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During the mid- to late 1970s he hunted mainly in the American West and South Africa, where he also coordinated safaris.
An astute observer of the culture, Idol realized in the early 1980s that "whitetail fever" had North Americans firmly in its grip. He came up with an idea: start a magazine dedicated solely to hunting big white-tailed deer.
"I called three different publishers with no luck," Idol said. "Then I attended the Dixie Deer Classic and discussed it with David Morris. David and Steve Vaughn flew out to meet me soon afterward, and a few months later North American Whitetail became a reality." Idol was soon one of the magazine's most respected, popular, and prolific contributors.
"I've always followed my heart," Idol said. "An idea might have seemed whimsical because it didn't make much economic sense, but I'd go ahead anyway."
North American Whitetail became a major commercial success, but by that time another whitetail-related idea had already taken root in Idol's mind.
"People thought I was crazy when I bought my first set of antlers," he said, speaking of the early days of a collection that later morphed into a popular attraction viewed by millions of people. Idol's quest for the biggest and the best deer antlers led him into remote corners of the continent. He unearthed trophies that otherwise might have been lost for all time, such as Ohio's famous Hole-in-the-Horn buck.
"My collection is my greatest achievement," Idol said. "Dozens of great heads and antlers were lost, stolen, cut up for knife handles, or hung on a barn to rot. Larry Hessman, Bass Pro Shops, and I helped preserve at least some great antlers before anything happened to them."
Idol's whitetail-related business ventures kicked into overdrive in 1982 when he collaborated with Cabela's to create a popular line of whitetail hunting clothing. He quit his "Legendary Whitetails" antler collection tour in 1994, and that same year he released his first bronze sculpture, titled "Midnight Crossing-Whitetail." The demand for Idol's artwork grew, reaching an apex when the Cabela's store in Owatonna, Minnesota, installed on its grounds Idol's twenty-six-foot tall sculpture, "Autumn Legends."
Dick Idol Ventures, LLC, dedicated to brand licensing, was launched in 2000, and in 2001, Klaussner Furniture introduced Dick Idol's High Country Heritage Home Collection, one of the hottest furniture lines in the country. The first Dick Idol's Lifestyle store, encompassing six thousand square feet of retail space, recently opened in Calgary, Alberta, and there are stores under construction in Red Deer, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. These stores will sell Dick Idol furniture, art, and lifestyle accessories, all of which can be used to decorate the Dick Idol Log Home.
Idol no longer hunts as much as he once did, but last season he found the time to harvest an Alberta typical whitetail that grossed 183 Boone and Crockett points and netted 176 5/8.
"When I started hunting whitetails, I don't remember as many big bucks being taken as there are today," Idol said. "But if regulations remain the same, I believe deer as big or even bigger than those recently taken will continue to be bagged."
Despite his optimistic outlook on trophy deer, Idol worries about what the future holds for deer hunting in general. "High fencing concerns me, and so does genetic tinkering. Some hunters shoot nice bucks but fail to inform anyone that the bucks were taken in high-fenced areas. You can't compare apples (high-fenced deer) with oranges (truly wild deer). Whitetails turned loose in two- to three-thousandacre fenced acres, with plenty of cover, are as difficult to hunt as wild deer, and yet they aren't wild deer. Just where will this lead us in the future? What will [the public's] ultimate perception of [high-fenced hunting] be?"
David Morris: A Natural Educator
You can get an education just talking with David Morris. Publisher and author, wildlife biologist and researcher, businessman and hunter, David Morris has worn a number of hats, and he's still doing so today. He is busier than ever now that he has become a partner in Tecamote Wildlife Systems with Tecamote founder Gary Schwarz.
Morris grew up in Geneva, Alabama. "I was interested in deer even as a child," Morris said. "Which was difficult since there were no deer at all until I was in tenth grade, when they were stocked. I saw my first deer when I was a junior in high school, and only after I'd hunted forty days in a row as a senior did I actually see a deer-a button buck-while hunting."
Although Morris didn't kill a deer that year, there would be plenty of deer-and deer hunts-in his future. After receiving a . in wildlife biology from Auburn University, he went on to help found Game & Fish Publications in 1976 and North American in 1982. He owned and managed Georgia's Burnt Pine Plantation, where for twenty years he pioneered food-plot management for whitetails. Techniques he learned then inform the management of Morris's whitetail ranches in Montana and Texas, both of which serve also as Tecomate Food Plot Program pilot projects.
Morris made hunting his way of life, and his courtship with wife-to-be Debbie perhaps proceeded more smoothly because deer were more abundant near her home than his. "Debbie has taken many big bucks, including one she shot last season in Texas, which scored 173 B&C points," Morris said.
Morris has taken two-possibly three-Boone and Crockett bucks, including one that grossed 196 6/8 points. "The only buck I've officially had scored grossed 178 7/8 and netted 172," he said. Forty of Morris's whitetails gross-score more than 160 B&C points, a rather remarkable achievement, but that's not what he thinks is most important about his life.
"Getting into publishing when I did helped create a market for whitetail hunting," he said. "From that platform I could then help educate and inform readers to better enjoy the outdoors and whitetail hunting. I've watched the whitetail industry grow. seeing so many people work so hard for whitetails and hunting, and then to see them actually give back more than they take from the sport, has been extremely gratifying."
Morris enjoys patterning a specific whitetail and then sticking with that buck until he scores. He admits, though, that such a feat isn't always possible. "It's hard to pick out a particular buck to hunt here in Montana," he said. "I'll rattle at various places while I'm covering a lot of ground. The last two bucks I rattled in gross-scored 179 and 182 B&C points, respectively."
Morris is in a good position to speculate on the future of whitetail hunting. "Since the best hunting will be found on protected or managed land, quality experiences will be more costly, and harvest rates will decline," Morris said. "But the up side is that the overall quality of big game will improve."
With fewer places to hunt, Morris said, wildlife managers will have to get more nutritional value for wildlife from less land. "We [Steve Vaughn and myself] pushed the envelope on small-tract nutritional management at Steve's Fort Perry ranch in Georgia," he said. "We succeeded in part because we insisted that in our food-plot studies native habitat had to be maintained or improved. If deer start relying on supplemental feedings or become habituated to feed or people, the challenge of hunting disappears. But any well-fed whitetail existing in native habitat will remain a difficult animal to hunt."
Morris feels that if a high-fenced area of at least 1,000 acres is managed to improve or maintain native habitats, then the deer within will provide a quality hunt. "My 3,000-acre Texas ranch is not high fenced, and it includes 240 acres of food plots," he said. "Those deer don't have to move to forage. If not for the rut, they would be impossible to hunt, even if the ranch were high fenced."
"Planting food plots relieves the pressure on native habitat," Morris said. "That means more deer can be carried per acre, and those deer can be held closer on a smaller tract of land, which means less chance of them wandering off your property to get shot."
Although he is not opposed to high-fenced operations perse, Morris pointed out that building such an enclosure is tantamount to "stockpiling" deer since yearling bucks cannot disperse like they do in the wild.
"A high fence can be a tool to use or abuse," he noted. He is also opposed to transporting deer between areas. "As soon as a human handles a deer, I no longer consider that deer a wild animal.
"Fair chase is important to a real hunter," Morris said. "Without that element of mystery or uncertainty, it's no longer hunting. Shooting or collecting, perhaps, but not hunting. Why would anyone want to do that?"
The Benoits: Shane, Lanny, and Lane
The original legend of the whitetail world is Larry Benoit, father of Shane, Lanny, and Lane Benoit. The Benoits have been called "The First Family of Whitetail Hunting," with good reason. All have proved themselves as deer hunters and as woodsmen. All followed in Larry Benoit's footsteps, and each continues to refine the traditions with which he was entrusted. The influence of the Benoits can be seen throughout the Northeastern deer woods in the green-checkered wool garb, knee-high rubber boots, and Remington pumpaction rifles used by hunters young and old.
When modern whitetail hunting was still in its infancy, the Benoit brothers were young men. They are middle-aged now, but still more than up to the task of taking on the vast north woods and the unforgiving cold to hunt a trophy whitetail the way few others do-by tracking, on snow or bare ground. The Benoits understand whitetails. Each of them seems to know what a big buck is contemplating before the big buck itself knows. The Benoits take on the whitetail on its own turf. They've been doing this for many years, and they will be doing it for many more.
"My dad and uncles and older brothers all hunted," Shane Benoit said. "When I was eight or nine I finally got to go, too. I'd trudge along, tire, fall down, and find myself buried in snow." Shane was eleven or twelve when he bagged his first deer, a 5-pointer.
Even today, the brothers acknowledge the existence of a Benoit "pecking order."
"Eannie is the best hunter," said Shane. "He's so good, he always made it look easy."
The Benoits have hunted in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Shane and Lannie recently hunted on public land in Ontario where they both bagged bucks that grossed more than 180 B&C points. In typical Benoit fashion, they took no field photos, perhaps because, like most old-time whitetail hunters, they've always been more enamored of burly body size than huge racks. The family's hunters have taken many bucks weighing more than 270 pounds, and their grandfather bagged several that cracked the magical 300-pound barrier.
Like father, like son, and grandson, and great-grandson. Yes, the younger generation can boast of a hunter or two being groomed to follow in the footsteps of the older Benoits.
Like the other legends, Shane and Lannie both expressed concerns about the future of hunting. "Licenses must be applied for," Shane said. "Land is posted or leased. Canada requires guides for nonresidents, but if you have a good compass or a GPS, why do you need a guide?"
"Some agency should offer landowners a tax break for allowing a couple of hunters onto their land," Lannie said. "Every year, there's less land to hunt, and the land you can hunt is infested with deer hunters. The biggest challenge facing deer hunters is simply finding a place to go where they won't have to pay an arm and a leg."
Not that any of this will stop the Benoits. Not as long as there are large tracts of vast and silent woods waiting to be plumbed for a whitetail monarch roaming free and wild. When the Benoits get on the track of such a buck, one gets the feeling that they have more in common with the wily old whitetail than with their human fellows back in the cities.
Jay Gates: "Mr. Deer"
Jay Gates admits to being consumed by deer and deer hunting. "It was my way of life," he said. Whitetails were-and are-important to him, but so too were mule deer, Columbia blacktails, Sitka blacktails, and Coues deer. Gates probably possesses the most thorough understanding of any living person of all the North American deer species, including western whitetails.
As a boy of eight, Gates began tagging along on mule-deer hunts with his father. "My father always shot the first forkhorn he saw," Gates recalled. "By the time I started hunting when I was twelve, I had no interest in small bucks."
Gates first hunted on his own at age fourteen, the year he and his friend, Hub Grounds, drove a jeep-neither had a driver's license-into the backcountry of Hub's father's ranch where they both bagged 4×4 mulies.
"That did it," Gates said. "1 was hooked."
Although his degree from Texas Tech was in animal science, graduation found Gates working in the department-store business with his father. A stint as a beer distributor followed that, and by 1974 Gates had finally achieved the financial wherewithal to allow him to scout or hunt for about two hundred days each year. In the late 1970s, he began guiding.
In the early 1980s, he decided to try for a "Deer Slam"-one buck of each species: Columbia blacktail, whitetail, Coues, and mule deer, taken in a single year. This he accomplished four years running, until Boone and Crockett added the Sitka blacktail as a category to its record book. Gates never even hesitated. He bagged all five species within a single year during each of the next four years.
Gates then set an even more challenging goal for himself: to bag a B&C buck of every deer species. To date he's done quite well, with two B&C mule deer (198 and 191 net scores), eight Coues (his largest a 154 gross nontypical), and five or six Columbia blacktail that net between 135 and 143. Although he has not yet broken the B&C barrier for whitetails or Sitka blacktails, he has taken five whitetails with antlers grossing between 170 and 178, as well as one Sitka that netted 107, just one point under the minimum qualifying score. Gates has hunted whitetails in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Idaho, South Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana.
"As I get older I find that I'm hunting more now and killing less," Gates mused. "I still love to hunt; I still go on five or six long hunts each year. But while I once was driven to take a big buck on every hunt, I now take just one or two bucks each year."
Gates sees challenges ahead for deer hunters. "Taking a big whitetail buck used to require time, not money," he said. "It now takes money just to access private land known to have huge whitetails. Mule deer are a different story. They are our most fragile wildlife resource and a treasure that must be protected. You can't buy one. Heck, you can barely find one.
"Hunting gives me life," Gates said. "Without hunting, what would I do? Without hunting, who would I be?"
It's a sentiment that might be echoed by any of these living legends. Whitetail hunting helped make them what they are, and their knowledge and passion for the pursuit of deer has, in turn, enriched the world of deer hunting for all of us.
Legends Live On
For information about Dick Idol Ventures, call 336/ 812-8080, visit . Dick's book, Hunting the Four Periods of the Rut, is available from Safari Press, .
David Morris's book, Advanced Strategies for Trophy Whitetails, is currently available from Safari Press, .
The Benoits have made two videos, Tracking Big Bucks With the Benoits (VHS only), and Jracking Big Bucks With the Benoits II (VHS and DVD), available from . Two books about the Benoits have been written by Bryce Towsley: Big Bucks the Benoit Way and Benoit Bucks; they are available from .
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