Joe DeFalco, of Baldwin, deer hunter and hunting guide, dies at 95
Hunting guru Joe DeFalco, left, speaks with John Valseconi, 15, who brought a large poster of DeFalco to a hunting show in Westbury in 2002. Credit: Newsday / John Keating
The name of his local TV show in the 1970s summed up Baldwin’s Joe DeFalco professionally: “Long Island Outdoorsman.” A renowned deer hunter and hunting guide, he held an annual seminar on the subject from the early 1970s to 2001. But three other words he habitually used described Joe DeFalco personally: “best, best friend.”
“If he enjoyed your company, you became his best, best friend,” said his longtime neighbor Shabena Baksh.
DeFalco’s attorney, Ira Leibowitz, once explained in a Long Island Business News article, “We became exceptionally close friends. It was not uncommon for him to flatter me with his pet phrase: ‘This is your best, best friend.’ I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that he also labeled many others the same way.”
Among them were such famed athletes as the Mets’ Ed Kranepool — the best man at one of his weddings — Bobby Valentine and Bob Apodaca, the Jets’ Joe Namath, the Yankees’ Joe Torre, boxer Chuck Wepner.
“We were all his best, best friends,” Baksh recalled, “and that's why his passing is a hard hit for us.”
DeFalco died of natural causes at age 95 at his home on Oct. 27.
“He wanted to pass in his den, surrounded by people that loved him,” said his youngest child, Joseph DeFalco Jr., of that trophy-filled man cave. “The deacon at his funeral joked that the only ones that are probably happy [at his death] are all the deer.”
Yet despite the countless deer he bagged, DeFalco embodied sportsmanship, taking a vocal stand against assault rifles as early as the 1990s.
“He didn't believe in them at all,” said his son. “He said, ‘I never met anybody that had to hunt with a machine gun.’ ”
In a television interview in the '90s, DeFalco urged legislators to “ban every assault rifle,” and penned that sentiment in a letter to then-President George H.W. Bush.
DeFalco had learned to hunt and fish as a child, as a way of helping his father procure food in Depression-era Far Rockaway, Queens. Born there Aug. 6, 1929, the fifth of six sons of Italian immigrants Umberto (Albert) and Josephine DeFalco, Joseph Mario Philip DeFalco dropped out of school at age 13 — already 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, according to a 1983 Sports Illustrated profile — and forged papers in order to join the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II.
He returned from that wartime-civilian position to follow in his butcher father’s footsteps. Those skills served him well upon being drafted during the Korean War, where he rose to the rank of sergeant, serving at an Army meat-cutting plant at Georgia’s Camp Gordon (now Fort Eisenhower).
He met the woman who became his first wife, Gloria Orlando, the mother of his four children, when he bought her family’s first butcher shop, in Cambria Heights, Queens. DeFalco later relocated his business to Franklin Square as the Starlight Meat Center. The couple divorced and DeFalco was married and divorced twice more.
In 1968, a hunting club asked if he would demonstrate to 25 members how to field-dress a deer. Reportedly at least 2,000 attendees converged on his shop that Oct. 21. A subsequent demonstration on Nov. 11 at the Plattduetsche Park Restaurant in Franklin Square proved equally popular. Soon DeFalco gave up his shop to become a deer-hunting maven.
He self-published a popular, much-reprinted book, “The Complete Deer Hunt” (1969); wrote a column in the Lynbrook-Malverne-East Rockaway newspaper, The Helm Independent Review; and became a brand ambassador for the hunting and fishing section of the local department store chain TSS. He had a TV show, “Long Island Outdoorsman,” on WSNL/67 and then Suffolk Cablevision.
And for decades he staged his annual deer-hunting exposition that featured celebrity athletes and acts like comedians and magicians, and as centerpiece a live lesson on field-dressing a deer carcass. Venues included the Adelphi Calderone Theater in Hempstead, the Narragansett Inn in Lindenhurst and the Westbury restaurant Verdi’s. Business ventures included group hunting tours in the Catskills and a housing development, Top of the World Estates, in upstate Sullivan County.
DeFalco spent about a dozen years living in Florida in his 70s and 80s before resettling in Baldwin.
In addition to his son Joseph, of Jericho, DeFalco is survived by his daughters, JoAnn Bianco, of Melville, and Linda Cutaia, of Dix Hills; another son, Albert DeFalco, of Great Neck; six grandchildren; 10 great grandchildren; ex-wives Eleanor DeFalco, of Lido Beach, and Natacha Walker, of Baldwin; and two stepchildren from those former marriages.
Visitation and a funeral were held Nov. 1 at Park Funeral Chapels in Garden City. He was interred at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.
The name of his local TV show in the 1970s summed up Baldwin’s Joe DeFalco professionally: “Long Island Outdoorsman.” A renowned deer hunter and hunting guide, he held an annual seminar on the subject from the early 1970s to 2001. But three other words he habitually used described Joe DeFalco personally: “best, best friend.”
“If he enjoyed your company, you became his best, best friend,” said his longtime neighbor Shabena Baksh.
DeFalco’s attorney, Ira Leibowitz, once explained in a Long Island Business News article, “We became exceptionally close friends. It was not uncommon for him to flatter me with his pet phrase: ‘This is your best, best friend.’ I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that he also labeled many others the same way.”
Among them were such famed athletes as the Mets’ Ed Kranepool — the best man at one of his weddings — Bobby Valentine and Bob Apodaca, the Jets’ Joe Namath, the Yankees’ Joe Torre, boxer Chuck Wepner.
“We were all his best, best friends,” Baksh recalled, “and that's why his passing is a hard hit for us.”
DeFalco died of natural causes at age 95 at his home on Oct. 27.
“He wanted to pass in his den, surrounded by people that loved him,” said his youngest child, Joseph DeFalco Jr., of that trophy-filled man cave. “The deacon at his funeral joked that the only ones that are probably happy [at his death] are all the deer.”
Yet despite the countless deer he bagged, DeFalco embodied sportsmanship, taking a vocal stand against assault rifles as early as the 1990s.
“He didn't believe in them at all,” said his son. “He said, ‘I never met anybody that had to hunt with a machine gun.’ ”
In a television interview in the '90s, DeFalco urged legislators to “ban every assault rifle,” and penned that sentiment in a letter to then-President George H.W. Bush.
DeFalco had learned to hunt and fish as a child, as a way of helping his father procure food in Depression-era Far Rockaway, Queens. Born there Aug. 6, 1929, the fifth of six sons of Italian immigrants Umberto (Albert) and Josephine DeFalco, Joseph Mario Philip DeFalco dropped out of school at age 13 — already 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, according to a 1983 Sports Illustrated profile — and forged papers in order to join the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II.
He returned from that wartime-civilian position to follow in his butcher father’s footsteps. Those skills served him well upon being drafted during the Korean War, where he rose to the rank of sergeant, serving at an Army meat-cutting plant at Georgia’s Camp Gordon (now Fort Eisenhower).
He met the woman who became his first wife, Gloria Orlando, the mother of his four children, when he bought her family’s first butcher shop, in Cambria Heights, Queens. DeFalco later relocated his business to Franklin Square as the Starlight Meat Center. The couple divorced and DeFalco was married and divorced twice more.
In 1968, a hunting club asked if he would demonstrate to 25 members how to field-dress a deer. Reportedly at least 2,000 attendees converged on his shop that Oct. 21. A subsequent demonstration on Nov. 11 at the Plattduetsche Park Restaurant in Franklin Square proved equally popular. Soon DeFalco gave up his shop to become a deer-hunting maven.
He self-published a popular, much-reprinted book, “The Complete Deer Hunt” (1969); wrote a column in the Lynbrook-Malverne-East Rockaway newspaper, The Helm Independent Review; and became a brand ambassador for the hunting and fishing section of the local department store chain TSS. He had a TV show, “Long Island Outdoorsman,” on WSNL/67 and then Suffolk Cablevision.
And for decades he staged his annual deer-hunting exposition that featured celebrity athletes and acts like comedians and magicians, and as centerpiece a live lesson on field-dressing a deer carcass. Venues included the Adelphi Calderone Theater in Hempstead, the Narragansett Inn in Lindenhurst and the Westbury restaurant Verdi’s. Business ventures included group hunting tours in the Catskills and a housing development, Top of the World Estates, in upstate Sullivan County.
DeFalco spent about a dozen years living in Florida in his 70s and 80s before resettling in Baldwin.
In addition to his son Joseph, of Jericho, DeFalco is survived by his daughters, JoAnn Bianco, of Melville, and Linda Cutaia, of Dix Hills; another son, Albert DeFalco, of Great Neck; six grandchildren; 10 great grandchildren; ex-wives Eleanor DeFalco, of Lido Beach, and Natacha Walker, of Baldwin; and two stepchildren from those former marriages.
Visitation and a funeral were held Nov. 1 at Park Funeral Chapels in Garden City. He was interred at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.
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