When hunters eye the future, they see women

When hunters eye the future, they see women

January 2, 2005

By LEW FREEDMAN Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO – When Crystal Glade took her first goose hunt eight years ago on Wonder Lake, the sight of approaching birds made her heart beat fast and her mind race.

Everything she learned came rushing back. She took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. Her shot was true. When the dog retrieved her first goose, she was thrilled. But then, as Glade ducked back into the blind, she smashed her head on the low beam and knocked herself to the ground.

“It was like a cartoon with the birds flying around my head,” she said.

An appropriate enough image, too, because real birds were flying around her head.

“It was just so intense,” Glade said. “You get overwhelmed.”

Growing up, Glade, 30, participated in fishing, bicycling and camping. At the time of her first hunt she worked in the gunsmith shop at Gander Mountain. Like many women, Glade came to hunting late, but she has become passionate about it. A banker who wears suits to work, Glade is now equally at home in camouflage. But co-workers and friends to whom she shows hunting pictures just don’t get it.

“They say, ‘I don’t know how you could do that,”‘ Glade said.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1.2 million of the 15 million hunters in the United States are female. Mark Duda, an official with Responsive Management, a non-profit agency in Harrisonburg, Va., that surveys public attitudes, has suggested about one in 10 hunters is female and only 1 percent of the U.S. female population hunts. Anecdotally, other organizations say participation is on the rise.

“There still aren’t many women who are into it,” said Paula Erickson, 31, also of Wonder Lake, who grew up hunting with her dad in Bessemer on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “I find it difficult for women, and men, too, to accept hunting women. My mother says, ‘Don’t kill any does.’ My boss says, ‘Good luck, but I’m rooting for Bambi.”‘

Influences and opportunities. That summarizes how women who are avid hunters get started. Tina Fesler, 23, of Barry, Ill., grew up in Kentucky. Her dad took her out hunting for squirrels and doves. Now she hunts for deer in Pike County with her husband, Andrew. Friends thought the whole idea was disgusting, with all that blood.

“It’s not that gross,” Fesler told them.

Fesler, who operates a day-care program, took off from work for Illinois’ first shotgun deer season in late November. On the last morning of the three-day season, she scored an 8-point buck.

“I can’t believe I actually shot it,” she said.

Overcoming stereotypes

It is common for women who take up hunting to have a male mentor. Paula Welsh, 59, of Burr Ridge, has hunted for 30 years with her husband, Tom. They first visited a waterfowl-hunting club in Cairo.

“He put a gun in my hand and said, ‘Shoot,”‘ Welsh said. “I was all black and blue. I wasn’t familiar with how to handle a shotgun. I enjoyed it from the beginning. Just being out, working the dog, watching the dog work. I shot 100 rounds and hit three or four ducks.”

Welsh, who has hunted in Africa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Canada, Cuba and elsewhere, said she is often the only woman hunting. The men’s attitude, she said, is, “Is this woman going to curtail my fun?” On one trip, the men kept their distance, but at the end they said, “You aren’t too bad.”

A recent book, “The Thrill of the Chase,” written by Kathy Etling and Susan Campbell Reneau, profiles successful women hunters. In the foreword, well-known hunting writer Jim Zumbo discusses the place of women in the sport.

“For too many years,” he wrote, “hunting has been considered a male activity. That scenario wasn’t limited only to my family, for I never saw a woman in the woods from the days I began hunting in the early 1950s through the next couple of decades.”

Other stereotypes trailed the small number of women hunters.

“When I first became a hunter,” Etling wrote in her introduction, “few people could believe a woman would want to hunt just for the sheer joy of it. Men thought I went hunting so my boyfriend – now my husband – could shoot more game, using my tag, of course. Women thought I’d become a hunter so I could meet more men.”

Women hunt because they love the challenge, they eat the meat, they like to shoot and they enjoy being outdoors. Just like men.

“It’s the camaraderie,” Welsh said. “Being with other people, sitting in the duck blind telling lies. That’s why God made duck hunters.”

Women, said Jerry Luciano, president of the Illinois Chapter of Safari Club International, are the future of hunting, a sport under siege from animal-rights activists.

“I honestly and sincerely believe women are going to make or break hunting in this country,” Luciano said. “No one spends more time with kids. Teachers will be more inclined to preach to them in the classroom, telling them it’s fun, it’s about the environment.”

Luciano said he takes women hunting about six times a year and said it is critical they have a good time.

“The important thing is that you don’t get them out with a bunch of grunting and belching guys who get on them,” he said.

Karen Spearing of Bartlett shot at fence posts with her dad when she was 10. When her husband, Edward, embarked on a pheasant-hunting trip and “invited me to go with or stay home, I went with. I didn’t get married to stay home.”

Spearing, 35, is now a hunting safety instructor who has started a shooting group for women.

“For a long time it was me and the boys,” Spearing said. “The change now is that some of the women are single. Because of the shooting sports I met women who wanted to try hunting, but they didn’t have a chance to go. I’ve always been welcomed by the men. I’ve never asked them to tie my boots.”

Male-female bonding

Women mixed with the men weighing in big bucks and plump does at the check station on the first day of November shotgun deer hunting in Pike County, Illinois’ busiest.

“That’s the best one I’ve gotten,” said Carey Barber, 47, of Sherman, admiring the deer she shot with her 20-gauge in her fifth year of hunting with her husband, Marlin.

Barber went horseback riding and hiking when she was younger but wanted to hunt.

“I just didn’t know anybody who went,” she said.

Marlin said his wife has picked up finer points fast.

“She knew very little about it, but she got right into it,” he said.

Angela Ruble, 37, and her husband Jason, of Pittsfield, are tutoring their daughter Michelle, 11. Ruble does not want Michelle to miss out the way she did when her father and brothers refused to teach her or let her hunt with them.

“It was always, ‘The boys,”‘ said Ruble, who loves eating venison. “I think the next generation we’ll see more and you’ll see a bigger shift in two generations. These women are stronger.”

Ruble said she has no tolerance, either, for the squeamish stuck in a Walt Disney-movie fantasyland.

“I don’t kill Bambi,” she said. “I kill Bambi’s mommy and daddy. I have it in my heritage. God put me at the top of the food chain for a reason.”

Ruble was climbing down from her 15-foot tree stand on her family’s 140-acre property near the end of Illinois’ second shotgun deer season, when she heard a noise. She froze. A doe appeared at 55 yards in front of two other deer. She fired with her 20-gauge and brought down the animal. Then on the other side of the clearing, a bigger doe led another herd into range. Ruble dropped her at 60 yards. Pounds and pounds of meat for the freezer.

For Angela Ruble, it was a very good five-minute hunting season.