I’ve mentioned Karen Lee, editor of Women in the Outdoors magazine in a previous post. She’s a great hunter, and hands down one of the funniest people I’ve ever met—she’ll come out with these one-liners that will have you on the floor in hysterics. She's also just a marvelous person in general.
      Women in the Outdoors (both the organization and the magazine it puts out) has done a lot to introduce ladies to the field. So Karen offered (since I'll be out of town for a few days) to write a guest post on how she got into hunting, and the support that helped her continue with the sport. So without further adieu…--K.H.

      I didn’t grow up hunting or in a family that hunts. We always were more of the canoeing, hiking types. In fact, I didn’t even know my father owned a gun until I started work at the National Wild Turkey Federation and became editor of Women In The Outdoors magazine.
      Thinking back to my first hunt (a turkey hunt in Mississippi) when I was 22, I smile at my parents’ reactions. The hunt happened the week before Easter, so I made a side trip on the way home to spend the holiday with them. Dad had me pose in full camo with our dog—a stray mutt that adopted us when I was in grade school—for a picture I still keep in an album titled Favorite Photos. And Mom weeded through the turkey feathers picking out the prettiest ones to pass out to her students at school.
      Now, both of them are active participants in the wild game dinners at their church. When they’re flipping channels, they pause on a hunting show just to make sure my husband or I are not on it. And both of their vehicles sport NWTF stickers. Neither of my parents hunt, nor are they in danger of picking up the habit anytime soon. But they are 100 percent supportive of me. And I am thankful.
      When you’re a novice hunter, it’s important to have a mentor to show you the ropes in the field. But it’s just as important to glean moral support from family and friends. Surrounding yourself with people keeps you energized and excited about your new adventure.
      You never know. You may just recruit a new hunter along the way.
      But I just can’t imagine my mom in Mossy Oak…
Karen Lee
Editor of Women In The Outdoors

...two winners this week, actually. I’ll be traveling for the first half of next week with intermittent internet access. So I figured I’d announce two winners this Friday, in case I’m not back with enough time to pick a winner for next Friday (But considering the flood of great comments over the past few days, I’ll do my best to pick a winner for next week anyway!).
      SO, winner number one is Wanda Hyleman of Cordele, Georgia. We all got to know Wanda a little better through her comments and photos this week, and she’ll be getting a FatBoy Lite cushion courtesy of Hunt Comfort (it’s a plush, camo seat for long hours of sitting on the ground).
      Winner number two is Jeanne Emmons of Tallassee, Alabama. Jeanne is a new(ish) hunter, who we know as J9, and she will be getting a pair of SHE Pro Hunter Series Pants, courtesy of SHE Safari.
      The giveaway goes in, so look for another winner (hopefully) next week. –K.H.

Have you seen this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about gun manufacturers offering pink firearms to attract female buyers? It’s currently being discussed by the guys on the F&S news blog (you might want to check out some of their comments involving Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake stickers). The story quotes a number of store-owners and shoppers who have differing opinions on the appropriateness of a pink firearm in the field.
      So how do you feel about pink guns—or any other girl-ified gear for that matter? Is such an item a fun must-have, or an obnoxious must-avoid? When I say girl-ified, I don’t mean a shorter stock or other modifications meant to improve the way a piece of equipment fits its owner; I mean aesthetic adjustments that make piece of gear more, well, girly.
      Maybe the larger issue is that of each person’s self-perception as an outdoorsman. Do you consider yourself a woman hunter, who’s in many ways different from the men in the field? Or are you a hunter like any other, who just happens to be a woman? –K. H.

I’ve been wanting to get some photos up on the blog, and conveniently enough, reader Wanda Hyleman sent me a few to post along with the following comments. –K.H.

      I encourage all the women I know to join their boyfriends/husbands in the woods. I sure am glad that my ex introduced me to hunting, as I never went before he took me and I have so many great memories of those years together. Last year, when he gave me the gun that was his dad’s I know I probably had my mouth open since we’d been divorced for 6 years. He even gave me a ladder stand a few months ago, and I repainted it and my nephew helped me put it up last weekend. I feel bad for him that he lost the desire to hunt after his father died in 1995, but I sure do treasure all those memories. I learned everything I know from the two of them.
      My ex-husband was always just as excited as I was when I got one. The buck mounted on the wall was taken in 1991, on a south Georgia farm. We all saw him throughout that season, and when I shot him my father-in-law said, “Son, she got our deer.” But he was happy for me anyway. He scored 124 7/8. The other photo is of me and a deer I took on the farm where I still hunt. He was my first 10-point, and I was so excited. Could ya tell by my smile! I had a little trouble finding him. The men on the farm told me I missed him, and I had better check my scope. I called my ex that night, and asked him about how they react when they are hit. And he said, “You know you are a good shot, don’t pay those men any attention, just go back and start looking in the thick brush, and I know you will find him.”
      So I went right back the next day and kept on til I found him.

I have to say, I love our blog. There are so many great, thoughtful comments—I really look forward to checking in to see what everyone’s talking about. And the more talk, the more impossible it gets to pick a ‘winner’ each week. Luckily, we’ve gotten some additional items in the giveaway inventory, so we can keep our little system of finding good homes for gear going longer.
      Okay, so enough suspense. This week’s winner is Katie Hendrickson of Crab Orchard, West Virginia. Katie will be getting a Climb-Lite Cushion from Hunt Comfort. It’s a small, light, camo cushion designed to make tree-stand hunting more comfortable.
      The giveaway goes on, so look for another winner next Friday. –K.H.

It’s always time to talk about the environment. But considering that Field & Stream’s Heroes of Conservation Awards event is taking place Thursday, this week seems better than most for a post on the work sportsmen do for habitat.

Those of you who read the magazine know that for two years, Field & Stream has held this awards program to spotlight sportsmen and women who do great things for conservation. The magazine gets a number of entries throughout the year, and each fall, six winners are featured in the book and honored at an awards event in New York City.

I’ve been one of the editors working on this program, and having read hundreds of entries, I've been amazed by the fact that so few were from women. Of course, this wasn’t a huge shock considering that Field & Stream’s readers are overwhelmingly male. But I mean hardly any women were writing in about their conservation projects. There actually was one woman who made the semi-finalist round of 21 people in the program’s first year. But when we asked each of those 21 to provide more information so we could choose the winners, she was the only one who didn’t respond—so frustrating!

But the tides have turned in 2007. There were more entries from the ladies this year, and one of the six winners to be honored at Thursday night’s event is a woman—and she’s awesome! Her name is Joan Vernon, she’s from Key Biscayne, Fla., and she’s vice-chairman of the Billfish Foundation (she’ll be our honorary fisherwoman on the blog). Joan does so much good work, I frankly have trouble keeping all her involvements straight. But the saltwater habitat conservation project she’s being recognized for is a massive research program that places $4,000 tracking tags into marlin, swordfish, and sailfish to collect habitat data.

Joan travels a lot for her work, but she took a minute last night between trips to email this comment for the blog:

There are many women involved in fresh and saltwater fishing these days. It is good to see women take an active part. We need more women to take part in the conservation of our sport. Whether it is fishing or hunting women need to be aware of the urgency and need that grass roots efforts have for support. It does seem that when women get involved more gets done!!!!

So what do you do for habitat conservation? Maybe you have a project of your own, or belong to a conservation group like Ducks Unlimited or Pheasants Forever. From cleaning trash out of a stream, to planting upland bird habitat, to just making sure you recycle—every little bit helps.

--K.H.

Nancy Jo Adams of Banks, Alabama! You know her as ANewMe2B, and she’s posted a number of great (and lengthy!) comments. This week, Nancy Jo will be getting a pair of Mad Dog Gear Ducks Unlimited waders, courtesy of the folks at Ducks Unlimited.

The giveaway goes on, so look for another winner next Friday. –K.H.

I remember the exact moment that I first fully realized there was a limited amount of time in a day, and not everything you wanted to do was going to fit.
      It was a warm September afternoon during my freshman year of high school, and  I had just found out that Indoor Guard, for which I was about to try out, practiced at the same time as Vocal Jazz Ensemble, of which I was already a member (yup, I was both a band geek and a chorus nerd). At the time, I also played French horn in the Brass Choir, was on stage crew for the musical, and sang in a community chorus. So far, all those activities fit into a week, but Indoor Guard—which I really, really wanted to join because the boy I liked was in it, and the year-end competition would be in Wildwood, N.J., which was cool—would demolish my delicately coordinated extra-curricular routine.
      That schedule conflict was the moment at which I realized you couldn’t do every single thing you wanted. You had to prioritize, then you had to pick.
      Now the cruel limits of a 24-hour day are never far from mind. And moving to Manhattan, with its unending opportunities and non-stop activities made my tendency to over-schedule even worse. Just finding time to write this blog post on finding time has been a challenge.
      But, of course, you make time for the things you love, and hunting is one of those things. Luckily, working at Field & Stream made hunting part of my job, so finding field time hasn’t always been a challenge for me. But I feel like I’m constantly hearing from others how hard it is to get out there—work, family, school, after-school—the list of demands on your time can seem unending. In that Field & Stream Women Hunters Poll, 20% of respondents said that, Finding time away from work and home responsibilities to hunt, was the No. 1 challenge that separated women from men hunters. 
      I realize there are plenty of women much saner than myself, who have built an outdoors life that naturally allows for time in the field. But how much of a struggle is it for the rest of us to carve out time to hunt? Do you take time off of work? Line up babysitters? Or maybe you simply say, “To hell with it all, I’m just going!” –K.H.

I’d been planning to kick off an election discussion at some point. With Fred Thompson announcing his candidacy, and Field & Stream’s news blog currently discussing preferred Republicans, I figure this might be a good time.
      I have a question, actually: How much do hunting and gun issues influence your vote? I first started really thinking about the nature of the hook and bullet vote in fall 2004, when Field & Stream ran a pair of Q&A’s with President George Bush and Senator John Kerry. At the time I was editing the magazine’s mail page, and I read every single letter that came in response to those interviews. That was by far the biggest, most raging flood of mail I’d seen, overwhelmingly from male readers, who seemed to be basing their vote solely on hunting and gun issues. I remember one lone reader stating that field-related concerns definitely factored into his vote, but so did health care, education, and the War in Iraq.
      When Field & Stream’s 2007 Women Hunters Poll asked, Do hunting or gun issues affect the way you vote? 78% said yes. So how much do field-related concerns influence your decision? How do you feel about Thompson—or any other candidate for that matter? Or what are your Election ’08 thoughts in general? –K.H.
      
      

Laura Bell of Garrettsville, Ohio! Laura comments frequently and has had more than one great post (as have a lot of people, I think; the comments overall are getting more and more fun to read). This week, Laura will be getting the Pro Series Hunter Jacket, again from SHE Safari (Hey, the company has great stuff and sent F&S a lot of it!).

The giveaway goes on, so look for another winner next Friday. –K.H.