Whitetail University Writers Camp #1 - 2007
Arrival Day - Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Bear Archery | Dave Parker & P.J. Reilly |
| Dream Woods Adventures |

Dave Parker

Dave Parker is the Purchasing/Sales Manager of Kinsey's Archery Products. Dave became a bowhunter at the age of 15, the minimum age for purchasing a hunting license in Massachusetts. Over the years he has hunted in 20 plus States, Canada and New Zealand and has taken 4 big game species that qualify for P&Y. 

"The big attraction of bowhunting, for me,  is developing the skill to get close to animals, it was the first attraction when I was young and it still is, absolutely." Dave told me.

Dave's first experience with an outdoor business was opened a fishing bait & tackle shop when he was 17 and operated it for 4 years. He spent a short stint as an electrician and decided he liked an outdoor career better and got a job with Dave's Sporting Goods in Pittsfield Mass, a large, independently owned, 4 season sports shop. Dave became the buyer, placed advertising, hired and fired, and learned the business. After 13 years with Dave's he made a move to Kinsey's Archery Products (in 1999).

He was hired as Purchasing Manager and his responsibilities have grown over the years. .He has 3 other buyers who buy 15,000 items from over 600 manufacturers. Wearing one of his other hats, Dave started Kinsey's Dealer Trade Show, the first of its kind at the time.

"My first thought is bowhunters today have a luxury of product quality that is so great, by comparison, to earlier days. The technology in manufacturing is so improved there is never a time when the quality of bowhunting products has been better."

"For 20 years, every year you see improvements and the innovation continues on and on. Somebody always does something to push the envelope to improve an existing product or create a better product for archers and bowhunters.

"I have the best job in the world, I can't wait to get to work in the morning.

Dave is an energetic guy who is impressively knowledgeable, he knows about archery product history, features and uses. He is dedicated to the archery and bowhunting industry business as well as being a bowhunter from day one of his hunting life.

P.J. Reilly works full time for the daily morning newspaper in Langcaster, PA  and covers outdoor articles and general news. He is a newspaper vet of 17 years. And for the last 10 years he has written free lance for numerous hunting magazines, including; Sports Afield, Buckmasters, Petersen's Hunting, Cabela's Outfitter Journal, Wildfowl in addition to Bowhunter Magazine.  He has the Archery Column for Pennsylvania Game News.

P.J. always had a bow and enjoyed archery and shot competitive archery. At 22 he bowhunted whitetails for the first time. He told me, "The technology is vastly superior and advanced compared to 20 years ago. What's amazing is there is nothing I'm doing now that I wasn't doing 20 years ago. Then, there were no range finders and I learned to judge yardages myself. That made me accurate in both hunting and target situations (the early days of 3-D shoots). I did what I had to do then and do what I have to do now. I had the equipment available then and learned to live in it limitations."

P.J.'s articles are mainly about "destinations." This year, so far, he has hunted 12 states, 4 Canadian Provences and one European country and had hunted wild hogs, whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, caribou, waterfowl, game birds and reindeer (in Iceland, which is a european country). 

P.J. favors writing hunting adventure articles. He likes to describe the hunt but also offer information about the game and the country or area.

I asked him what his advice for people who want to write for the hunting magazines. He said, "It' one thing to be able to tell a story but another to write it. Learn to write. The technical, grammar, punctuation, the basic writing skills is what kills new writers. Every editor of a magazine will reject poorly written articles. They don't like to do 'triage' on an article and have to drastically re-write it to make it a good article. Triage is used in editing as a term for emergency medical care for articles."

Doug Doty, Greg Griffith and Joe Doty  are the owners of Dream Woods Adventures. Greg met Doug on a trip when Doug was down from Connecticut. Greg invited Doug to hunt with him on an area he hunted. The first time out Doug shot at a monster buck and saw a few dozen deer. They became good friends and hunted together every Fall for 5 years.

Doug was an experienced deer hunting guide and thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie and satisfaction of helping them take deer. They decided to form an outfitting service for the area and secured the land and started booking deer hunters. 

Every year they can be found at the Springfield, Massachusetts Sportsmans Show, the Birmingham Alabama Deer Expo and in 2008 the Texas Trophy Hunters Expo in Dallas, Texas. 

"It is a misconception that this is a seasonal business. It takes a year round effort to take care of customers, field work and scouting -- a minimum of 30 a week in the off season. Treestands have to be removed after the season, we have over 100 treestands. Scouting for the next season is many, many hours of observation. Watching productive food sources during the summer to determine what quality of deer are in the area is important. When we find trophy bucks we scout the area thoroughly for treestand setups for bowhunters. Customer contact is daily, emails, phone calls, mailing are constant. In most cases we return emails the same day or the following day." 

Hunters in our camp can expect to see P&Y bucks and some see B&C bucks. We hunt timbered areas near bedding as well as wood lots near food crop sources. The terrain varies from flat agricultural farm land to hilly timbered areas. 

Joe Doty added, "We encourage and can accommodate women and youth hunters."

Their web site is at DreamWoodsAdventrues.com.