Peterson began posting videos on his YouTube channel, Brave Wilderness, in 2014. On the channel, he hosts several series including:
Breaking Trail, which won a 2015
Emmy Award for youth/teen programs,
Dragon Tails, ''Coyote's Backyard
, Beyond the Tide
, and On Location''. Peterson made his first "bug attack" video unintentionally in 2016. His most popular videos are ones where he intentionally lets venomous insects sting him, working his way up the "
Schmidt sting pain index" created by entomologist
Justin Schmidt. Early videos featured
harvester ants before moving on to
fire ants, the
velvet ant, the
tarantula hawk, and then the
bullet ant, which has the most painful sting on the sting pain index. He was later stung by a
warrior wasp, an
Asian giant hornet, and the
executioner wasp. In the executioner wasp video, he declares its sting worse than that of the bullet ant, stating "the executioner is king." He started his dangerous experiments because of the enthusiastic response of his audience. In 2020, Peterson said that he was probably done making "sting and bite" videos. In May 2021, Peterson and his teammate Mark Vins participated in a video call with president
Joe Biden and
Anthony Fauci to promote
COVID-19 vaccinations. On July 7, 2022, Peterson released a Facebook post in which he claimed to have excavated a large primate skull in British Columbia and smuggled it into the United States, further claiming to have initially hidden the discovery due to concerns of government intervention. The post went
viral, garnering the attention of multiple scientists who dismissed the finding as a likely
replica gorilla skull. Darren Naish, a vertebrate paleontologist, stated, "I'm told that Coyote Peterson does this sort of thing fairly often as clickbait, and that this is a stunt done to promote an upcoming video. Maybe this is meant to be taken as harmless fun. But in an age where anti-scientific feelings and conspiracy culture are a serious problem it - again - really isn't a good look. I think this stunt has backfired". In the follow-up video posted by Peterson, it was revealed that the situation was staged as a hypothetical example of what not to do in response to such a discovery. In 2022, his YouTube show ''Coyote Peterson's Wild Field Trip'' was nominated for Outstanding Host at the
Children's and Family Emmy Awards. ==Animal Planet series==