Watch Wardens on Outdoor Channel. Back-to-back episodes on Friday nights in the summer! Current air times are:
Monday at 3:30pm ET
Tuesday at 9:30am ET
Thursday at 6:30am ET
Friday at 9pm ET
Friday at 9:30pm ET
Saturday at 5am ET
Saturday at 5:30am ET
Sunday at 3am ET
Sunday at 3:30pm ET
Sunday at 3:30pm ET
Michigan Conservation Officer Mark Zitnik.
A Michigan conservation officer risked his own life to save others while enjoying some down time with his family. This news is around three weeks old but it’s still an incredible story of the self-sacrifice made by so many in the law enforcement community.
The full story is available here.
After staying indoors through Michigan’s winter months, a lot of people like to jump into spring by riding an off-road vehicle (ORV). Here’s a brief clip that’s taken from this week’s episode and features some officers from the Muskegon area as they patrol ORV riders.
The time period for Michigan’s highest risk for wildfires is just starting up and runs through early June. This is a bit different from the western United States, where summertime usually poses the highest risk. The video below introduces you to some of the men and women who are virtually always on standby to protect the state’s natural resources when the risk is elevated. It’s also a part of this week’s episode on Outdoor Channel.
“Wood is a renewable product... Steel and concrete are finite,” said David Neumann of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. We interviewed him for this video which is some of the footage we shot most recently, before our daily lives were altered pretty significantly by quarantines and executive orders. It explains a newer building technique that is being used at Michigan State University for a current project.
Actually, they jumped through a window and were probably scared out of their minds!
October 1 is the opening day of archery deer season in Michigan every year so on the day that we shot this video, as a TV crew, we were hoping to run into some opening-day hunters who were leaving corn in a county closed to baiting. Pre-dawn rain made that potential encounter less likely but a doe and a fawn made things more interesting for us, albeit a tad rougher on themselves. This segment shows a bit of that story and comes from the episode that premieres tonight on Outdoor Channel.
Our crew was with a couple of conservation officers as they encountered some fishermen who were fishing a closed stream and, as it turned out, had a few other infractions that had to be addressed. This clip is from an episode that’s airing this week. We hope you like it!
The state of Michigan usually has 200 elk tags available each year that are distributed through a lottery to which thousands of hunters apply. With so much interest in this hunt and with fairly short seasons, conservation officers, as well as the general public, keep a close eye on those that are fortunate enough to garner a tag. The video below is a clip from this week’s episode on Outdoor Channel and follows a few officers during an elk patrol.
Elk were re-introduced to Michigan in 1918 and the Michigan DNR celebrated the 100th anniversary in 2018. The segment below commemorates this success story in wildlife management and is featured in the episode that debuts tonight on Outdoor Channel at 8:30pm ET.
Brian Mastenbrook, a wildlife manager with the Michigan DNR, mentions the Spanish Flu in this piece as a reference to how different the world was in 1918. Obviously, none of us involved with shooting this segment could have imagined that within 18 months, we’d all be quarantined as a result of COVID-19.
So in 1918 and 2020, there’s at least one aspect of life that is comparable.
We hope you stay safe (at home) and healthy and enjoy this segment.
Outdoor Channel is currently offering an episode of Wardens on its site. I’m unable to embed it here, but it can be found here.
In this clip, an officer in southwest Michigan runs into a man on a jet ski who has a life jacket on but isn’t wearing it properly.
Not only does the equipment look neat, but it’s obviously useful! The segment below is a part of this week’s episode on Outdoor Channel. This one was shot in Roscommon, Mich. where representatives of fire-fighting agencies from several states gathered to share ideas and techniques as well as look at equipment.
Michigan Conservation Officer Tim Rosochacki utilizes some skills he learned long before he went through recruit school to became a C.O. This segment is from the episode that’s airing this week on Outdoor Channel.
When a resource is doing relatively well, there’s frequently an urge to take advantage of it. Sometimes that’s done without the knowledge of some important factors: like limits.
The video below is from this week’s episode and offers a brief (3 minutes or so) glimpse into how a white bass (or silver bass) patrol is orchestrated.
Sometimes an officer runs into something during a patrol that he likely never could have imagined…like the cat lady in this clip that starts around the 0:17 mark. (This is from the episode that’s airing this week).
Conservation Officers spend a lot of time in the community educating people, both young and old. In the video below, Officers Zach Painter and Jenni Hanson teach a snowmobile class at an elementary school.
Since the early 70s, any Michigan hunter that bagged a deer and went to the DNR for a patch could get one. Here’s a bit more info on that:
A brief snippet of tonight’s episode: