A Personal Journey Through Whitetail History

By Charles J. Alsheimer

In September 1979, I left the world of corporate sales and marketing to pursue my dream of becoming an outdoor writer and nature photographer. From the beginning, both endeavors were laced heavily with public speaking engagements. As the years passed, the seminar circuit took on equal status to both writing and photography. It’s been quite a journey, one scripted in Heaven.

To say I’ve seen change within the hunting industry would be a gross understatement. In some ways I’ve been a part of what could arguably be called the greatest generation of hunting.

My Early Years

To assess the impact of what I’ve seen in my lifetime, I have to go back to my early childhood. I was born in May 1947 to a family of potato farmers. Our 500-acre farm in western New York was the perfect place for a kid with aspirations of working in the outdoor field to get his start. As the oldest of five children, and the only son, I was able to spend an inordinate amount of time with my father, who was not only a farmer but a whitetail hunter to boot. So, from my sixth year on my autumns were spent in the deer woods.

Of course, the deer scene of the 1950s didn’t resemble the deer scene of today – not by a long shot. Back then, I was a “designated driver.” What I mean by this is that the deer hunting strategy of choice for local farmers was to get together and drive each other’s wood lots. They needed bodies to do this, and they would often get their kids to push the deer. In New York, a person cannot hunt deer with a firearm until they are 16. So, I had a 10-year apprenticeship before I could hunt to kill. The bird dog gave me quite an education into deer behavior, and by the time I was 12 years old, I was pretty good at knowing where core bedding areas were and where deer would run when pushed.

In the ’50s and ’60s, little was known about hunting rub lines or scrapes and nothing was being communicated about food plots. These would all be discoveries of the late ’70s and ’80s. From an equipment standpoint, the hunters I knew went to the woods wearing their farm clothes – everything from Carhart coveralls to blue jeans and solid-color hooded sweatshirts. If one could afford it, red-plaid wool hunting clothes were top-of-the-line woods garments. One thing is certain; the hunting attire of the ’50s would get some pretty strange looks today.

Compared to today, archery tackle of the ’50s and ’60s was pretty crude. To get the cash I needed for the “right equipment,” I graded potatoes in a local warehouse on weekends as a teenager. I used my earnings to buy archery tackle and guns. My dad didn’t think much of hunting deer with bow and arrow, so I got a lot of ribbing from him when I began bowhunting in 1963 with a Bear Kodiak Magnum and cedar arrows topped with Bear razorhead broadheads.

Our area of New York was shotgun only back in my formative years, and so our deer guns were nothing more than bird guns with a bead for a front sight. Pretty crude equipment! When I was 16 and able to hunt on my own, I took to the woods with the first rifle-sighted shotgun in our group – a .16 gauge Ithaca Deerslayer. Even with sights, the gun was marginal by today’s standards. From this early beginning, I’ve been able to see the whitetail world progress beyond anyone’s imagination.

“Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold”

“Nothing happens until something is sold” is one of the most powerful quotes I’ve ever heard. These words were drummed into me at my first corporate sales school in the early ’70s. This philosophy drives our free enterprise system and is what I view as the base point for the direction and success the hunting industry has seen in the last 30 years. But there is more to the equation.

“When people realize that the whitetail has a value, everything changes.” These are 11 magic words legendary whitetail biologist and manager Al Brothers said to me in the late 1980s. To my way of thinking, these two quotes formulate a mindset that has been responsible for the rapid growth of the whitetail industry. The last 30 years have seen an explosion of ideas and products. Witnessing and being a part of what has transpired has been quite an education.

The Takeoff

There is often debate over when the hunting world truly discovered what the whitetail could bring to the table, both in terms of dollars and enjoyment. Some would argue that the recovery era of the early to mid 1900s started things happening in a big way. Others would say the 1950s and ’60s was the starting point. Each of these eras certainly played a part, but I believe the whitetail industry’s real takeoff of came in the late 1970s. During this time, the children born after World War II were beginning to get out of college and setting their sights on conquering the world. Technology exploded, household income rose, and more and more Americans had free time on their hands. For the first time in history, recreation became the “in thing.” And large numbers of baby boomers recreated by going to the deer woods.

To feed the hunters appetite, an industry was born. By way of example, there were only five well-known hunting magazines on the market in the mid 1970s – Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, American Rifleman and Petersen’s Hunting. All were general in scope. This changed in 1977 when Deer & Deer Hunting magazine was launched to fill the need for an all whitetail deer magazine. Shortly thereafter the flood gates opened, and at one time in the 1980s, there were at least 10 recognizable magazines on the market devoted solely to whitetail deer. People had started to realize that the whitetail was not just the straw that stirred the hunting industry’s drink but was the drink itself.

The Shift to Whitetails

By the early 1980s, I’d come to realize that the whitetail truly was king for North American hunters. Seminar promoters had nearly 10 topics to choose from when I first began lecturing and doing seminars in the late ’70s. I would speak about elk in the Rockies to the Alaskan wilderness to whitetails. In the early going, promoters asked me to talk about my photographic journeys in Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. By the time the late ’80s rolled around, my whitetail choices represented more than 80 percent of the 55-plus engagements I was doing each year. Even though I still love traveling and photographing, the varied big game species in America’s Northwest and Alaska, 98 percent of the requests I now get are for whitetail-related topics.

In the late 1990s I was asked to do a major story on the impact the whitetail deer has on the hunting industry. It was a tedious project, requiring a lot of interviews and statistical analysis. In many ways, it was similar to sales analysis I had done in my corporate days. The findings were quite remarkable and showed just how much impact the whitetail has on hunting in this country. My article appeared in one of Krause Publications 1997 issues of Whitetail Business magazine and was titled, “The Whitetail – How it Built an Industry.”

The best estimate at the time was that the hunting industry in America was roughly a $25 billion per year industry. What was remarkable was that the whitetail was responsible for $20 billion of it. Nearly every executive I interviewed stated the same thing by saying, “Without the whitetail we wouldn’t have a business.” The whitetail was king of the ’90s and remains so today.

Giving Back

The dollars that whitetail-related business has generated have been a huge benefit to not only the whitetail but non-hunted wildlife as well. Through excise taxes on hunting — related equipment, billions of dollars have been given to wildlife-related projects over the last century.

Hunters have always been quality folks and are the most giving conservationists in North America. Their generosity dwarfs that of animal rights groups, illustrating that they more than any other group “put their money where their mouth is.” Hunters truly walk the talk, and the whitetail more than any other animal has made America the shining light in defense of wildlife around the world.

Evolving Communication

When I first began speaking to deer-hunter audiences, the public’s desire was to hear about hunting strategies. From 1979 to the early 1990s this stayed the same. Hunters couldn’t get enough of how to hunt rub lines, scrape lines or how to understand deer behavior. Then, in the early 1990s I began seeing a subtle shift away from strategies and toward management.

As we eased into the ’90s the baby boomers were now graying as they approached their 40s and 50s. With many hunting seasons under their belts, they were thinking more and more about deer and land management. Oh, they were still interested in strategies, but for the most part, they had had a lifetime to fine-tune these and wanted to raise the bar in their deer hunting journey. They also had dollars to spend and a vision of bettering the deer herd they were hunting. As a result, the concept of quality deer management, or what I like to refer to as total deer management, burst onto the hunting scene. With it came a whole new approach to the way hunters looked at the whitetails.

As I write this, I’m in the middle of my winter speaking-engagement season. My travels have taken me from the East Coast to the Midwest. In the process, I’ve fielded many questions about the whitetail. More than 75 percent of the discussions I’ve had have centered on small-property deer management, food plots and seed selections. Hunting strategies have been back-burner topics at every stop, and I don’t look for this to change any time soon.

Words Mean Things

The sporting industry has come to realize that the hunting world has changed. The customer is always king and to be successful requires giving the consumer what he wants. Consequently, every major whitetail magazine now includes articles dealing with food plots and quality deer management in their editorial package. The public wants to know about a variety of deer-management related topics from natural-habitat maintenance to which is the best forage choices to how to grow better antlers. It’s an exciting time to be alive, an exciting time to be a part of an evolving industry. I see this only magnifying in scope.

Based on what I’m hearing at my speaking engagements, I fully expect America’s deer hunters to demand more of their individual state deer biologists in the next 10 years. This is because today’s deer hunters are far more than hunting strategists. Thanks to publications like Whitetail News, many of today’s landowners/hunters are as in tune with the whitetail’s needs as university-educated deer biologists. Consequently, the knowledge hunters now possess when it comes to management-related topics are impressive. This will undoubtedly drive change.

So, look for more and more states to embrace such concepts as antler restrictions, quality deer management and modern-day methods of controlling burgeoning antlerless deer populations. All are topics whose time has come.

Also, land management concepts and deer-forage offerings will remain hot topics. They are hot now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.                        

The Past 50 Years of the Whitetail World

1950s & ’60s

•  Deer population thin throughout most of the animal’s range

•  Regulations did not allow for does to be harvested

•  Deer drives were common during hunting season

•  Camo clothing non-existent

1970s

•  Deer population rapidly expanding

•  Regulations continued to prevent harvesting does

•  Hunting rub and scrape lines developed

•  Compound archery equipment gets increased attention

1980s

•  Basic deer management concepts developed, primarily in Texas

•  Deer populations, and harvest numbers, expanding at record pace

•  Doe regulations open in many places

•  Food plot revolution begins with founding of Whitetail Institute

1990s

•  Deer populations reach all-time high, overpopulation in many areas

•  Most states see record harvests year after year

•  Lease prices increase rapidly

•  Archery and camo clothing industries really take off

2000s

•  Deer populations begin to level off in some areas with liberal doe regulations

•  Intensive deer management leads to record harvests of record-book bucks across the whitetail’s range

•  Food plot acreage across the nation hits record high

•  Popularity of archery hunting hits all-time high