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The Women's Hunting movement: past and present |
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Written by Rachel Jones Burchett
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Sunday, 17 January 2010 13:40 |
 You open up your favorite hunting magazine and what do you expect to see? What you expect and what you get may be two very different things. Hunting has been known as a primarily male sport for many years, but a recent look shows many more women holding there trophies up with pride. I opened a magazine the other day and noticed there were four stories about women taking a trophy and five about men. It seems more and more ladies are getting involved in the hunting and shooting sports. I am so happy to see that the industry is finally waking up to the idea of women hunters. As a female hunter I am also urged to stand up and tell the world yes, I am a girl and I can hunt! We owe a lot to the women of the past who helped the world to see women didn’t have to “belong” in the house, that women could be adventurous and love the outdoors as much as any man.
The industry has been pushed for years to notice that the sport is not only male dominated. There just weren’t enough women hunting for the industry to make products and clothes geared for women. Every company that tried lost money, but it seems now even the big companies are starting to notice whether it’s a lady going out to sit with her husband on a cut corn field, or a girl throwing her tree stand and bow in the truck for an all day alone. I think we owe a lot to organizations such as the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Women in the Outdoors Program, Becoming an Outdoors Woman and WomenHunters.com. Women are strong independent people and if they are interested in something they are just as capable of learning and enjoying doing it as any man.
We also owe it to the women of the past and present who pursue hunting with a strong will and no worries about what others are going to think. Women hunters have been around for years, there just weren’t as recognized from the Annie Oakley’s of years past to the Brenda Valentine’s of today. The women’s hunting movement has come a long way to be accepted.
When we think of women in the past who hunted: Phoebe Ann Mosley seems to be the lady who pops into everyone’s mind. She began hunting at age ten to help feed her family and later in life she got in on the marketing side of hunting and trapping to support them financially. She grew up to become the world renowned shooting star Annie Oakley.
Now while Little Annie began hunting to help her family, there were recreational hunters of the past also. Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson was one of those ladies. After her parents’ divorce, she and her mother moved to New York from California where she was raised in pampered luxury. In her early twenties while on tour in France she met the man who would change her life: a naturalist by the name of Ernest Thompson Seton, whom she fell deeply in love with. Soon after their marriage Mrs.Setton realized she was in for some great changes, but the love of her husband and her curious nature would take her a long way. Around the holidays the Settons realized they had two very different ideas on how they would spend the holidays. Her mind was telling her a whirlwind trip abroad, yet her husband was feeling the call of the wild. Playing the dutiful wife she put away her plans and followed her husband into the wilderness. She would not only impress her husband, she would also impress the guides, being a great shot and learning quickly how to track downed game. In fact her love and passion for the outdoors carried on long after her marriage to Mr.Setton was over. She went on to write several books including A Woman Tenderfoot (1900) and Nimrod’s Wife (1907). One of my favorite paragraphs was in the beginning of her first novel read “This Book Is A Tribute To The West. I can only add that the events related really happened in the Rocky Mountains of the United States arid Canada; and this is why, being a woman, I wanted to tell about them, in the hopes that some going-to-Europe-in-the-summer-woman may be tempted to go West instead.” I think in that short introduction you can feel her passion for the West shine through.
So we owe a lot to the ladies of the past who stood up for what they believed in. I discussed Ms.Grace to show that women have been hunting for years. Not all were as recognized as they are today. Ms.Grace told the world about her passion of hunting and being out in the wilderness and she stood up in a time where women were rarely recognized for anything except doing the cooking and laundry. When I hold up my trophy and smile for a picture to share with the world, I think of that determind Grace and how she wanted women to stand up and recognize they could enjoy the adventure, too.
Some are so amazed to see women in the hunting industry showing so much pride for what they do and yeah, some of us may be a little “tender foot,” but the passion to be out in God’s beautiful creation is there. Thanks to the industry’s growing support and acknowledgement of women hunters it is becoming more common to see women holding up their trophies with pride. From the determination of the ladies of the past to the passion of the women hunters now, keep the ladies’ hunting movement coming!
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General Hunting