I have a reputation to uphold around here – I don’t go in the woods,  I don’t pack heat and I don’t know the proper way to hold a bow.  This one time at Cabelas, out of boredom, I picked up a bow like I was some hot outdoor chick scanning the woods to smack a critter when my husband turned around and said, “Jody you’re holding that backwards.”

And he went about his business while I stood there for an hour trying to figure the darn thing out.  In case you’re wondering, we had the same conversation last weekend.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time you know I have a fear of a squirrel attack.  Just as I step foot in the woods I know one of those flying trapeze of a squirrel with find it’s way in my hair.  Because I have big comfy nest hair for squirrels.

So when I read about Indiana B.O.W. – Becoming An Outdoors Women on the Women’s Outdoor News I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to … well … maybe … just … read about it.

That’s all I’m doing.

Just gathering information.

• It’s about 2 hours from our house and about 30 minutes from our river house.  (Oh deer)
• The cost is only $175 from Friday to Sunday. (I can afford that.)
• It’s in the woods.  (Blair Witch.)
• You sleep in barracks or a tent. (Friday the 13th made me sleep on the floor til I was 18.)

I’ll write more about the details next week.  It sounds like a very affordable exciting weekend for any female looking to learn more about the outdoors.

But what would it do to me?  My blog would never be the same.  Next thing you know I’ll be wanting to wear camouflage on my date night like I yell at my husband for.  Or competing at some clay sporting shot ‘em up.  Or having a camera crew follow me around in the woods.  That would make great footage … squirrel attack.

My non wearin’ camouflage painted nails hunter’s wife reputation will be ruined.

Because I know me … I cave to peer pressure and I’m very competitive.  My blog would change to smack em attack em and rack em.

What do you all think?

Have a great day …  maybe I could go there as a reporter or the entertainment.  And stay at the local spa hotel.

See the original article at TheHuntersWife.net

Holly Heyser

Holly A. Heyser, hunting blogger and college lecturer

I am pretty much the last person anyone – including myself – would have expected to take up hunting. I was born in Southern California and have spent all of my adult life in urban areas. After college, I spent 19 years as a newspaper reporter and editor (Orange County Register, San Jose Mercury News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Virginian-Pilot, Sacramento Bee) before leaving the business in 2006 to teach journalism at my alma mater, California State University, Sacramento. Reporter. Professor.

Urbanite. Not someone you think of as a gunner.

But I have always craved unusual experiences, and hunting started worming its way into my realm of possibility back when I was in my late 30s. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, with my boyfriend Hank Shaw, and we were both working for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. We had befriended the hunting and fishing writer there – Chris Niskanen – and what he did was really piquing Hank’s interest. One day Hank announced that he wanted to take up hunting. “That’s fine,” I said. He’s a cook, so I knew he’d eat what he’d kill, which was my threshold of acceptance for hunting.

He was really getting into it, spending a lot of time out in the woods, and pretty soon he started asking if I’d like to join him. I didn’t, because I was busy training for marathons at that point, and I rightfully concluded that I couldn’t fit two activities that intense into my weekends. But a couple years later we moved to Sacramento, and I stopped running, and I finally said I was ready to join him. My first hunt was a pheasant hunt, but what really grabbed me was duck hunting. Half of the ducks in the Pacific Flyway spend their winter in the Sacramento Valley about an hour north of us, and the duck hunting can be amazing. I will hunt anything that I’m willing to eat – pheasants, turkeys, wild boar, deer – but there’s just something about ducks. They’re fast, the marshy terrain is challenging and the worse the weather, the better the hunting. I love a challenge. And ducks taste divine. Duck is by far my favorite meat, followed closely by wild boar.

I very quickly dedicated myself to my new pursuit. I had just started my teaching job and was overjoyed when I realized my winter break covered the last six weeks of duck season, so when Hank was working, I’d drive up to one of my favorite wildlife refuges and head out into the marsh myself, determined to teach myself how to actually hit these birds. (Three years later, I’m sorta kinda getting the hang of it.)

A year to the day after I fired my shotgun for the first time ever, I started a blog about hunting, NorCal Cazadora (www.norcalcazadora.com). NorCal stands for Northern California, and “cazadora” is Spanish for huntress. I figured no one would care what a novice hunter had to say, but boy was I wrong. I quickly found that even the most veteran hunters enjoyed the frustration-filled tales of trying to learn how to do this hunting stuff right. Since, then, I’ve expanded a bit and have begun writing for magazines including California Waterfowl, Delta Waterfowl and Turkey Country, and I’ve done quite a few hunting stories for the Sacramento Bee, which has shown amazing openness to hunting.

I’ve also taken up photography, and do a lot of food photos for my boyfriend, who started a blog shortly after I did – Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (www.honest-food.net) – and writes for a variety of food magazines. I’ll be doing photography for his upcoming book as well.

Writing and photography has opened many doors. I’ve begun doing a lot of volunteer work for California Waterfowl, which graciously honored me with its Artemis Award this year. And I’ve made friends all over the country and world, which means if I can afford a plane ticket someplace, I could probably find someone to hunt with there. I feel incredibly blessed.

Probably the biggest blessing, though, is having been able to enter the hunting world in the first place. I was not naïve about where food came from before I started hunting – I spent some time in the country as a kid, and my family raised a lot of animals for meat. But participating in food, nature and the cycle of life at this level has been a revelation, and it has improved both what I eat and how much I appreciate it exponentially. So many things had to fall into place to get me here: meeting Hank, moving to Minnesota, befriending Chris. There are any number of different choices I could have made that would have put me on a different path. But I got lucky, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.

See the original article at CampWildGirls.com

See the original article at GotHunts.com

Sarah Calhoun- Founder of Red Ants Pants.

Since college I’ve wanted to start hunting. I think it’s important to know where our food comes from.  Having grown up on a farm I’d had to opportunity to help butcher pigs and chickens so I had that experience, but I wanted the wild game experience as well.  When I moved to White Sulphur Springs, Montana, the hunting opportunities were endless.  I bought my first rifle in 2004, a Remington 30-06 with a Winchester bolt.  I’ve been lucky enough to harvest a mule deer every year since, but the elk have continued to elude me.  We’ll see how this season goes!

Sarah has started her own company called Red Ants Pants (work pants for women) and travels the country doing the Tour de Pants.  Here is a poem about that.

You may be asking, why the name Red Ants Pants?

See the original article at CampWildGirls.com

A couple of things I’d like to mention today:

Outdoor News:

Norcal Cazadora’s first deer:
Congratulations to Holly for harvesting her first deer. It was a spot and stalk but not tackle like my deer. But I tell you, Holly always amazes me. Not only did she harvest her first deer but she did it all alone.

Stacey Huston’s cover shot:
This months Primitive Archer magazine features Stacey Huston’s photograph on their cover. Congratulations to her and what a beautiful cover shot.

The Book by Dayne Shuda:
Dayne Shuda of Hunting Business Marketing has written The Book for simple strategies for marketing your hunting business on the web. Even if you’re blogger running an outdoor site, there are many helpful tips and strategies to help you market your name on the web.

Outdoor giveaway:
Ben G. Outdoors is giving away 4 great prizes on his blog. Muck boots from Hank’s Clothing, A Warrior Outdoors Hoodie, A Magnet Gun Caddy from Spec Tech and a copy of Warrior Outdoors Rack Attack. All you have to do is leave a comment telling Ben G. what you’d like to see more of on his blog.

Indoor news:

Wednesday’s at The Hunter’s Wife:

Starting on Wednesday’s here on my blog I’m going to share certain conversations I’ve had over the week with a particular person that made me laugh, made me think or made me want to smack them. Tomorrow will be an interesting conversation I had with my Mother the other night.

Have a great day all!

See the original article at TheHuntersWife.net