Men We Admire: The Rugged Dude

RD Carson -- The Rugged Dude -- and I go way back. Like waaaay back...to a band we had together in the early 1990's. I was a kid back then, still in high school, and RD (who went by a different name in those days) was the old-school mentor to the rest of us. Flash forward a couple of decades, and RD is still going strong in the entertainment biz. What he is; and why he's here; has to do with reinvention. I had a teacher once who said, "don't measure success by the number of things that work according to plan. Measure it by the number of total disasters you're able to recover from." Well, RD is the perfect model of success in this light: a guy who's taken his lumps and come back stronger than ever at every opportunity. Stoic, honest, patient, and of course rugged, RD Carson is the kind of guy most of us wish we could be. And he knows more venison recipes than any man I know.

Name: I’m known professionally as “RD, the Rugged Dude.” My legal name: Rugged Dude Carson. Passport, driver’s licence, federal firearms licence, the whole shebang. Honestly, I had it changed in 2002 on the advice of a marketing agency in Minneapolis. They said it would be “good for the brand,” you know, all that TV crap and of course, I bought it. But, looking back I wish I hadn’t have legally changed it, just kept it as a “stage name,” as they say. I have a lot less privacy now.

Age: At this time, I am 49, although I look 29… at least that what the mirror tells me. Kind of… well, actually sometimes when I look in the mirror, I look like I’m 149.

Occupation: For the last twelve years I have been working as a television host and producer. Most of my stuff iscomedy-based and pretty “out there.” I did eight seasons (150 episodes) of “Officially Rugged with RD,” which was a fishing comedy series (stupid as hell, actually, but a decent family friendly show.) That was series was seen across Canada, the USA, and parts of Australia and New Zealand.

I just produced another comedy-based fishing called “Moccasin Trails with RD.” We currently have agreements with five or six good sized broadcasters for 2013. If all goes as planned, we’ll start peeling those episodes off this June. The show will be on the air all across North America, along with seven countries in Europe.

For the last two years I’ve been trying to get into the cooking show TV biz… all wild fish and game and again, comedy-based. I did do a show on the Food Network in 2009, as a guest on one of Bobby Flay’s shows and a couple of the director / producers down there suggested I do a pilot. So, I did… but, I’m having no luck finding an executive producer to pitch it for me. I’m doing another one in a couple months...[read more]