A Hunter's Legacy

Samir Suleiman grew up hunting with his father outside of Washington DC, knocking on farmhouse doors and chasing whatever was in season within a two hour drive. By the time he was nine he had his hunter safety card and his first deer. By twelve he had an eleven point buck on the wall that he still has not topped. When his family bought 105 acres in Virginia, he was hunting before and after school, dragging does down mountains and calling neighbors to help load them into the truck before his dad got home from work.Then his career in the NFL front office took over. Negotiating contracts and managing salary caps for teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, St. Louis Rams, and Carolina Panthers meant football season ate hunting season whole. So he adapted. He started booking hunts around away games, borrowing rifles, and finding public land in whatever state the team was flying into. When the budget allowed, he went further. A mountain lion in the Kaibab National Forest near the Grand Canyon. Forty four hundred doves in four days in Argentina. And then Mozambique, where he hunted leopard at midnight with one headlamp and a spearman for backup, killed a problem hippo that had taken a boy's life, and fed an entire village on the spot.Samir's story covers whitetail hunting in Virginia, dove hunting across the Southeast, dangerous game in Africa, and what it takes to keep hunting at the center of a life that keeps pulling you somewhere else. A Hunter's Legacy exists for stories like this one, from public land deer hunters to guys chasing leopards in the dark, because the passion behind the hunt is always the same.Like what you’re hearing?Hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. New stories drop every week.Follow A Hunter’s Legacy:InstagramFacebookTikTokYoutubeWebsiteShare the show with a buddy who lives for cold mornings, heavy packs, and quiet woods.

John LaMarca didn't grow up in a hunting family. Nobody in his house hunted, nobody handed him a rifle, and nobody showed him how to read the woods. At 18, he decided he wanted to hunt, walked into the Maine timber country with a borrowed shotgun and a pair of used wrestling shoes, and figured it out the hard way. It took him four years to kill his first deer. Today he's a registered Maine guide, the director of engineering for a precision muzzleloader company, and one of the more well-rounded woodsmen you'll come across in the Northeast.John hunts two very different worlds. Down south near Merrymeeting Bay, he's working swamps, hunting the edge where hardwoods meet marsh, and trying to locate the few mature bucks hiding in a sea of does. Up north, it's a different animal entirely. Miles of unbroken timber, no cell service, no agriculture, no pattern to follow. You wait for snow, cut a big buck track on a logging road, and go. He's tracked deer eight miles through the Maine mountains before catching up with one. When the conditions are right, he's still hunting through the wind. When they're not, he's posting up and sitting still.This episode covers deer tracking in the Maine backcountry, hunting without a mentor, wool versus synthetic in thick timber, and what it actually takes to become a woodsman from scratch. A Hunter's Legacy keeps telling these stories because this is what whitetail hunting in the Northeast actually looks like, and guys like John are the ones keeping that tradition alive.Like what you’re hearing?Hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. New stories drop every week.Follow A Hunter’s Legacy:InstagramFacebookTikTokYoutubeWebsiteShare the show with a buddy who lives for cold mornings, heavy packs, and quiet woods.