sportswoman tagged posts

By Hannah J. Ryan

The morning sunlight seeps across Wyoming’s sky and into a corn stubble field near the river. Friends and family are tucked to either side of me in layout blinds. My feet are reaching that freezing point that would soon drive me from my hiding place, but a dark cloud lifts off the river as a few hundred Canada geese leave their night’s resting place.

As their ruckus reaches us, our adrenaline-levels spike and my numb feet are eitherwarmed or forgotten. Our decoy spread forms an open-ended triangle and we are stationed in the V’s crook. Four geese break from the flock and head for the open ground we left in the spread directly before our blinds.

When the birds come in range, someone calls out, “Take ‘em!” and we pop up from our prone positions, shotguns singing...

Dan’s first birds.

Recently, I read Leigh Newman’s essay What a Camping Trip Taught Me About My Marriage (and Myself) in Real Simple and it got me thinking about my own relationship to the outdoors and my husband Dan.

Like Leigh, I come from a family deeply rooted in the outdoors and the sportsman and woman community. So when I traded in my smaller hometown for the big city and stayed my family was a little in shock.  And then when I fell in love with a city boy who loved to mountain bike they were welcoming but a little surprised.  While Dan loved the outdoors and worked at outdoor camps he had never been hunting or exposed to the sportsman community.  My brother joked that Dan had to “kill something” before becoming a part of our family...

By Jodi Stemler

I have a confession to make – I’m not much of a morning person. It’s not that I like to sleep late, (typically I can’t stay in bed later than 8 a.m. and most days I’m up by 7) but I definitely am a creature of the sun, and if it isn’t up then neither should I be. At least that’s my rationale...