More women are joining
the hunt in Washington

LITTLEROCK, Thurston County - The weather turns crisp, the trees start to blush and the talk, in some circles, touches on licenses and permits; shooting with a rifle vs. a revolver; camouflaging oneself in snowy timber; and the practical aspects of wearing a sports bra. The straps won't slip. Less distracting when you're out stalking a 600-pound animal.

The great tradition of hunting, a sport practiced last year by 225,000 people in Washington state, is gradually being embraced by women and girls.

These new practitioners, who sport ponytails and blue plastic barrettes, say their interest is about wanting to be a part of the natural cycle, about love and, in some cases, about the desire to be a good parent.

"We eat whatever we harvest," says Alison Block, 40. She grew up near Bellevue and now lives in Spokane with her husband, a lifelong hunter, and their two daughters, ages 6 and 8. She calls herself a "hunter in training" - her first foray with a rifle was last year, when she failed to kill a doe.

"We feel healthier eating wild meat than what I can buy in the grocery store," says Block, who will feed her family this winter on elk, venison and stir-fried cattails. Her interest was born by harvesting wild plants; the logical next step was to hunt animals.

"A lot of people think hunting and they have this image of beer drinking, shooting guns out of a car window," she says.

But what she has learned from watching her husband is that hunting can be about respecting wildlife. It's that respect - knowing where food comes from and then appreciating it - that Block wants to teach her daughters.

9 percent of 7 percent

Some 14 million Americans are hunters, according to 1996 data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. About 9 percent of those, or 1.2 million, are female.

While the government lacks comparable figures from earlier years, officials and hunters alike cite anecdotal evidence that more women are hunting.

Earlier this year, the cover of Sports Afield magazine featured a woman, calling her "The New Face of Hunting." Hunters organizations such as The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation have added women's workshops the past five years. Last weekend, at a hunter education course near Lake Quinault, Doug Zimmer of the federal wildlife service counted 30 students: five were female, including an 8-year-old girl (children can hunt, regardless of their age, if they pass a hunter education course).

State authorities now track the numbers of hunting licenses issued according to gender: some 7 percent of the licenses in 1998 went to women and girls.

But game wardens encounter more women in the field than those numbers reflect, said Dave Ware, an 18-year veteran of Fish and Wildlife's game division. The women are with their husbands or fathers-in-law or, sometimes, on their own. And those women, in turn, tell of seeing even more "gals" on the road or in a store buying supplies.

Cookie Lillard is the first woman to serve as a regional director for the 23-year-old Washington State Bow Hunters Association. As such, she makes the rounds of the annual sportsmen conventions in Puyallup and Seattle. More and more women stop at her table and inquire about how to learn to hunt, or where to find equipment and clothing suited for a female physique.

Once in a while, a man will look her over and tell Lillard - who is 40, stands 5-foot-11 and slightly resembles Julia Roberts - that she doesn't look like a hunter. To which Lillard replies: "Well, tell me, what does a bow hunter look like?"

Similar stories

Women who hunt often tell a similar story:

They grew up in a non-hunting family, then fell in love with a hunter. If you wanted the man, you did what he liked to do. A typical date might be a Saturday afternoon squirrel hunt.

But somewhere along the line, this "courtship hunting" is something you begin to enjoy. You become so proficient, so devoted, that the arrival of fall, which signals football to some, has you oiling the shotgun and hunting turkey.

"I love being out in the woods and the relationship I have with animals," says Diane Lueck, who bought her first rifle before her wedding.

She lives in Wisconsin and is the assistant director of Becoming an Outdoor Woman, an organization that teaches outdoors skills to women across the country.

"I like to hunt," Lueck says. "I like to eat what I hunt. It's important for me to feel like I'm part of that natural system."

A good hunt doesn't have to involve a kill, Lueck says. Last year, she was propped against an oak tree when six gobbling toms paraded out of the brush and strutted in front of her. If she had picked up her gun, she would have spooked them. So she just held her breath and watched.

"That was the most wonderful hunt I have ever had," she says.

For Susan Regan of Washougal, Clark County, a single mother, living near the woods offered both a food source and a playground to share with her two sons. They camped and fished, picked berries and hunted mushrooms.

When a woman friend saw her making macaroni and cheese for the boys' dinner, she persuaded Regan to join her on a big-game hunt.

"It was a wonderful way to be able to pull out a steak for breakfast," says Regan, 58, who has hunted for 20 years. "Do you know how many trout it takes to make dinner?"

Bringing a fresh ethic

Mary Zeiss Stange, a professor of religion and women's studies at Skidmore College, has researched women and hunting for her book, "Woman The Hunter." She cites cultural and social factors: the second wave of feminism after World War II; an increase in women's disposable income; an increase in women's interest in exercise and the outdoors; the increase in the number of single mothers.

"It's not simply assumed that a man is going to pass hunting skills down to his sons in some male rite of passage," Stange says. "That has changed."

As more women become hunters, they are changing the macho image of hunting to include a stronger environmental and behavioral ethic.

Jim Posewitz, a former Montana state biologist and founder of a hunter education group called Orion, wrote "Beyond Fair Chase," a popular, palm-sized book that addresses the ethics of being prepared, of the hunt itself, and of how to behave after a shot has been fired.

"Women are more interested in hunting as a method of securing food and of being with nature," Posewitz says. "There's not a competitive mentality that they need to shoot something fast or shoot the biggest bull in the woods."

Many women say they get an adrenalin rush not from firing a gun at an animal but rather from the thinking it requires. Lueck takes joy in the challenge of making a decision with enormous consequences - a challenge that doesn't exist in target shooting.

In 1991, a group of university professors in Wisconsin convened to ponder the barriers that kept women out of the woods and waters: the different ways boys and girls were raised; ill-fitting equipment; the discomfort of being in the minority; lack of programs to teach women about being in the outdoors.

The conference gave birth to "Becoming an Outdoors Woman," a program funded largely by state wildlife agencies that now boasts some 15,000 women participants.

Washington Outdoor Women, or WOW, is a newer program that received state support until budget cuts forced it to seek private funding. The program offers courses from archery to kayaking to Dutch-oven cooking to hunting.

'I like that responsibility'

As many as 100 women paid $175 each to attend a WOW session last weekend at Millersylvania State Park south of Olympia. The big-game-hunting workshop drew five women.

"As soon as you put your hand on that trigger, you have that responsibility," says Diane Wirth, 57, a recent transplant from Alaska and a veteran hunter of deer, caribou and bear. "I like that responsibility."

Lillard, the bow hunter, taught much of the class. She showed photos of deer hunts and talked about when to take a shot. She explained how to use elk urine to mask human odor; how an underwire bra can throw off a compass; how men's wool clothing can be shrunk to fit a woman's smaller frame. She fed her students Idaho elk meatballs, then had them strap on finger and arm guards for some target shooting.

Lillard's mother was a hunter. She grew up hunting grouse with her brother, then switched to elk and deer after meeting her husband. Her weapon of choice is a long bow she made out of yew wood, traded for one of her pies.

She hunted deer while pregnant with her daughter, Heidi, her only child. Heidi could distinguish a mule deer from a white-tailed deer with a spotting scope at age 5. At 6, tired of holding her parents' arrows, she learned to shoot. At 7, she witnessed her first bobcat hunt.

"I think what I'm teaching her is to appreciate wildlife, and that she's going to have to share her habitat with these animals," Lillard says.

Heidi, now 13, has amassed several archery trophies. What's nice about hunting for animals - with a camera, binoculars or a bow and arrow, she says - is "being out in the woods and getting so close to them." She prefers a bow over a rifle because she doesn't like the way a gun kicks against her shoulder.

Last season, Heidi tried for an elk but didn't see any. She saw one deer but wasn't allowed to shoot because it was dark. This fall she'll try again, likely with Mom at her side.

Florangela Davila's phone message number is 206-464-2916.