Historical Index | My Involvement | Staff Songs | Home Page
Discord | Facebook | In Memoriam
Historical Index | My Involvement | Staff Songs | Home Page
Discord | Facebook | In Memoriam
Save the date! November 14, 2026 is looking like it will be the date for the 2026 CAC White Stag Staff Reunion. We are still in the early planning stages, but we wanted to get a date out as early as possible to give everyone as much time as we could to start planning. I will continue to provide updates as they are available. Check out the Discord and Facebook links for live discussion and updates. Check out the 2025 Attendees if you're worried you won't know anybody. All White Stag Staff are invited. Whether you staffed TLD, Silver Bars, TLTC, JLTC, or NYLT, if you did it in the Crossroads of America Council and it was a forerunner to or called White Stag, we want you to attend in 2026!
White Stag was the Crossroads of America Council's Junior Leader Training Conference (JLTC). At one time, White Stag in the Crossroads of America was arguably the best of the best east of the Mississippi. Beginning in 2006 it began transitioning into an NYLT. White Stag JLTC in Crossroads of America was based on the standard national Boy Scouts of America JLTC staff guide, most recently the 1995 edition. The White Stag JLTC program taught youth leaders eleven tangible, articulable, applicable leadership skills necessary to provide effective, quality leadership, not only to their home units, but on through adult life.
The week-long White Stag course no longer exists as a training program in the Crossroads of America Council, having been fully replaced by a weekends-only NYLT program. At the conclusion of the current program conducted in a, "patrol-like setting," participants, "present their vision of the meaning of leadership."
Brian T. Phelps said it best on his web site, whitestag.org, "The current program differs markedly from today's White Stag program because the leadership competencies have been diluted and replaced with generic concepts of group formation and leadership."
Fortunately, the original White Stag Leadership Development Program is alive and well where it all began in California, and White Stag's lineage can be directly traced back to the original White Stag course in 1958. Even more fortunate is that youth can and do still attend. If you're considering your local council's NYLT, consider instead White Stag Leadership Development Monterey and White Stag Sierra for your scouts. These courses are both reputable examples of the effective, formative, impactful, meaningful White Stag method.
The more research and reading I've done on whitestag.org and understanding the history and development of the White Stag method, the more I've come to realize and understand that once the NYLT syllabus was adopted, the program in the CAC was effectively no longer White Stag, despite the name hanging on for over ten years. White Stag isn't just the name of a course that can transcend syllabi; True White Stag is a specifically defined method of leadership development entailing the eleven specific leadership skills and the patrol method. Once these skills and methods were changed, diluted, altered, or otherwise deviated from in any way, what we did in the CAC from 2006 on, from a purity standpoint, could technically not be called White Stag since it no longer adhered to the definition of the White Stag method.
All that said, the goal of Page10.org is to preserve and share the history and heritage of the White Stag program in the Crossroads of America for generations to come.
Mike Boebinger, who most recently served on our staff as a Patrol Councelor in Troop 821 in 1982 recently joined our Discord Server. Mike's experience pre-dates White Stag, extending as far back as Troop Leader Development, or TLD, in 1979, and Silver Bars in 1980. Mike's knowledge and experience also pre-dates my entire life. Mike was literally present when White Stag was born in the Crossroads of America Council. Because we now have this fantastic resource of information, with Mike's help I will be compiling as much of an accurate history as I can on the program as far back as possible and presenting it here for all posterity. Because White Stag has been so formative for so many young men in central Indiana over the years, I believe we're doing the legacy of the program a disservice if we don't present an accurate history of its earliest roots here on this site.
From at least 1982 through 1996, the White Stag program in the Crossroads of America Council consisted of only one course. This course was held in June at Camp Red Wing, near Muncie, Indiana. In 1997, the White Stag course was moved to Ransburg Scout Reservation because of complications with Camp Red Wing. In 1998, White Stag would return to it's home at Camp Red Wing, and a second session, to be held in August, would be added. In 1997, at Ransburg Scout Reservation, White Stag consisted of four troops, each on a ridge at Ransburg. The size of the program at that time likely contributed to the launch of the two session program in 1998. The initial second session was to be held in August of '98, and was initially run exactly the same way. The second session, initially August but which became the July session in 1999, eventually took on it's own flavor. New staff was hired as usual every year to replace those youth staff who had aged out the year prior, and the staff that remained of the 1997 course was split up between the two sessions. New adult staffers were hired to fill any absences that existed. The creation of the second session created a division in the White Stag program.
Both sessions of White Stag ran in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, a new adaptation to White Stag was developed and launched. This session was known as the White Stag Woods and Water session. Woods and Water was an adaptation on the classic White Stag JLTC method for a high-adventure environment. White Stag Woods and Water drew it's staff from the returning staff of the 1999 June and July sessions. White Stag Woods and Water session was based out of Adventure Point at Ransburg Scout Reservation and was highly mobile, requiring an extensive logistics operation to support the course.
In the summers of 2000, 2001, and 2002, White Stag operated three sessions. These were White Stag June, White Stag July, and White Stag Woods and Water. June and July were the traditional static sessions, and Woods and Water was the high-adventure session. In the summer of 2003, more change came to the White Stag program. The Woods and Water session was discontinued, partly because of the establishment of a similar White Stag course operated by the Hoosier Trails Council in southern Indiana. Added to the White Stag calendar in 2003 was the second July session. This session was first held in late July and early August of 2003 at Camp Krietenstien, which had been acquired by the Crossroads of America Council when it merged with the Wabash Valley Council in west-central Indiana. The June and July sessions at Camp Red Wing and the second July session at Camp Krietenstien absorbed the staff of the disbanded Woods and Water session. Additionally, new staff were hired to supplement all three sessions.
The White Stag Krietenstien session ceased to exist around 2005. White Stag June and July sessions absorbed the staff remaining from the Krietenstien session. In 2006, the new NYLT syllabus was adopted, replacing the Junior Leader Training Conference syllabus that the White Stag program had great success with for many years. As I described above, I believe this effectively ended the White Stag method's usage in the Crossroads of America Council. The final course called White Stag in the CAC was held around 2019 or thereabouts. I am still a little unclear on when all references to White Stag were ultimately purged from the NYLT program.
In 2023, some of my fellow brilliant members of White Stag Staff had the foresight and drive to start a staff reunion at Camp Red Wing. This reunion has now become an annual thing, and as of 2025 we have grown to about fifty staff in attendance. This basic, static website, which is a direct evolution of the first personal White Stag website I first published in 2004 on my former nwjcra.org domain, will serve as a repository of White Stag history, documents, photos, memoribilia, links to relevant social media locations such as The White Stag Reunion Discord Server, Facebook, and whatever else I can think of to put up here. I have been entrusted with some fantastic resources, some of which are digitized and some of which still need to be digitized; I will be working on that as time allows.
This site and the White Stag Staff Reunion are not affiliated with the Crossroads of America Council, Scouting America, the White Stag Academy or the White Stag Association. The information presented on this site pertains to the White Stag program as it previously existed in the council service area of the Crossroads of America Council in Indiana and should not be construed in any way to pertain to present-day activities of or intellectual property owned by the White Stag Association or the White Stag Academy. Notwithstanding this statement of non-affiliation, I wholeheartedly appreciate and support the two aforementioned organizations' efforts in keeping White Stag alive for the youth of today and tomorrow.
Page last updated 16:53 1/17/2026.
© 2004-2026, Dennis M. Boyle. All rights reserved.
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