Christine Cunningham's Bio
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Although I have always loved the outdoors, hunting came to me later in life. Unlike many women hunters, I didn’t have early role models who hunted. I did, however, spend my youth wandering the woods alone which gave me nature as a source for truth. My path to hunting has been a surprising course of self-discovery. No matter how much time I spent in the field, and it was plenty, it is with the eyes and heart of a hunter that the beauty of the outdoors really came to life for me. I wrote about my first experience duck hunting for Alaska Magazine in 2008. Since that time, I've become active in many non-profit outdoors groups. I’m a volunteer Hunter Safety Instructor for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game's Hunter Education Program and participate as an instructor for a local Delta Waterfowl chapter's Youth Education Day. Developing the Youth Day and mentoring duck hunts with youth has been overwhelmingly rewarding. The more involved I become in hunting, the more I want others to share my experiences. The unique perspective of women in the field is something not often portrayed beyond its uniqueness, even as more women become hunters.
I share an alternating outdoor column with my hunting partner for a weekly local newspaper. Working on my column, "Common Ground," as well as freelance writing has helped me to better understand and communicate my experiences as well as strengthen my voice as an outdoor writer. Robert F. Kennedy has been reported as having said, “People who write don’t shoot and people who shoot don’t write.” Before I realized this quote was in the context of assassination attempts, I thought to myself, people who write and shoot, don’t have time to do anything but those two things. Both are a labor of love.
Still, I face challenges. This year I was interviewed as a winner of a local Ice Fishing Derby, and the reporter asked me if I thought hunting was better than quilting. At a firearms instructor course, one of the male gun experts made a comment, after I admitted that I wasn't as familiar with a lever action gun as the other types of actions, which he didn't know much about sewing machines. It just took me aback. I have never quilted or sewn, but the tone of these comments suggests that quilting or sewing, for no particular reason, are my proper province. It’s a perspective I hope will change as more women enter the field.
I want to see women have their own Old Duck Hunter's Associations, their own myth of the cool duck hunter, their own voices of tradition in the field. I find as much time to write about my experiences as time allows because I think it's important to develop my story from the outside in. I find as much time to read the work of other outdoor women as possible because I’m eager to see what we will become to each other, whether we will be female versions of the male stereotypes or whether we are at a point in time where a new definition of what it means to be a hunter emerges.
Articles by Christine Cunningham
Planting Birds To Train Your Dog
Extreme Waterfowling: Hunting Alaska’s Mud Flats
The Hunting Partner Relationship
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