![]() Historians advance several candidates as Bumppo’s real-life counterpart. But it was the fictional Natty Bumppo of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales who cemented the American deer hunter, specifically, as a cultural hero-rugged, steady, trustworthy, upright. Culture Club / Gettyīoone and Crockett, both legendary hunters in their own right, shaped the mythos of the American backwoodsman. Nat Foster, The Original Deerslayer Natty Bumppo and Henry March, in a scene from Cooper’s The Deerslayer. But Massasoit gets the nod for the symbolic significance of his gift of deer and deer hunting-to the colonists and ultimately to all of us. ![]() Native Americans were the original whitetail deer hunters, of coruse, using tactics many of us consider modern, including decoying and rattling. Realizing upon arrival just how skimpy the meal would be, Chief Massasoit (1581-1661) dispatched his hunters, as the story goes, who quickly secured enough venison to feed 140 celebrants for three days. Not long after the Mayflower landed in Plymouth Bay, Puritan leader William Bradford invited 90 Wampoaug Indians to a harvest feast in October of 1621-now often referred to as the first Thanksgiving. Chief Massasoit, The Giver of Deer Massasoit, Wampanoag chief, greets the pilgrims near Plymouth, Massachusetts. It’s because it takes decades to build a body of work and often much longer to see the full view of any one deer hunter’s influence on the sport.Īnd so, with all of that out of the way, here are the greatest American whitetail deer hunters of all time-mostly old-school and a few new-school influencers who, yes, stacked up bucks, but, more important, shaped the way we hunt today and how we see ourselves as deer hunters. It’s not that we have anything against youngsters. You definitely won’t see any young hotshot podcasters, Instagrammers, or YouTubers below. Even so, Boone and Crockett don’t make the cut, either, nor Pope or Young-because here we are talking about hunters best known for their skill at taking whitetail deer specifically and for their part in advancing the sport of deer hunting. ![]() This is a list of the greatest American deer hunters. There are deer all over the world that have been hunted since the very beginning, but you won’t find Ook or Grog here, nor Robin Hood killing the king’s deer. Larry Benoit, widely regarded as the greatest whitetail tracker ever, poses with his signature Remington pump. ![]()
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