Tom Venesky: Today’s social media celebrities not the hunting mentors of years ago

The biggest challenge to getting a child interested in hunting today isn’t time or access to land.

Granted, time and access are major issues, but the more important factor deals with who is teaching our kids about the sport of hunting.

I’m not talking about parents, family members, hunter education instructors or anyone like that. It’s the so-called mentors they look up to that appear as celebrities in hunting shows and “influencers” on social media. These people all have one thing in common – they emphasize the kill – and it creates a false narrative to a kid about what hunting is truly about.

Today, thanks to the outdoor celebrities who are mistaken as mentors, hunting is about instant gratification. Anything less is a failure, and as we all know, the majority of our time afield doesn’t end with filling a tag.

And that’s OK.

But to a kid today who grows up watching videos and social media posts where the hunter always gets the big buck, the expectation when they start their hunting career is already too high.

The big name hunters of today may be doing more harm than good by presenting the sport in an unrealistic fashion.

It wasn’t always like this.

When I was growing up, my biggest hunting role model was my dad. There were plenty of hunting “celebrities” as well, but they weren’t all necessarily people who made their careers out of blasting trophy bucks.

To me, the big names of the hunting world were those who appreciated the sport not for the kill or even the pursuit. They appreciated hunting because of the unique connection it offered to the natural world.

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People like Ned Smith, who made learning about the intricacies of nature as fulfilling as harvesting a deer. And Stanley Hawbaker, whose classic book “Trapping North American Furbearers” is a lesson on animal behavior as much as it is about how to make a flat set.

And then there’s Leonard Lee Rue III, the famed wildlife photographer whose images were in every wildlife and hunting magazines, and whose words filled the pages of more than 30 books.

Like Smith and Hawbaker, Rue is no longer with us. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 96, but I was fortunate enough to get to know him a few years prior when I visited him at his New Jersey home.

For someone who grew up marveling at his photos in Deer and Deer Hunting magazine, being able to spend time with Rue years later was an unforgettable experience.

He was considered one of the foremost authorities on deer in the world and was the most published wildlife photographer in North America. Rue was a legend, and when I walked into his house I felt like I was meeting a true celebrity.

Despite his international success as a wildlife photographer, the inside of Rue’s home reflected the passion that defined him not so much as a deer expert, but a student of the natural world.

Paintings by fellow artists adorned the walls, as did the mounts of several monster bucks – some of which served as subjects for his photos years ago.

Shed deer antlers sat on just about every shelf, and in his living room a camera with zoom lens was mounted on a tripod, ready to go to work at a moment’s notice.

Several large picture windows lined the living room, overlooking an expanse of woods and a pond just outside the house. Along the windows was a long table where Rue spent much of his time, watching the wildlife that would appear outside.

The camera was always ready for whatever showed up outside, he told me.

When I visited him, Rue had just finished what would become one of the most comprehensive books ever written about deer behavior, Whitetail Savvy. And even though he was in his late 80s at the time, Rue was working on a few other books, including one about woodchucks and another about wild geese.

That’s what made Rue so fascinating – he could take a seemingly simple subject like a woodchuck and make it an interesting subject for a book. He was fascinated with every species.

Rue never stopped learning, and that’s what fueled his passion for wildlife – the fact that there is always a new direction, a new mystery to solve.

“I want to know everything I can about every animal,” Rue said. “I’m a naturalist first, and a photographer second.”

But age had caught up to him, and Rue admitted he couldn’t venture into the woods as often or sit long in a blind (he once stayed in a blind for over 21 hours photographing a red fox den in Alaska).

Instead, the table next to the windows in the upstairs of his house had become Rue’s treestand, and he seemed content with that.

We spent hours talking about deer, wildlife, his career, outdoor writing and his life.

And for someone whose accomplishments included over 1,800 magazine covers, more than 30 books and 1,500 columns, Rue was still able to sum it all up.

“I was never one of the best photographers, but I was one of the best naturalists,” he told me. “I’ve always been fascinated by words and wildlife, and I’ve always done my best to learn everything about wildlife and share it with people.

That was my career.”

Spoken like a true mentor.