His knife fight with a wounded 10-point buck in October 1819 became the subject of a the famous subject of a popular Currier and Ives lithograph made in 1861, and painted by the great A.F. Although equally known as a bear hunter, Browning had a reputation as a deerslayer of legendary drive and toughness. Meshach Browning (1781-1859) was not the first to chronicle hunting life on the early frontier, but his Forty-Four years of the Life of a Hunter focuses more squarely on deer than others. Meshach Browning, The Buck Brawler A print of “Life of A Hunter, Catching a Tartar,” depicting Browning fighting a 10-point buck. Audubon is America’s original hunter-naturalist, who, as deer hunting historian Robert Wegner writes in his excellent Legendary Deerslayers, “studied deer to hunt them and hunted them to study them.” 4.
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Audubon’s influential 1831 essay “Deer Hunting,” widely read in his day and in print for well over a century, was (1) the first serious how-to manual detailing the popular deer hunting tactics of the time (2) a romanticized case for deer hunting as noble recreation and (3) an early argument for fair-chase hunting. Stock Montage / GettyĪlthough not widely celebrated as a deer hunter, Audubon (1785-1851) was an avid whitetail devotee, and, along with Foster, a strong candidate for Cooper’s real-life Natty Bumppo. John James Audubon, The Hunter Naturalist An early 19th century engraving portrait of Audubon. Nonetheless, as the inspiration for Bumppo, there may be no real-life hunter so influential in casting deer hunters in a golden light. He was suspected of killing many and was tried and acquitted for the murder of one. Unlike Bumppo, he was no cardboard hero and none too friendly with the natives.
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Like Bumppo, Foster was a supremely skilled hunter and crack shot with a long rifle. As likely as not, and according to a 1937 report in The New York Times, renowned Adirondack deerslayer Nat Foster (1766-1840) gave Cooper his protagonist. 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.
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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.