Hendee: Female hunters say they like the camaraderie

Malia Meyer and Tara Moeller are used to being one of the guys.

In their circles of friends, few other women are active hunters. So when they take their shotguns into the fields during pheasant season, it's more than likely that the hunters on either side of them are men.

They were the only females in a family-and-friends hunting party near Wisner on opening day of Nebraska's pheasant season a month ago.

“To get up early and have the camaraderie with friends and family, watching the dogs work, the anticipation — that's what it's all about,” said Meyer, 45, a registered nurse in Wayne, Neb.

“Mostly it's just about being out in nature.”

Meyer and Moeller — who each started hunting at age 12 — are part of the changing face of hunting across the U.S.

The number of female hunters — about 10 percent of the nation's 12.5 million hunters — has grown slightly since 1991, according to the most recent National Survey of Hunting, Fishing and Wildlife Associated Recreation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Among Nebraska-resident hunters, an estimated 11 percent are women, according to the survey.

A study by the National Sporting Goods Association puts the number of female hunters higher. It estimates more than 3 million women hunt, accounting for about 16 percent of what the association says are nearly 21 million active hunters in the U.S.

The study, which covered 2001 to 2005, found that 2.4 million women hunted with firearms in 2005, up 72 percent from 2001. Fifty percent more were target shooting. The number of female bowhunters grew 176 percent to 786,000.

The fastest-growing age groups are women ages 18 to 24, followed by those ages 35 to 44.

The slight increase of female hunters in the Fish and Wildlife survey came during an 11 percent decline in the number of hunters nationwide from 1991 to 2006.

But there's hope on the horizon. About 304,000 girls ages 6 to 15 hunted from 2001 through 2006, a 50 percent increase from a decade earlier.

Moeller, 29, a credit analyst at Farm Credit Services of America in Omaha, said she started hunting for the opportunity to spend more time with her father, brothers and cousins.

In a Nebraska Game and Parks Commission safety course, required of new hunters, 12-year-old Moeller was the first shooter in her boy-dominated class in Wisner to break a blue rock in shotgun practice.

“To this day, hunting is still a little competitive,” she said. “In my family, you want to shoot well.”

Moeller said she won't forget the adrenalin rush she experienced when she shot her first pheasant while hunting with her father, Lary Moeller of Wisner.

“Dad let me have the first shot. It fell to the ground and I took off running after the pheasant with my gun,” she said. “Dad yelled at me to put the gun down. I set the gun down and caught up with it.”

Meyer grew up hunting to put food on the table after her father moved the family to Montana from Iowa when the hog market fell apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“I was the oldest in the family and Dad's right hand. It always was a necessity to hunt,” she said.

Meyer was 12 when she shot her first deer, a two-point buck.

“We were hunting the coulees. It was snowy and warm. I stepped into snow and suddenly was in water to my knees. My boots filled with water but I continued to hunt,” she said. “This was before the days of Gore-Tex and Thinsulate, waterproof boots.

“Then on the way back to town in Dad's old Ford pickup, the heater went out,” she said. “I was frozen but excited.”

Meyer gave up deer hunting but still hunts pheasants.

“I enjoy walking in the grass,'' she said. “We don't have to get birds, but it's always a bonus if you do.”

Nebraska is one of more than 40 states adopting the program Becoming an Outdoors Woman. The program is designed to attract more women to the outdoors, and has been in Nebraska for 17 years.

Across the nation, the program introduces about 15,000 women to shooting, hunting, fishing, hiking, bird watching and other activities each year.

Among dozens of Nebraska events are canoeing, kayaking, firearm safety, fishing, map and compass, camping and backpacking, deer and turkey hunting, taking kids hunting and fishing, rifle marksmanship, shotgunning, bird banding and identification, Dutch oven cooking, sausage making, predator calling-hunting, photography, tracking wildlife and self defense.

Game and Parks also has a series of Beyond Becoming an Outdoor Woman activities. They include snowshoeing, scuba diving, mentored deer hunts, processing and preparing deer meat, Niobrara River kayaking and spring turkey hunting.

Two family workshops based on the outdoors woman model were held this year.

All of this has one goal, said Jeff Rawlinson, a Game and Parks outdoor education manager: Develop more opportunities for women and families to become engaged in the outdoors, especially hunting, fishing and shooting sports.

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com

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