Born to Hunt-by Melissa Shopes

Born to Hunt

By Melissa Shope

My first hunting experience was when I was a little girl and my dad decided to take my sister and I grouse hunting.  I, of course, being against killing helpless animals, had no intentions of letting him kill anything.  He told us before we left that we had to be very quiet.  We weren’t and that was the last time he took us hunting.  He loved to hunt grouse and turkey but was never much on deer hunting.   He loved the outdoors and in turn taught us to love nature also.  We didn’t have much money or a lot of extras but he always saved enough money to take us on a family vacation.  We learned not to be in a hurry to get to our destination because he always took the scenic route and made plenty of stops to enjoy the views.  I don’t really remember being upset about it.  It was just what we were used to.  He always tried to pick historical places so we could learn something from our experiences.

Growing up in eastern Kentucky gave me a love for being the mountains that I didn’t realize until I moved to North Carolina.  As a girl I loved being in the woods exploring or climbing a tree with my favorite book and reading for hours.  I moved to the foothills of North Carolina when I was eighteen and didn’t visit the mountains that often. My first husband did not hunt nor did he enjoy going to the mountains or visiting KY.

I went home to Kentucky as often as I could and looked forward to the climb up the winding roads to get to my parents house.  I found that I would get more homesick in the fall.  It has always been my favorite season and the mountains in Kentucky are beautiful in the fall.

At age thirty-six, after a failed marriage and two wonderful teenage daughters, I started dating a man that I worked with.  I had worked with him for five years so we knew each other well.  He had always been big on hunting and I used to tease him sometimes about killing helpless animals.  We fell in love and spent as much time together as we possibly could.  One day he asked me if I wanted to ride to South Carolina with him to his hunting land and I said that I would love to go.  I still remember how I felt the first time we walked into the swamp.  It was in the spring and it was breathtaking. I cried as I stood and took in the beauty of it all.  The way the sunlight broke through the tress spilling rays of light into the densely wooded swamp gave me goose bumps.  I fell in love instantly.  I could see how much he loved being there and that he felt the same way that I did. Seeing his love for the outdoors and how he took time to stop and show me things that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, made me love him even more.   I continued going with him to help him get ready for deer season.  It was a lot of work but I enjoyed every second of it.

One day he jokingly asked me if I wanted to go deer hunting with him and again I agreed to go.  He was very surprised but excited that I actually wanted to try it.  He found me some clothes and bundled me up as much as he could and warned me how cold it might be.  I made it through the day without complaining even though I couldn’t feel my feet as I walked back to the truck.  We didn’t see any deer that day but I continued to go with him every chance I got. It was a long time until I actually saw a deer and I was getting very impatient.  He tried to encourage me and continued to tell me that if I kept going I would see deer.  I finally did start seeing deer and it was so much fun being able to sit in the stand and watch them walk under you and never know you were there.    I loved being in the woods and listening to the sounds and seeing all of the wildlife. You feel so close to God during those times.  Seeing all that he created and experiencing it firsthand makes you appreciate things so much more.  It gives you time to examine your life and be thankful for the ones you love.

He took me to the range and I finally found something that I was good at.  I had never been athletic and failed at every sport I had tried but I could shoot a gun!  I loved it.  The more I went hunting the more I wanted to try it for myself.  I started sharing a stand with his son, Hunter.  We had so much fun.  We saw a lot of deer but we always seemed to get the giggles over the silliest thing.  Those were memories I will never forget.  Eventually I started hunting by myself but I just never saw a shooter.  I had no desire to shoot a doe.  If  I was going to kill something I wanted it to be a good one. With that said, I still haven’t got my chance to this day.  But I have patience and I know it will happen.

In the spring he took me turkey hunting and I my love for hunting doubled!  I was shocked at how much fun it was.  The first day we hunted he called in a big bird right to his decoy.  He shot and I jumped and yelled, “You got him!”  I guess I was surprised but he thought it was funny.  He is a very good hunter and a very good shot.  He easily killed his limit that year and I was disappointed when it was over so soon.

My dad was surprised and proud that I had taken to hunting the way I had.  After each hunt I would call him on the phone to give him every detail.   He would share his experiences with me and would tape things on TV to show me when I came home to visit.  We planned to go turkey hunting together in Kentucky during their fall season but he passed away before we got the chance.  I am so glad that I found my love for hunting before he passed away.  Being able to share our hunting experiences with each other made us closer than we had ever been.  My mother gave me his turkey gun and I will proudly carry it hunting with me the next time I go.

I had my first exciting chance to shoot at a turkey this past spring.  It was a lot of fun but a big miss for me.  I was so upset and disappointed.  I will try again next year.  I have been teased many times by my co-workers about hunting but it doesn’t bother me.  They have no clue what they are missing and I can’t explain it to them.  I owe so much to my wonderful husband for taking me with him and letting me fall in love with the many joys of hunting.  I have no doubt that it will be a part of my life for many years to come.   I look back and laugh at how I used to be and how I am now.  I went from a little girl who hated the thoughts of hunting, in to a woman who, I now know, was born to hunt.

My first buck-by Deborah Fox

After multiple weekends of whining and feeling sorry for myself; my many years in the woods finally paid off.  I hate to admit it, but I’d been whining. I was sick of hearing myself, and I know my husband would agree. It seemed that no matter what I did to hide my scent, be quiet, and make as few movements as possible, my cover would be blown!

We’d been hunting in Georgia for a few years with some “good ole’ boys” who had some “freezer” success but no real bragging rights. As the only female hunting on the property I didn’t really get a warm & fuzzy welcome from the other male hunters. At one point they even asked my husband, “Do you bring her every weekend?” He smartly replied, “I wouldn’t think of leaving her at home, she’s a better shot than me!”

The moon had been full or close to it for several nights so the deer had been doing most of their feeding then. There had been signs of rutting activity for a few days, and my husband witnessed several bucks chasing a doe.  As they raced past him, he spun around so quickly that he broke the chair he was sitting in. But that’s for another story.

We made the decision to sleep in the next morning.  We ate a big breakfast and head to the stands around 9:00am. We had plans to stay all day instead of breaking at noon for lunch and maybe catch some bucks wondering mid-day.

I had been in my ladder stand five minutes when I heard the fateful blow of an alerted deer behind me. I was so close to climbing down and going back to bed! But not wanting to mess up my husband’s hunt, I stuck it out.  I’m really glad I did.

Ten minutes later I noticed some movement inside the wood line about 85 yards in front of me.  I picked up my binoculars and scanned the edge to find out if it was a “shooter”. I caught the glimpse of an antler and my heart started to pound. I carefully raised my gun and tried to locate the buck in my scope. Where was he? Every time I looked in the scope I couldn’t locate him through the saplings and briars. I could only see him with the naked eye. I was really getting nervous! I thought back to the past few weeks and all the blown opportunities. I was sure if I didn’t get it together soon this would be added to the list. I took a deep breath and looked back in the scope one more time and found his front legs. Eureka! Just above that is his chest! I slowly moved my gun up until I found his front right shoulder and pulled the trigger on my 30-06. All four legs went in the air in the classic bucking motion. I had made contact! He broke into the field and headed straight for me. This is when I realized he wasn’t just a buck he was the biggest buck I’d seen in the woods, and the first one I’d shot at! I rapidly pumped my gun and fired off four more shots. He came to rest about fifteen feet behind my stand. I quickly grabbed another clip and slammed it into the gun. I wasn’t going to take a chance that he might get back up. He wiggled a little and I shot him again. Once I was confident he wasn’t going anywhere the celebrating began. Later I was told that I was heard on the other side of the property hoopin’ and hollerin’! My husband keyed up his two-way radio and asked if I was ok, and if I had one down. I confirmed that it was big but he should continue to hunt. I still had no idea the magnitude of what I had just accomplished. He waited about ten minutes but couldn’t stand the anticipation and headed my way.  By then I had finally stopped shaking and felt confident enough to safely climb down out of the stand.  I stood there for what seemed an eternity just staring at the magnificent animal in front of me. When my husband arrived he congratulated me with a hug and a tear. I then said to him, “Don’t even think about telling me I’m not getting it mounted!”

I’m very blessed to have found someone who enjoys the sport as much as I do and that we were able to share this moment together. The only thing that would have made it greater was if my Dad, who introduced me to hunting could have been there too.

As we started to drag the deer out of the woods my husband noticed there were only two shots in the deer. The first shot and the last shot. The first being the fatal one and the last was my nervous one….right into tenderloin, which to this day my husband won’t let me forget!

When we returned to camp we discovered there had been multiple deer shot that morning including an 8 point, a 6 point, and several does.  But nothing came close to my 11 point. Those “good ole’ boys ”  were in awe of what the “girl” had harvested. The president of the club said it was the largest buck shot on the property in 20 years. The guy who shot the 8 point couldn’t stop rubbing the antlers of my deer. He said he was really happy with his deer until he saw mine.

After all the congratulating my husband and I took my deer to a local “stop n shop” that had a scale to get it weighed. As they began to hoist it up the last number I read was 185 lbs before the scale blew apart. It might have weighed more than that but I’ll never know.

He now proudly hangs in our home on what I like to call my “Wall of Fame” along with two of the biggest fish I’ve ever caught.

I’ve always looked forward to deer season beginning, but since that October morning in 2005 things have been a lot different.

Tiffany, Colorado – 06/19/10 – Colorado

Aztec, New Mexico – 08/21/10 – New Mexico – New Mexico

Coffeeville, Kansas – 06/27/10 – Kansas – Kansas

June’s Woman of the Wild-Christine Appleberg

By Christine Appleberg

How does someone who grew up in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago become an avid outdoorswoman, president of a bowfishing club and editor of a hunting website?

I credit my parents, particularly, my most understanding mom.   She started a lot of my interest by teaching me to fish and then how to fillet the fish that we caught.  This lit the fire in me that nature was not only wondrous and fun, but often downright tasty.  And despite her desire to see me wear cute frilly dresses and act like a proper little girl, she never attempted to quash my fascination with the outdoors and nature, even when I kept a live red bellied snake in my dancing ballerina jewelry box.

Gaining permission to hunt where I lived was difficult but finding a place to trap was far easier.  Even in the waning days of the fur boom there were plenty of raccoons, ‘possums and skunks on the edges of suburbia for a kid to catch.

When I checked my traps I often carried my Browning Nomad recurve bow and a mismatched assortment of arrows with me.

The bow was a gift from my older brother and the arrows were whatever Kmart had on sale.  I knew nothing of arrow spine, or bow ‘tuning’ concepts.  At 45lbs @ 28″ the bow was far too heavy for me. Yet, a surprising number of rabbits, squirrels and the occasional woodchuck became dinner and tanned hides due to my bow.   Deer were scarce in the area back then, so while I did buy a mail in permit a few times, I never actually went hunting for them.

After high school I went to college in Bottineau, North Dakota.  Going from the Chicago suburbs to ND was quite a culture shock.  If I remember correctly, there were about 7 million people within a 40 mile radius of where I grew up.  There was only a little over a half million people in the whole state of North Dakota at that time.  While this meant I had to accept that there were no real pizza places or sushi bars for couple hundred miles of my college, the upside was outstanding.

There were miles and miles of State Wildlife areas teaming with critters and hardly any people.  Creatures quite exotic to someone from Illinois, like moose, elk, pronghorn, mulies, snowshoe rabbits, jack rabbits, ruffed grouse and porcupines.  There was an unbelievable amount of waterfowl around too.  The college even had a bird cleaning area for the students. However, my only attempt at waterfowl hunting resulted in me shooting a single blue winged teal, which dropped into the middle of a slough.  I had to wade into the cold water and mud to retrieve it and this experience chilled me on water fowling. My other hunting adventures were more productive, and I kept myself busy with rabbits, ruffed grouse, furbearers and even took my first turkey in ND.

It was also in North Dakota that I started to get serious about archery.  A very entertaining and patient sporting goods shop owner and his wife helped me get set up with JVA Astro Stinger bow.  Even back then this was not a very high tech bow but I became enamored with it.  I shot it every day.  At my first outdoor tournament I won the women’s division but what really made me proud was that I would have been in fourth place had I been competing in the men’s division.  I also managed to win a moving target competition. I was officially hooked.

It was still a couple of years later, when I moved back to Illinois, that I finally started to make a real attempt at hunting deer.  Like most of my other outdoor pursuits, I am a self-taught deer hunter which means that I made a whole lot of dumb mistakes.  One of my first deer bowhunting  experiences I made the mistake of sitting down right in the deer trail and waited for a deer to show up. This was thinking like a trapper rather than a hunter.

Sure enough, a nice buck comes ambling down the trail and just about runs into me.  I was desperately trying to pull my bow back but was unable to because I was overcome with a serious bout of buck fever.  When the buck finally noticed the weird blob waving a bow around in front of him, his eyes bugged out and he simply bounced off the trail snorting (and I swear laughing) at me.

It only took once to learn that lesson but I plenty of learning to do after that.  Thankfully, I was fast learner (and lucky) and did tag my first deer that same year.  Like most hunters today, deer hunting makes up the majority of my hunting time afield.  However, these days I find myself referring to deer season as the ‘off-season’.   Don’t get me wrong, I love deer hunting. However, my latest outdoor obsession lets me pursue my quarry day or night, warm or cold weather, and I can do it, literally, with a boatload of friends.

Bowfishing.

Bowfishing combines the ‘thrill of the hunt’ with fast paced archery action and it’s only as serious as you want to make it.  I am blessed with a great circle of friends and truly some of my fondest memories are times we’ve had together bowfishing.  It’s a sport where on a good day or night you will shoot so many times you may simply become too tired to shoot anymore. Laughing, yelling, high fiving and plenty of ribbing is all part of the sport. After a good bowfishing outing, a new appreciation of the simple things like a hot shower and good soap are realized.

I have been bowfishing almost year round for several years now.  I’ve bowfished from Lake Guntersville in Georgia to Saginaw Bay in Michigan and many places in between.   My boyfriend Kendall has a tricked out pontoon boat that has a raised shooting deck, lights, generator and uses a pusher fan instead of a trolling motor to get into very shallow water.   It gets us some weird looks when we pull it down the road but it is an absolutely sweet bowfishing rig.  [If you're reading this Kendall, I do love you for more than your boat!]

I am currently President of the Illinois Bowfishers Club.  It’s a not for profit club that promotes bowfishing in Illinois through education events, outdoor shows and also host several tournaments and fun shoots.   We also work with state and federal fisheries biologists who study both native and invasive non-native species.  This makes the sport not only fun and entertaining but downright interesting too.

If you are someone who is interested in cutting back on your ‘down time’ between deer seasons, I urge you to look into bowfishing.  You might be surprised at just how much it will change your opinion of the ‘off season’.   I will be teaching a bowfishing class for women at an upcoming Women in the Outdoors class in July at Clinton Lake in Illinois.

For information about bowfishing, check out www.illinoisbowfishers.com

I am an editor and administrator on www.HuntingNet.com There’s a wealth of hunting information there that will help a new hunter avoid learning so many lessons by trial and error like I did.

December’s “Woman of the Wild”-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.