leader tagged posts

A Life Among the Silver Backed Males

I work in a pretty male-dominated field. I remember 20 years ago when I was interning for a wildlife conservation organization, my supervisor described our colleagues as “silver backed males,” a fairly apt description for the typically gray-haired men leading most of the conservation movement at the time. At the first conferences I attended, I was often struck by how skewed the gender demographics were in traditional wildlife management.

Jodi Stemler

I felt I had another strike against me as I was trying to shoulder my way in to the profession, because I grew up in the most densely populated state in the country. New Jersey – little bitty state, lots and lots (and lots) of people...

By Dan Wrinn

Clayton & Molly Wrinn

I consider myself a pretty hard core hunter.  If you look inside one of my three freezers, as well as the freezer in my office, they are overwhelmingly full of things I’ve harvested.  Ground venison outweighs ground beef, and ducks and geese outnumber chicken nuggets by at least ten times.  As far as fish, well, I can’t really remember the last time I actually went to a store and bought fish.  I can honestly say that me and my wife and two kids eat more wild game than store bought food.  No doubt. 

And now that my kids are getting older, I’ve started thinking about what I hope will be a long, personal relationship with their natural world that they will develop with the mentoring of me, my wife and my inner circle of hunting and fishing buddies...

My First Bird, Leslie Dunne Ketner

Leslie Ketner

The first time I ever shot a bird it was a dove.

I was on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the early ’90s. It was opening day, and I sat excitedly on a bucket in a field of sunflowers.  My husband and our yellow lab, Berkeley, were in another row of sunflowers. 

As the birds started flying, I looked around to track my fellow hunters, showing caution on my first attempt to shoot something other than an orange clay. All of a sudden a dove was flying a nice left to right pattern.  It was pretty far off, but I mounted my side-by-side 12 gauge and  boom, it dropped in another row of  dried flowers.  Being new to this, I wasn’t sure of the protocol on when to pick up my bird...

Hunter Identity, by Katie McKalip

Katie McKalip

I was paying for my new shotgun, several years ago in a sporting good store, when it hit me.

Hunting had become part of my identity. But I wasn’t sure exactly how it happened.

Growing up, I had few opportunities to get afield, even though both my parents came from hunting and fishing families. And my upbringing in the suburbs of a city that severely restricted personal firearms ownership was hardly one that celebrated sporting pursuits.    

But then I moved out west after college and had the good fortune to fall for a man who appreciated public lands and open spaces and opening weekends of various game species. I started going hunting, with him and then with other friends, for deer and elk and waterfowl but mostly upland birds...

Connie Parker

I step into the cold water of the Gallatin. I search for the rock shadows where they live.  I cast awkwardly as fly fishing is a long way from my dad’s boat, a spinner, a chub and hours on the water. I plant my feet solidly on the slippery rocks and cast again.  This time my mind drifts to the lakes of Kansas, to endless hours of catching one fish after another and remembrance of the seven year old girl handing the pole (not even a rod) to her father and saying, “Here, you take a turn; I am tired!”  The roar of my father’s laughter who had caught nothing still rings in my head.

Suddenly, my line goes straight. I go from Kansas back to Montana in an instant. The cut throat and I play for a while and then I marvel at his beauty and his magical ways of taking me home once again!