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Interviewer: Hello everybody out in the world of whitetails. Thank you for joining us on Whitetail Rendezvous this is your host Bruce Hutcheon. This morning I’m very pleased and privileged to have Craig Dougherty, executive director of National Deer Alliance, on the line with us. Craig, good morning.
Craig: Good morning. Good morning, how are you today?
Interviewer: I am well. Craig, let’s just jump right into it and tell us about NDA, why it was formed and what its mission is.
Craig: Good, thanks for that opportunity to do so. Basically the genesis of NDA goes back less than a year. Well actually, let me correct that, the official genesis is less than a year but slightly more than a year, last March there was the first ever whitetail deer summit meeting was held in Branson, Missouri. And about 228 deer enthusiasts and deer experts, the whole deer community got together and that was hunters, it was deer researchers, there was deer policy agency people, manufacturers of bows and arrows and guns and bullets all came together in Branson to take a look at what was going on with at that time whitetail deer.
We knew full well that mule deer have had difficulties for a number of decades with populations and habitat and other issues that were affecting mule deer development and prosperity. They were affecting hunting opportunities for mule deer, and we wanted to take a look at the whitetail deer. Frankly speaking, we didn’t come away with a real warm fuzzy feeling after this group met for two and a half days even when it came to whitetails. Yes, there are good populations of whitetails and good opportunities to hunt whitetails in many areas, but in the same token the whitetail deer numbers seem to be definitely on a decline. Hunter success rates are going down and many factors are negatively impacting to whitetail deer herd right now. I’m not saying that we concluded the sky is falling, but we clearly concluded at that meeting that a national organization has to be formed that will be basically the spokesperson for whitetail deer and also the spokesperson for whitetail deer hunting.
That summit meeting happened a little over a year ago. Less than a year ago and Quality Deer Management Association was the key driver behind that summit meeting. The board of directors of QDMA said, “Here’s what we think is the best approach. Form a brand new organization called the National Deer Alliance, and go to work to bring all deer hunters and all deer groups together.” And basically they asked if I would serve as an acting executive director; I have lots of years in the hunting industry and when you get grey hair and years in the saddle you know people and you know how things happen.
For the last year, or less than a year, I’ve been heading up the National Deer Alliance. And the critical name of that organization is alliance. Very shortly after QDM’s board said let’s put this together, the mule deer people came to us, the Mule Deer Foundation came and said, “We’re in. We want in on this.” Shortly after that, Whitetails Unlimited, the other national deer group in the country came onboard and said, “We’re in too.”
So within a month or so of the NDA being formed the three national deer organizations came together and said, “We’ll work together cooperatively. We have a common interest, a common agenda — that’s deer to hunt, and the right and privilege and hunting opportunities follow having deer.” Not long after those three groups came together, or during that same time, the Archery Trade Association came in, which represents all the archery companies in the industry, led by Jay McAninch, they came forward and said, “We’re in.” In addition to that, the National Shooting Sports Foundation came forward and said, “We’re in.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation, NSSF, is the trade association that puts on the shot show and they primarily represent all the gun companies and everything associated with shooting and hunting from a gun standpoint.
So all the gun people are in, all the bow and archery people are in, the three deer groups are in, and then we started to reach out to hunters across the country and say more than anything we need to be the voice of the deer hunter. We need you all to come forward, join our organization. It’s free, it’s online, it’s a cyber-driven organization, there’s no banquets or membership dues, no magazines, but we want everybody aligned with this thing and everybody on board that when we have deer issues that surface, and there’s many of them . . . at the meeting we identified deer diseases as a real threat to deer and deer hunting. Deer habitat is huge, recruitment of hunters is a big issue; there are many factors that have kind of created an environment now where deer don’t have the same, if you will, easy sailing.
For years, deer have just prospered and populations have grown. Some have overgrown and are too many, but in most cases we didn’t have to worry about deer like we did with ducks and restore turkeys to huntable populations. Deer were just taking care of themselves and not that they aren’t now, but predation issues are huge now, lots of impact from predators, lots of other issues impact them. We wanted to get hunters and policy makers and everybody else with a stake in this thing together to work together to make good management decisions as to how to always have a good, prosperous hunting population of deer. And all this has happened within a year.
Interviewer: That’s fantastic. In my talks with some of the folks at QDMA, they’re really enthused about what you’re doing and how this has been embraced by the industry. As you and I know it’s a multibillion dollar industry, and there are over 18 million people that hunt whitetail deer — young, old and women and men. Let’s talk about how you’re going to assist in promoting hunting for the youth and for the women of North America.
Craig: Well, that is a very easy question to answer without trying to be too cute about it. Well, how we’re going to assist that is we’re going to work as hard as we possibly can to ensure there are huntable populations of deer to hunt. And I’m not trying to be cute about it at all. I’ve seen dozens of recruitment programs for youth. There are some darn good ones out there. We will of course support them. There are great women’s programs; they’ve been going on for 20 years. I’ve been in the hunting industry for probably 35 years, primarily in archery. I ran and we owned at one time Bear Archery, I was part of that [inaudible 00:08:40]. I spent my whole professional lifetime in that industry.
But nothing is going to happen without a huntable population of deer, primarily whitetails. If you look at the mule deer story, it’s somewhat a sad story. They’re declining in numbers and with them are decline in hunting populations of hunters of mule deer. It’s kind of hard to get a mule deer hunt together as far as tags go and other things. If the NDA can work and ensure that some of the areas, and help to ensure and work with the agencies to do this, where whitetail populations are declining, where whitetail populations and hunter success rates are declining, then we’ve got about the best hunter recruitment program we can possibly have. It’s called Something to Hunt.
And 80% of hunters hunt deer in our country. If we take deer out of the equation, the math is pretty clear, there’s not much left to hunt. And that’s our focus right now. We will certainly support women recruitment programs and youth recruitment programs, but our contribution will be making sure there’s something for these recruits, and retention of hunters as well, that’s the third part of the stool. Recruit young people, recruit women, and keep old folks like myself in the game. And none of it happens without deer to hunt.
Interviewer: Thank you for that, so much. Now with your vision, how can our listeners impact what you’re doing? What would be the best way for somebody who says, “Hey, I want to get involved,” how would they specifically get involved?
Craig: Well, I’ll give you a two-part answer. The first part might be out of their reach right now, but next Wednesday the second ever deer summit is being held. We’ve been planning it now for months and that summit meeting is going to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. You can go to nationaldeeralliance.com and register for the summit right now and we’d love to have you there. A big part of the summit is having hunters and anyone else with an interest in deer coming forward, coming to the meeting and listening and speaking and voting. We actually vote when we come to these meetings. We can accommodate hundreds of people with electronic voting devices. The top speakers in the country will be there on deer issues. We will follow up on the first summit where numerous issues were identified, and this summit is all about which ones should we tackle now that we’ve formed the National Deer Alliance, now that we’ve incorporated, now that we’ve registered as a nonprofit advocacy group, now that we have a board of directors, now that everything is in place.
This year’s summit which is next week is going to be all about what should we tackle? And our membership and the experts we’re bringing together will all be deciding that collectively. When you push the button your vote matters as a deer hunter just as much as a deer manager of the state of Kentucky director of management who will be there and other officials. Our belief is the best deer policy decisions are made when hunters have an active voice and work together with policy makers to examine what the issues are and decide how to tackle them. Now that’s the quick answer.
The other side of the answer is to go to the same site, Nationaldeeralliance.com and just sign up, be a member. Every single week, a newsletter goes out from the NDA called “On Watch” and we identify deer issues. We provide the latest and greatest deer information, but in addition to that, every week we ask two or three questions of our membership to hear and find out what’s on their mind. What do they think are important issues? How do they feel about this? How did your season go? Was it a good year, bad year? Why or why not? So every single week for the last 40 weeks we have surveyed our membership all online, it takes you, some of our members take hours with our newsletter because it leads them to other strands and other places where they see cool videos and other stuff. We have a very high return rate on our surveys which are all online surveys. That’s another way to participate, but we really need you to become a member. It’s free, it’s easy, Nationaldeeralliance.com, you say, “Yes I’m in,” and you’re in.
Interviewer: And listeners, it is that simple. I joined after speaking to the folks at QDMA. I joined and their newsletters are valuable. If you’re a deer hunter, there’s absolutely no reason that you wouldn’t want to be a part of NDA; no question about it. Part of their vision, part of their mission is to ensure the future of North America’s deer. And without the deer we don’t have the traditions of hunting. Craig, talk to me about your tradition of hunting. You’ve been in the industry for a long time, you’ve done a lot, you’ve been there and as they said “been there and done it”. So talk to me and our listeners about the tradition of hunting and what it means to you.
Craig: Goodness. Like most of your listeners, I had my first exposure, I think, following my dad around when we were rabbit hunting. I hunted with a stick, and he hunted with a shotgun. That transitioned into rifle hunting or gun hunting when I turned the proud old age of 12 in the state of Pennsylvania. Of course Pennsylvania, like Wisconsin . . . and I’m not sure of your listener demographic, I’m sure it’s national in scope, but you know, schools close in my home state of Pennsylvania on the opening day of deer season. And because there are not enough kids in school to justify having them in, they’re all hunting with their families.
I started that way and then I took up the bow in my ’20s and I’ve been a bow and rifle hunter ever since. I have written a few books about it, my son is a wildlife consultant. Virtually every day of the year he’s on someone’s deer property helping them to develop better property, helping them to manage their herd. As they say, it’s what I do, and I’ve reached the ripe old age of 65. Prior to becoming executive director, I was pretty happy sitting on the seat of a tractor driving around helping my son put in food plots and do other habitat things and taking my grandchildren fishing. The board of directors at QDMA said, “Craig, why don’t you come out of your happy semi-retirement for a while and head this thing up?”
I’ve been again in the industry . . . you rub shoulders with all the decision makers and players, and above everything else you really develop an economic and social appreciation for what deer mean to this country economically. Again, I was lucky enough to be a senior executive in a few archery companies — Golden Eagle Archery, Bear Archery. Some mornings you pull into work and you see a full parking lot and you say boy, there’s a lot of groceries being brought in this parking lot this week because of hunting. And then you go out and you travel the country and you see what a beautiful wildlife world we live in. Those of us . . . me and your readers and others like us, and your listeners, I’m sorry. I’m too much out of the magazine world here.
Interviewer: That’s fine.
Craig: We understand that hunting licenses are what drive wildlife management in our country and excise taxes, which not everyone knows are every time you buy a bow or a gun or a fishing rod or something like that, a little bit of that money goes back into wildlife funds. That’s why we have it, that’s what pays for all the agency folks, and of course hunting licenses and fishing licenses. What it means to me is huge. And the most meaning to me are two little grandchildren I have that right now I mostly take fishing, but we take nice walks in the woods. One of them is old enough to have sat in a box blind last year for about 20 minutes, that’s how long that lasted, deer hunting.
There are so many aspects to this thing as to why someone would step up to the plate and . . . consideration and says very simply deer hunting has been part of the fabric of America since it was started. And deer hunting is part of the fabric of America, the good fabric of America, and if you need more reason than that to participate and join for free I don’t know what else I can tell you. It’s part of our fabric, it’s part of the good fabric of what America is built on.
Interviewer: Well said and agreed. We have listeners that are just beginning their careers or mid-career and saying, “My career isn’t going where I want it to go. I love the outdoors, I love the fishing, the hunting,” and with your experience what are three or four things that you would recommend to our listeners that they really want to get into the outdoor industry? What would you say to them?
Craig: Well, I would say to them welcome aboard and don’t give up and don’t stop trying. And basically I think what your listener could do who want to join the hunting industry is you really need to develop a skillset. Frankly right now the skills that we look for . . . you can be an engineer and product designer and obviously you can enter through the sales side because all these guns and bows and other things, somebody has got to sell them. You can get into the retail side and sell and go to work for Bass or Cabela’s or Corner Archery Shop, or something like that. That gets you into the industry.
Also, because this is a podcast, you might have some people who spend a lot of time in the technology sector, and that’s one of the growing opportunity areas in our industry with manufacturers and other companies because so much more of our communication is driven through podcasts and online presences. The NDA is an entire . . . our whole universe is cyber-driven, is in cyberspace. That person who both appreciates the outdoors is passionate about hunting and understands the comings and goings of the cyber world, which I don’t very well — and I blame it on my age — that’s a good combination to have right now. A person who can write, a person who can speak, who can listen and also knows how to manipulate that electronic media and the cyber world, that’s a nice place. If you’re 19 years old and say, “Hey, I want to be in the hunting industry,” don’t discount the fact that they’re mutually exclusive. In fact they’re very compatible to be very strong in technology and also very strong in how the woods work and how hunting works and how deer works, etc.
Interviewer: Thank you for that. What can people do on a local level just in their communities to help perpetuate, one, the tradition, and two, getting involved with state agencies or other agencies that are promoting our deer herds and the hunting tradition? I know you said they could become a member, but is there anything they can do locally? Are there local chapters or branches that people can get involved in so collectively they can make a difference?
Craig: Well, I thank you for that question because even though we are a national organization, I managed deer properties and deer for many, many years. Everything, like politics, all deer stuff is local. So our vision for the National Deer Alliance, our website that we’re developing now, a new website, new and improved if you will, the one that you go to is kind of basic and more about asking and answering questions and some good information. The future website of the NDA that should be launched within a few months is very local.
In other words, in our world we want to be able to identify let’s say a local issue. Let’s say there’s an urban hunt planned to take deer numbers down in a certain urban or suburban area of Wisconsin. And the anti-hunting crowd gets ahold of that information and the next thing you know, some politician has gotten in the middle of it and the hunt has been cancelled. The NDA is being set up to work those issues and when we become aware of that. We can become aware of the cancellation of a hunt or any issue that would affect hunting or deer at 9:00 in the morning. We can have the issue researched by noon. We can have a notice out to our members within a 500-mile radius of that hunt out by 3:00, and we can have a petition on the governor’s desk by the end of the work day on that exact same day.
Again, there’s not going to be physical meetings, but as you know, online meetings are constantly going on. Online conversations are constantly going on and they’re in real time in the real world. So we’ll start that conversation with the 500 radius of Waupaca, Wisconsin. If we have 700 members or 7000, we will have 7000-10,000 members in Wisconsin, we’ll start that local conversation and have it resolved within hours, we hope, the way we’re set up. So yeah, join the National Deer Alliance at Nationaldeeralliance.com. That will help you locally.
All right, let’s take it out of the cyber world. Of course mentoring young hunters; of course opening up your opportunities to mentor young hunters to participate and to interface at every possible way with your state agencies. They try very much to understand what their hunting population does, but they get pulled left, right and sideways because many agencies are directed that they have the stakeholder concept, it’s not just hunters, it’s apple growers and automobile insurance companies and other things. You have to be heard and you have to speak up. And you have to have a voice.
Again that’s why NDA was created — to have a voice for deer and deer hunting, but the engagement, the involvement, going to local meetings, going to hearings with their agencies, writing, talking to them and we’re going to try that and we’re making that much easier. When you come to our summit meeting next week, you’re going to be able to participate and reach out to agency people. We’re going to be doing ongoing . . . Nationaldeeralliance.com is going to be doing ongoing coverage and blogging from the National Deer Alliance from the national summit. There are going to be live interviews held there, they’re going to be podcasted in other places. So you can almost participate in the summit without going or keep track of what’s going on in real time.
Interviewer: Craig, thank you for taking a bit of your day and sharing with us. And this is a wrap up where you have the open mic. I know you shared already how to get involved, but if you could just take a minute and give a shout out to anybody you wish, be it QDMA, be it other stakeholders. Again, let’s let the listeners know specifically your website address and how best to get in touch with you if they have specific questions.
Craig: Well, if I can shout out to every deer hunter within earshot of this podcast, I would say thank you for being a part of the fabric of America because I strongly believe as I look at these young children and others that it is critical that we have hunting in our country for a million reasons but particularly deer hunting which is the fabric of America. But as far as reaching out to us, Nationaldeeralliance.com is the way to do it, eventually your comments will get to me, we have other staffers who look at things but what we want more than anything is for you to weigh in on deer issues. There’s power in numbers. If we have this power, if we recruit a million members, we’ll have huge say and huge power in deer issues and that’s what’s needed right now. Because it’s not a calm sea anymore, please understand that. There are lots of issues affecting deer and hunters need to have a voice and they need to be strong. That’s what the National Deer Alliance is all about.
Interviewer: On behalf of the Whitetail Rendezvous community, thank you, Craig Dougherty for enlightening us, bringing to the forefront that we need to get involved. If we’re hunting whitetails, if we’re passionate about whitetails we need to get involved and become a member. It’s free, folks. Just go up and sign up because a lot of our voice, the more it will be heard, either at the local level, the state level and of course the federal level because hunting is a tradition in this country. Thank you again, Craig, and you just go out and have a fantastic day, sir.
Craig: Thank you very much. My pleasure. Call anytime. Bye.