Alan Haynes, right, and long-time friend James Shamburger had a successful hunt for pheasant in Texas Panhandle in 1979. Haynes was a proponent of hunting and fishing in Texas, and always enjoyed hunts with friends. (Courtesy)

I am not sure when I first met Alan Haynes, but I know it was when I was a student at Tyler Junior College.

It was either when he and Woody Brookshire were about to open the original The Sportster on Fifth Street, or a time another student and I were going duck hunting with him on a slough out on the Kilgore Highway. I remember both occasions very clearly

If it was The Sportster, I went in to apply for a part-time job. He did not hire me, something I never let him forget.

If it was the duck hunt, at Alan’s urging I spent the night at a rent house he owned and rented to students. It was freezing outside, and there was no heating inside. Something else I never let him forget.

Alan was a life-long Tyler resident. Born in 1939 he lived here almost exclusively until his death June 22.

Alan tells the story that in the early 1970s he was teaching a class at Tyler Junior College when Woody Brookshire interrupted to ask him if he wanted to go into the sporting goods business.

Like Brookshire, Alan had a retail grocery background. His father was the Haynes portion of the Lewis and Haynes Grocery Store located just off the square in an era when most of the city’s retail business was downtown.

In a town of about 58,000, The Sportster was an instant success. It was Tyler’s first “big box” sporting goods store selling shoes, shorts and shirts, the items with the biggest return. The store also had hunting and fishing gear, attracting customers from around East Texas and beyond.

The hunting and fishing portion of the store was Alan’s focus because he was a hunter and fisherman. That is what he grew up doing. Those departments not only allowed the store to bring the latest gear to East Texans, but also gave Alan a door to some great trips around the world.

And for Alan, those trips gave him more stories, because along with enjoying the outdoors Alan like to tell stories about it. And just as often as not, it was going to be a funny story with him being the butt of the tale.

Like the time he was hunting sheep in Alaska and missed a ram, if I remember the count correctly, 21 times. Or when he took a monster, free-ranging buck on his lease in Tom Green County. Already excited over the buck, when he finally got up and saw just how big it really was, his first reaction was to throw up.

Truth be told, Alan was just as comfortable with friends at the lease or on a private lake in East Texas catching bream.

The lease, originally known as The Sportster lease and then the No Talent Hunting Club, a term Alan often used to describe himself and others who had similar missteps afield, was his home away from home.

Alan ran the lease. Members nicknamed him Adolph, if that gives you some idea of how he ran it. He had a list, no make that a book, of rules that he handed out and would evoke if he ever remembered them.

He had the corner room in the lodge. Don’t worry if you left a piece of gear at home, he had extras piled in there somewhere and was happy to loan it.

It was a fun lease and good hunting country. Like any lease some members came and went. Others have been on it for decades and will probably be there into the future.

It was a lease where a lot of young hunters, including my sons, learned about deer and turkey hunting, and that is what he really liked. He enjoyed seeing boys and girls introduced to the outdoors, and was as excited as their parents when they were successful.

It was that enthusiasm of getting youth involved in hunting and fishing, and the future of outdoor sports in Texas, that transitioned him from a retailer to a proponent. That is what got him involved as chairman of the Kid Fish program.

Later he co-founded the Tyler Woods and Waters Club, a social organization for hunters and fishermen, that morphed into East Texas Woods and Waters Foundation. The foundation has fingerprints all over East Texas including the access for white bass fishermen above Lake Palestine, the original stocking of eastern wild turkeys and the fishing pier at The Nature Center and Faulkner Park in Tyler.

He was on Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Freshwater Fishing Advisory Committee and the planning committee for the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.

Alan was also a big proponent of the Mineola Nature Center, a 3,000-acre facility.

That’s a short list of his accomplishments. For his support of fishing as a retailer and as a public advocate, he was named to the Texas Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in 2019.

I always called Alan a big picture person. Often to the chagrin of others he was quick with an idea, and even quicker with talking someone else to put it into action. And he was like a bulldog in that he would not stop until it was done. I once said when it came to different projects he had selective hearing, he could not hear the word no.

That included everything from outdoor projects to the deer lease. In fact, the last time I visited there he started talking about mowing the grass around the lodge. The next thing I knew I was behind a lawn mower. I will never forget that either.

Alan Haynes could drive a bronze statue crazy, but there was no doubt he loved the outdoors and getting people to be a part of it. Any of his friends would tell you they loved to hate him at the same time, and that he will be missed.

— Contact Knight at outdoor@tylerpaper.com