The English setter stands frozen, glaring into the rustling brush. Its tail juts skyward, quivering. The setter pounces, and the air comes alive, a whir of wildly beating wings. A pheasant lurches from its refuge in the brush and takes off in frantic flight.
Its escape is short-lived. Melanie Safarcyk raises her Beretta 391 shotgun to her shoulder, takes aim and pulls the trigger. The ground shudders as the blast reverberates through the fields.
Safarcyk, 28, is among more than a million women hunters in the U.S. It’s a small but devoted group, and wildlife managers are working to add to its ranks. But, like a gunshot shattering the air’s stillness, the question rings out: Is this progress for women?
Mary Stange, director of the women’s studies program at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and author of “Woman the Hunter” (Beacon Press, $25), says that by hunting, women are claiming a life-changing experience they have long been denied.
“Males in our culture have always had all sorts of positively sanctioned forms of aggressive activity, from the military to warfare to NFL football,” she says. “There have been few ways that women have been allowed access to those activities in a positive sense.”
Statistics back up Stange’s assertion that women who hunt are venturing into a male stronghold. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the nation’s 1.2 million female hunters represent about 9 percent of the nation’s 14 million hunters. That’s only a blip of an increase from 6 percent in 1950, but efforts to target women are increasing.
Also building is the debate over hunting in general. Opponents say that because it’s not necessary for human survival, it has become mere sport–and one in which the rules heavily favor humans. Proponents say it’s an important part of our country’s heritage, a right that should be protected.
One vocal hunting critic is Greta Gaard, associate professor of humanities at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. Gaard says no one is stopping women from hunting if that’s what they choose to do. “The flaw is in the belief that we should do whatever men do so we can get respect, this idea that we should beat them at their own game. . . . Just because men do it, does that make it worth doing?”
Anne Muller, president of anti-hunting group Wildlife Watch, says women hunters are an aberration. “I think women are far more compassionate than men. They don’t enjoy killing and watching animals die.”
But Stange says hunting is more complicated than that. In “Woman the Hunter,” she describes the moments after her first kill. After she pulled the trigger and the buck collapsed, she writes, “The tears that rushed to my eyes issued from a collision of remorse and release. The former because the killing hurt; the latter because it was done well.”
`Kind of a rush’
Safarcyk, who has been on three hunts, puts it more simply. “It was kind of a rush to shoot my first bird,” she says. “It was like, wow.”
But Muller says women don’t hunt because it’s thrilling or groundbreaking. Women are being targeted to hunt–something neither hunting proponents nor opponents deny. As ranks of male hunters decrease in the face of more urban lifestyles and fewer areas to hunt, wildlife agencies are hoping women and youths will take up the slack. After all, these agencies get federal funds based in part on the number of licensed hunters in the state.
Hunting outfitters and equipment manufacturers also are realizing that women present “a viable market,” says Terri Latner, publisher and editor of The Outdoor Woman’s Life Magazine (352-307-8881).
“Camouflage is now being made for women, though it usually says `a smaller-framed hunter’ on the tag,” says Latner, who hunts white-tailed deer. “They’re also making lighter-weight guns and archery equipment.”
Muller is skeptical about the focus on women, saying the marketing won’t stick–one season and women will put the guns down in disgust.
But women do stick with hunting, Kathy Andrews says. She’s involved in another growing effort to draw women into the activity: statewide hunting programs specifically for women. Andrews is coordinator of the state’s Becoming an Outdoors-Woman program. Since 1994, Illinois has run its version of the nationwide program, which began in Wisconsin in 1991. At two weekend retreats each year, Illinois’ BOW program offers women courses in hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities such as wilderness camping. Hundreds of women have taken part over the years.
“We’ve had women from [age] 18 to 75 participating,” Andrews says. “One woman walked away from the weekend saying, `You’ve changed my life.’ And other women feel the same way. And that’s how it grows.”
Women hunt for the camaraderie, just as men do, Andrews says, and many form lifelong friendships at the retreats. Many women are drawn to hunting in the first place because the men in their life hunt. “We get some who say things like, `I’m getting married and my fiance deer-hunts, and I want to understand what this is about.’ “
Craig Miller works with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Natural History Survey. He says early research indicates that “women seem to get introduced to hunting either through growing up in a family that hunts, or they can be exposed to it when they start dating a guy who hunts.”
Safarcyk, who grew up in the Cincinnati area, says, “Nobody in my family hunts, and few people go hunting where I’m from. So I was never around it.” About a year ago, she married Chadd, a naturalist for the Illinois DNR and an avid hunter. She moved to Morris, Chadd’s hometown–and at first was appalled at all the guns he had around the house. Melanie had never even touched a gun until Chadd placed one in her hands.
Then last summer, she went to a women’s shooting clinic Chadd was leading and shot at clay targets. She liked it, and decided she was ready to try hunting.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to shoot an animal,” she says. “But once we got out there, I just looked at it like it was a clay bird, and just shot.”
Chadd says he didn’t insist that she hunt. “If she hadn’t liked it, I would have said, `You don’t have to go anymore.’ “
“My personality needs a little pressure to get me to do things, and I like to try things at least once,” Melanie says. “But if he was really pressuring me . . . I wouldn’t have gone at all.”
Stange’s initiation into hunting was similar. “I grew up in Rutherford, N.J. I believed everybody saw the Empire State Building when they looked east. Guns and hunting weren’t part of my culture.” She began hunting to be with her husband, who grew up in Wisconsin and had hunted his entire life.
Now, the two run a bison ranch in Montana, and Stange considers hunting an “essential” part of her life.
`Wired to think like predators’
Essential, and natural, too, she says, for humans are simply born predators. “Our brains are wired to think like predators. We’re quick-witted, able to act on impulse, we value things like precision, balance, physical poise and dexterity–these are the things that mark us as predators.”
Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, scoffs at the idea that by hunting, people are expressing their true nature. Only 6 percent of the public hunts, he says, so “94 percent of Americans do just fine emotionally without going into the woods and chasing down an unarmed animal.”
The idea of an unfair fight gains a foothold in light of today’s hunting realities. Some hunts are wild; others are controlled, meaning animals, typically game birds, are bred and released for the kill. In either case, wildlife agencies “manage,” or manipulate, their land. They’ll cut away spots in forests to allow sunlight in so new growth can appear, or perhaps plant crops, to provide certain food for animals–often deer, considered most hunters’ favorite game–so hunters have adequate game to hunt.
“Wildlife are owned by the people of the state,” says John Buhnerkempe, acting chief for the division of wildlife resources at the Illinois DNR. “We’re mandated to provide recreational hunting opportunities for the public.”
Controlled hunts have become more common as natural hunting areas decrease. Melanie Safarcyk’s latest hunt was an example. It was at Seneca Hunt Club, one of about 60 licensed hunting preserves open to the public in the state. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are about 2,000 licensed hunting preserves across the country. The preserves release such game birds as pheasant, quail, partridge and turkey. State wildlife agencies also release birds on some of their land, and some federal lands allow controlled hunts as well.
For Melanie Safarcyk’s hunt, husband Chadd bought five pheasants for $15.50 each. Before the hunt, the birds, which were pen-raised and had never flown, were released into Melanie’s assigned hunting area. Chadd, acting as hunting guide, planted the birds in the brush, first shaking them to disorient them. (On some hunts, he tucks their heads under their wings so they’ll sleep for a while instead of fleeing before the hunt starts.)
Then, as his wife stood ready, shotgun in hand, he sent his 7-year-old English setter, Storm, to flush them out. The setter eagerly scampered through the fields. When he caught the scent of a bird, his tail would flick straight up. Chadd would head to the brush and kick at the grass to get the bird flying. Once it reached head level, Melanie would aim and fire.
Over the course of a few hours, she winged three birds. Storm chased them across the fields and retrieved two; Chadd would quickly wring their necks and place them in Melanie’s backpack. The third bird flew off and would be considered fair game for other hunters. Another bird wouldn’t fly, it only hopped, and Storm nabbed it. Melanie nailed the fifth bird cleanly between the eyes.
Ethics of controlled hunts
Pacelle of the Humane Society says such a hunt “puts a lie to the idea that hunting is done for sustenance or management [a common hunting argument, disputed by opponents, is that hunting helps manage what would otherwise be soaring animal populations]. Here you have a species bred to be shot. It’s planted, dizzied, flushed, then shot for a guaranteed kill. And that’s common.”
Stange is reluctant to comment on the Seneca hunt based on a description. But she says, “You walked into a source of controversy among hunters. Ideally you would have been able to go after wild birds. But there are controlled hunts that do go a long way toward approximating a bone fide hunting situation.” Still, she acknowledges, “there are all kinds of questions of fair chase and downright fairness.”
As the questions ring out–Should women hunt, should anyone hunt, and under what conditions?–Stange says women can bring new ethics to hunting.
“Women don’t approach hunting with the same macho garbage that men do,” she says. She also calls irresponsible hunting on the part of some men–such as drinking while hunting or bagging more than the allowed kill limit–“childish carry-overs” from their boyhoods, when the do’s and don’t’s of hunting might be seen as rules made to be broken. Women, on the other hand, typically begin to hunt as adults, “when you’ve got your value system in place,” she says. Beyond that, “Women who undertake an act like hunting are conscious of crossing a boundary. In ethical terms, they’ll think, `If I want to do it, I want to do it well.’ “
But the Humane Society’s Pacelle says it’s sheer ethics that should stop hunting. “We have standards in our society that say you’re not allowed to be cruel to animals. . . . We don’t need to have people searching out animals and shooting them just for the fun of it.”
The debate is not likely to wind down soon. As more women hunt, it’s probable that more children will too.
“We’ve found that a lot of women are in our program because they want more confidence so they can teach their children about outdoor activities,” says Andrews of Becoming an Outdoors-Woman. “If a woman understands the concepts behind hunting, and gains confidence and experience, she’ll bring kids into it.”
Wildlife Watch’s Muller counters that “the idea that hunting is something to pass down to kids is perverse. It’s certainly not typical of the average woman.”
But Melanie Safarcyk, who recently learned she’s pregnant with her first child, expects to pass hunting on to her children. “I know that if we have a boy, he’ll take the boy hunting,” she says of husband Chadd. “I think we’ll probably go as a family. But I’d want the child to go with Chadd more before I go out, so that I’d be more comfortable. I think I’d be nervous with the child having a gun in his hands.”
But such considerations are for the days ahead. At the end of her recent hunt, she has the birds in her backpack to think about. Melanie explains that when she and Chadd get home, he will be the one to cook them. Melanie hasn’t quite recovered from the time she opened her freezer and came eye to blinking eye with a pheasant Chadd had shot and thought was dead. They could laugh about it later, but in retelling the story, Melanie scrunches her face and says, “I can’t even bring myself to clean them.”
But she is satisfied with her latest hunt.
“I don’t like going out and not hitting something,” she says. “That last one that I knew I hit, I liked that.”
