Shooting clay pigeons helped get Wyatt McCaghren to college, but shooting video is where his future lies.
The senior All-American clay target shooter from Mayflower, Ark., will graduate in May with a major in media production. He already has a head start on his future plans, having started a fledgling outdoor videography and apparel business venture called The Flight Shops as an Ozarks student.
“If it wasn’t for shooting sports, I probably wouldn’t be in college,” McCaghren said. “It’s what got me here to Ozarks, and I love doing it, but through my classes I’ve found a passion for outdoor filming and videography that I want to pursue. I’m extremely excited about the future.”
McCaghren said the first time he picked up a video camera in Associate Professor of Practice in Communication Susan Edens’ Media I class as a freshman, he was hooked.
“I’ve been hunting for as long as I can remember and I grew up watching hunting and outdoor shows,” he said. “When I took the class under Professor Edens, I just fell in love with doing the videos. She helped me realize that someone with no background in media production could actually be good at it.”
McCaghren said he vividly remembers checking out his first video camera as a freshman to take along on a duck hunt to nearby Spadra.
“I just loved everything about it,” he said. “I knew nothing about filming or editing and I had no idea what I was doing, but by the time I came back I was hooked. Ever since then I’ve been working to figure out how I can sustain a living doing just that. Professor Edens really helped open up a lot of possibilities to me.”
Ironically, it was the LENS curriculum that opened up other possibilities for McCaghren. Since he had to find a minor in another field other than his media production major and biology minor, he hesitantly chose art.
“At the beginning, I really didn’t like LENS because I wanted to major in media productions and minor in marketing, but I had to drop marketing,” he said. “If someone would have told me I was going to be an art minor in college, I would not have believed them in a million years. But my art classes have been an incredible blessing to me.”
Through his art classes, McCaghren was able to create and design his logo for his business.
“I designed the shirts and logo myself,” he said. “I took the advanced art class last semester and that’s where we came up with my logo and my design. My logo is actually my dog, that I took the photo of, so my digital photography classes really helped also.”
Despite some good-natured kidding from his teammates, McCaghren said he’s proud to be an art minor.
“I’m living proof that if you have a good enough art professor, anyone can draw,” McCaghren said. “Professor Tammy Harrington really taught me a lot about the design aspect of art and I was really able to bring a lot of that into my business. I wouldn’t change a thing. ”
McCaghren said he started his website, theflightshops.com, as a way to help support his YouTube outdoor channel.
“I built the website to sell hats and shirts and then added outdoor merchandise, and I use the proceeds to help fund my videos,” he said. “The website allows me to make my videos, which is what I really want to do. My ultimate goal one day is to have my own outdoor hunting show. That’s what I’m working toward.”
McCaghren called it “surreal” that he is in his final semester of collegiate shooting after helping the clay target program win numerous national championships during his time at Ozarks. He was named an All-American shooter by ACUI/SCTP at the end of his junior season.
“We’ve been blessed to have a group of guys that just enjoyed competing and having fun around each other,” he said. “Coach [Lance] Brown has been a wonderful coach and mentor to me. It’s also been great to be a part of a program that has had so much success and knowing I had a small role in that. We’ve had a team chemistry that’s been pretty special. I just hope I can find something similar to it after college because I’m definitely going to miss it.”
Topics: Art, Athletics, Media Production