12/02 © Ronald L. Moody (2002)
All rights reserved.
Reprinted here with permission.

What Are Girls Made Of?
Why, Guns and Bows of Course!

At the end of our Hunter Education classes we instructors always ask our students to give us a call during hunting season to tell how they're doing on their first hunts.

I got such a call night before last. The new 12-year-old hunter on the other end of the line was excited about a fork-horn muley buck killed instantly with one true shot. Who says volunteer instructors aren't paid well?

Beyond the true value of my caller's tale of success, however, was a larger story - something new, different and better about hunting in the 21st Century. For my proud new hunter's name was Colleen.

She and her sister had both completed their Hunter Ed course in September. Both took their first bucks on the same family outing. Colleen didn't report whether the girls had left any room in the family freezer for dad to add more venison.

Women have arrived in the hunting field. Don't look now but hunting widows may be an endangered species. It is true that overall numbers of hunters in America continue a discouraging decline. Within that shrinking hunting community, however, women are growing in number every year. Here in Montana latest stats reveal that some 80,000 of more than 300,000 hunting licenses sold went to female hunters. Nationwide, more than 2 million of a total of 13 million hunters are now women.

If trends continue we may be seeing stories in the hook and bullet press about Mom and Sis striking out for the elk camp while Dad and Junior go bowling.
Of course the female hunter is nothing new for the human species. In the origins of our species during the Pleistocene women certainly would have participated with the men in the essential economic activity of the community. Indeed, the ancient Greeks, who were great hunters, had Diana, a goddess, as their deity of the hunt.

Prof. Paul Shepard argued that it was only with the beginning of agriculture and livestock herding that gender differentiation actually took strong hold in human culture.

The passage of 10,000 years only proves that the more things change the more they stay the same.

My hope is that female nimrods, rediscovering their old roots, will breath new life into a dying tradition of recreational hunting in America. I have no clear impression that female hunters will make any substantial change in the actual experience of hunting. They go out and do pretty much the same things for the same reasons the men have always done. Indeed, it would be unfair to try and place some greater expectation on folks who really just want to enjoy a natural personal experience in the wild.

But one can't help but look for a straw of hope in the appearance of a new, energetic and enthusiastic group of participants. Otherwise the picture of hunting's future is dim. Men are dropping out. The hunting community is ever so slowing imploding toward the small wealthy elite who can afford private clubs and estates.

If women do change the hunting tradition I predict it will take form around the following three points:

1. Women, particularly young girls, are less likely to join the "Cult of the BIG HORNS." My few conversations with lady hunters show them much more interested in the experience they've had. There seems to be very little 'locker room competition' among them over whose antlers scored the most points.
2. The ladies seem to be much more relationship oriented placing a lot of emphasis on who they go hunting with and why. This could be more impression than substance, however, since men cherish the same experiences but talk about it only briefly and awkwardly.
3. Women hunters, as a group, seem much less inclined to break the rules just to prove a point. They are, however, tested alone in the wild by the same temptations and desires than have long produced unethical behavior among their male counterparts. As years go by I predict we'll discover once again that people are people regardless of gender.

The big unanswered question about the difference women will bring to hunting centers on conservation leadership. Male hunters nationwide have largely abandoned any effort to assert social and political leadership for conservation of wild lands and wild species. They are willing to donate money to preserve habitat but don't show up to fight for habitat when it goes on the political chopping block.

Will women step into this breach? A few already have, but it is not yet clear whether female hunters as a group will identify with the citizenship of the hunt. Certainly they have not yet shown an inclination to organize to gain power.
In the meantime, women are showing up as leaders in the culture and heritage of hunting and conservation. Several female hunting writers have produced important works and I predict we haven't seen anything yet.

My personal favorite on the subject of the entry into the hunter's world by a woman is a short story DEERSKIN by Terry Tempest Williams published in an excellent anthology titled WOMEN ON HUNTING edited by Pam Houston. (Ecco Press, 1995)

Other good readings for and about women hunters.

1. WOMAN THE HUNTER, by Mary Zeiss Strange. (Beacon Press Books, 1997) (this book is one of the more important and under publicized works on conservation in modern life to be written in recent years. Ms. Strange evidences for a positive answer to my question about women as conservation leaders of the future.)
2. BECOMING AN OUTDOORS WOMAN, by Christine L. Thomas. (Falcon Press, 1997)
3. IS SHE COMING TOO? MEMOIRS OF A LADY HUNTER, by Frances Hamerstrom. (Iowa State Univ. Press, 1987)
4. SHOOTING SPORTS FOR WOMEN, by Laurie Morrow & Steve Smith. (St. Martin's Press, 1996) (this is a good how-to book)

Women are much more broadly established in the world of angling. And the angling literature by and for women is large enough to demand its own story, but for any ladies reading this who would rather go fishing I recommend: THE WOMAN ANGLER An Introductory Handbook for Women Who Want To Fish, by Laurie Morrow. (St. Martin's Press, 1997)

I'll turn this essay over to Frances Hamerstrom for a proper ending from her prologue to IS SHE COMING TOO?

"Some people are tone deaf and so miss glorious moments in music: some are colorblind and so lose the emotional impact that great paintings bring to our being. Some people can never use all five senses at once as a skillful hunter does. Besides, there is an alertness - a type of concentration throughout a hunt that demands an openness to the total environment.

My father, a hunter, always dreamed of having a son to hunt with him. He had four children: three boys and one daughter. His disappointment must have been rather sad. None of his sons wanted to go up into Maine to trail giant bucks with an Indian guide, nor to dash down to Cape Cod on the Big Flight Day.

The one person who passionately wanted to share his hunts was his slim, blond daughter."