There are a lot of single-parent families out there, and when you’re working two or three jobs, you intend to feed your family off of a small paycheck and a waitress tip. Women in the Outdoors or WITO is a subsidiary program of National Wild Turkey Federation which aims to help and teach single parents how to hunt. Kaylee Jackson, the Executive Director for the state of AR NWTF “WITO” program, goes deep into what they do – educating people about the conservation of turkeys and other animals and training parents on archery, shooting, and breaking down the meat along with the recipes so that they will have the organic way of feeding their kids.
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Women Rock The Outdoors – NWTF “WITO” – Kaylee Jackson
I’m heading down south, in the Midwest or someplace out East with Kaylee Jackson. Kaylee and I have known each other probably 400 or 500 episodes ago. She’s always been a friend and a supporter. All around, she is great gal and I’m proud of what’s she’s accomplished and what she’s doing. She’s involved with the National Wild Turkey Federation Women in the Outdoors or WITO Program. She’s got something to do with Prois. It’s an outdoor apparel line founded by Kirstie Pike in Gunnison, Colorado. They came out with a new line called Cumbre line. We’ll be talking about that and finally, a little bit of TAK Driver TV, which was on the Pursuit Channel. This girl is busy. Kaylee, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me back. It’s been a few episodes ago that we started this. I was doing radio then and you stepped it up. I’m proud of you.
What state are you in?
I’m in Arkansas. I’m in the north part of it. I’m 30 minutes from the Missouri state line, a town in the Ozark. We moved here from Pennsylvania by the way of Mississippi. I’m a southern girl all the way around. I don’t do the north and I can’t stand the cold weather, so I’ve got to be down in the south.
Kaylee is one half of a huntress and a shot. She’s done a lot of stuff and we’re going to talk about Women in the Outdoors with National Wild Turkey Federation. You’re quite involved with that. Kaylee, tell us about that.
The National Wild Turkey Federation has a subsidiary for women and women only. It’s called Women in the Outdoors. What we do is we’re into conservation but we’re into taking single mothers or single fathers out and teaching them how to hunt. They can teach their kids how to hunt. We also do a lot for the community. As far as teaching them about conservation of our turkeys especially but other animals as well. We also take women hiking, boating and we do a lot of things with women. When we started this, we didn’t have a couple of people that were interested in it and now we’ve gotten a lot more interest in it. We’re going to do our annual banquet. You can go to our website Arkansas WITO and order your tickets or you can call one of us and get your tickets.
Where does this money go?
This money goes into our fund. What we’re going to do with our fund is lease land for people to hunt on. We’re going to make conservation boxes for turkeys to lay their eggs in. We’re going to take kids and moms out on trips. We’re going to do a lot of different things to teach these women how to be in the outdoors and to pass it on to the next generation of hunters, anglers, hikers and conservationist.
There are a lot of groups out there all doing similar things. Why do you think women want to get outdoors?
There are a lot of single parent families out there and when you’re working two or three jobs, you intend to feed your family off of a small check off waitress tips or whatever. It gets hard and I see a lot of this every day or hear about it a lot every day that it’s hard to feed their families. They’re trying to go some organic way of feeding their kids and the most organic meats you can eat is what you kill in the outdoors.
Who teaches them, who ventures these ladies so they can learn how to shoot and get the game?
I do the archery and the shooting. We have Cora Gray, which is our site Director and she’s a heck of a shot as well. She does a lot of the shotgun and a lot of the rifle, too. I started a long-range shooting. If you want to go out west or something like that, I can teach you how to do that. Around here, we don’t have a lot of places that you need to shoot long range. It’s something that you can have and go on about your business and go out with to get an elk, a moose or whatever you want to get.
Who teaches them to break down the meat?
We take them out as a group and it’s either I and Cora or our husbands go with us a lot of times. There are a lot of women involved in this. It’s always one of us to teach them how to gut a deer, skin a deer or cut it up to be able to transport it and to be able to cut the head off if it needs to be cut off. In a lot of states and CWD, you need to take it to a certain place. We teach them everything about how to do it properly.
Who supplies the recipes? Who teaches them how to cook?
We have a lot of great recipes that are online. You can go online at ProisHunting.com and get a lot of great recipes off of our website.
We’re going to talk about Prois a little bit. The National Wild Turkey Federation has been around a long time. Is this a new program for the Turkey Federation?
No, it’s been around a long time. Debbie Le Gette was the first one I ever knew that was in the WITO Program. Jana Waller’s in it. There are a lot of women that you would hear or know by name that’s in this. I’m not exactly sure what year it started but it’s been around for 20 or 25 years. I just got involved with it. With our group, we try to work with the WITO and the BOW, which is another group in the state. What I ended up doing was becoming friends with Cora and she asked me if I would help her. I went down to Conway and we met. We talked and we decided that because I had connections and she had connections, that we work together. She and I have made a great partnership together along with our state and met with the NWTF district manager. We’ve done a great job doing what we do.
If somebody’s out in your neck of the woods, how would they get ahold of you or Cora to get some information so they can say, “I want to volunteer. I want to be part of the program?”
First of all, you can call me anytime. My number is (870) 4218-421. If I don’t answer, I will call you back as soon as I get your message because I’m either busy or I can’t get to the phone. You can go on to my Facebook page and look under the WITO banner that’s up there. Cora’s number is on there. You can call her. She’s out of Conway and she can help you. We take donations for the banquet. We would appreciate any donation that you could give us.
I’ve talked to a lot of people throughout the country and hunting, there is no question we are under attack. A lot of people are asking me all the time, “How do I handle a person that doesn’t like that I got a dead deer in the back of my truck. Having said that, “Why do we hunt?” Let’s spend a little bit and talk about why we hunt. Why does Kaylee Jackson hunt?
I hunt to feed my family and I know that’s a cliché. When I tag out every year, I have enough meat to feed my family the entire winter. On springtime, I’m planting the gardens. I have fresh vegetables and I’m fishing. I have meat or fish on my freezer year-round. The second reason I hunt is that if we don’t hunt, our deer overrun each other. That’s where you get your diseases, your chronic waste and your bluetongue. You have to send those herds out. People will argue up and down that it is not true but that is the truth.
Let’s go back to your hunting tradition. You hunt to feed the family and you hunt to help manage the game. When somebody comes up to you and says, “Why don’t you go to the grocery store? You don’t have to kill animals to feed your family. There are a lot of other ways to do it.” What do you say?
The first thing I ask them is if they’ve been to the slaughterhouse.
Some people just don’t connect the dots, do they?
No, they don’t and let me explain why. They don’t understand that when those animals are killed, it’s very inhumane the way they kill them. If anybody eats veal, they starve those little calves so their meat is white. They give them no nutrients. They give them nothing that’s going to make their skin color other than white. That’s inhumane to me. Even if you ate a hot dog, whatever you’re eating out of a grocery store, it’s an inhumane way of killing an animal. I know my way is humane. I’m not going to take a bad shot. I’m not going to injure a deer. If I can help it, I’m going to take the ethical shot, therefore, I know I’m not doing anything wrong.
Some people don’t want to have a conversation and the people that I’m trying to reach are the ones that are open to having a conversation but sometimes it’s all about the killing and sometimes our grips and grins aren’t the most eye appealing. I had to change some of the things I do because I want to attract people rather than repel people.
I always say, “I’m not out killing, I’m out hunting.” There’s a difference between killing and hunting. Killing is when you go out and do it for the fun of it. Hunting is when you go out, you scout, you put up trail cams, you put up your blinds or your tree stands whatever you’re in and you have worked to humanely take an animal.
I know you have a longstanding hunting tradition because hunting is a part of us and if you’re a person, a single mom, a single dad or coming from a family, which there are a lot more of these days that never hunted. Even in my family, my dad never hunted. I was fortunate to have a neighbor out all night and I just jumped in his truck and hunted with his dog. I had a mentor way back before they were called mentors and I’ve hunted all my life. What’s your hunting tradition?
My grandfather was my mentor. He hunted fish. I can remember being in a boat at two years old fishing with my grandfather. Before I ever learn, I was two years old, he’s out cleaning his gun and I asked him, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m cleaning my gun.” “Can I help?” He said, “You can help.” He let me help. The next time he cleaned, he said, “Do you think you can clean this gun?” I said, “Yes, sir. I sure do.” I was five then. He said, “You clean that gun,” and I did. He began to explain to me how to take the gun apart and put it back together. It was a little Ruger 44 rifle, a nice little shooting gun.
I had learned to put that gun back together, and then he started teaching me how to shoot the gun and to me, it didn’t kick. He said, “This winter if you do good in school, I’m going to take you hunting.” I worked hard that first year. I come home and he said, “I’m going to take you hunting on Saturday.” That Saturday, he took me hunting. He sat me next to this old log and told me to stay there and don’t move. He said, “Watch this little pathway right here because that’s where the deer will come.” It’s been about an hour and I was sitting there and down came this little six-point buck deer. He got about probably 100 yards from me and I laid the deed down on him. I pulled the trigger and he dropped where he stood. I was hooked and I’ve been hunting ever since.
What does that feel like when you realized that you harvested your first big game animal?
I realized what I’d done but what I’ve realized most was when he came down there and saw that deer because he heard the shot. He looked at me and he said, “Job well done, baby girl.” That made me prouder than me harvesting that animal. I was all about making him proud and I went over there and he said, “I’m going to teach you how to gut it.” If you’ve ever learned to gut a deer, you’ve got to learn not to hit the glands. The next time, I was seven. I killed another deer. I learned then not to cut the stomach open.
I learned the hard way. Everybody’s got to learn. If you hadn’t done it, then you haven’t hunted a lot but you learn from your mistakes. I’ve always done this and I dragged most of these deer home by myself. He didn’t help me. He said, “You’ve got to do it yourself. If you’re going to hunt, you’ve got to be a hunter.” I tied a rope through the deer horns. The first one I tied it around the base of the horns and I dragged that deer until finally, I came to a hill. He helped me up to the hill and then I dragged it out the rest of the way home and the little doe, I put it over my back and carried it home.
You mentioned one thing that is missing in our society, especially in the non-hunters, they never get that approval from their parents. Your grandfather said you’d done well. They never heard that.
I’ve always said, “If you don’t have respect for yourself, you’re not going to respect anybody else.” In order to gain respect, you’ve got to have one person in your life that respects you and that gives you the approval that you need. That’s where you learn what respect is. Being in law enforcement for twenty years, I earned respect on the streets where I respected the people that I meet, even the worst of worst, I earn their respect.
Let’s talk about Prois, Kirstie Pike and the crew. You’re part of that deal. Tell me about their organization, how they sell product and how they got women involved. Share with us the whole deal about Prois.
Kirstie designed Prois several years ago. If you knew Prois back, we were at a Realtree pattern. We changed our pattern where we went to something else. She decided that because nothing would fit us. If you go to Walmart, it doesn’t fit, it’s a man’s cut even though it says it’s a woman’s apparel. It’s still cut from a man’s line. It doesn’t fit you right. With Prois, she makes sure that it’s fit for a woman. There is for a short woman, a medium-sized woman, a tall woman, a woman that wears a size zero and a woman that wears a size 24. She has everything there to fit you.
She has done well over the years. In each site, there’s a coordinator and maybe in a couple of sites, there might be two like Alaska, Texas or California. I’m the coordinator of Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. We have Facebook pages to coordinate with the state. We promote on those websites or Facebook pages. You can go to the Prois Facebook page to see everything. We also have our website which we’re getting into doing different things. The food deal, we’re getting into a blog session about what it takes to hunt and tips and techniques of hunting.
I said we were with Realtree. We are now with Veil Camo and they with Kirstie Pike come up with this pattern called Cumbre. It’s a breakup pattern. People look at it and go, “No, this is not going to work.” It actually does work. If you’ve ever seen a tree, it is not the colors of some of the stuff that’s out there. A tree is brown, green and it’s got a beige tint to it. She designed it that way but she also designed it to where, as a serious hunter, you want it to be where you’re not seen. She broke it up into different patterns. We have three lines.
We have our light line, which will be in the southern states, where it does get hot. We also have the middle one, which is for my state, a little bit up, a little bit over to the east and we have the heavy duty for the northern part of the United States, Alaska and New England area. We also have rain gear. What Kirstie did was she took words from Gaelic and made each of our lines into a Gaelic word. I’ll give you an example. The lightweight line is called a Tintri. It’s Gaelic for hot weather. She put a lot of our effort into this and she’s done a great job of promoting the Women in the Outdoors.
If you knew five or ten years ago what you know now about hunting, what would that be?
Have the best equipment that your money can buy. What I mean by that is, if you can only afford a $20 or $40 scope, that’s fine. They work the same as a $200 or $300 one. If you can afford a $60 or $70 one, go ahead and get a little bit more expensive one because it sometimes gives you a clear image of what you’re shooting at. Always buy the best guns you can buy because if you buy second hand, usually, they are good. Take them to a gunsmith and make sure they’re okay. I personally try to buy a brand-new gun, not everybody can do that and I can’t do that all the time. My Valentine’s, Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are always a gun. I’ve got four around here. I always say get the best equipment, the best tree stand, the best blind that your money can buy because if you buy bad cheap stuff, then it ends up costing you more than what you paid for it with. I have the most expensive habit. I go duck hunting and goose hunting.
Start off with the best stuff that you can get and then work yourself up, keep on trading out, working it up until you get to the place where you’ve got solid gear and you can go anyplace, go on any hunt and you’ve got what you need. We’re talking about Prois and what makes it special. Tell us about why that brand is the number one woman’s brand in the United States, in fact, North America.
We engineer all our gears especially for women, we maintain creative control in each and every piece and we’re committed to you as the female hunter. Kirstie, Katherine and me and all those in Colorado, they work 100% of the time trying to appease and please every female hunter out there. If you’ve never tried Prois, you have to. I would rather buy one piece of expensive equipment and not be cold than be out there in a $40 jacket freezing my tail end off. Buy that $99 jacket, $149 or $199 whatever the price is and make it a Prois piece, make it something that you will wear constantly. I wear my short-sleeved shirts all year-round. I just don’t wear them during hunting. People ask me all the time, “What does the P stand for?” It stands for Prois. It gets around after a while. That’s what we’re trying to do with the coordinators. If we’re in a state, we try to get enough women to join. We asked the women to share it with their friends. We do home parties. We are a little bit different than any other lines that you can imagine.
You talked about marina wool, that’s the warmest wool you can wear. I’d been soaking and still been warm because I was in wool.
Marina wool is the best of the best.
When you think about that, ladies, the company is for you. Kirstie had a dream several years ago. She didn’t have a lot of money. She didn’t have any experience in the apparel business. She knew what she didn’t want. She went out and created it with a lot of friends and with a lot of help from a lot of people. She didn’t do it herself but she stayed to it. She stayed to her dream and she’s making that dream available to women throughout the United States. Hat’s off to Kirstie Pike. Kaylee, it was a pleasure being with you and I can’t wait to have you on the show again to catch up.
I appreciate you letting me be on. As always, it’s a pleasure talking to you. I hope I made a little sense and I hope you get out in the outdoors, get off the couch and do a little hunting, do a little fishing or doing a little hiking or whatever you want to do. Be sure to catch TAK Driver TV.
We didn’t talk about that. Close on that and say how they can find you on TAK Driver TV?
TAK Driver TV is a group of people that we film ourselves. Nick Albanese had a dream of being able to do this. He and a few of his friends formed TAK Driver TV. If you self-film, you can sign up. You have to pay $150 for a package to get in but if you self-film, you’ll send your raw footage to them and they’ll do the rest of it, then you’ll be on TV. It’s on the Pursuit Channel.
Important links:
- National Wild Turkey Federation Women in the Outdoors
- Prois
- TAK Driver TV
- ProisHunting.com
- National Wild Turkey Federation
- Facebook – WITO Arkansas Facebook Page
- Prois – Prois Facebook
- Veil Camo
About NWTF
Prior to the implementation of Women in the Outdoors, NWTF supported female-focused outdoor skills training programs through various organizations. Seeing the demand for such activities for women, the NWTF expanded its outreach efforts to include a formal Women in the Outdoors program in 1998.
In the past decade, the number of women owning firearms and participating in target shooting and hunting has soared. See the “Girl Power” graphic to the right, provided with permission from the National Shooting Sports Foundation published in their 2014 Women Gun Owners: Purchasing, Perceptions and Participation article.
According to Southwick Associates, women now make up more than a quarter of all anglers and represent the fastest growing segment within the hunting and shooting communities.
Women who seek outdoor adventures or more quality time with family and friends will find that connection through hundreds of Women in the Outdoors events hosted by NWTF chapters around the United States. Events are affordable and offer outdoor activities such as archery, shotgunning and various introduction to hunting classes. Women in the Outdoor members receive a one year subscription to Turkey Country magazine and special discounts. Get your membership today.