TV Projects

Steve’s television career began in 1986, when Channel 4 news director David Merrill handed him a camera and a simple assignment: get out there and bring back some nature footage. The very first thing Steve filmed was the wild parrots of Brownsville, and a natural was born.

Over the next eleven years he became a Saturday-evening fixture in South Texas living rooms, from Roma to South Padre Island. His show ran under a few names over the years. Border Outdoors began on Channel 4 (KGBT) in Harlingen in 1988, and in 1992 the program moved to Channel 5 (KRGV) in Weslaco as Vámonos with Steve Walker; somewhere along the way it also carried the name Outdoors with Steve Walker. All told he shot some 156 episodes, about 26 a year.

He had developed the format while guiding hunters and fishermen at a ranch in southern Tamaulipas, and the show never lost that feel: real country, real people, and a host who would follow a story anywhere. He took viewers deep into Mexico’s backcountry and its small towns, and shared the screen with Tejano stars like Roberto Pulido, Ram Herrera, and Emilio Navaira.

The parrots that gave Steve his start also gave him his exit. When he used his show to call out the destruction of a red-crowned parrot nesting site, he lost his sponsor, and the program came to an end. His final episode was dedicated to the same birds he had filmed on his very first day. He never stopped protecting them, and years later they would be named the official bird of Brownsville, thanks in no small part to him.