Dang, now I know why the guys won’t let me go hunting
==============

Women changing the face of hunting

By Claire Martin

Denver Post Staff Writer

Oct. 31 – Earlier this year, Sally Delange and her husband were hunting elk
when she passed up a clear shot at a big bull only 18 yards away. “It was a
wide-open shot on a four-by-four, and the elk didn’t have a clue I was
there,” she said.

“But last year I harvested a black bear, and my husband had to live with
that ego thing … Your opportunities come few and far between, but I felt
it was right to give him the opportunity.

“He asked later why I didn’t shoot, and I explained why. He said, “I
wouldn’t have been mad if you’d shot it!’ But he would’ve.”

Scenes like that are evidence of the changing culture of hunting in
Colorado, as an increasing number of women are joining men in hunting camps.
Of 600,000 hunting licenses issued this year, 10 percent went to women, said
Patt Dorsey, state Division of Wildlife education specialist. Twenty years
ago, women bought fewer than 2 percent of those licenses.

Nationally, the percentage of women who hunt has doubled, from 1.5 percent
in 1985 to 3 percent today, according to the National Survey of Hunting,
Fishing and Wildlife-Associated Recreation.

While that’s a statistically significant leap, hunting remains a sport
dominated by men, many of whom have mixed feelings about women sighting a
deer rifle or drawing a bow.

“Hunting camps are just one of those places that men consider their
domain,” said longtime Michigan hunter Jerry Zeidler. “It’s a place where
it’s acceptable to act crass. It’s a place where men blow off steam.

“It’s not that men don’t think women don’t have a right to be there. It’s
just that we don’t want to be embarrassed by how we behave when we’re there,
and we don’t want to have to change our behavior, either. “I know that while
I really look forward to a week of hunting or fishing camp with the guys,
I’m always quite happy to go home to my wife – even if I’m one of the people
farting and telling jokes and talking with my mouth full while I’m there.”

Joe Arterburn, a spokesman for Cabela’s, the Nebraska-based retail mecca of
hunters, fishing addicts and other backcountry fans, agrees with Zeidler.

“There’s a long tradition of men in deer camp or elk camp, with that freedom
of getting away from the home,” he said. “And it kinda has a chilling
effect on camp at some point” if women are present.

“Not in our camp: The girls in our camp are warned about the way guys are,”
responded Rick Komloski, a Loveland contractor who often hunts with his
wife, Kathy, at a camp in Pagosa Springs.

“Guys act like kids in hunting camp. They don’t act like they do at the
dining room table. That’s a guy’s weekend thing. The girls know how the guys
are, and don’t expect us to be different.” A “romantic’ date But his wife
begged to differ.

“I think I probably subdue the guys a little when I’m there,” Kathy
Komloski said.

“I try to give them their space. The guys think they can’t fart with a lady
around.”

Like most women – most women who get hunting licenses are at least 30 years
old, Dorsey said – Komloski didn’t become a hunter until she was an adult.
She began hunting 14 years ago, after her children had grown and left home.
She hunted with her ex-husband and learned how to field-dress a deer.

On their first date, Rick Komloski showed up fresh from a deer hunt. He
borrowed her shower to clean up before going out, leaving his deer in her
garage. When he’d finished showering, he found Kathy in the garage, where
she had just skinned his deer.

“My first date with my wife, and she skinned my deer! How’s that, pretty
good, huh?” he said proudly.

On the other end of the spectrum are hunters like Kevin Wells, a Longmont
man whose favorite hunting camps include a site in Pagosa Springs.

“I haven’t ever dated anyone who expressed an interest in wanting to hunt,”
he said.

“The woman I’m dating now is antigun. I know hunters who, there’s no way
they’d want a woman to go along. But maybe that’s ignorance on their part. I
have other friends whose wives go hunting, but it’s their choice. It’s a
great camping trip, but most women I know are a little squeamish about the
kill.”

If you’ve never been hunting, you should know that one hunting credo is: The
fun stops, and the work begins, once the animal is killed. Colorado law
requires hunters to field-dress big game, removing all internal organs (and
quickly, before the meat starts to spoil).

“Then, at some point, you need to take the hide off the animal, and get it
out of the field,” said Todd Malmsbury, DOW spokesman.

“That’s a big job with an animal that weighs somewhere between 150 pounds
for a small doe deer to 800 pounds for a bull elk. And you have to get all
that meat out of the field, which can take a matter of hours – or even days,
depending on where the animal’s been killed. That’s extremely difficult work
sometimes. “Hunting, done properly, it takes an awful lot of work doing the
sort of things that are not the sort of things that most people like to
do.”

Women hunters confirm this. Serious hunters, including Delange, Kathy
Komloski and Dorsey, roll their eyes when women who are not hunters talk
about joining their husbands or boyfriends at hunting camp, envisioning a
romantic getaway.

“You don’t go to a hunting camp if you want to bond with your husband,”
Komloski said.

“You go to a single camp if you want a close relationship, but if you go to
hunting camp, you have to be laid back. I think women should experience it
at least once – try it and give it a chance. It’s not romantic, but it is
great, something that builds stamina with people.

“The reason I go is because I enjoy getting away and enjoying nature. But I
don’t go out in the morning with my husband. I take my gun, and I go where I
want to go, and if I get something, then it’s my responsibility to take care
of it.”

Delange often is the only woman in a hunting camp, and she believes, almost
literally, in carrying her own weight. “If we backpack in, my backpack won’t
weigh much less than my husband’s does,” she said.

“I carry well more than 20 percent of my body weight, where he carries 20
percent. A woman has to constantly prove herself. I grew up in the ’60s,
when I was told I couldn’t be a vet, couldn’t be a jockey. “Well, I’ve
learned not to believe that there are things I can’t do. I clean and dress
my own animal. A lot of men want to keep hunting their thing, and you’re not
going to change their minds. When I’m in a hunting camp, the only thing I
want is to be treated as an equal. I expect the guys in camp to treat me
with respect not because I’m a woman, but because I’m a good hunter, as good
as they are, and I’m willing to do my share of the work – but they’re going
to have to do their share also.”

Which means, as she often explains to new hunting companions, that she is
not along to provide cooking and cleaning services.

“The key to getting along in a camp,” she said, “is making sure you’re
compatible with who you care to camp with. And being flexible, once you’re
there.”

The flip side of that, as Wisconsin hunter Robert Runge noted, is that the
other hunters should be flexible, too. He hunts with his wife, and brooks no
argument about it from “the boys,” his longtime hunting buddies.

“If they couldn’t be themselves, it was their fault,” he said. He
enumerated the real reasons his hunting buddies didn’t want his wife at
camp.

“One, when they tried to be “nice’ around her, she laughed and said, “Call a
spade a spade, or better yet, a f***ing shovel!’ Two, she was a better shot
than all but me and my boss. She killed, and the other guys missed, which
was their fault. Three, she told better dirty jokes.”

The guys got used to his wife, he said, and she continued to hunt with them
until their son was born a couple of years ago. Now that she’s pregnant
again, it will be a few years before she returns to hunting camp. He gives
this advice for women new to hunting camps:

“Anyone who has a problem with you in deer camp, tell them to get a life.
Besides, a woman in camo or blaze orange smelling of fresh-killed deer and
gun-smoke is sexy.”

Percentage of males who reported hunting
1980: 19.5%
1990: 16.4%

Percentage of females who reported hunting:
1980: 1.3%
1990: 2.7%

Source: National Survey of Hunting Fishing and Wildlife-Associated
Recreation