Rifles/Muzzleloader
 I am a woman and I hunt! Some of my earliest and fondest memories are those I have of hunting and fishing with my parents. I am an only child and when I was growing up, we never took any traditional vacations to tourist attractions, we packed up our Willis Jeep and headed out camping usually to hunt or fish, but sometimes to just go camping. I was a tomboy and a Daddy's girl. Before I could even shoulder a gun, I was shooting ducks from blinds in New Mexico. My father would shoulder the gun and help me to point and aim at the mallards as they came in. I would proudly watch as one of our Cockers made the retrieve. After all these years, the smell of marsh and gunpowder takes me back to those times.
I was only 8 years old when my father retired from the Army and we moved to Alabama. My first new gun was a Winchester lever action .22. We called it the "little .30-.30"; it was my squirrel gun. I grew up with Black and Tan Coonhounds that were trained for deer hunting, but one would hunt anything and everything! I loved my dogs and I loved hunting with them. I was 15 when I killed my first deer using a model 12 Winchester 20 gauge, shooting #3 buckshot. That sounds old now, so often I read of kids as young as 5 killing their first deer, even girls! But when I was 15, almost nobody deer hunted in Alabama, and certainly not a teenage girl!
I never read "Teen" magazines, but I would virtually memorize Field & Stream and Sports Afield issues from cover to cover. I would dream of the hunts described by the Benoits, Jim Zumbo, etc. I would read Ed Zern's "Exit Laughing" over and over, finding something new to laugh about each time!
After graduating from Mississippi University for Women in 1979, I married my best hunting buddy, Greg. His 20+ Air Force career would afford us the opportunity to hunt some of the places I'd so often read about and dreamed of. We lived in Montana, Washington, Alaska, Colorado, Florida and North Dakota before he retired and we settled down in NW Arkansas on the scenic shores of Beaver Lake.
Although I grew up mostly in Alabama, a state that boasts one of the most successful wild turkey populations, I had not turkey hunted until we lived in Colorado.
 We have on son, Jeremiah Daniel. After 2 years of college, he decided to pursue a career in music and has moved to Austin, TX. Greg retired from the Air Force in January, 2000 and while he does some odd jobs (to include guiding for bird hunts on a nearby preserve and some taxidermy), he mostly hunts and fishes.
When Jeremiah first went to college, I began to fill my empty nest with animals. We own 7 dogs - 5 English Setters (Charlie, Laic, Dash, Two Dot and Little Bit), a Redbone Hound (Ruby), a Beagle (Buster), a pet whitetail buck (Outlaw), an outside domestic housecat (CC) and a pet Bobcat (Baby).
Most of my hunting is done here close to home. We have some good deer and turkey hunting right here on our own property so I don't see any reason to go somewhere else. I have bow hunted some but mostly I muzzleload and gun hunt. I enjoy fishing if the fish are biting, but I don't have the patience at fishing as I do hunting.
I am very excited about WomenHunters! I have never really known any other women that actually do hunt. I have known some that said that they hunted only to find out that they sat in the truck reading a book or filing their nails while their husbands filled their tags. I look forward to us sharing our hunting stories, knowledge and hopefully sometime hunt together!
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