White's Outdoors

 Hello everyone, my name is Thomas White. I am the founder, owner and operator of White's Outdoors (www.whitesoutdoors.net). I created this site for a couple of different reasons. First off, I love the outdoors. The outdoors have been a major influence in my life since I was a kid. Growing up, there were no trips to Disneyland, no trips to Hawaii, in fact, no trips anywhere. Well, that is not entirely true. Our family was religious about taking three trips every year, three trips that involved sleeping in a tent.

I grew up on the central Oregon coast where most people either fished for a living or worked in the timber industry and everybody's hobbies included hunting and fishing...well...everybody I knew anyways. My family owned a small seafood market so we were far from wealthy. This most likely explains why our trips were spent inside of a tent. All three of our annual trips were into the Cascade Mountains which form a barrier between Oregon's Willamette Valley and Central Oregon. One trip was dedicated to trout fishing and the other two focused on blacktail hunting. The fishing trip was during summer so the weather was usually extremely nice. We went to a small lake called Lost Lake that sat on the summit of the Santiam Pass. This lake was extremely shallow and only allowed row boats. You could clearly see the bottom on 90% of the lake and it used to fascinate me watching the large Rainbows and Brooks lurking around on the bottom.

The two hunting trips that we took each year didn't generally involve the same type of weather. Sometimes we would get a break during our fall trip, but almost never during winter.....and I loved every second of it. We spent my early childhood returning to Lost Lake for hunting. We would soon begin going a little bit down the west side of the range to a place called Ollalie Creek. The move was primarily to cut down on our battles against the snow. We spent most of the time soaking wet and cold. I can still remember laying there bundled up in my sleeping bag listening to the rain pound the top of the tarp that we had stretched over the top of our tent. On more than one occasion, my dad had to get up in the middle of the night to either adjust ropes due to the wind or to dig additional ditches to deter water from going under the tent. We would then get up well before daylight and head up the mountain for the morning hunt. I would generally sit on a stump next to my mom as we waited for my das and brother in their attempt to flush deer to us. I loved every second of it...well...except for the shivering.

These times were great. I absolutely fell in love with being outdoors. In fact, as a kid, I don't ever remember wanting or dreaming of going to Disneyland or anywhere else like that. i can still clearly remember dreaming of going to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park and Crater Lake. Unfortunately, we never made it to any of them. We simply could not afford it. That's another reason that I started this business. I want to be able to take my family to those places so they can enjoy it. Not to mention, they are still on my bucket list. I definitely am not trying to get rich from www.whitesoutdoors.net, in fact, I don't want overwhelming business. I have a 9-5 job that I love and that I worked extremely hard to get. I plan to retire at that job. I just hope to make a few bucks on the side to offer my kids a few of the things I wasn't able to get as a kid, and a few of the things that I did get.

So do me a favor, next time you are in the mood to buy something related to hunting, fishing or camping; keep me in mind. I am trying my hardest to be competitive with the competition and get this thing going. We just introduced thousands of marine products as well. We have everything from propellers, navigation systems, radios, depth finders, etc etc  etc. Come check us out and tell your friends. I am constantly trying to improve the site to make it easier to navigate.