nope

Yup.

He's reaching a younger generation with trapping and hunting and despite how difficult it is for us older dudes to watch, youngsters cannot look away. He's absolutely brilliant, I don't care what the rest of you say. Sure he makes some mistakes, but he is putting trapping in front of an entire generation who would never read a trapping magazine or book, go to a trapping convention or have anyone in their family that traps. Everyone who starts out trapping screws things up, even if you have a good trapping mentor. I did not have anyone to teach me, and I am embarrassed by some of the stupid mistakes I made. I didn't know ANYONE who trapped when I started. Those are the generation he is reaching. Kendall is one of the few people helping the future of trapping to people under the age of 30. So what if you don't like his style or if his mistakes are right out front for all to see??? He's doing way more positive for trapping than all you haters put together.

You do have some valid points, Bernie. Just wish he would learn to edit some of that stuff.

Good job playing the "hater" card, even though not one person mentioned anything about hating this guy in any of their posts.

I might agree with you if I had not directly explained why his coon made it up the tree how to avoid it in the future and how that putting his mistake on line could be use by antis. And his response was not ok thanks or anything but I post what real.... No ok I see how to avoid it in the future or how he could see how it may be bad for trapping. He is a jack (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) only interested in views, cnt admit his mistakes and however it effects others he could care less. So he is a useless POS in my assessment. E mail with him on something when he puts us in a bad lite due to his lack of knowledge. His response will show you who he is.

** This post is not in reference to the Kids Youtube channel but to Social Media in General**
This is kinda the way I look at these days.. Im a hunters Ed instructor.. Most of yall would not believe how many kids and ladys come into a hunters ed class because of being introduced to hunting/fishing/trapping on youtube or social media...Im dead serious about that..
Its our job to say great! now your interested, let us show you the way. let us show you what this is all about and teach you about wildlife management and safety. How to have fun in the outdoors and so on....
That's just the way it is these days. Most of these folks dont have a mentor to get them in to the outdoors so they look for one.. That often leads them to social media, now Im not the bigeest fan of social media but like it or not its a powerful tool in todays world..
The outdoors reaches more people than ever before because of it.. l.. Love it or hate it, its part of it now and we can either bury our head in the dirt and ignore it, or put it to actual good use...Its never going away and infact most Fish and Wildlife Dept's depend on it more and more every day...
Just food for thought

Big ones make little ones. Teach your kids right.

Ol dad

It's all about the $ for some. Even some on here.
He's popular because so many of the next generation would rather watch it than do it. Time will tell if he's helping trapping in the big picture or not but my guess is it won't benefit trapping in any measurable way in 10 years. But he'll of made a bunch of $ and that's what is important. Guy probably wouldn't even trap if it wasn't making money on youtube.

There's no stopping him when there is big $$ involved...If I were nearby I would try to reach out to this kid and get him on the line with me.

Mentoring him would turn him around, IMO....He could still do videos in his quirky style, but I think it would mitigate the social damage to trapping going forward if he were taught a better way.

Maybe you need to go back and read the posts on this thread.

Well he was trapping before he made money on youtube.

Bernie where does ethics fall in on the importance scale compared to $ and views? Would you show unethical hunting on your hunting channel to make more $ or get more views from the younger generations? Because those are your only arguments supporting this guy. By his response to critics concerned with the ethics he's showing on his channel he's more concerned with views. If $ is your only factor of importance then I'd agree with he's brilliant. But $ has corrupted a lot of people and things.

He was just a dumb kid, doing dumb stuff, much like the dumb stuff we did as kids, and decided to put it on youtube. He certainly isn't saying he's a trapping expert. Reminds me a little of Crazy Eddie Muldoon in the Patrick McMannus books and my best friend growing up. You guys are a bunch of old stick-in-the-muds. Every thing in life is not serious.

Reading the posts is how I noticed you were the only person that mentioned hate or haters. But, based on what I've read from the other posts, I have determined there is no reason for me to want to watch any of this persons videos. That doesn't mean I hate him, nor do I suspect those that have referred to this person as a moron or idiot, hate him either.

I have a 9 year old son (and trapping partner), so I have spent some time watching Kendall Gray. His channel is one of the 4 or 5 that are on the list that we allow our kids to watch. He's certainly not my favorite, but there's no denying that his channel has a huge attraction to young kids, especially those with outdoors interests. When KG puts a new trapping video out my son always calls me in to watch it with him. I don't care for the channel, but I do care for spending a little bit of time doing something that my son enjoys. With his trapping videos I do point out what he's doing right and what he's doing wrong. Sometimes I say things like, "don't ever do it that way". It's an educational opportunity and a way to take a few minutes out of the day to spend together. On one of his latest beaver trapping videos he actually calls Stu from Coon Creek Outdoors to get advice on adjusting his beaver traps. Coon Creek is a great trapping educational channel, so clearly Kendall has some interest in the sport in a serious way. As someone above alluded to, he needs a trapping mentor. And no matter how much we gripe about some of his questionable episodes, he's not going to stop making videos. And kids like my son who would never watch Coon Creek Outdoors (sorry Stu!), will keep watching KG. He's young, hopefully he'll keep growing up and learning.

In a nutshell to me what’s bad is that he’s making kids and 95% of indifferent YouTube viewers think trapping is all like that. He has done and posted some pretty distasteful stuff in years past. He called the other YouTube guy to help boost both of their channels I would guess. I would also bet there’s no real helping him trapping. He’s not really interested in that. It has to be escalating nonsense to keep the kids coming back.

Someone suggested we invite him to one of our meets to do a “demo”. Officers and directors were in agreement we didn’t want him “teaching” kids anything. He’d be welcome to come and learn, in fact, the spring meet is near him. But he won’t be there.

I guess I don't know what I think about this one. Showing things like he does in the linked video is definitely not good for trapping. Is the possible harm that he causes by posting unethical videos offset by the fact that he's likely got at least some kids into trapping? I don't know. How do you measure something like that?

Maybe if someone in the trapping community that he admires talked to him about it he would take more care in what he posts?

Bottomline is, if you search trapping videos on youtube, it likely won't take you long to find some that put trapping in a bad light. They're everywhere! I don't think there is any way to put that genie back in the bottle.

Trading integrity fo popularity usually loses in the long run.

I think part of the generational divide now is that the younger generation has more in it than we that integrity is a foreign concept. The money wins over integrity and they see absolutely nothing wrong with it.