Stephen Byers
General Manager / Pro Staff / Videographer
I can’t honestly remember a time that hunting and fishing wasn’t part of my life. My father was a missionary pilot and minister so we didn’t have a lot of time to spend together, but we always looked forward to fall, and our annual hunting trips. Every year we would travel to the Southern-Tier of NY and then PA to chase whitetail deer and turkey. Since those early days I live and breathe hunting.
Although I will hunt anything there is a season for my passion is whitetails. From the time I was 12 to this day nothing quite gets me fired up like hunting a whitetail buck, although a big tom is a close second.
I started videoing hunts in the late 90’s in Michigan but after 9/11/2001 decided to join the US Army, and videoing hunts was put on the shelf. For the next number of years most of my hunting was done overseas in Iraq. I left the military in April 2008 and at that time I started to really study and practice QDM. I was fortunate enough to find some friends with larger tracks of land and the same vision for growing mature whitetails as I had. This is now the focus of my hunting. Growing mature whitetail bucks and healthy herds.
After leaving military service I started to video hunts again and now I spend more time in the woods behind a camera then hunting. My greatest passion now is recording my families’ hunts. My two children Ashley and Jason have hunted with me since they were very young and are now old enough to hunt in NY. My wife Sarah has not just tolerated my obsession but encourages it and has become quite a hunter herself in her short hunting career, taking two deer her first year. Hunting is a family event for us and the time spent together is priceless.
Last year my good friend and fellow FWO Pro staffer Ralph Lowry asked me about working with the show and I couldn’t be happier. It has been a dream come true for me and the staff at FWO is like family. We look forward to laying down some great footage in the coming seasons, that is both entertaining and ethical.
Sarah and I are the parents to 5 children in a blended family ranging from 10-16 yrs of age. We work fulltime as pastors in a large church in Watertown, NY. We serve the military families in our community that are stationed at Ft. Drum, NY. Just to make things interesting we own and operate a property management company that caters to military families moving to our local area.