By Ritsuki Miyazaki

 

Two former VSU students are now making wild history on the reality TV show “Ax Men,” which airs on the History Channel.

 

Dave Stone, 35, and Chris Miller, 24, are the crew members of DreadKnots river logging, and are also cast members of the sixth season of “Ax Men,” which premiered December 2012. The DreadKnots river logging originally began in 2007.

 

Stone, who received the nickname “The Kraken” due to a tattoo that he has, is the main diver for DreadKnots.

 

Graduating in 2000 with a criminal justice degree, he played for the football team, and also taught a scuba diving class at VSU. In 2005, he received his degree in psychology.

 

Miller is DreadKnots’ “River Guide,” as he is responsible for anything above the water and driving their boat.

 

From Atlanta, he came to VSU after graduating high school in 2006. He changed his original major from sports medicine to mass media before graduating in spring 2011.

 

Stone and Miller learned of the show’s existence about three or four years ago.

 

“We started to send our promo videos and telling them how bad they were and how much better we are,” Stone said.

 

Since Miller was a mass media major, he helped to make their pilot video. After sending the video to Hollywood, they were offered a five-year contract on the show.

 

“Even though I hear from people in Hollywood’s mouse [director], it still was never actually real until they sent us camera crews down here,” Miller said.

 

Stone mentions that the most enjoyable moment about this experience is being able to sign autographs for children. This is because he found getting an autograph from someone on a television show to be the coolest thing when he was a young boy.

 

He also adores actually finding logs from underwater for over 120 years.

 

He says that it’s similar to green diving, and is environment friendly, since we are losing our forest rapidly every year.

 

Miller, on the other hand, loves the recognition from people the most.

 

“Being a mass media major, I would never expect to [be on] something huge like the History Channel.”

 

Stone experienced the dangerous side of river logging when his right arm was bit by the alligator causing him to get 300 plus stitches, 22 staples and two broken bones.

 

But Stone came back to the river after five weeks, killed the alligator and made a knife out of its jar bone.

 

Stone not only river logs, but is also owner of Valdosta’s dive shop Southern Ocean Sports.

 

When DreadKnots diver Clint Roberts visited Southern Ocean Sports (SOS) to learn how to scuba dive, Stone taught him. In return, Roberts taught Stone how to log

 

The next episode of “Ax Men” will air on the History Channel Sunday at 9 p.m.