A first-person YouTube video by Craig, founder of BoQuest, narrating the personal origin story behind the company: how a small mounted 50" 10-point deer taken by his grandfather became the catalyst for creating NFC-enabled 'bow tags' and 'mount tags' that store photos, videos, journals and provenance. Craig demonstrates how tags are embedded in mounts and bows, explains transfer of ownership and cloud/blockchain-backed storage, and invites viewers to tag their own treasured hunting gear and trophies.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Craig, founder and owner of BoQuest. I appreciate you taking just a minute to kind of check us out. We're going to start off with a little bit of a story about why are we even doing this, what is Bow Quest and what are bow tags and mount tags? Why do they exist and what's the point of it? I hope you find it kind of fascinating. The best way really to describe it is to start with a story. One of the things we do is put tags on really cool, precious, timeless, valuable mounts like this little 50 inch 10 point right here. Now, the question, you may ask, why is a little 50 inch 10 point mounted on a funny piece of wood that isn't even stained right? Actually, the most precious trophy that I own and that I have, and that is why BO Quest exists. This little 10 point rack mounted on this little board, almost as a joke, if you turn it around, says Charles Deaton, 1996. And even that, without context, doesn't really mean anything. What's the story with this thing that makes it so precious? The story behind it is that this is Charles Deaton. Charles Deaton was my grandfather. This is a picture of him right after World War II when he returned. You'll notice he's wearing a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart. He actually had a couple of each during that conflict. Combat Infantryman's badge. I've got a bunch of pictures like this and I've got pictures of me and grandpa hunting together. Now, after the war, we hunted a lot, but we never deer hunted ever. He never went deer hunting with us. We went bird hunting, we went rabbit hunting. Every Thanksgiving, as soon as we got up from a table, all of us kids would sit around and we would wait and we would wait and grandpa would sit in his easy chair. And finally after Thanksgiving dinner, he'd say, well, time to go. We knew what that meant. We were heading out, we were going quail and rabbit hunting. And so we'd all get ready and we'd take off. But grandpa never deer hunted. Then in 96, right here, Grandpa decided one day he wanted to go deer hunting with us. I hunted. My brothers hunted, my dad hunted, my uncles all hunted. But grandpa didn't. But in 96, he decided, I want to go hunting. So he went and bought a crossbow. He was in his mid-70s at the time and he decided, I'm gonna go. So he went in 96, and this was the first deer that my grandpa ever killed in 50 years after the war. This deer right here. So that's why this little 50 inch, 10 point rack that we kind of mounted, my uncle actually did as a joke almost at the time, we were kind of giving him. We were giving him a little bit of a hard time overkilling a little bitty tiny deer. But to me, this is the most precious mount. And I've got a bunch of mounts. This is the most precious one I have. But what makes it precious is that story. In 50 years, when this is handed down to my grandkids, what will happen to it? Who will ever know that story? How is that story attached to this mount? That makes it the most precious thing. The way we do that is we take a little tag and you can see all these mounts have them on them. We take a little tag, it's called an NFC or a near field chip. I put it on this mount, stick it on here, and it's permanent. It'll stay here forever now. And I upload the video of me explaining that whole story to this chick. I upload all the pictures of me and grandpa hunting. I upload the picture of him with his crossbow. He killed his last deer in his 80s at 84 years old. He killed his last deer with his crossbow, about 145 inch. Buck certainly improved his, improved his performance over this one here. But I take all those stories and pictures and all the video of me explaining this, all the texts and journals I have that I have of my grandpa, and I'll load them onto this chip. And then in 50 years down the road, when I'm long gone, when my kids pass it to their kids, this will still be precious. Because all I do is take a phone, hold it up to that chip, and the story will pop up on my phone. The video of me explaining why it's special, the pictures of Grandpa, the pictures of him and his crossbow and holding this little deer up, how proud he was when he got his first one. So that is what BoQuest does. We take all those memories, all that rich heritage, all those pictures and videos and journals and that timeless experience that you want to share with friends and family and enthusiasts, and we give it a place to reside that makes things special and makes them special forever. And it's not only mounts. This is interesting. This is a Matthews Helium. This is my bow. Had this one for quite a while and I've had a lot of adventures with it. But again, where do I store all those adventures? One of the cool stories, if I hold this up here, it opens it. I just click and it'll open the story of my bow and the Hunts I've been on. So if I scroll down to this one here, this is a story. That's my son, and he killed his first animal with my bow. We went javelina hunting in Texas for his 16th birthday. That was a trip we took him on, kind of an epic trip. And so I've taken and stored all the memories and all the pictures and the journals and everything I wrote, even the video of him taking that javelina. And it's stored right here inside my bow, so for years to come. One day, when I'm ready to hand this bow down to him, which might be a little while, because I actually kind of like this bow, but when I'm ready to hand that bow down, I'll transfer ownership. And all he has to do going into the future forever is touch his phone, and he'll see all of my hunts. My elk hunts in Kentucky when I drew a Kentucky tag, my. My deer hunts with it. The doe I got last year with that very bow, he'll see all those memories that I've placed inside there, and he can take his phone and touch it and add an event and start adding his own memories and his own pictures and his own journals and videos and maybe pass it down one day to his kids. Now, it'll probably be a relic and hang on the wall by then, but rather than throw it away, it'll be precious because it'll have all the memories of all the hunts we've ever done right inside of it. Now, they technically are on these chips. The chips link up. There's a lot of technology behind this. The chips link up to a blockchain, so it's all stored and encrypted in the cloud so it never goes away. And even if for some reason it gets lost, the chip can still recreate it in the cloud so it doesn't ever go away. It'll be there forever. But that's really what we do. We take those precious memories, all that heritage you create, all those experiences you have. We give them a place to live, A place to live where they're special. And we can take something that seems relatively innocuous, relatively unimportant, something that, after I'm gone, would probably end up as a dog chew toy. And we make it absolutely priceless for the family to keep, to be able to see all those memories of, why is this so special? We give that story a place to live. So all these have great stories. This old turkey up here that I did this wonderful mountain job myself on has a really cool story behind it with me and my neighbor. We had a great laugh on that one. And I'll tell you that one another someday. And so does this buck and this turkey over here. All the things I have have great stories. This is the bow right here. I've got a tag on this. When my brother got back from Iraq with the Marine Corps, we went out and went elk hunting together. He just wanted to get away, so we took our stick bows and headed out and chased elk for 12 days in Colorado together. And that was one of the most precious memories I have and one of the best times I have with my brother. And I store it on this bow, and if I touch my phone, bring it up, I've got all the pictures, I've got all the video. I've got all the memories of me and my brother 15 years ago going on that elk hunt together. And they're all right here. And it's not the only memories this old bow here has. It's got a lot of them stored inside, so appreciate that. That's a little bit about what we're doing, why we're doing it, the highest level of how it works. We'll do some others on the actual technology and how to use it and how to make your own memories. But I appreciate you taking a little time. I thank you so much for giving us a chance and having a look at it. Go out and grab yourself a bow tag or a mount tag. Stick them on something that's precious to you and take all those memories and experiences. Give them a place to live. Thank you very much.
