“A Mathews Tradition” shoots dead on

It’s not too often that you look back at a fruitless hunting season and be thankful. And I’m sure Luke Pearson wasn’t all-too excited when his North Carolina turkey tags never saw the light of day last spring.

Fast forward a few months and Pearson might win a hunting trip thanks to his family’s struggles with toppling a turkey.

Pearson’s video, “A Mathews Tradition,” is among a group of qualifiers in Mathews Inc.’s “My Mathews Moment” video contest. Finalists from the first round of qualifying will be selected based on a vote rating system that continues until early next week (Aug. 9). Pearson’s video is the best on the site, but it needs more votes! (CLICK HERE TO VOTE)

“The original plan was to get a bow hunt on film,” Pearson shared with AHuntersTales. “By the time we found out about the contest, deer season was over. We knew we would have to shoot for turkey season or try to get a hog hunt together. It turns out, shooting a turkey with a bow on film isn’t always the easiest thing to do and the only land we had permission to chase hogs on was a good distance away. Since the deadline for the contest was fast approaching, I decided to go a different route.”

That route included taking the storyline out of the field and into the home. Pearson, a professional videographer, submitted a compelling video featuring a young, outdoors-loving couple embarking on the journey of parenthood while pondering outdoor traditions to be passed down. Put simply, the video is well worth watching and is done well enough that it could easily be inserted into the Mathews advertising buys very easily (not that this is an intended purpose).

With a storyline rooted in family tradition, it’s no wonder that Pearson kept his featured subjects close to home as well.

“The young family in the video is my sister and her husband,” Pearson said. “They are expecting their first kid in a couple months so it worked out great. The baby foot at the end of the video is my nephew on my wife’s side. He’s a year old so I had to use a large hospital band to make his foot look like a newborn. I’m blessed to have family and friends willing to help out on projects like this.”

Pearson, who shoots a Mathews LX and insists his entire family shoots Mathews bows, shared that it was his father who told him about the video contest and also came up with the idea of carrying on a tradition.

The video strikes a cord with me each time I watch it. It was through family traditions that I was introduced to the outdoors, a first impression that has forever changed my being. And anyone who reads this blog knows how excited I am to introduce my family – my own children, my nieces and nephews and hopefully someday grandkids – to hunting.

“I think a lot of hunters can relate to the story,” Pearson said. “Tradition is one of the most important things that outdoorsmen and women have. Passing it on isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.”

Pearson, who clearly has video production skills and owns Lift Films, did a fantastic job transforming an idea into a well-packaged 1:06 video.

“We filmed all the footage in a few hours, spread throughout the day,” Pearson said. “My sister and brother-in-law were working on the nursery the day of the shooting so I wanted to incorporate that into the video somehow. Most of the scenes are from their house. We also drove to the local hospital to shoot the scene of them looking into the hospital nursery. We shot my nephew’s foot a few nights later. I recorded the voice over the following morning and edited the video together in a couple hours. I already had the story board put together in my head so the editing was fairly easy.”

Any funny anecdotes from shooting the video?

“When we arrived at the nursery window (at the hospital), they had the curtain closed and the lights off because all the babies were out,” Pearson remembered. “We stood there for 10 minutes. Finally a nurse just happened to walk out of the nursery. We told her we were shooting a ‘pregnancy video’ which I have no clue what that is, and needed to shoot a video of them standing in front of the glass. She looked at us pretty funny but let us do it. She opened the curtains and turned on the lights long enough for us to get the shot.”

Should Pearson end up winning the contest, he will receive an all-expense paid deer hunting trip that will be featured on Mathews TV. If he gets on that hunt and is lucky enough to arrow a deer, my gut tells me he’ll forget last turkey season!