Mark Humphries
I'm Mark Humphries from Maysville Kentucky over in Kentucky, probably two hours away from Friendship, Indiana.

Ethan Yazel
Just to give some background to the listeners. We've been outside since about eight, seven or eight this morning, setting up for your New Year's Day. Shoot here at the Range. So we're kind of little chilly kind of finally inside into the warm and relaxing office.

Mark Humphries
I put that together last year because I just thought it would be a fun day for for fellows to come and shoot because it was no no entry fee and no prize money, no medals just come let's talk shop swap each other's goods and testifier a few of them and and I just thought would be a laid back day and trying that last year for the first time. I thought maybe five or six years would show up posted on the NML are a Facebook page and put little short promo video together and 21 shooters showed up was about 38 degrees and a little little hazy. But 21 shooters showed up and we shot muzzleloaders all day long from nine till four o'clock and and they asked if I would be willing to do it again this year and I'll say if y'all come I'll come. So that's all good. started today we had 36 shooters 36 that's gonna show up for this event and we had plenty to eat because I asked him to to bring snacks and so forth and my bride made chili to take care and we brought a bunch of hot dogs over and goldstar chili sauce and we cooked all these things and they they seem to enjoy it.

Ethan Yazel
We really lucked out this year.

Mark Humphries
Yes, yes. You never know when you plan these things three weeks, four weeks in advance if it's 70 degrees or seven inch of snow on the ground, and we got lucky today it was sunny and about 45 or so lot of jackets and sweaters and even the girls that showed up had thinner jackets on.

Ethan Yazel
We've we wanted to bring you on because you've been prominently a you've been a prominent figure online for muzzleloading for a while now with your you run the black powder, maniacs shooter YouTube channel correct and if many of our listeners and members really enjoy that your YouTube channel but if you haven't, if you're listening you haven't seen Mark's channel definitely check it out. He's been putting out some great how to videos and safety videos on muzzleloading that we picked up on and just wanted to bring you in and talk about talk with you some and putting on this shoot here at our range. You know, we're really thankful for everything you've done for the community and it's nice to sit down and talk with you.

Mark Humphries
Well thank you for bringing joy. I enjoy muzzleloading the the wife of mine thinks have absolutely gone berserk with the hobby and

Ethan Yazel
I think a lot of wives do.

Mark Humphries
Yeah, she just shakes her head And she watched some of the videos before post them online and she just she shakes his head are you actually going to post this videos? Yes ma'am. Sunday night's gonna go on the on the internet so so the viewers can see it

Ethan Yazel
So how did you get started in muzzleloading then?

Mark Humphries
Believe it or not I had a the wife of mines brother called me out of the blue in the summer of 2013 and says I've got the soul cap and ball again he called it and I want to give it to you I want you to have this because I'm not gonna take it out anymore Come on out here and get it so I went out there picked it up. And it's a Traditions Hawkins 50 caliber percussion gun and I still have it today shot this a few days ago the he gave me a can of pyrodex and a few round balls and sent me on my way.

Ethan Yazel
Pyrodex? That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Mark Humphries
I didn't know pyrodex anything else at the time I was pretty pretty green with the sport. I spent 30 years in the metal detecting hobby, searching battlefield sites and so forth and civil war areas and stuff like that. So he gave me this gun and I tried it out. I had ball stuck in a dry ball to the few times and stuff drill bits in on ram rods to get drop ball stuck out stuck out of it finally figured out you could pour power behind a nipple and and fire it out. And the first time I tried that Ethan I actually hung the gun in a tree in the backyard because I was scared of it and have hit points straight to the ground and tie the string to trigger and running up over Brad's a suit about 75 feet away and pulled the string Oh my god, and it goes to drop all work and just got the ball right into the ground and took one of the metal detectors to go find a ball to be sure actually did get it out. Yeah. And got it out. And that's basically how I got started in the muzzleloading and probably six months later At the end of 2013, I was in lieu of a one day local Kentucky. I told the wife Oh stop into cabella stores see if they got a flintlock rifle in there. Look, get one of those course being the end of the year sales the time to go get these things. And they had a Pedersoli Kentucky flintlock rifle winner, little small lock 50 caliber, and it was the last one on the shelf. And I told the sale was lucky, you know, everybody is spent on this gun and they've dropped it. You had to give me some kind of a break. And they sold it to me for 500 bucks. I couldn't believe it. Wow. And the guy even pulled a box out of the back and the instruction book and rapid and original plastic pay for the gun to walk out the door. Thinking man if I don't like this hobby, I'll at least sell and not get beat up on too bad but got to shoot that thing by then and figured out how to not dry ball and got to play with it and shooting my wife's old skillets and things like that and got wrapped up into the hobby really fast and loved it. still do.

Ethan Yazel
Feels quite the story of getting into it.

Mark Humphries
Yes, it's it's fun hobby and and through this trial and errors that I've done with it. I've had several others in my hometown that interested in in the hobby and so kind of working with them a little bit showing them what not to do where I've done, how not to dry ball guns and powder patch and ball method is always the best way to do it.

Ethan Yazel
Yeah, there is a certain order it needs to be done in.

Mark Humphries
Yeah, and I haven't done that sometimes. So I've been showing a couple of fellows in my hometown and, and brought one of them with me today and he shot a gun he picked up a few weeks ago and he burned powder for or for noon, at the New Year's Day shoot so it was a good day.

Ethan Yazel
That's what we like to hear is getting people involved.

We talked about it a lot when I'm talking with people on the range, muzzleloaders seem really intimidating, but as if you know somebody or you can watch a video somebody that knows what they're doing that intimidation barrier is is kind of dropped very quickly

Mark Humphries
That's one of the reasons why I tried to put these videos together several years ago actually wish I'd use my better cameras now but I have the crude videos on the on there but they're they're effective and I was using cheaper Kodak cameras and filming things but I wanted to show a new visitor or new viewer how actually to load muzzleloaders and to actually know what accouterments you need in your shooting patches and stuff like that to to get them started without going through all the drop balling I did yeah, and haven't drop it stuck in barrels and shooting them out and all kinds of silly stuff that I did originally hanging them in trees, trades triggers were strengthened, afraid of the barrels would blow out on me. So I want to keep them from getting to deal with that. So that's one of the reasons why I like to put the How To videos together.

Ethan Yazel
So how did you hear about the NMLRA then? You got started and you got your you got your Pedersoli. What was kind of the next step to coming here.

Mark Humphries
The next step is believing on I have a fellow on the mail route that I that one of the customers on the mail route to the carried up in my hometown named Bill Pritchard. He's a bunk gun builder. And he found out he was a gun builder and stop talked to him one day on the rails. And he mentioned the the muzzleloading Association. He said it's in friendship and like most folks, where's friendship in? Yeah, I don't even know where this is. Oh, it's an hour. It's an hour in the Indiana border just out of Lawrenceburg. Okay, so he should need to come in June. So I took a day off from work and came over here and never even took the guns out of the truck just walked around. I was overwhelmed with all the vendors and all the muzzleloaders being fired everywhere and and I spent the whole day walking around from one to this property the other just checking out all the fellows shooting and the girls shooting and pistols and smooth bores and, and up and primitive I thought, Man, this is right down my list, right up my alley. We got come over and do some more of this Yeah, you know, picked up a magazine and joined that that weekend.

Ethan Yazel
That's awesome. Well, we appreciate you coming back for sure. And then so you've got your muzzleloader, you've joined, nd then when did the videos start? Because that's how that's what most people know you for.

Mark Humphries
Right? Right. believe or not, my daughter was a freshman High School seven or eight years ago, she came home from school one day and said, Daddy, we helped me make a public service announcement. I looked at her like, What are you talking about? Well, she signed up for this video editing class. And the teacher required is make a public service announcement says okay, what do you want so we put one together on on sexting, don't do any sexting. And I told myself, man, this is this is cool stuff. Oh, like this. So I started using little cheap video cameras myself and doing Ohio River skiing videos with the kids swinging off ropes in the river and, and falling off the inner tubes and things like that. And, and I've actually left a couple of those videos on the black powder shooter channel on the bottom of the main screen so I can go back and look at them once in a while. See what the kids look like in high school. And then 2016 I said, Hey, if she can do these, I can do it for muzzleloading started putting simple, pretty crude videos together of shooting skillets and bowling pans and water jugs and just whatever I could find one camera set up seven behind the targets Now sometimes shooting at it and just basically crude stuff for two minutes. So and then not thought you can do better than that. So put some fun into this because a lot of the videos that you watch on the YouTube channel, other fellows are all too serious. Yeah, you know, what I tried to do is make it fun. I want you to laugh at me. And say, "he's nuts", you know, but tried to shoot all these videos and safe manner. So I review them 9, 10, 12 times before they actually get posted. Looking for any type of safety infractions and if a safety violation is found, then I'll delete that part out there and change it to something else and, and several times I've actually filmed videos and it caught lean and gun gets a tree and I walk past it looks like it's unsafe. So I'll go back down to the location shoot and shoot that section over again, put the same clothes back on read whatever it on that day, same jackets, and same boots, shoes, whatever, and go back down and refilm that little 30 second clip to change it around

Ethan Yazel
Right. So then I think that's it. In a way it's your responsibility to portray it safely and do it safely.

Mark Humphries
Exactly. The one you want to get hard because I tried to keep the channel family friendly, so that I don't allow any vulgar language on it. I don't like any attacks, I don't know screaming, biting, silly stuff that you see a lot of videos. If it bleeds, it leads type stuff I don't want I want that on there. I'll keep it family friendly so your kids could even watch it if they want to. And enjoy the whatever they're watching was them shooting my zoo critter targets, which were metal targets made in shape of hogs and, and ducks and so forth. So just keep it fun. That's what it's about.

Ethan Yazel
I think that's what a lot of people have told me about your channel. And when we started sharing your event today and the shoot and even during the shoot just how much fun it was. You know, we have our competitive side and that's very much a part of what we do here, but it's really easy to be intimidated by that. And the fun part of it is just as important.

Mark Humphries
Exactly. And I was intimidated the first year I came over brought the guns with me I thought you know these guys roll been shooting forever and they're exactly know what's going on. I'm kind of, You know blind leading the blind here. My first time shooting at the NMLRA, I thought well least all I'll shoot the running bore match, you can't really mess that up too bad and the first time I shot it I got a score of whopping four points 10 shots at that running Hog, I got solid four!. I was so embarassed, I almost wanted to run out the weeds so that you can get I don't know what the potential score is, a hundred points I guess, but whatever it is I got four. . And the second time I saw that the next year I got goose egg, zero points.

I've taken two cameras with me last couple years. Shooting with Tambi Dudley. she's a Swiss Powder rep here in the US and we get together and we had a blast. On the woods walk I rip her give her a hard time and she's given it back to me just a gentle fun ribbing. And we had a great time and care what the scores was. We had a good time and put that on the channel back in the summer, and they seem to like enjoy it. So

Ethan Yazel
We talked a little bit today about how much work goes into a video because I was filming and you were filming and we got to talk shop a little bit. For the listeners and people who enjoy your videos and what's your process look like?

Mark Humphries
Yeah, I try to keep it very simple when I'm out into the field shooting it. You know, you've all seen videos where someone's has their cell phone camera out shooting and and are there you see someone's maybe shooting a muzzleloader for 8 or 9 seconds seconds and then that's pretty much it and in the screens it's got the narrow, they're shooting vertical, it drives me bonkers. So I shoot two cameras with where I can get the whole screen on it. I use a Canon cameras but generally when I'm by myself, I will set them up on I only use tripod I have a piece of PVC pipe, couple shock cords and a selfie stick a stick them up on it and twist a camera screen around where I can actually see myself. Then I have a backup camera they use a B roll camera that I will show hitting the targets. Then I go home and edit those splice those two together so the viewers can see a target being hit. The Amazing part Ethan is if I can't figure out who's up on the Final Cut Pro X program I'm using, I'll YouTube it and guess what happens? A 12 year old girl tells me how to do it.

As far as video making is concerned is, I will shoot the scenes. My general rule of thumb is if I shoot an action scene by myself which up until this past summer, pretty much all of them or by myself, limit them to five minutes to five minutes and 10 seconds in that area. Because my thinking is is you won't watch a video that's 10-12 minutes long with some fellow loading a muzzleloader for four minutes. I mean, you know it's all slow. So I try to keep the shooting action going on as much as possible. Usually within 20-30 seconds of the last shot, I'm ready to put the next one into it or some type of an action scene to keep a viewer Watching so five minutes generally limit that put on by myself if I'm shooting with you, for example, since we're splitting time between you and me, maybe seven, seven and a half minutes, okay. And I was shooting a video with with a fellow for Portsmouth last week and his dad came out and the three of us together we're at where the range of advanced per Kentucky and I was laughing at those fellows and they were laughing at me and it's just giggles and laughs all afternoon like a three high school kids. And that was almost eight minutes long, but it is jam packed full of shooting and normal placental channel here in a couple of weeks. This one today is going to come up next Thursday program. So but I'll limit to seven minutes or so if two of us are shooting or three. But the event like today, or a come over here and the June and September shoots the nose are generally in the 11 minute range or maybe 12 if a good enough dynamite stuff in my opinion, to keep you Watching it right? You don't do this for the money cause there's no money. There's no money and no and YouTube doesn't really like gun channels anyway so you know they D monetize everything and most the time i d monetize them before you list them because I just don't want to deal with the hassle. I'll do it for the fun of video work and while everybody just to see what's going on in Eastern Kentucky, so yeah, that's that's the reason why I do um, it's for the fun of see if I can actually still put something good together that someone would watch. Yeah.

Ethan Yazel
So how many people do you have watching?

Mark Humphries
The channel has at the moment just under 4000 subscribers, which started in 2016. I was hoping for 300 I thought if I get 300 I'll be I'll be blessed. . I don't know how that works, but it's up to all just under 4000 subscribers. Most videos have 1000-1200 views on them. I try to put them on twice a month lately I've been putting them on every week but I usually get every other Sunday evening is when I try to post them and let them run for two weeks unless it's something that just that you know really dynamite LS single artist depends on which one of these but for the most part 1000 views what they get. The Muzzle Loading communities, you know, are a small market of this small segment of the market you know if I were putting AR videos together, you know or Glocks or something he would have, you know, 20,000 views overnight because there's a lot more people. It's a bigger, wider market but the muzzleloading is such a small market. That's what surprised me that the channel actually has almost 4000 subscribers because it is a small market is only my opinion, maybe three or four good muzzleloading channels out there.

I've been asked that quite a bit on on the on the channel in comments. So it had time for Get a custom built one in and I've generally come back with not at this time and the main reason why is because I wouldn't take a 1500 or $2,000 muzzle loader that's built by Tip Curtis or somebody that's that's cool looking gun and and I and I'm all for beautiful but those are using the range and so forth where I take mine to his back was Eastern Kentucky they lay in a bottom of canoes are there in the rain and mud.

Ethan Yazel
Then you just you retired recently?

Mark Humphries
Yes,

Ethan Yazel
So would you consider yourself a full time youtuber now

Mark Humphries
pretty much full time for YouTube.

The biggest problem I had before Ethan is I worked for the US post office, US Postal Service and and we were working six days a week all of 2019 and getting off to go to the June shoot in September was impossible, so I could just do Sunday. This year I finally looked at the retirement papers and realize it's in my best move when I crack 60 years old is to say goodbye. I signed the paperwork and said goodbye and I've been off for eight nine Saturdays now and love every minute of it. For example, even tell you this. Buddy, Steve Bowen and he's from Lexington. got together about four Saturdays ago he had rained all day and all night. And he has a farm down in Harrison County, Kentucky and we we pulled the trucks inside the barn. We have a few Zoo critter targets out there in the trees and we shot out the barn all day. That's awesome. Put two videos together that you'll see in the next few months on the on the homemade cap gun and he had an a Kentucky versus local basketball game video. That would be pretty fun to watch. So we put those together. So the point I'm getting at is is now they have all these days off every day. I've got eight or nine videos sitting on my desktop ready to post just waiting for a week or two to put one on. I have plenty of time to you know, reverse before, especially with the time change. Yeah, I could never get together after work and put one together so I start we'll get anything together. We're so excited to be retired.

Ethan Yazel
That's good. We're excited that you now have that time off

Mark Humphries
I bring the cameras with me everywhere I go. They go with me everywhere now, especially if it's Muzzle Loading. related. Yeah, take them to trade shows, bring them here. Definitely bring up here today for this New Year's Day shoot and don't mind at all playing with them.

Ethan Yazel
You mentioned you've been shooting the video since about 2016. You told me a story earlier today about one of your Kodak cameras and I want to talk a little bit about what kind of changes you've gone through with your videos. So you've changed your muzzleloader. Some, you know, you've gotten the Pedersoli, you've just got a pistol. But on the video side of things, What's changed?

Mark Humphries
What's changed is it finally decided to upgrade the cameras I was using a Kodak camera the size of a deck of cards, and I had three of them and selfie sticks. So what I was doing is I was set one up on on the PVC pipe or up shooting. Set the second one up down near the target and we'll shooting steel hogs or into the woods or whatever, but the problem is I'd shoot the cameas! I could never hit a deck of card size camera if a wanted to hit it, but when the shooting the the steel hogs or the turkeys or wherever shooting at I'll shoot the cameras so I decided to finally upgrade last summer or summer before last to some canon models. I don't konw the model number, but they have zoom on them. So now I set the cameras up just out of range behind a tree or something six, seven feet away from me in the woods and zoom in to the targets, maybe 50 feet away so I won't have to shoot the cameras and

Ethan Yazel
That's not the first time I've heard of people shooting the camera. Don't feel bad about it.

Mark Humphries
Well, good that makes you feel bad when somebody else has shot cameras.

Ethan Yazel
Has your video process changed?

Mark Humphries
One way or the other. What I've started doing the last six months meeting a fellow shooter Steve Bowen. He invited me to come down to his farm back in the spring. And we should we shot some kind of video was smooth boars were shooting water bottles and swinging in the air and clay pigeons and so forth. He brought a couple of older guns out to Montana and I put something together with the both of us. Now this is kind of cool. Instead of doing them all by myself. I'll get someone else involved in once in a while if they're willing to do that. So I'll put one together with him. And about a month or two later stuck another one together with him. And then my buddy Rick that I grew up with in high school gets involved with a few of them. And since we've known each other since high school, it's really fun watching those because I really brag him and he gets on me and we have a good time. And then recently, a couple of fellows from Portsmouth got together with me. So the point of driving at is is now that I'm retired. I'm actually going to look for fellow shooters within a couple hundred miles of my hometown and try to range get together with them and They got a place to go shoot and tell them before calm I'm coming to the Razzle you know, yeah, we're gonna shoot have fun, but do you miss targets I'm good, I'm will, you know laugh at you and then you can laugh at me and we'll put some fun with them minute for the ones that wants to do it. And

Ethan Yazel
I often think that the loading time for muzzleloaders is intentional. It takes time so that you can razz your body or I got things you can goof on each other.

Mark Humphries
We do that but what I generally do is no put too much the loading process in videos anymore because most everybody's seen that on the channel but focus on the shooting now and really tried to intimidate him funny wise. And so now he's Can he shoot that water bottle? Is he gonna really choke? You know, do you have your eyes open? You know, breathe easy. there's anything I could dream up at the time to intimidate him and if they miss a target, how laugh Adams while you choke you know you you know you had one eye closed and you thinking every girlfriends or what Whatever I can come up with that and it gets a kick out of that and so forth. So that's that's we got one I've got one a couple weeks coming up with some fellas come up porch but then we laughed each other the whole eight minutes and it's it's it's fun stuff to do it's what a joy do is is cut out the dead time and the videos because you know most of these video like today's video I'll put one together for New Year's Day vant I probably have an hour hour 20 minutes of time on that camera. I don't know what it is because I'm just putting the box and coming Yeah, but I will squeeze that down to 10 and a half 11 minutes. So when you get it down to 20 minutes, which is easy Park is you can get rid of dead time you know stuff like that. But then you have to decide okay, now I won't get it down to 1415 and then I'll run through it again. Okay, I can walk this out. I cut a little bit that dead time to get it down to 11 minutes is tough in the last two minutes of video. You know what I'm talking about.

Ethan Yazel
You're watching it and I think because you're filming it to at least for me, I'm like, Oh, I really enjoyed that. I'd really like that to be in there and I almost have to take kind of an impartial step back. I do too and think about the viewer on audio. I really liked this but the viewers not going to enjoy it as much as I did. They were there.

Mark Humphries
And I do too. I do that word thinking alike. I think of the ones that's going to watch this video and not my own personal taste. Yeah, you know if I can catch someone that misses and fells laughing adding something it's definitely going on there. Or if he makes a funny reaction if he if he hits one. For example, someone today shot one of those playing cards in half. And the smile that I came in which one was to look at the camera. Yeah, this was just thought wow, this is cool. And the usual they're shooting the day and never smacking the zoo critter targets and smiling and that's what it's about is the kids having a good time and everybody showing up and having a good time. So That's what I'm doing lately is inviting others to come on and not just hogging the channel for myself. But you know, if you invite others to come it's it's just a lot more fun. And what we're gonna do in the springtime is I'm going to work with one of the vendors over here at the NMLRA, Abe's General Store. He asked me to come up back in in October for day of shooting but I couldn't do it because of medical reasons. But we're going to go up next May and we'll get the Mrs. Black Powder Maniac Shooter to run the cameras and work on go up there.

Ethan Yazel
We really appreciate you coming out and and putting that on and you know anytime you want to put something on just let us know and we'll do our best to get it going for you.

Mark Humphries
What we're going to try to do this New Year's Day shoot again next year it's it's always you know, a poker shoot because you don't know if you're gonna have seven inches snow or 70 degrees. We have 70 degrees on Christmas and Kentucky you know or could have been seven inches here today. So we hope for the best and we can always shoot under the shelter of the off hand range

Ethan Yazel
Thank you so much. I don't know that I have any more questions for you. Well, I really appreciate it coming on the show and and doing so much. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people that have said, you know, they were members for a while and they kind of got away from it got away from muzzleloading to went off to other things and then they found your YouTube channel and they got their muzzleloaders back out and they joined back up and they started shooting again. started burning some powder and throwing some lead and you know, just from everybody here, you know, thank you for your welcome everything you've done.

Mark Humphries
So it's not just hobby, more obsession now.

Ethan Yazel
Well you are the maniac!

If you want to look for Mark's videos will have them linked in the show notes but it's at Black Powder maniacs shooter.

Mark Humphries
That's what you want to put in on YouTube's search window and the channel will come up. Okay, good deal. And you got this crazy old fella with a muzzleloader gun barrel almost sticking in your face.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai