- What's going on Coyote Pack?
It is officially the end of 2017,
which means that this is the end of the year video.
- Let's see 'em. What are we doing?
- Well, it's--
- I thought we were just going to roll videos now.
- No, no we gotta have a little mix and mingle.
- Oh, we have to have the conversation?
- Yeah, I mean this is sort of like a
behind the scenes element.
We gotta give the Coyote Pack a little bit of inside
as to what the year has been,
and what's to come.
Don't worry guys, I know how you like sneak peeks.
- Oh, we're going to show some secret footage?
- Maybe just a little bit, just a little bit.
- Kind of a cozy spot.
- That's right, we are actually filming this episode
at one of our favorite restaurants where we
always eat when we're off of production,
One on One Beer Kitchen which is so graciously hosting
us this morning to shoot this behind the scenes
moment recap of 2017.
- And I know Mario's happy that there's a fire here
because ah, how are you acclimating to the
Ohio winter weather?
- Ah, winter is here, guys,
and it's pretty cold for this South Floridian.
- Well you don't look like Kenny from South Park
in this video.
I've already made comments in the merch video
which we filmed in freezing cold weather.
We actually found out pretty quickly,
you were frozen by the time you got back.
- In case you didn't see it,
let's cut to that shot real quick.
Yeah, you do look just like Kenny.
- [Mario] I was bundled up real tight
in that orange jacket, you know?
- That's a snow suit, buddy.
- Sure, it was keeping me warm.
- Have you bought snow boots yet?
- Not yet.
- Might need to pick up a pair.
- Can somebody out there send Mario a pair of snow boots?
Nah, I'm just kidding, he can get his own snow boots.
Okay guys, let's take a look at our year,
which was 2017, but let's even go back further.
The channel is now officially
just a little over three years old,
can you guys believe that?
We've been on YouTube for
just over three years at this point.
- Man, we've been to a lot of places in three years.
- Lot of places, seen a lot of things,
lot of cool animals, and we've also collected
and incredible number of Coyote Pack members.
How many subscribers do we have now?
- I think like 8.8 million.
- Maybe 9 million by the time this video's
actually coming out.
- [Mark] That's a lot of people.
- Lot of people.
- [Mark] That's a lot of pack members.
- And all those pack members have managed to amass
how many views?
- 1.5 billion.
- WOAH!
- 1.5 billion views, that is crazy guys.
That is all of you out there watching.
You love animals, you love adventure,
we're trying to promote conservation and education
and we couldn't do it without you guys.
And you know what's really cool,
that because we've reached this many subscribers
and this many views,
you know what we were awarded this year?
- Two world records!
- That's right, Coyote Pack,
you are officially now in the Guinness World Records book.
That's right, the most viewed animal channel on YouTube
and the most subscribed to animal channel on YouTube.
How cool is that?
We couldn't have done it without all of you.
So this is collectively our awards at this point.
- Yeah, they just send these to you, by the way.
So if you do ever make a world record,
you'll just get it in the mail.
- Nice.
- Pretty sweet though,
they're going on the wall in the office, that's for sure.
- Okay so we know that in three years we have done
quite a bit, but let's specifically take a look at the year
we've had in 2017.
I'd say it's our most epic year yet,
and I think what would be cool would be to share
our favorite location that we have visited,
and of course our favorite animals that we got up close with
or filmed this year.
What do you guys think?
- Let's do it. What's your favorite location, Mario?
- Aw man, my favorite location,
we traveled extensively, right?
- Every month. Sometimes twice a month.
- We traveled so much,
and we actually kind of globally expanded,
and my favorite location is Australia, absolutely.
- [Coyote] The land of reptiles.
- [Mario] I mean,
the field book we have of reptiles is like this thick,
so I was really excited to get down there.
It was our largest, biggest trip ever.
- [Mark] That's right.
And I think when this video comes out,
probably only two or three Australia episodes
will have been seen so the
best footage from Australia is still yet to come.
- Oh yeah, all the epic content is still out,
we'll give you guys some sneak peeks in this video.
Yeah, I agree, Australia was epic,
and you guys should have seen the field guide
Mario was carrying around,
it was crazy big.
Like, your entire backpack was filled.
- Yeah, luggage overweight every single time
we got on an airplane.
- So many awesome species, a wonderful continent,
and definitely my favorite of the year.
- Okay, so Australia for you, how about you Mark,
what was your favorite location?
- Oh man, there's so many good ones.
I think location-wise I'm going to go with Hawaii.
It's one place I've always wanted to go
and we also got to do our first scuba diving videos
which is super awesome for me to get to go underwater
and use some of the filming techniques we've been learning
as we've been going along on this channel
and getting to swim in the coral reefs,
seen sea turtles, frog fish, crowne laporte, sea stars,
I mean there were so many cool creatures under water
it just makes me want to get back out there,
beneath the water surface, to find more.
- Yeah and so many animals
that we have yet to feature on camera.
What was so tough about that location
was just getting close to some of those things under water.
So many fish species that I don't think any of us
even knew what they were but they're so bizarre looking,
under the ocean waves, is like a whole other planet.
- So I said Hawaii, how about you?
- Well, now Australia, Hawaii, both epic locations.
I'm going to actually go with something that is
a little bit closer to home.
West Virginia I think was my favorite location
we visited this year and that's primarily because
we encountered so many bizarre creatures,
from the hellbender to the sapphire crayfish,
and then of course,
one that I don't think any of us will ever forget,
the hellgrammite.
Mark, even you got involved in that episode,
putting your hand into a bowl of hellgrammites,
experiencing all those bites,
which really weren't that bad at the end of the day,
but when it came to bizarre creatures,
I would definitely say that, to my surprise,
West Virginia had quite a few of them.
- [Mario] What's pretty cool about West Virginia
is that it's near to home, right?
- [Coyote] Right.
- So you can still find some pretty amazing animals
here in the United States.
- Right, and there are lots of US locations
that we have yet to explore.
But we won't get into that quite yet because,
we've talked about our locations and I think now
let's talk about what our favorite animal was
that we encountered or
got up close to the cameras this past year.
Mark, you want to kick it off?
- Sure, I actually came prepared for this one
because we've seen so many amazing species on our
adventures this year,
but for me, because I don't usually get to find the animals,
when I found the red velvet worm,
that memory will always stand out as an achievement
because usually I'm fiddling with camera functions
and not worrying about finding the animals.
So finding that really rare--
I think we're the second people to ever film this creature,
and they're super cool.
So, I'm going to go with the red velvet worm.
- [Mario] Yeah, I remember when you were like,
Mario, Mario, I found something!
And I come over and he's like I think this is a velvet worm.
- [Mark] Yeah, that was pretty epic.
- I wasn't even with you guys when you found that.
These guys were out shooting B-roll.
I was actually working on a script,
which I think we said in the episode,
I was working on the killer whale script at the time,
and it was like, okay, I have to get this script done
so I can send it back to the post-production team
so they can start lining up the episode.
We do that a lot when we're on location.
I'll be writing the voiceover scripts from the field,
sending them home,
and these guys will go out and get some nighttime B-roll.
When you guys came back I was so excited you found that.
I mean you could find a red velvet worm,
or you could find Bigfoot.
It'd say they were equally, kind of as rare.
- [Mark] We may never see another one of those again,
for as long as we go back to Costa Rica.
And what was really cool was when we were staying at
Brian's place,
that was one of the photos up on the wall.
First day we walk into that outpost we were like,
what is that?
We want to find one of those!
And he was like, Mm, I don't know guys,
those are pretty tough, you may never see one.
Sure enough, we go out filming B-roll, good things happen.
- Pretty neat. It's always just going out there,
you never know what you're going to find.
- Now, okay, Mario let's talk about your favorite
animal of the year and I could probably say it would be
Bigfoot but we're not releasing that footage yet.
Guys, that one's for the vault, we're going to save that.
So don't tell them about Bigfoot,
tell them your other favorite animal we filmed this year.
- This is probably the hardest question because
certainly every species that we feature is amazing
and there's something unique about it,
but from a biologist's standpoint,
I really enjoyed the hellbender.
It's a very obscure species that's found here in the US.
It's a threatened species,
and it is one of North America's largest amphibian species.
I also go to work with my buddy, Tim.
- Tim, what's going on, if you're out there.
- And I just enjoyed the adventure
of trying to search for this animal.
It's freezing cold water,
so you saw a coyote swimming in there
but guess who was also in the water.
Our guys.
So we're in there with our cameras and it's freezing cold
and the chances of finding one of these
obscure and allusive animals was pretty rare,
and when we found one it was quite amazing.
I really enjoyed the hellbender.
- [Mark] Good pick.
- [Coyote] Okay so my favorite animal that was caught
or encountered this past year.
I can give a sneak peek at this point, right?
Can I sneak peek an episode?
I'm going to sneak peek one here guys.
'Cuz technically this was a catch in 2017
but I know that the episode is not out yet
and that is the incredible sand monitor.
This is one of the largest monitor species
in Australia and when we headed to Australia
I was like, okay if anything happens there,
or nothing happens there,
as long as I catch a monitor or
have the chance to catch a monitor,
I'm going to be a happy camper.
I did catch the monitor and it was probably one of the most
difficult captures we have ever pulled off.
The acrobatics it took to not only follow this thing
into the underbrush but also what I had to go through
to climb up into a tree and catch it--
- Dude, don't give too much away.
- I won't give too much away
but I want to let everybody know
that this episode is coming.
You have to stay tuned.
This one will probably be out in,
I don't know, late-January or at some point in February,
but it was one of my best accomplishments of 2017
I would say, and probably us as a team working,
one of the most fluid-like on the fly episodes we got.
- Yeah, I'm just glad you didn't fall out of the tree
because you were up there like 30 feet.
- Yeah, hanging from like one arm
trying to like catch this lizard out on a branch.
It was a dangerous episode
but definitely worth the effort in the end.
Hope you guys are excited to see the sand monitor.
- What an amazing year.
Thank you guys so much for watching everything.
It's incredible to have such an enthusiastic audience
to show our work with.
- We have been to so many locations this past year.
Do you guys want to try and
count them down real quick if we can?
- I need another cup of coffee please.
- It started in January in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica,
- [Mark] Florida.
- [Coyote] Florida.
- [Mark] Arizona.
- [Coyote] Arizona, West Virginia, Maine, Washington,
Orcas Island, Washington,
- [Mark] Hawaii
- [Coyote] Hawaii,
- [Mark] Back to Costa Rica.
- [Coyote] Back to Costa Rica? Yeah, back to Costa Rica,
then back to Arizona where I was bitten by a giant
centipede, then it was the book tour,
which we count as a location
because there were many locations--
- [Mark] And then Australia.
So 11 major trips, not to mention all the small trips
we had in between there, I mean we had
Vincon, YouTube Creators Summit which is super cool.
- I love those.
I love getting the chance to be part of the
YouTube community and of course getting to meet
members of the Pack out there in person.
- [Mario] The book tour in itself was an adventure.
We got to meet a lot of the members
of the Coyote Pack and we traveled
extensively throughout the eastern US.
And for those of you on the west coast,
we just announced our West Cost book tour
coming out in February and April of 2018,
so buy your tickets guys, I want to see you out there.
- And all throughout the course of this next year
we'll be touring pretty much every other month.
So our goal is going to be to visit as many
Pack members as we can in 2018.
So we launched our book, the Brave Adventures book,
which was pretty awesome.
Do we have one of those? There's one right there.
- I got two right here.
- The Brave Adventures book.
But we also launched the Brave Wilderness Merchandise line,
which has been, a lot of you have been waiting
in anticipation of that for quite some time,
but it officially launched this holiday season.
- [Mark] Hey, Coyote.
- [Coyote] I'm okay, don't worry guys,
still fine at this point.
- People actually enjoy these shirts.
We get a lot of comments about it.
- Yeah a lot of comments on that shirt.
- There are two left.
- So books, merchandise,
and so many other big things to come in 2018.
And I guess this is the part where we say
thank you to the Coyote Pack
because what you guys don't realize is that
without you watching, each and every one of you,
there is no us.
There's no adventure, there's no epic animal encounters.
We do this because of the viewers.
- That's right.
And man, we have a lot stacked up for next year.
- Maybe a little sneak peek of what's to come in 2018?
You saw the sand monitor,
but what's our first major location
that we're visiting, Mario?
- All right, so we hit up Australia,
that's one large continent.
Now we're diving into Africa.
Yeah, in fact South Africa is going to be our next location.
We're going to try and get up to some lions,
elephants, rhinos, the big five.
So it should be pretty epic.
- Where else are we going in 2018 Mark?
- Well we have a lot of other projects in the works, guys.
Obviously YouTube is our home,
but there's some Top Secret stuff happening
behind the scenes that we can't exactly
share with you just yet,
but I can promise you they are coming in 2018
so there's a lot to look forward to next year.
- Out trail?
- Out trail time? We rehearsed this guys.
- Okay I'm ready.
I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave.
- Stay wild.
- We'll see ya next year.
- That was pretty good. I think that's a wrap, right?
Bye guys!
- [Coyote] Hey Coyote Pack!
2017 has been one wild adventure,
so make sure to go back and watch where this year began,
an unexpected up-close encounter with a two-tailed gecko.
And don't forget, subscribe so you can join
me and the crew on all of our adventures in 2018.
(wilderness sounds)