NUN with a GUN

Sunday, December 22, 2002

By Tom Rademacher
The Grand Rapids Press

Want to take on Judith Kirt in a big buck hunting contest?

Some of us wouldn’t have a prayer.

Judith Kirt is better known as Sister Judith Kirt. And when the regular firearm deer hunting season concluded last month, she had not one, but two whitetails to brag about.

Affectionately known as “The nun with a gun,” Sister Kirt has been hunting deer since she was a teen, and this year, she downed an 8-point buck and a doe on separate days.

Not bad for a 64-year-old Dominican from St. Michael’s Catholic Church near Fremont who stands barely 5 feet 4 and weighs 115 pounds.

Her weapon of choice? A .35-caliber Marlin rifle, one of four guns she owns. “I’ve still got one in the trunk of the car,” she says. “I suppose I should take it out but, you know, squirrel hunting’s still on.”

Sister Kirt — “It rhymes with ‘dirt,’ ” she volunteers — understands she’s different from most nuns. But she points out that she’s just doing what comes naturally, after being raised on hunting and fishing in Lake Leelanau, in Michigan’s little finger region.

Her parents were outdoorsy, as were a grandmother and grandfather, and she shrugs that she’s merely following in their tracks. Harvesting and consuming wild game is as natural to her as growing vegetables.

“We were born and raised with it,” Sister Kirt says of herself and her three siblings. “It’s what we knew. If we had meat, it was deer, pheasant, rabbit.”

In fact, while serving as a principal during a stint on Beaver Island, Sister Kirt says it wasn’t unusual for her to do a little ker-plinking even as she plied the back roads after school and on weekends.

“You’d go for a drive. See some partridge on the road. Get out. Shoot it. Eat it.”

She chuckles to remember. “Oh, it was nice.”

Of course, women of the cloth have

responsibilities. For Sister Kirt, that meant a career as teacher and administrator, which she began shortly after taking her vows in 1956. She retired last year from education, but remains busy with work at the Dominican Aquinata Infirmary on Lakeside Drive SE in Grand Rapids.

Every week, she commutes there from the convent she shares with one other Dominican in the quiet burg of Brunswick to provide foot care for ailing sisters — trimming toenails and otherwise attending to their needs.

“I enjoy it because it’s helping people who can’t help themselves,” says Sister Kirt. “When your feet hurt, you hurt all over.”

Sister Kirt is no stranger to discomfort. She has suffered mouth cancer, though “I’ve never drank, smoke, chewed or cussed,” she says. She has undergone surgery and therapy for it and isn’t prone to predicting the future.

“You live until you die,” she says quietly.

For now, that means living large. She’s also a woodworker. She has made a dining room table for the convent and, in her bedroom, an 8-point rack hangs from an armoire she built.

She also holds a certificate in locksmithing, earned through a mail-order course. And she’s no slouch at photography, gardening and making minor repairs at the convent in everything from plumbing to electric — again, a product of that self-sufficient upbringing.

But each autumn, her passions turn to deer hunting and you will find her sitting all day in a cozy little blind on property owned by parishioner Carl Nielsen, 10 miles from the convent.

Her needs aren’t great; she slips into her hideaway with a bag lunch, a rosary and a Louis L’Amour novel.

“Sometimes,” she says, “you don’t see a thing. And you get quite a few rosaries in.”

Amen to that.

Tom Rademacher’s column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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