hunting memories or promoting their services. Cameras that are capable of recording good quality video can now be found on most African Safaris, either in the hands of professionals being paid to capture every detail or in the pockets of amateurs using their phones to capture some of the hunting action. More cameras mean more Hunting Videos, and also more opportunities to inform, educate and entertain the Hunting Community.

Below is a Venn diagram I created to visually explain where Hunt Gauge sits when taking three different perspectives of Hunting Videos, namely as Storytelling, Educating, and as Hunting.  There it is… Hunt Gauge sits right in the middle, with some of these overlapping features:

1. Reviews and Curation – helping you find what you are looking for, telling you more about what you are looking at, and offering my opinion about it.
2. Art and Fact – using filmmaking and storytelling techniques (art) can enhance HV’s or sometimes detract from what actually happened (fact).
3. Commentary and Analytics – value-adding comments from the Hunting Community with some useful analysis can go along way to enhance the viewing experience.

If you were to show the same HV to a group of Hunters or Huntresses, and then asked them individually what they thought of the video, you would probably get equally as many different answers.  This isn’t because the Hunting Community is fundamentally divided on the act of hunting, rather it’s because Hunting Videos are multifaceted with lots of different things going on.  Just like with a TV sports desk panel giving their post-match analysis after a big game, each panel member would have their own points of interest and opinion of how the teams performed.  Detailed analytics and careful review of the footage are often used to break down critical moments in the game that made the difference. Here are some questions I’m interested in exploring:

Could Hunting Videos benefit from detailed “sports-like” commentary and analysis from experts, the type seen in TV coverage of major sports like football, rugby or cricket?

If there was such a thing as a hunting coach, how would they make use of Hunting Videos or footage to coach and improve their hunting skills? Does this already happen with some Professional Hunters?

Some viewers may remember some aspect of how the HV video was made, it’s production, editing, clever use of video animations, choice of soundtrack, or terrible audio quality that could have either enhanced or detracted from the actual hunting story.  As they say… beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this saying probably holds true of most HV’s when you consider how the video was made. Most people would agree that wildlife and nature documentaries made by the likes of the BBC and National Geographic (eg Blue Planet and Planet Earth) are beautifully made and a joy to watch while simultaneously educating the viewers.  This is despite the fact that there is usually much more graphic animal-animal killing and animal suffering-footage than most Hunting Videos show. Much of what makes this sometimes very graphic content watchable is the clever use of storytelling and filmmaking techniques that often go unnoticed when watching any good video. Here are some questions I’m interested in exploring:

When watching a Hunting Video, which parts do you see objectively (black or white) versus subjectively (grey)?

How different would Hunting Videos be if they were produced using similar filmmaking and storytelling techniques used in documentaries and other non-hunting wildlife productions?

When someone makes a video, they are telling a story.  Most viewers don’t want to waste their time watching a boring story with no entertainment or educational value. So I doubt the group’s opinion of the video would be very flattering if we had to subject them to a half hour video of long scenes that feel like watching paint drying, or worse, filled with cringe-worthy moments where every person in the video acts irresponsibly at every opportunity.  Here are some questions I’m interested in exploring:

How can online Hunting Videos be used to promote sustainable and ethical hunting practices?

How many Hunters and Huntresses consider themselves to be Hunting Brand Ambassadors when filmed on HVs? Are things like weapon safety, fair chase and respect for others common threads in all HVs?

Why Hunt Gauge?  4 reasons why…

Firstly, I intend HuntGauge.com to showcase the best of Hunting Videos. Rather than draw attention to Hunting Videos that are poorly made or of questionable ethics, Hunt Gauge’s main objective is to promote Hunting Videos that are good.  Want to know what I mean by a good Hunting Video? Please check out the HuntGauge page for a detailed explanation.

Secondly, I want to show that each Hunting Video is more than just storytelling, it’s also an opportunity to learn something.  Whether you are an amateur or professional:  Hunter, Videographer, Vlogger, Safari Outfitter, Ranger, Tracker, Wildlife Rancher, to name a few, there is always a useful tip or lesson in every Hunting Video that can be applied to make you better at your hobby or profession.

Thirdly, if you’ve ever searched for Hunting Videos online you’ll be familiar with the popular video hosting platforms.  These platforms, or platform, are heading in a direction that is becoming increasingly unsupportive of Hunting Videos, similar shooting sports and hunting vloggers.  In addition to this, limited search functionality on these platforms can make finding what you are looking for a bit of a challenge. There are also often viewer comments from “anti-hunters” that can be an unnecessary distraction, or sometimes no comments whatsoever because this feature was disabled by the video publisher. Therefore, comments are welcomed on all of HuntGauge.com’s posts, especially from members from the Hunting Community that are knowledgeable about the hunting area or animal being hunted in particular HVs.  Please note that all comments will be moderated to ensure that only value-adding comments are approved.

And lastly, I created HuntGauge.com for members of the Hunting Community that have an interest in hunting and operating on the African continent.  I feel that legal, sustainable and ethical trophy-hunting in Africa is more prominent now than ever before, and the important role this plays in the conservation of many of Africa’s game species cannot be overstated enough, despite its counter-intuitive nature.  It is my view that this is one of the continent’s biggest success stories and it is also my view that Hunting Videos, especially those distributed online in the public domain, can have the biggest impact on how this story is communicated to the rest of the world.

Conclusion

I watch Hunting Videos online, I tell you where I found them and what I think are the important bits to watch, and then I gauge and organise them on this blog.

Hunt Gauge Guy