About the Trainers

Preston Taylor:

Preston strives to immerse in and interact with our wild world though a variety of outlets including digging clams, picking mussels, collecting edible mushrooms, fishing, hunting, surfing, backpacking, and sitting around a campfire. He is a crafter of wooden longbows, a passionate traditional bowhunter, and participates in a variety of earth-based natural skills. He earned his Senior Tracker Certificate in 2015 through CyberTracker International, and has a B.S. in Wildlife Management and Conservation from Humboldt State University. He is the author of Tracking the American Black Bear. Preston currently works as an Ungulate Specialist Biologist with the Yurok Tribe.

Matt Nelson:

From the Arctic to the Antarctic, this simple traveler has left footprints in search of authenticity in his life. Slow to learn and insistent on the hardest of life’s lessons, he’s a generalist in the true sense of the word. Easily bored, Matt has worked more jobs than can be listed here, searching for himself amid all the glittery promises of the materialistic culture he grew up in.

A lifetime hunter and woodsman, Matt strives to share his deep observations and his love for all things wild and true freely amongst his human interactions and in his teaching.

​

Matt holds a Senior Tracker certificate from CyberTracker Conservation, is a track and sign evaluator with the same organization, and has worked on numerous wildlife and research projects, including the Gualala River Watershed council, the Garfield/Mesa Lion project, and the East Bay Puma Project. He currently resides in northern Wisconsin.