The road less traveled

When David Blanton thinks back to his childhood in Gaffney, South Carolina, hunting isn’t what comes to mind.

“We were a sports family,” he said. “I have amazing memories of playing Little League football, baseball, basketball and golf, and bass fishing in farm ponds.”
That changed in 1976, when his father’s textile job took the family to Alma, Georgia.

“Down there, hunting is a way of life. Everybody hunted. My older brother asked for a bow and arrow for Christmas, and soon after we were hooked,” Blanton said. “I’ll never forget my first bow — a Bear Archery 76er Recurve, red, white and blue. I still have it to this day. My dad, brother and I learned how to hunt together when I was 14.”

That introduction to the outdoors set Blanton on a path he never imagined. Looking back, he says the hand of God guided him on a journey that would take him from managing a hunting plantation to becoming one of the most recognizable figures in outdoor television as an ambassador for Realtree, the Columbus, Georgia-based brand that transformed camouflage.

From UGA classes to the Georgia outdoors

When he enrolled in the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES), Blanton said it was the environment, both literally and figuratively, that drew him in and expanded his horizons.

“What I loved was that it was centered around the outdoors,” he said. “And it opened up opportunities for me.”

He chose his major, agricultural economics, after an eye-opening class.

“My favorite class up there was about learning how the commodities trade works and playing the market. For our class, we had to learn strategies and make investments in the commodity market. I loved that. I’ve never forgotten it,” he said.

While earning his degree at UGA, Blanton landed a job as a hunting guide at Burnt Pine Plantation, then a 12,000-acre hunting property near Madison, Georgia.

After graduating in 1984, Blanton returned to Burnt Pine as a full-time manager before moving to LaGrange, Georgia, where he opened LaGrange Outdoors, a small hunting and fishing shop, with a partner. The two also started a small cable-access hunting show on local LaGrange television. The following year, the show began airing on Sunday mornings on WLTZ-TV in Columbus.

A chance meeting and a new path

The timing was serendipitous. It was 1987, just a year after company founder Bill Jordan introduced a new camouflage pattern called Realtree. LaGrange Outdoors began selling Realtree gear, which was unlike anything hunters had seen before.

“It was this new thing — what we called ‘designer camo,’” said Blanton, who met Jordan while scouting for deer with a mutual friend late one afternoon on Jordan’s hunting lease in Harris County. The two men immediately hit it off and began hunting together regularly.

In 1989, after many conversations, Jordan asked Blanton if he would be interested in joining Realtree. By 1990, Blanton was on board full time.

At the time, outdoor television was in its infancy, with The Nashville Network (TNN) pioneering nationwide broadcasts of hunting and fishing programming. Jordan’s goal was to land a show on the network, so the team began working behind the scenes, producing hunting videos for retail and refining the art of filming in the wild through trial and error.

We started looking at hunting from an entirely different perspective,” Blanton recalled. “It was not just harvesting the animal but trying to capture that moment.”

The team’s most popular series was “Monster Bucks,” later recognized as the best-selling deer-hunting video series of all time.

“People come up to me even now and say, ‘I learned how to hunt watching ‘Monster Bucks,’” Blanton said.

When TNN finally gave them a time slot in 1993, Realtree’s national television presence was born. “Realtree Outdoors” soon became the highest-rated outdoor show on television, setting the now-iconic brand on a course for success.

Since then, Blanton has hunted across North America — from elk and bear to sheep and deer — filming along the way. The company developed its own broadcast platform with Realtree365, sharing original fishing and hunting content anytime, anywhere outdoorspeople want to watch it.

Mentoring the next generation of hunters

More than three decades into his career, Blanton serves as a public face of Realtree. He spends much of his time hosting “Realtree Outdoors” on the Outdoor Channel and “Spring Thunder” turkey-hunting episodes on Realtree 365, appearing on podcasts, visiting retailers and speaking at events.

Blanton’s commitment to the outdoors extends beyond public appearances.
“We owe it to future generations to mentor kids,” he said. “So many children today are hooked on screens instead of the outdoors. We have to help them find nature — even if it’s just hiking or being outside.”

Looking back, Blanton marvels at how his journey has unfolded.

“If I could tell my younger self something, I’d take my studies a little more seriously,” he said. “But I’d also say — don’t lock yourself into one path. Be open to opportunities. You never know what might come along and change your life.”