Quite the busy morning for huntresses in the news: I had yet to recover from the buzz of seeing a huntress on the Republican ticket when I came across an article in the Burlington (Connecticut) Free Press about a lifelong huntress who just launched her own hunting clothing line.
Wendy Butler is the newest in a short line of women like Pam Zaitz (SHE Safari), Shelah Zmigrosky (Foxy Huntress) and Kirstie Pike (Prois Hunting Apparel) who grew tired of wearing ill-fitting men's clothing on the hunt and decided to do something about it. I adore these women.
Her clothing line is small so far - appropriate for a startup - and the prices are on the higher side compared with her competitors. But I'm immediately impressed with her "Double Fly Pants," which include a traditional men's fly and a women's fly that basically opens up the entire crotch of the pants so we don't have to pull our pants down to take a leak.
Even more sporty: The product description touts the ability, wearing these pants, to pee easily out of a treestand. Now, I don't hunt from treestands - we don't do that so much out West - but if I did, I'm thinking that would be a bold move. I don't want to be too graphic here, but all I'm saying is we don't aim as well as guys do...
Moving on!
Butler isn't the first on the market with a women's fly - Foxy Huntress sells pants with a Velcro opening at the crotch (see photo at right) for exactly the same purpose.
But Butler comes by the idea honestly: Her mother customized her own pants in this way 30 years ago after getting tired of dropping trou on cold days in the woods.
So, I'm pleased to add a new link today to my women's clothing company list in the bar to the right of this column. And with any luck, I'll get my hands on some of this stuff and do a review for Jesse's Hunting & Outdoors to let you know how it works.
At ground level, anyway. I'm thinking I'm not ready to pee from a tree yet.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Trailfeathers: A new women's clothing line
Posted at 10:05 AM 8 comments
Filed under In the news, Women's hunting clothing
Election 2008: A huntress on the ticket!
Well, hot damn, looks like we've got a huntress on the Republican ticket.
It's not confirmed yet, but it's all over the news that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be Sen. John McCain's runningmate.
Palin, who was born in Idaho and moved to Alaska as an infant, is a lifelong moose huntress. According to her Wikipedia entry, she and her dad used to get up at 3 a.m. to go moose hunting before school. That rocks.
Now, I would never make my decision in the voting booth based on just the fact that someone hunts - nor would I advocate that anyone else do so. Politics and character are pretty important to me, and I'm sure we'll all learn much more about Palin's over the next few days.
But I've got to say it's pretty cool just to see a real huntress - not someone who took a poke at a duck once - in the race.
Update: Click here for an AP story on Palin - and note that it doesn't even mention she hunts! Weird.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 8:24 AM 9 comments
Filed under Finding fellow huntresses
Monday, August 25, 2008
Using a rifle case is concealing a weapon?
Hunters, you might want to stay out of Colorado for the next few days, because you just might get arrested.
The Democratic National Convention is going on through Thursday in Denver, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was evacuated from her hotel on Sunday after a 29-year-old man from Wyoming walked into the lobby carrying with two rifles and two handguns, apparently in cases. He was promptly arrested, and Pelosi dutifully praised the police for their quick and professional reaction.
The charge? Carrying a concealed weapon.
The guy, Joseph Calanchini, said he was preparing for a hunting trip, and he told a TV station he didn't even realize the convention was in town. (Yep, sounds like a hunter to me - not obsessed with politics.)
Click here for the full story from Associated Press, or just check out these highlights:
"Calanchini did not have a concealed weapons permit, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety.
"(Secret Service spokesman Malcolm) Wiley said authorities were not releasing information about whether the weapons were loaded because the case remained under investigation. Wiley said the charge is the same whether the weapons were loaded or unloaded."
WTF???
I've been hunting for a little less than two years now, and I've already carried my shotgun, in a case, into several hotel rooms. I'm sure as hell not going to leave it in the car.
Now, obviously, I don't know anything about this guy, and for all I know he was out to assassinate Nancy Pelosi. But if that was his plan, he should be arrested for stupidity for openly carrying a rifle into her hotel.
But I am flabbergasted that police would charge the guy with carrying a concealed weapon. What the hell are hunters supposed to do, carry the rifles out of their cases as they approach the registration desk? Oh yeah,that'll go over well. Holy crap, even at the airport we all know we need to have the gun in a case.
I mean, I understand the Secret Service has to take care of our leaders, especially with all the Pelosi haters out there. That's fine. Pull the guy aside. Check out his story. But charge him with carrying concealed weapons? Puh-lease.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 5:35 AM 15 comments
Filed under In the news
Friday, August 22, 2008
Man bites dog: Hunting group attacks NRA
Well, isn't this interesting: A group called the American Hunters & Shooters Association blasted the NRA this week for giving millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress with bad records on conservation.
"Our goal is to pull back the curtain on the ugly truth: The leaders of the National Rifle Association, who have long claimed to represent hunters and shooters, have instead overwhelmingly supported the biggest conservation opponents in Congress," AHSA president Ray Schoenke wrote in the Huffington Post on Thursday. " We want America's 70 million gun owners, most of whom, like me, consider themselves conservationists, the opportunity to learn about the NRA's dismal record on conservation."
Click here for Schoenke's piece, and here for AHSA's special website on the contributions, "Real Hunters, Real Conservation."
I'm still digesting this, but I'm having a few reactions so far:
The cynical part of me says that the NRA's No. 1 mission is protecting gun rights, so of course it's going to give its money to strong supporters of gun rights, regardless of what else they do in Congress.
The hunting cheerleader part of me thinks it's really important that the non-hunting public understands what hunters are really about, and anything that highlights the strong connection between hunting and conservation is a good thing. Coincidentally, I'm about to interview Jon Schwedler, the guy who organized Sierra Sportsmen, for a piece on that very concept for the JHO Journal.
And the journalist part of me wants to look at this in more detail. Here are a few things that have struck me so far:
One: AHSA was founded in 2005 by Massachusetts developer John Rosenthal. Rosenthal, who enjoys shooting clays, had been working for the anti-gun/pro-gun control Brady Center and found its positions to be too extreme. But the NRA was too extreme for him too. So he teamed up with Schoenke, a former Washington Redskins football player who owned a 300-acre hunting preserve, to form American Hunters & Shooters with the goal of preserving gun rights for responsible hunters and shooters while supporting reasonable restrictions on guns. (My source for this is a 2006 Boston Globe Magazine story -click here to read it.)
So, here's your grain of salt to go with this: It appears this organization's roots are in the gun issue - particularly providing an alternative to the NRA - not in conservation.
Two: Because I really love salt, here's another one: This organization tilts leftward. It endorsed Barack Obama for president in April (click here for press release).
Now, I don't personally think that's an inherently bad thing. When I interviewed former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman earlier this summer, he told me there are 10 million liberals in America who own guns, and I thought it was an important point: We shouldn't assume that liberals are the enemies of hunting. (In fact, in that same interview, Feldman suggested AHSA as an alternative to the NRA for gun owners who aren't happy with that organization.)
Three: One more thing to chew on: American Hunters & Shooters held a press conference Thursday on its report on NRA contributions, and I can't find a bit of coverage of that event, aside from Schoenke's piece in the Huffington Post.
Now, there are many press conferences that are indeed so boring or ridiculous that they shouldn't be covered - we refer to such banal happenings as "dog bites man stories."
But when a hunting group attacks the NRA, that is a "man bites dog" story worth coverage, and I'm not sure why this story was - apparently, anyway - ignored. That's usually a sign of poor publicity of the press conference (which was at 9 a.m. Eastern time, not friendly to Western outdoors writers), a perception that the sponsor of the press conference isn't credible, or maybe just too many competing news events.
Like I said before, I haven't figured out what to make of this turn of events. But I figured it was worth discussing, so please pile on and tell me what you think.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 5:00 PM 14 comments
Filed under Hunting and politics, In the news, Perceptions of hunters
Thursday, August 21, 2008
A quiet teen, a loud shot and a flaming pig
I had a moment of clarity Wednesday morning as I stood inhaling the smoke pouring off a freshly killed wild hog that my guide was blowtorching while my 16-year-old nephew watched from a few feet away.
Normal people don't do this, I thought to myself.
And they certainly don't enjoy it.
So why was I having a good time?
I'm not sure yet - I'm still working through that. But I can tell you how I got to that point.
When I met T. Michael Riddle earlier this year at his Native Hunt game ranch in Monterey County, I remarked on how lovely his lodge's outdoor kitchen was, and how much Boyfriend would love it. One thing led to another, and now Boyfriend will be cooking for a big dove hunting party at the ranch on Labor Day.
When Boyfriend and Michael started planning the menu, they decided that they wanted to roast a whole pig. Acquiring one would be no problem because Michael's 1,000-acre property is loaded with wild hogs - in fact, that's where I got my first pig ever back in June.
I still feel like I need a lot of practice with big game hunting, so I asked if I could come down and shoot the sacrificial pig. And because my nephew Joel was coming from the Seattle area to visit me this summer, I arranged to do the hunt when he was here, because Lord knows I wouldn't want to do anything normal with the kid.
That's how I found myself back at Native Hunt late Tuesday, kicking back with Joel and two guides: Sam, who guided me to my first pig in June, and Ed, who has very photogenic facial hair.
Now, Joel has never been hunting before, and no one in his family (besides me) hunts, and no one he knows from school hunts, so what I'd done was thrust this teenager into a completely new planet where the conversation centered around cherished hunting memories.
Joel learned a lot. He learned that a "Texas heart shot" is one that goes the length of the body. And that the particular Texas heart shot Ed witnessed involved an entry wound in the pig's bunghole - such a precise shot that no one could even see the bullet hole. And that the bullet's trajectory tore up pretty much every internal organ the poor critter had, and the pig bloated to three times its normal size in something like 30 seconds flat.
So, nice intro to hunting for Joel.
Had this been his younger brother, who's very interested in hunting, I would've been very confident that he was enjoying himself. But with Joel, I just wasn't sure. I'd look at him from time to time, trying to gauge how he was reacting to everything, but the normally boisterous teen had been pretty quiet for most of his visit. I mean, just getting him to smile for the camera had been an ordeal. So I went to bed wondering.
The next morning, we got up at 5 a.m. and Sam, Joel and I headed out.
We were looking for a hog that weighed 80-85 pounds, just the right size to fit in a Cuban-style oven, and I was confident we'd find one.
The question for me was could I make a good shot? I'd been practicing my shooting, still tormented by the memory of the pathetic gut shot I'd inflicted on my first pig. And I really wanted to see the holy grail of hunting: an instant drop.
But my rifle (Boyfriend's rifle, actually) was loaded with new lead-free ammunition, and after the ordeal we went through sighting it in, that added an extra layer of worry for me.
And oh yeah, did I mention this pig would be roasted whole, so my shot would be on display for all of Michael's guests on Labor Day? No pressure, though.
We walked quietly to the back of a draw and indeed we heard pigs, but they never emerged from the trees. So we walked back out and up a road to another of the pigs' favorite crossings and we quickly came across maybe a dozen more pigs.
Sam motioned to me to get set up, and Joel stood back, motionless. I dropped to my knees, set up the shooting sticks and raised the rifle, and just then, two trucks came rolling up the dusty road.
CRAP! Michael was having some work done around the lodge, and the work crews had arrived for the day.
The pigs retreated to their hideout in some dense oaks, and we walked back down the road, waiting to see where they'd emerge. We knew they wanted to cross the road to get to their midday resting spot.
Sam set off at a trot, and Joel and I followed. But when we rounded the corner, the dust drifting across the road told us we were too late. The pigs had crossed and slipped into the brush, heading around a hill onto the next piece of property.
So we went back to the draw where we'd started, and sure enough, we spotted a few pigs high on a hillside. But I couldn't get the chosen pig in my sights before it turned and disappeared into the brush.
Sam was looking discouraged. It was getting late, and pretty soon, most pigs would be bedded down for the heat of the day.
"Dude, don't worry," I said. "If I don't get a pig today, that just means someone else needs to get one before Labor Day. I'm having a good time either way."
His face relaxed. "I'm glad to hear that," he said.
And I found myself glad to say it. You assume, when you go to a game ranch, that you'll get on a pig pretty quickly. And sometimes you do. But these are wild pigs running in steep terrain that's covered with dense brush, and there are no guarantees.
And that's fine, because that's hunting.
We walked back out of the draw to make one last effort, chatting a little more easily because we'd relaxed. And of course, when we rounded a corner, we saw two pigs at the top of a hill.
"Set up," Sam whispered.
And I did. But the pigs were skylighted, nothing but blue sky around their silhouettes. That's a lesson I remember vividly from hunter safety: Don't shoot at skylighted animals, because if you miss, you have no idea what the bullet will hit on the other side.
And in this case, I knew that the workers had been in the area where these pigs were, so there was a very real chance I could hit a person.
"Can't do it," I whispered back to Sam.
"OK," he whispered back, motioning to Joel and me to get up.
Sam managed to get us farther up the road without being detected. The sun was behind us, making us difficult to see. And the wind was blowing from left to right, so we were impossible to smell.
I set up next to the trunk of a thick oak tree, propped the rifle on the shooting sticks, and got the chosen pig in my sights. She was looking straight at me, but couldn't see me.
"Aim for the neck," Sam had told me.
The pig turned broadside. I trained the crosshairs on her neck, and willed myself to make them stop wobbling. But in a moment of unusual calm, I realized I was so close - maybe 35 yards - that it didn't matter if I wobbled a bit. I pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
She dropped, and began kicking - not the kick of a wounded animal, but the nerve reaction of a dead animal. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
Thank God, thank God, thank God. She didn't know what had hit her - her death was mercifully instantaneous.
I looked back to Sam and Joel and grinned. I'd finally done it right.
Maybe it was that sense of success - a clean kill! - that made the rest of the morning bearable.
I knew in advance what we'd need to do. When you roast a whole pig, you do it with skin on. Normally, you would remove the pig's hair by dipping it whole into a tub of scalding water, scraping off the hair and taking a blowtorch to those stubborn hairs that just won't go.
But we really didn't have the means to boil that much water or dip this pig, so we'd get the job done entirely with a blowtorch.
Sam quickly got to work, having done this once before. It was horrendous - the hair would catch on fire, smolder sickeningly and leave a charred crust, which we then scraped off. It took repeated applications of flame to get the job done. (To get a good feel for what this looked like, click on the photo at the top of this post. Very, very vivid.)
I stood close and helped with the scraping. Joel stood further back, and I looked at him from time to time to see how he was doing.
Had he grown up the way his mother and I did, where domestic pig slaughtering was an annual family party, he would be unfazed. But I didn't know if my family's weird genetics alone were enough to steel him for this.
While I sat and wondered, Sam thrust the blowtorch into Joel's hands and encouraged him to do some torching. Fun times.
We got through it, and a couple hours later we were pulling out of the gate to head home.
That's when Joel started talking, saying more in a few minutes than he'd said for the entire previous 24 hours.
He said he was surprised about one thing: Even though he wasn't shooting, every time I'd get ready to shoot, his heart would start racing, anticipating the moment.
I smiled.
"And if I ever decided to hunt, I'd want to do my first hunt there," he said. "It was pretty cool."
"Cool," I said. "Just let me know."
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Postscript: I wasn't the only one hunting at Native Hunt to put food on the Labor Day table this week - Phillip over at The Hog Blog also took out a fallow deer for the event, and you can read his adventure here. Turns out we were writing our stories at the same time!
Posted at 8:40 AM 15 comments
Filed under Hunting stories
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
VIDEO: Women and Children Shoot First
Man, there is something fantastic about being involved in a special event.
I've been working all year with California Waterfowl's Women's Outdoor Connections, a group developing programs designed to get women more involved in the outdoors, and Saturday was our first major event.
Picture this: Forty women and kids took up arms for a day of shooting, conservation, hunting and cooking lessons at Coyote Valley Sporting Clays.
It was a blast. I could've just written about it on Sunday morning, but it was really fun, and I think this little slideshow I put together captures the spirit of the day much better (despite my extreme amateur status with this stuff). Check it out:
And oh yeah, in case you're wondering: Yes, the guy doing the cooking lessons was none other than Boyfriend. He rocked!
And did you notice those pink duck calls? They were made especially for this event by an Oregon Company called KumDuck. The owners came down to do the demo personally.
All in all, a sweet day.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 12:12 PM 9 comments
Filed under Finding fellow huntresses, Video
Friday, August 15, 2008
Keeping Cazadora honest - it takes a village
Perusing my e-mail over coffee this morning, I found something I had never seen since starting this blog: a challenge.
"I have a (small) bone to pick with you on this post ("Kids and hunting - where to draw the line")," one of my readers wrote.
"Invariably, when you mention a statistic, you cite the source. Where is your source for the statement of 'Lord, you always hear about turkey hunters shooting at movement and sound that turns out to be another turkey hunter doing some really good calling.' "
I nearly fell into my coffee.
You see, during my 19 years in the newspaper business as a reporter and editor at papers small and large, it was routine for readers and sources to call or email when they thought I or my reporters hadn't met our normal standards of accuracy.
But as a blogger? I've never been challenged like that - until today.
I was delighted. Why?
In a word, legitimacy.
Professional journalism is filled with myriad garden-variety errors every day, but part of what makes it work, on the whole, is that there are a number of forces arrayed to keep journalists honest.
Part of the unease professional news organizations have with the concept of blogging as news is that there are no broadly accepted ethical standards for blogging, as there are for news organizations. Bloggers can say whatever we want, be as opinionated as we want, and if we wanted to make stuff up, who would hold us accountable?
Matt took up this general issue today in the first of a series of posts on the Outdoor Bloggers Summit, "Writing Workshop Series: Are Bloggers Journalists?"
Having someone challenge me today meant that there are blog readers - just as there are newspaper readers - who will hold us to high standards. And with blogs filling in a vacuum left by the shrinking forces of professional journalists, I think that's really important.
In this case, the reader affirmed a doubt I'd had as I wrote my post about kids hunting. Should I back up this statement on turkey hunting accidents, or should I just leave it at this generalization? I took the easy route, relying on my memory of various news stories.
Professional journalists go through the same thought process, and when a reader or source calls us on it later, we learn a lesson: Yes, take the extra step to do it right.
As it turned out, what I'd written about turkey hunting accidents was just fine. As I gulped down my coffee, I did a search and quickly found more than a dozen stories from the past few years about turkey hunting accidents.
In the old days, that feeling of vindication would've been the highlight of my day. Today, though, it's the fact that blog readers have high standards and aren't afraid to call us on it if we get something wrong.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 8:58 PM 9 comments
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Kids and hunting - where to draw the line?
When a 14-year-old boy in Washington state recently mistook a hiker for a bear, took aim, and fatally shot her, there was surprisingly little bitterness toward the boy, despite his tragic error in judgment.
But eleven days have passed now, and the repercussions are becoming clear: Prosecutors have announced they'll file first-degree manslaughter charges against the boy, who appears to have violated one of the most important rules of hunting - identify what you're shooting at before you pull the trigger.
And some officials at Washington Fish & Wildlife have announced they want to reinstitute age requirements for hunters (click here for the full story).
This is one of those rare times that I'm honestly not sure what I think about an issue.
As a rule, I hate knee-jerk reactions to accidents. One person makes a mistake, and legislative or regulatory bodies figure some sort of ban will ameliorate the public's outrage or concern. But the problem is that no ban can ever fully eliminate risk, and bans predominantly restrict people who weren't doing anything wrong to begin with.
But ... children are more prone to making mistakes because they are young and learning, and a mistake in hunting can be - as it was in this case - irreversible. So doesn't it make sense to place more restrictions on children in hunting, just as we restrict children in driving?
But ... haven't adults made mistakes like this as well? Lord, you always hear about turkey hunters shooting at movement and sound that turns out to be another turkey hunter doing some really good calling.
So, was this a mistake of youth, which you can address with age requirements? Or was it a mistake of stupidity, which infects people of all ages?
Should we cut off more youth from hunting? Or is there anything we can do to improve hunter safety training, which has already tremendously reduced hunting accidents? Or do we accept that no matter how careful we are, people will make fatal mistakes - in hunting, just the same as in driving?
I don't know the answer. But regardless of the law, I think decisions about when a child is ready to hunt should be made by a (hopefully intelligent) parent who is evaluating whether the child is mature enough to handle the responsibility. Terry Scoville over at the Women's Hunting Journal is exploring the same question. Some kids are careless and obviously shouldn't have guns; others are so diligent that you know they're going to be the smartest and most careful hunters out there. But there's no way to legislate that decision-making process, is there?
All I know for sure is that this shooting and the ensuing debate come at a critical time.
All over the country, hunting groups are pushing states to make it easier for kids to hunt, and for good reason: If you don't catch the hunting bug with your family as a kid, you may never start as an adult, and that means the number of hunters will continue to decline.
That's a problem, because hunting is a heritage well worth preserving, and not just to justify our existence or ensure our political clout. Hunting is important because it connects us to our food and nature in ways that nothing else can. And, personally, I think this country needs to be a lot more in tune with our food supply, because removing ourself from the process of food production and entrusting it to industrial geniuses has done nothing but make us fat and sick.
So, dear readers, what do you think? What's the answer? As a new hunter who grew up in a non-hunting family, I don't have one, so I'm looking to the experienced hunters for your wisdom on this matter.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 9:38 AM 19 comments
Filed under Hunting and politics
Friday, August 8, 2008
News to PETA: Hollywood hunts too!
As someone who cares deeply about the future of hunting, I don't spend much time worrying about PETA. It's an ineffective organization, known mostly for stunts, naivete and its not-so-credible Hollywood following.
But PETA still irritates me, so it was with great joy this morning that I came across news that actress Eliza Dushku - who played "Faith" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - has pissed off PETA by announcing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she hunts.
OK, not just that she hunts, but she actually killed a deer on Christmas last year.
Now, to me, that sounds like a great Christmas, but the studio audience was horrified by this.
The host wasn't upset, but he couldn't stop laughing. He just kept saying, "You shot a deer on Christmas? (giggle) You shot a deer on Christmas? (giggle) What, you gutted it on Easter?"
Dushku ran with it. "My mother called me herself and said, 'You're a liberal from New England, what the 'f' are you doing in Oklahoma shooting things." (Remember what that former NRA lobbyist, Richard Feldman, said about liberal gun owners? See, he's not crazy.)
Much to host Jimmy Kimmel's credit, he defended her against the murmurs of disapproval from the audience, saying, "If you eat meat, you shouldn't be horrified by killing the animal." Amen, bro, you got that right!
PETA, predictably, admonished the actress: "Slaying bloodthirsty vampires on Buffy is brave, but slaying innocent animals where they live and raise their families is cowardly and cruel," a spokeswoman said. (Click here to read that story on IMDb.)
That not being enough, the spokeswoman followed up with a flat-out LIE: "Eliza is sorely out of step with the rest of the country; 95 per cent of Americans oppose hunting."
While it is true that 95 percent of the population doesn't hunt, public approval of hunting is on the rise, hitting 78 percent in a 2006 survey. (Click on the chart to enlarge it, or click here for the source of that chart - it's on page 162.)
But again, I'm just not going to get that worked up about it, because no one listens to PETA.
However, I definitely recommend checking out to Dushku's appearance on the TV show, shown in the video below. Skip to the 3-minute mark on the video below to see exactly how it went down.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 10:24 AM 11 comments
Filed under Finding fellow huntresses, Perceptions of hunters
Saturday, August 2, 2008
New website for women who love hunters
One of the most interesting (and flattering) things about being a female hunter is how often male hunters say to you, "Man, I wish I had a woman like you."
If I were in the market for a guy, I'd certainly have my pick of potential partners, what with male hunters outnumbering females 9-to-1 in this country.
Of course, I'm not in the market, but Roxinne McPhail, a Southern California Realtor, is, and she decided to start a dating website called "Hunters Blind Date" designed specifically to match hunters to women who either hunt or just love guys with muddy pickups and dog hair all over the backseats.
I saw her article about a month ago in the Sportsman's Warehouse newspaper, The Sportsman's News, and now The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that about 100 men and women have visited the site (click here for that story).
“I know there are millions of women out there who are looking for a man to share the outdoors with them,” McPhail told Union-Tribune reporter Ed Zieralski. “They're just like me in that they support hunting activities, aren't opposed to guns, love being outdoors and are willing to cook wild meat. I'm hoping to attract women to this site who are looking for a touch of Neanderthal in their Mr. Right.”
She used that "Neanderthal" line in The Sportsman's News, too, and I've gotta admit I cringed when I saw it. Not the best word to associate with hunters when we're already viewed as troglodytes by much of the non-hunting world.
And speak for yourself, honey - I consider my hunter-man to be pretty highly evolved, and I like him that way.
Nonetheless, I'll be curious to see how this works. Are there really so many hunter-friendly women that McPhail can use her site to improve the odds for male hunters looking for a woman who doesn't shudder when they bring home venison? That would be great.
But I think I'd rather focus my energy on just getting more women to hunt. To each her own, I guess.
© Holly A. Heyser 2008
Posted at 6:28 AM 12 comments
Filed under In the news