Personalities

Dave Poteat

Dave now has over 27 years of hunting experience and has worked throughout the United States as a cameraman on several outdoor shows as well as a professional guide. Along with Tim Anello, Dave founded the Inside Outdoors TV show and has been a senior producer, co-host and the Sales and Marketing Director for the company since the show began.

Dave has held big game tags in more than 20 states and 3 countries and has filled those tags in both Mexico and Canada as well as in 16 of those states and many of them multiple times. His experiences literally range from the Eastern shores of Maryland to the Western coast of California and from Northern Saskatchewan to Old Mexico and many places in between. Dave has been fortunate enough to take more than 100 whitetails since his first, several P&Y bull elk and bear, B&C Mule deer and Antelope. He has completed the Grand Slam for Turkeys, 2 different times and killed more wild hogs than he could recall. Though Dave considers himself a lover of all types of hunting, most of his hunts are with a bow.

His passion for hunting and desire to share the experiences with anyone that would listen, pointed Dave down the Television Production career path. “The first ‘kill shot’ I ever filmed, was with a High 8 consumer grade home video camera, and my dad shot a beautiful eight point buck with a bow in Henrico County, Virginia back in 1994. It was a perfect hunt; dad made an incredible 30yd shot on the walking buck and the footage was awesome! I must have shown a hundred people that footage in a week! I was forever hooked on being able to ‘bring it all back’!”

Dave put motion to his passion when he was 19 years old, by taking out a loan and purchasing his first ‘high-end Pro-sumer’ camera and wireless mics. He began filming his dad, brother and every one of his hunting buddies and became very adamant about not only recording the kill shot, but the whole experience and getting it perfect. He went on to attend an outdoor production camera school in Oklahoma City, Ok and absorbed every piece of knowledge he could about television production. “My father taught me how to hunt, so I had that part of the business down, it was the production aspect that was up to me to learn about now”, said Dave.

Even though he had worked on a horse boarding farm through Middle-School and framed houses throughout High School, his education and people skills landed him an incredible opportunity in the high demand world of Information Technology, as an IT Specialist for Capital One and eventually the Bank of America corporate head quarters in Richmond, Va. Dave says “the money was incredible, the career path smooth and straight up, but my heart was in the woods with a video camera! I can remember looking out of my 8th story office building down into the massive parking lot full of BMW’s, Jags, Mercedes, and too many sports cars to count, and proudly pointing out to my co-workers, my muddy (and bloody) Black Chevy Z71 and saying, ‘wish I was on a dirt road or in the woods today!”

Though the future in his career looked extremely bright and ready for the taking, the desire to be outdoors with a camera and hunting, was too strong to ignore. Against almost everyone else’s ‘better judgment’, Dave resigned from his “cushy” job in a sky rise and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in August of 2001 to pursuit his childhood dream.

“I know too many people that say “Wonder if I had…” or “Sure wish I would have…” I didn’t want to be one of those. So before life, age or complacency ‘locked me down’, I went for a ride!”

Though the show is preparing to debut its Eighth Season Premier in mid summer and network and sponsor renewal contracts reaching out for years to come, both hosts, Dave and Tim, remain humbled about their success and work 40+ hours a week to keep it growing. “I never in a million years envisioned or desired to have someone stand in a line for a half an hour just to shake my hand or have me sign their hat; I got into TV because it’s the only way I could figure out how to get paid to live my dream!”

Dave and his Co-host and business partner, Tim Anello can not only honestly say they chased their dreams, but they caught them!