Erik Seo Photography Blog

A lot of you have probably seen the video floating around about our recent poacher experience at the Poor Boyz Productions shoot at Mt. Bachelor but for those that haven’t, check out the video in this post.  I’ve had a lot more poacher problems during the Spring terrain park shoots so far this season then normal.  One of the things is that we have been in zones that are actually still open to public, and in other situations just drunk dudes looking for glory even with the mountain closed.  For those of you that don’t know what a poacher is, it’s someone that is not invited to a private, closed photo/video shoot that shows up, ignores everyone there telling him not to hit the jumps, rails, whatever and hits the features anyways and usually injures themselves badly due to being a complete idiot.

Poacher Getting OWNED at the PBP Mt. Bachelor shoot – going about 180ish feet.

This has been a pretty big problem this season, so far without any real consequence to myself and the crews I’ve been working with but poses a bit liability issue and brings up the necessity for myself and the film crews to be insured for liability.  These poachers, had they been hurt worse than they were could have shut our shoot down, one that everyone had spent a lot of time preparing for, traveling to, etc between the film crews, myself and the athletes.  Add in the potential for the negative impact to the resorts building these massive park features for us and then it just boils down to putting these shoots on lockdown.

So far we have had three poachers at the two separate shoots I’ve been shooting at Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Oregon.  The first one was by far the worst as he was the one that dodged park crew in the in-run trying to stop him only to send it about 180 feet to flat.  This hero won a trip to the hospital and a broken pelvis and broken femur.  He was also dumb enough to try and get up and claim it after he exploded however he crumbled with all the new broken bones he had.  The second also won a trip to the hospital.  Number two got himself a concussion but being the hero he was, rejected help from patrol.

The third was a fun one.  This guy who was blackout drunk said he was going to “slay the pipe bro” which was above the cannon box setup we were shooting on.  OK fine right?  Yah he was planning to hit the cannon box setup similar to what he watched on the X-Games slopestyle course.   Blackout dude decides to drop with no speed, basically fall off the cannon box to flat, ruining the perfectly groomed deck (looks better in photos without bomb holes) and then talking more shit than you could imagine anyone would to a group of about 15 people when he’s the only one on his side.  Blackout was really concerened that “you guys are messing up my wave” and “screwing my vibe broooo….”  This was followed by numerous hand gestures that were considered gay even when I was in high school, on the deck, below the deck and more in the parking lot at the security guys as well as the mountain manager (mind you the mountain manager is about 6’4″, 250lbs ish) before gettting into his truck and likely getting a DUI on the drive home.

Got a poacher?  Kick them out or kick them in the balls before they dodge the park staff trying to stop them on the in run, then crash, burn, get broke off and get your shoot shut down!  Or just watch them eat shit, laugh at them and hope they don’t have a fender bender chasing lawyer.