These days, Westhoff might be found walking the edge of a farm field, checking stands of trees for deer sign, or knocking on a landowner’s door to talk about hunting access. It’s a role he didn’t imagine for himself a few years ago.
Tom Westhoff serves as a Michigan Field Representative for HLRBO, helping landowners list their property for hunters to lease even though he had given up hunting around age 20 to focus on fishing Michigan’s big lakes.
“I hadn’t hunted in almost 20 years,” Westhoff says with a laugh. “Then my kid got interested in it, and the next thing you know I’m completely back into it again.”
A Long Break from the Woods
Westhoff grew up hunting with his grandfather in Michigan, roaming creeks, swamps, and hardwood ridges in search of deer. Like many young hunters, though, he drifted away from the sport as adulthood took over.
“I got really into fishing the big water—Lake Huron, Lake Michigan,” he says. “I had boats, I was out there all the time. That kind of replaced hunting for me.”
For nearly two decades he focused on work and family, and of course fishing. Westhoff also works full-time as a fiber-optic technician for a communications company in mid-Michigan, around the Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City region. The job offers stability and a family-friendly schedule—important for a father raising kids involved in sports and school activities.
Now, however, both his sons are obsessed with deer hunting and it’s pulled him back into hunting—and the hunting lease business—and given him a screen-free way to spend time with his boys.
The First Hunt Back
For his son’s youth hunt, Westhoff arranged access to a friend’s small 10-acre property—just enough woods and open space for a quiet introduction to hunting.
They saw a few deer in the distance but no deer were harvested that first year.
But something else happened.
“When we put him to bed Sunday night, he didn’t want to go to school the next day,” Westhoff says. “He wanted to go hunting again.”
The youth hunt had ended, and for Westhoff’s son, the wait for the next hunt felt endless.
“That’s when I thought, ‘Okay—maybe this is going to turn into something.’”
A Shared Passion
Westhoff began searching for places to hunt and eventually connected with a landowner managing an 80-acre property under Quality Deer Management principles. The owner showed them around the land, pointing out blinds, and explaining how he and neighboring landowners worked together to grow older, larger bucks.
For Westhoff, it was an education as well as an opportunity.
“We sat out there three or four times that season,” he says. “Just being out there together—that was the cool part.”
His son eventually got his first deer, but the only problem was that their access didn’t cover the regular rifle seasons Westhoff himself hoped to hunt. Soon, he found himself on Facebook Marketplace and HLRBO looking for a hunting lease.
Becoming a Field Representative
In early 2025 Westhoff was still trying to find a lease and noticed an opening for field representatives with HLRBO.
“It caught my attention because it’s really about helping people find access,” he says. “And that’s one of the biggest hurdles in hunting now.” Westhoff says that Michigan has a good amount of public land to hunt but that he’s dealt with overcrowding, seen too many stolen treestands, and resents the crush of orange-clad hunters that swarm those areas for the rifle opener.
“I really like doing the work of scouting and figuring out an area,” says Westhoff, “but {when hunting public land} I’d spend a quiet archery season learning a zone and then first day of rifle I’d be in there two hours before sunset and as it gets light you’d just see orange here, orange there all around you.”
By the time he started with HLRBO, Westhoff had spent several years reaching out to landowners for his personal access so it wasn’t a big leap to talk to the same landowners about listing with HLRBO. Now he travels across Michigan to meet them, capture photos and videos, walk properties, and explain how the listing process works.
In his first year he helped bring roughly a dozen Michigan properties onto the platform, ranging from small 10-acre parcels to large 400-acre tracts. Many were in farm country—wide open fields with small pockets of woods that offer long sightlines for rifle hunters.
Others took him farther afield, including trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula dense with hardwood forests, rivers, and swamps.
He enjoys seeing the diversity of Michigan’s hunting landscape—from flat farmland to hilly northern forests and swampy river bottoms.
“You can really find any type of terrain you want in this state,” he says.
Balancing Work, Family, and the Outdoors
Like many field representatives, Westhoff balances the role with a full-time job and family commitments. With kids increasingly busy in sports and activities, weekends are often reserved for family time.
“I try to do a lot of the field rep work during the week when I can,” he says.
The challenge hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm. If anything, the field work keeps him connected to the outdoors and the hunting community he rediscovered through his son.
And at the end of the day, that connection is what matters most.
“Getting back into hunting started because my kid showed interest,” Westhoff says. “Now it’s something we share together.”