wildHERness Ladies Youth Doe Hunt
January 8-9, 2021
Pass It On Outdoor Mentors and the wildHERness group came together and planned a ladies only doe hunt for 6 young ladies. This was a first for Outdoor mentors and for the wildHERness crew. This hunt took place at Timber Hills Lake Ranch in Mapleton, KS over the first weekend of the antlerless deer season. wildHERness is a new, group in Kansas that has a mission to create a community of strong, adventurous females through participation in outdoor pursuits. We sat down with Founder and President of wildHERness, Jess Rice to get the full scoop on how the deer camp went!
What is the mission wildHERness and how did you get started?
In its simplest form, our mission is to get women involved in the outdoors. As our organization developed, our mission evolved to introduce both women and young girls to an outdoor lifestyle through mentorship and community service. We investigate the basis of barriers to participation and offer skills-based programming aimed at removing those various barriers. Our goal is not to have a membership-based group, where the same individuals return for events time after time. We are aiming higher -- to aid in the creation of competent, authentic outdoorswomen who are empowered and capable of all outdoor pursuits without the presence of wildHERness.
The “Core Four” as the founders are called, met on a small outdoor women’s doe hunt, where we quickly bonded over our love of the outdoors and the shared understanding that there is a high demand for outlets that get women in the outdoors.
What inspired the female youth deer hunt this January with PIO?
As the Core Four looked back on our personal outdoor journeys, some of us were able to say “I am so glad I had a parent to teach me about hunting.” Some of us instead said “I sure wish I had been introduced to the outdoors at a young age.” As adults, we recognize and appreciate how nature has changed our lives. Every workshop, class & event wildHERness offers has educated us in some way, helping the Core Four to become better sportswomen. We knew we wanted to share that empowerment, and that’s when it dawned on us that we had a perfect platform from which to engage young girls.
That realization was the foundation for our female youth mentored hunting program, HuntHER. In our research, we have found that many mentored events fall short when it comes to long-term retention of hunters because there isn’t a follow up hunt to keep interest levels high. When thinking about our HuntHER program, we wanted to have multiple events with the same youths, so we can not only teach skills, but develop relationships with our mentees. Part of the beauty of hunting is the community of support that surrounds it, and we want to illustrate that! So, HuntHER will have annual classes of girls that are paired with mentors within our organization and “graduation” will occur after those girls have been through a series of four hunts (deer, turkey, waterfowl and upland birds) with us. That gives us the ability to really develop our relationships with mentees and give them an understanding of what the Midwest offers in terms of species to hunt.
We have been following the success of PIO for a while now, and knew that we wanted our mentorship program to have many of the same elements. It was a natural choice to collaborate with an organization that shares our values of passing it on to future generations!
Can you break down the events that happened on Friday and Saturday?
Six girls, each with a parent, joined us at Timber Hills Lake Ranch on Friday afternoon. After everyone settled into their cabins, we met at the range for a bit of shooting. After confirming our new hunters and their guns were ready for the next morning’s hunt, we headed to the lodge for dinner and a safety briefing. Owner, Joey Bisogno, went over the expectations from the hunters (most importantly, HAVE FUN) and we had a short Q&A session over gun safety, shot placement and shooting lanes.
Can you elaborate on some of the girls? Where are they from? Did they have much hunting experience?
We had girls from around Kansas, as well as two out-of-state mother/daughter duos, one from Tennessee, the other from Minnesota! We had first timers, second timers, but none of the girls had much deer hunting experience at all. I think the general consensus from parents was that their primary goal for bringing their kiddos to our hunt was to give them an opportunity to connect with other girls their age who enjoyed the same things they do. We ran with that as our primary objective and did our best to make the youth understand that they aren’t “weird” for being interested in the outdoors. That’s the image we strive to project at all junctures, not just when kids are involved -- here’s a whole group of women who are radically different in appearance, lifestyles, ethnicities, backgrounds…but who have formed an insanely strong friendship based on one thing: mutual enjoyment of the outdoors.
How about the mentors? What/How did the mentors get inspired to partake in this hunt?
The mission of wildHERness is one of giving back—we don’t want to learn skills or go on hunts simply to amass a rap sheet of experiences. We learn skills so that we can share with others. One of the mothers on the hunt said it best, “Sharing our experiences is part of hunting. What good is it to just do my own thing and not be part of a community?” We just felt that! I spoke with the individual mentors after the weekend, and all of them referenced how alive it made them feel to help another woman harvest a deer. It’s one thing to have an outdoor passion burning inside of you, but to see that fire light in a young girl’s eyes? That will almost bring you to your knees.
Did you personally hunt with one of the girls? How did it go with you and her?
I DID! I had the pleasure of meeting my hunter at the Governor’s Ringneck Classic event back in November. In your mid-thirties, you don’t expect a teenager to come around and just immediately take your heart, but that’s exactly what happened with Ryleigh. We just bonded immediately. Her parents are part of the package, and I’m beyond blessed to know a wonderful family that supports their daughter’s outdoor passion.
Ryleigh was able to connect with a deer on our hunt, the second harvest in her first season! I was very proud of how she paused long enough to get her shakes and breathing under control—she made a fantastic shot.
How does wildHERness plan to partner with PIO and other organizations moving forward?
In 2021, a goal for us is to increase collaboration with organizations, companies and agencies that share any part of our mission, because that gives us the opportunity to reach a bigger audience! There are so many outdoor groups that have ways for women and youth to get involved—when they can combine forces, great things happen. We have mentored events planned for 2021 with the Kansas chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and Missouri Pheasants Forever.
A Special thank you to the sponsors who made this deer hunt possible
The wildHERness crew
KDWPT provided a killer Outdoor Edge skinning kit and a blaze orange hat to each hunter.
Timber Hills sponsored lodging costs.
JOCO PF took care of our breakfast meals.
TriStar Arms sponsored our first year of the HuntHER program as well!
Want to get involved with wildHERness?
Contact Jess Rice at jess.wildherness@gmail.com or https://wildherness.org/
