Women: The Spirit and Face of a New Hunting Paradigm
by Amy Brooks Thornton

Middlebury College student Georgia Grace shoots a .32 caliber black powder
muzzle loader rifle with instructor Wendy Butler (not pictured).

Wendy Butler hunts with a custom-made flintlock made from bird's-eye maple her grandfather collected. It's the type of gun that "would have been used back in the 17th and 18th centuries," says Butler. Butler, who coordinates the Japanese and Korean language programs at Middlebury College, teaches hunter education at Middlebury College and is a chief instructor for the state of Vermont, participates in primitive biathlons, a competition involving snowshoeing on wintry trails to reach targets at which you shoot with archaic pistols and muzzle loaders.

The muzzle-loading flintlock requires Butler to build each bullet, "one element at a time." It's "something you would see Davy Crockett using. No magnifying scope, no crosshairs," Butler says. The handmade bullet, the effortful challenge it presents, and the emphasis on the experience over the outcome reflect the new hunting paradigm women are building.

Women "bring a completely different face into hunting," Butler says, who asserts that she wears "dresses all summer long" and doesn't identify with the stereotype of the "camo'd up man."

"We can … be ambassadors for hunting," she says. Unlike what some believe is a "crazy macho blood fest," Butler thinks that hunting for women is "about appreciating the natural world, nurturing the natural world, and stewardship for the resources around us," says Butler. "Men definitely do that. But women may do it more naturally." Women hunters, she adds, are also "concerned with making a very good shot"—clearly a priority if you're choosing to hunt with a flintlock.

Murphy Robinson is the founder and owner of Mountain Song Expeditions in Worcester, Vermont, where she teaches the "Huntress Intensive," among other classes, and leads trips into the backcountry for all genders "whether you are queer or straight, transgender or not transgender," as well as some trips and classes only for "people who identify as women."

Robinson says that while women—the fastest-growing demographic of hunters—might be changing perceptions of hunting, these perceptions may be based on sexist paradigms. "People think women are [hunting] in an ethical and safe manner"—a generalization that may not be true for all female hunters and that implies most male hunters are neither ethical nor safe.

Robinson notes that the women in her classes are very concerned about ethics, animal suffering, hunting safely, and passing on the tradition to their children. This approach, she says, "is legitimizing hunting in a new way in the eyes of those who are not hunters." People frequently tell her: "It's OK if you hunt. I know you're doing it the right way. You're honoring the animal. You're not getting drunk in the deer stand.'" Women help transform the sexist cliché of the hunter from the "drunken, competitive, violent man" to one more broadly accepted.

Murphy Robinson, founder and owner of Mountain Song Expeditions, teaches hunting and leads back country trips.

For Robinson, hunting is a "spiritual calling to deepen and expand the way I relate to the forest." Robinson, who grew up in a "hippie meditation commune," ate a vegetarian diet and thought "hunters were evil," says that hunting "contributes to the wholeness" of her life. She doesn't see it as violent. Harvesting her first deer at age 27 was a rite of passage; that evening, she became a meat eater as a way to "honor the animal."

Women Hunters Double & Dollars Follow

On the cover of Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a graying and wrinkled male hunter past his middle years literally points the way for his far younger, attractive female hunting companion, the look on her face suggesting she is raptly absorbing his advice.

Female hunters currently number about 3.45 million or 19 percent of the total hunters in the United States. According to the NSSF, those numbers have doubled since 2001, when female hunters accounted for only 10 percent of the hunting population. In the same time period, male hunters have dropped from almost 16 million to 14.5 million, or almost 90 percent of the total hunters to 81 percent. Surprisingly, Vermont doesn't follow the national trend for women, where the 5,500 women hunters account for only 9 percent of the hunting population.

The hunting industry is paying attention to the swelling ranks of women hunters nationally. Hunting gear sales are growing faster than all other sporting goods categories, reports the NSSF, with $38.3 billion spent in 2011, more revenue than Google ($37.9 billion) or Goldman Sachs Group ($36.8 billion). Of that sum, $17 billion went to purchases of firearms, bows, ammunition, clothing, trees stands, and more, with the remaining $21 billion spent on hunting licenses and for hunting trip expenses, such as gas, hotels, and restaurants. If each hunter spends an average of $2,500 per year of his or her disposable income, that translates, according to the NSSF, into women accounting for $8.6 billon in hunting-related purchases.

Although the portion of women hunter purchases may not be the lion's share, it's no kitten's either. Women have more disposable income at their control than ever before in history; Nielsen, the global information and measurement company, reports that women will control two-thirds of the consumer wealth in the United States over the next decade.

Marketers are eager to figure out what women will purchase and what captures their attention.

According to womenspeakworldwide.com, a survey created by members of the Boston Consulting Group, women worldwide agree that not having enough time for oneself is one of their top three challenges, the other two being managing household and finances and too many demands on their time. Spending time by oneself, maybe in the woods, turns out to be a worthy reason for women to spend money. The rapidly rising numbers of women who hunt may reflect not only their disposable income but also their need for "the tranquility that you find in the woods … the solitude, feeling one with nature," says Cheryl Frank Sullivan, huntress and University of Vermont entomologist.

Ironically, another reason why women hunt is to provide food for the family—tethering those women hunters back to the hearth and home from which they may crave escape. However, Sullivan, says, "It's liberating to put … sustainably harvested, organic, local, healthy … food on the table with my own two hands. It's very empowering."

While the hunting gear and weapon industry is keen on snaring women hunter dollars, they may be preying on them with the wrong bait. The weapon manufacturers are making smaller and lighter guns and bows and clothing with added design details.

"Can you deal with having a little bit of pink trim on it?" asks Sullivan. "To me it's very sexist. I'm really antipink." Sullivan "enjoys the challenge" of the more primitive weapons and hunts with a PSE Bow Madness, which is a 60-pound compound bow, as well as muzzle loaders and rifles. These weapons require her to be "close to a wild animal and have them not know that you're there." Pink doesn't exactly camouflage—unless you're hiding in a flock of flamingos—and it doesn't reflect the intensity and gritty spirit of women hunters. The hunting industry needs to rethink the women hunting gear look.

Conserving the Experience

Most hunters, such as Butler, believe conserving wilderness is essential to the experience of hunting. Through the 1937 Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, which placed an excise tax on firearms and ammunition to support conservation efforts among state wildlife agencies, the NSSF calculates that hunters contribute nearly $1.6 billion annually toward wildlife agencies and conservation through their purchases of licenses, firearms, and ammunition.

On her land Butler actively helps "improve habitat for all kinds of wildlife, bobcats, coyote, moose." For Butler, hunting is about "blending in with your surroundings, seeing and experiencing things you wouldn't otherwise, getting into the woods, being quiet, and observing my surroundings using all of my senses, smell, sight, hearing." It's "heightened observation, knowing the signs," Butler says, such as a favored tree a buck has repeatedly used to rub his horns or a preferred food, such as apples. It's "being able to anticipate a wild animal's behavior and how they're thinking."

"Getting the animal is just the icing on the cake," says Sullivan. "Some of the best memories are about seeing some beautiful animals, the biggest animals I've ever seen, the way they crept through the woods, majestic, wild, and free … Animals have learned to exist with human intrusion"—whereas the opposite is not as true.

"As soon as you step foot in the woods, you have to really pay attention … if you just go hiking, you can walk by a lot of stuff," says Sullivan. "Animals are watching you as you hike. They tune into us. They know where we are. They're smarter than we are."

Wendy Butler elk hunting in Colorado.

Hunting Tips

It's hard work, persevere. "Things don't always go as planned and you have to finish what you started," says Cheryl Frank Sullivan, who one evening shot a buck with her bow only to find it had disappeared. After a sleepless night she spent hours the following morning tracking it down. "I had to look at the way the grass had moved in the field, the scuffed-up ground. I finally found a faint drop of blood Further and further I found more blood," Sullivan recalls. "They don't just drop dead in their tracks when you shoot it. They run. So you have to have good tracking skills. That's why it's so challenging."

Stay warm. "Nothing will get you out of that tree stand [faster] than cold toes," advises Murphy Robinson. Use really good mittens to keep your hands warm with flip back finger tops to reach the trigger. Wear lots of layers, including two hats. To avoid getting wet from sweat, have fewer layers on when you're hiking in. Carry a daypack with extra layers for when you stop.

Practice. Put in the time and money. Do lots of target practice with your chosen weapon. "Find a safe place to practice with a good back stop," Robinson says. "One good thing with bow hunting, you can reuse your bows. With rifles, you can't reuse your bullets."

Get the right size weapon and learn to use it safely. "The Hawkins rifle I used hit me in the cheekbone," says Wendy Butler. "Men have a lot more bulk on their shoulders [which may shorten the distance]. I have a very long trigger pull. When I teach women to shoot I want to have a variety of sizes." Robinson adds, "Get a good strap for your gun and learn to carry your gun safely."

Find a mentor. Butler and Robinson advise women to find a good mentor who will take you seriously and whom you respect, whether it is a single woman, a group of women, or a man. "There are plenty of them out there. Someone you can talk about hunting with, you can share your stories with," says Butler. "There needs to be a community for a new hunter. That's something that children have if they're growing up in a hunting family. You can't assume that a new hunter knows a single thing about hunting."

Take a class. Becoming an Outdoors-Woman (BOW) is a nonprofit, educational program offering hands-on workshops to women throughout the states. The BOW course that was offered under the auspices of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Service (VFWS) no longer exists, but these workshops are still available in New Hampshire, Maine, and New York. VFWS does offer hunter education courses for licensing and also fish and wildlife seminars, which expand upon hunters and trappers: www.vtfishandwildlife.com/hunt/hunter_education/find_a_hunter_ed_course

Vermont Outdoors Woman through Vermont Outdoor Guide Association offers Doe Camp in the fall and winter for women: www.voga.org/vermont_outdoors_woman.htm.

Robinson offers a wide variety of classes at Mountain Song Expeditions: www.mountainsongexpeditions.com.

Predator Becomes Prey

Butler recalls a day in Ontario, Canada, when she was prey, not predator. As her husband and she set out in the dark early morning to hunt white-tailed deer, they heard wolves howling. An inch of crusty snow covered the ground. Animal tracks were easy to see. Her husband harvested a deer first, and after he dragged it out, they both returned to the woods. Sitting hidden in a swampy area, she used the doe can to make bleating sounds in hopes of attracting a buck. But instead, she recalls seeing the big legs of a wolf emerging through the hemlock, the wolf materializing in a clearing directly in front of where she and her husband sat. As the wolf strolled around the clearing, a second wolf appeared and a third. Circling. Considering.

"They could smell us. They knew we were people," Butler recalls. Suddenly, she found herself "looking into the eyes of a wolf" that was staring her down. It was "very powerful," Butler says. "We're just looking at it. My husband and I are whispering to each other but mostly taking it all in. One of the other wolves was in a crouch and closing in on us. I did the silliest thing. I lunged forward and hissed at it like a cat: 'I see you and I'm saying "Shoo!"' They sort of jumped back."

Butler and her husband gathered up their backpacks and walked for about 30 minutes away, figuring the wolves had lost interest. Soon after they set up their gear and started calling with the doe can again, the wolves started howling.

"I started processing," Butler says. "I have watched a coyote play with a rabbit before it killed it. It's not necessarily a quick and painless death. The [wolves] didn't run away."

Cheryl Frank Sullivan proudly displays her trophies.

Butler warns that people have to be careful in the woods. Although "there was nothing that would make the trip better" than to "see wolves and have them circle around … and consider her for a meal … Animals have so much advantage over us. They can be there and we don't know that they're there."

The Fear of Killing

The more common and overwhelming experience for a hunter is to hunt, not to be hunted. To hunt, by definition, is to pursue and to kill. And killing is problematic in our culture where we find most of our food packaged in plastic wrap on a supermarket shelf.

Robinson says that although a lot of people fear the feeling of killing an animal, the experience can be emotionally powerful on many levels. It is "this blend of awe of the sacrifice this animal has made and grief watching this beautiful powerful creature be killed and fall to the ground. There's an energy released when an animal's soul leaves its body that can be felt by all people who are near that body. It's almost a kind of high. It makes you feel very, very awake and intensely alive. You can feel your heart beating in your chest and you think about your own mortality in that moment."

The transcendent feeling is accompanied by the ancient elation and satisfaction found in providing "really healthy, wild meat for your family," says Robinson. The entire experience—the hunt, the woods, the harvest—"ties [us] to this sacred land" giving rise to "awe, grief, elation, pride." Robinson says it's a "universal feeling" for men and women alike. "Men will tell me how they feel when they kill a deer using words they wouldn't use when talking to other men."

"Then the work begins," Sullivan says. If you've harvested a deer, you have to field dress—remove the organs—quickly to prevent bacteria from growing, maintain the quality of the meat, and lighten the load. Hunting alone may seem peaceful and ideal, but dragging a 100-pound carcass out of the woods over hills, across streams, and sometimes through deep snow is exhausting even if it's burritoed onto an all-terrain plastic sled. "Hunting in the north woods … where you have a lot of rugged terrain, can be a laborious task to get [your harvest] out," says Sullivan. "You have to be physically fit to be able to do that. I went through a phase where I was all macho. Now I have no problem having other people help."

Passing on the Skills

The 1937 Wildlife Restoration Act funds 75 percent of hunter education programs led entirely by the states, many of which focus on recruiting women and minority groups. However, Robinson says the hunter safety courses that are required to obtain a hunting license teach gun safety but not important skills in hunting, such as tracking, animal behavior, following a blood trail, and field dressing a deer. Hunting teachers like Robinson and Butler fill in the gaps.

"I love to introduce new women to this event," says Butler. "Women really want the knowledge to know how to do things correctly. They want to do this in an environment where they don't feel like men are going to think they're silly. They want to be in an environment where they can have success."

Sullivan believes that women may have more influence than men in passing on the Vermont tradition of hunting to provide food for the family. "If there is no next generation [of hunters], you lose the skills," says Sullivan. "If you have a family that hunts together, you can pass on those traditions. If you have a mother who hunts, more likely they're going to pass down those skills."

Through her work at the University of Vermont, Sullivan has been exposed to the cultures of many different countries in which women will never be allowed the opportunity to hunt much less teach the skills to their children. "We're a very liberated country," Sullivan says. "Women in Vermont are very strong and independent … very tied to the land." It naturally follows that Vermont women can, and must, hunt and pass down the wisdom. Robinson "challenges" herself to go into the "old-school hunting spaces" dominated by older men and where she feels less comfortable due to her gender and her "green" approach to hunting, "because there is so much wisdom there." Wisdom to pass on.

Sullivan, despite her undisputed wilderness acumen, shared an all-too-contemporary anecdote, evidence that animals may be wiser.

"One day, I was sitting on the tree stand texting on my phone," Sullivan says, painfully aware that texting in the woods doesn't jibe with the ideal hunting image or experience, especially when using a bow or muzzle loader as she does. "I heard something and went to put my phone in my pocket. It fell, hit my tree stand, and fell to the forest floor."
At that moment a spike horn deer—a yearling buck with unbranched antlers, which are protected in Vermont—was underneath her tree. "He was looking at my cell phone and … smelling it. Of course," Sullivan recalls laughing, "the phone started vibrating. Someone was calling me. I've never seen a deer run and jump so fast."

 

 

Amy Brooks Thornton, founder of Pacem School, Montpelier, is a graduate student at Harvard University, studying lifestyle medicine and personal sustainability.