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Bruce: 4, 3, 2, 1. Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host Bruce Hutcheon and ladies and gentlemen, we are in for a treat today. I’ve just been doing the warmup with Barbara Baird of Women’s Outdoor News. Also, she’s a contributing editor at Shot Business Magazine. Also, she writes a blog at Field & Stream at Tagged Out and if you just Google Barbara Baird, you’ll find that she’s somebody that’s helping women get more comfortable, more involved and more informed in the outdoors today. Barbara Baird, welcome to the show.
Barbara: Thank you, Bruce. You know it’s such a pleasure to be here.
Bruce: Yeah, we’re going to talk about a lot of things. I just want to start off and talk about The WON. Tell me how it began, why it began.
Barbara: The WON was launched and they always say, Bruce, launch a business on a day that you’ll remember like July 4th. Well, I launched Women’s Outdoor News November 8th. . . no wait, November 4th, 2008. Oh yeah, I remember it and then I can’t remember it. November 4th, 2008, which was the election of Barack Obama. So we don’t want to forget that so that’s easy for me to remember. It’s almost eight years. It follows the presidential terms, which I think it will make it easier for me as we move forward to remember so that’s when it launched and we’re in our seventh year now. We have an incredible team of women who are out there hunting, fishing, shooting and doing soft adventures such as kayaking, hiking, I don’t really know that rock climbing would be considered soft adventure but that type of thing in a couple of weeks, I’ll be watching women bridge jumping, jumping off of a bridge in West Virginia. Fortunately, I’ll be in the boat below but they’ll be doing that and pulling their parachutes in time to land so that’s the type of thing we’re out there doing. We’re covering that and we’re also available in a blog format to talk to women, to connect with women and to see if we can help our sisters out there, get outside, be safe, be protected with fire arms or with whatever they want to be protected with and just to learn new skills and enhance their lives. Peace out, we’re done. Bye!
Bruce: Okay, adios! Where did this passion come from? Let’s go back to the beginning when you’re going through high school and college and starting your career. Where did this passion come from to start The WON?
Barbara: Well, I think was genetically wired to do it because I was an athlete in high school and college and I didn’t hunt and I didn’t shoot until I met my husband and I think a lot of us are Brenda Valentine, whom I know you’ve had on the show before said, “Women, men are genetically wired to be hunters, gatherers – a little bit of both.” So anyway, how I started and I think a lot of the women who find they like hunting can relate if they push themselves through a sport at an earlier age because it can be physical. So anyway, going back to how I started. . . well, it was because of my husband. It was because, like I told you earlier, I felt like I lived in a fraternity for several years having several sons and my husband and coming from a family of all girls, it was quite a shock. So they just didn’t want to go to the mall with me, Bruce. Can you believe that?
Bruce: Yes I can.
Barbara: So they found the mall rather boring so I had to change my lifestyle, go outside with them and I was a travel writer and in the 90s and into 2000 and people would invite me to fishing and then hunting and I started hunting with my family and that’s really where it all began because I loved it and I found out I was looking outside the window when I was at the newspaper office or at the Bluegrass Magazine working and I was thinking, “Oh man, what am I going to do outside next? And then, how am I going to tell people about that and how am I going to encourage other women who are like me coming to this maybe in their 30s or 40s to try it?”
Bruce: You mentioned a keyword. You just said, invite. You were invited by somebody to go some place and do something maybe you didn’t have the confidence or the skills but you sure had the trust and confidence in the person invited. Is that a fair statement?
Barbara: Yes, it is. It is and that’s what women want. They want access and they want mentorship.
Bruce: Well, let’s expand that. Let’s spend a few minutes and tell our listeners, guys and gals, guys, listen to what this lady has to say because it’s important for future relationships with Miss or Mrs. Right. Ladies, also, look for the right guy and hopefully Barbara’s going to give you a profile to say, “Hey, find these type of people and then go for it!”
Barbara: That’s right and you might be shocked. You might be at the dentist’s office and you look over and see a set of antlers on the wall or something like that and you think, who do those belong to? It might be the hygienist who’s cleaning your teeth. Okay, perfect and if you bond with her, “Hey, where do you hunt? And I’d really love to do that.” You might have a new hunting buddy. You just have to find somebody whom you admire and you feel have and exhibit some type of ethics that you would want to see and that you feel like you have and then you have to of course, go through the protocol of hunter education and finding out all the rules and regulations as you well know, since you hunt everywhere, Bruce. You have to mind your p’s and q’s there but that person will help you through that as well. They’re a lot of actually some community colleges in the country are now offering locavore classes where people who might want to learn to hunt turkeys start with the basics, get their hunter education certificates and then go out with a mentor too and get that turkey and then learn how to process it and learn how to cook it, bake it. It’s pretty exciting! It’s a pretty exciting movement that all starts with finding someone whom you’re comfortable with to go – if that person is creepy, there’s no way.
Bruce: So ladies have a pretty good radar detector and once it goes up, listen to your intuition, ladies. And lady listeners, make sure do some checks and balances. Do some background checks if you will and if it’s a guy or a gal to say, “Hey, where do you shoot?” Find out how interested they are not only in the shooting sports but supporting the shooting sports because what we need to do, everybody, guys, gals, kids, doesn’t matter, yeah, we love to hunt but now we need to find some groups, conservation groups that are going to echo and mirror our beliefs, our ethics and we need to support them because that’s how we’re going to keep the hunting tradition. Do you agree to that?
Barbara: I do. I totally agree with that. And the opposite and reverse what we’re talking about is true too. If you were that dental hygienist and you have a young woman or an older woman and come in and experience or say that she would like to experience something like that, invite her. Invite her to the range. Always go out first, I think, with a bow or a gun or whatever you’re going to use. Make sure that person gets some training on that because you never want that to be the first time either you go in the field of shooting a bow or a gun. That would be awkward. Awkward! So, that’s the other part. And also patterning a gun before you go outside with your rifle, explaining scope use – all that. There’s so much homework to do beforehand but it can be an interesting journey. It can be a relationship builder. And guys with their children, your little girls, my four year old granddaughter wants to start bow hunting so we’re going to put her on a Bear Cruiser here pretty soon because she’s the size of a six year old, which makes it a little easier. Just, you have to watch for that with children and offer that experience.
Bruce: You mentioned earlier about your team at The WON. Let’s talk about some of the people that you surrounded yourself with that are helping to get the message out about women can be extremely successful, comfortable and build, as I once had Huntress Jessica Intel said, “When I began hunting, it empowered me.” Let’s talk about that.
Barbara: It does. It does give women tremendous confidence. We just actually hosted a weekend with some of the women from Ruger here at our place in the Ozarks because we have some land and we have a rifle range and everything and we invited one of the local real estate agents to come over because you know, that’s a huge area of concern with personal finance with real estate agents especially. But anyway, she came over and shot some pistols with us and she really excelled on that new precision rifle that Ruger has just released and at 200 yards, she hit a group of two inches. Can you believe that?
Bruce: No way! First time out?
Barbara: Yes. So. . .
Bruce: Wait a minute. Was she shooting off a sled or sandbags?
Barbara: She was, she was. She was on a sled but still at 200 yards, that’s pretty decent and for her first time on a rifle so women have tremendous hand/eye coordination. And where we going with this question? We were talking about women, team WON. Well, if you look at womensoutdoornews.com and you look at About Team WON, you will see our wonderful lineup. I would be remiss if I didn’t at first mention Mia Anstine who is a hunting guide and an outfitter in Colorado and New Mexico. And she does all of our stuff for Shell Media. She’s an amazing woman, an incredible physical hunting machine and she is raising her daughter, Lia Leggitt to be an outdoor woman and that’s what she writes about at Women’s Outdoor News about how to bring up your daughter to enjoy the outdoors raised to make hunting fun, safe, maybe interactive targets on the range that children will enjoy and that type things. And then we have Mia and Lia and then below on that page I’m seeing Sara Ahrens who’s retired law enforcement so she does a lot of our personal defense, safety topics. And then we have a gear gal, Michelle Bodenheimer from Oregon. Sara’s from Illinois outside of Chicago and Michelle is from Oregon. She’s just recently picked up to be a National Wild Turkey Federation Regional Director in Oregon and Washington but she’s still going to keep reviewing gear for us and we’ve got Stacey Bright, another outstanding fire arms instructor from southwest Missouri who co-hosts a radio show in southwest Missouri about guns and is becoming one of the nation’s top gun writers. And she’s on kind of a slow burn with that. We have Michelle Cerino who is an amazing competitive shooter who is out there doing three gun a lot and you know women love that! And she writes about that. She’s also writing for several of the top gun magazines in the country now and she’s out of Ohio. We have Marti Davis and I know you talked to Marti a little while ago.
Bruce: Yes, I did.
Barbara: Yeah, you did and she, of course, is just getting geared up to go hunting. She was here this past weekend with us shooting and Marti also coaches a girl’s softball team and we sponsor that. Did you know that, which I think is so important too.
Bruce: No, I didn’t know that.
Barbara: So, anyway, Marti is a mentor. So this is the other thing, a lot of states have mentor programs. I meant to tell you this earlier and talk about this but a lot of states are really seeing the value of that so I just was reading that The National Wild Turkey Federation has a mentorship program so if you’re interested, that’s a great way to sort of get yourself vetted and then start working with people immediately. Let’s see, we’ve got Annette Doerr, she is from New York, right outside of New York city. She, bless her heart, is an NRA instructor and she writes about personal defense and concealed carrying. And occasionally, we have Julie Golob and we all know Julie from Smith & Wesson. She’s the team captain there as well as host of the NRA’s Love at First Shot series so she’s incredibly busy. She’s also in Binelli’s Team and whenever she and I can break away, we go hunting together and she will write about that. We went on an incredible goose hunt last year together where we did – have you ever done a ditch slip?
Bruce: No, I don’t know what that is.
Barbara: It’s where you get down into the drainage ditch and then there was a field with about, oh, I would say 2,000 geese in it. And you come up out of the ditch and wham, bam you’ve got a Christmas goose.
Bruce: Holy faith! There’s some stalking and maybe some mud or water in the ditch or is it a dry ditch?
Barbara: No, it was wet and full of muck and I personally felt it between my waders and skin when I fell over backwards twice.
Bruce: No!
Barbara: But it’s great because my bred a pintail was up in the air and Julie just said she saw me on my back but my gun was like, “Save this gun!”
Bruce: Did you have that on film, I hope?
Barbara: No, no.
Bruce: Oh my goodness.
Barbara: It completed sucked my socks off my feet. They were in balls. It was so shhhh. It was sucky.
Bruce: That’s really funny.
Barbara: It sucked so we also have a fishing writer, Anietra Hamper and she’s just all over the world: Vietnam, Ireland. And she’s going to Spain to get the world’s some sort of catfish record so she’s an incredible addition to our team. We have Vera Koo out on the west coast. Vera’s Chinese American, started shooting when she was 40 and now she’s a world champion, grandma. She’s just -she’s got a lot of energy but zen and if you meet Vera, you just want to take classes from her on how to be calm yet fierce. And so, and then we also have Wendy Megyese and this is an interesting woman. She is a Hispanic woman who grew up in New York city and is now law enforcement in Arkansas. Hello?
Bruce: Hello! How did that happen? That’s a story in itself.
Barbara: I think she just married the right guy so and she also writes about self defense because self defense is so important when you’re outside. You have to think about that. If I’m hiking on this trail, like for me, if I’m fly fishing in Methland of the Ozarks and I go around a stream twist or whatever, my husband still, maybe he’s a quarter mile upstream from me so I’m not just going to depend on him so I usually have a gun in my fanny pack and if it gets wet, I just take it apart and dry it out so we’ve got that thing going on. And then we have. . . oh go ahead, sorry.
Bruce: I was going to ask, is it 380 caliber? 9mm?
Barbara: No, I usually carry a 40, kind of old school in that way or a 38 special. It just depends.
Bruce: Let’s stop for a second and ladies, you hear a lot about what Barbara is saying about awareness and you have to be aware of your surroundings and I call it and I’ve been trained in it. It’s situation awareness. I don’t care where you’re at, ladies and this goes for guys, it’s up to you to be aware of the situation and if it feels wrong, get the heck out of there. Would you agree?
Barbara: Oh absolutely and I almost think that women have, because we’re born with maternal instincts, most of us, we also have maybe of a sixth sense than you guys do. And so, and Sara will be the first to tell you and Wendy also I’m sure will back her up. If you feel the hairs on the back of your neck are raising and they’re rising and you don’t really see anything, there’s probably something that’s going to happen or you get that sense that something’s going to go down and you should really follow your instinct and prepare either to leave, of course, or for battle.
Bruce: And listeners please understand that because the world that I grew up in and Barbara grew up in and other people in our family, it’s a changed world and you’re responsible and accountable to yourself.
Barbara: Yes you are. A lot of times too, for your family, for your husband, for your mom. You might be out with your mother, your sister or your friends and yeah, where’s there’s one attacker anymore, there could be two so you just have to train for that and be aware.
Bruce: Do you on The WON, do you talk about that situation awareness specifically?
Barbara: We do. Actually, Wendy, we just published a post by Wendy about color and the different colors of your awareness levels going from white a.k.a being asleep or in a coma to being red, to full out red so. .. yeah, it’s very valuable to start judging like what am I? Would I be an orange right now or would I be yellow am I all out feeling red?
Bruce: I hope you’re just cruising and feeling real comfortable or you can make me feel uncomfortable.
Barbara: No, I say we’re kind of in white. We’re in yellow, really pale, daffodil colored glow. We’re just in a nice zen mood here. And then we have one more writer. I don’t want to leave her out because, well, it just wouldn’t be right because I just actually put a post up by her today and it’s Rita Schimpff and she owns Heritage Game Mounts in Texas. This woman fishes, fly fishes and hunts. Everywhere, she bird hunts and there’s this beautiful lodge decor and it can be old world style or just kitschy hunting cabin collectible kind of stuff but the way she puts things together, is worth a peak because if you want to be inspired indoors to go outdoors, check out Rita and what she does at Women’s Outdoor News for ideas. Heavy into photos. Thank God because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do it.
Bruce: Okay, we just spent 10 minutes talking about Team WON. We have listeners right now, guys and gals are saying, “Oh my goodness! That’s what I want to do.” And just a couple of minutes because we could spend the whole show on talking about becoming engrained in the outdoor industry but let’s share just three or five tips that you would tell our listeners of how to begin their pathway, their journey, their career into the outdoor world.
Barbara: Oh boy! Okay, so I guess it depends where your passions lie. Do you like marketing? Do you like public relations? Do you like writing? Do you like. . . what else can you think of, Bruce? You have to know what you want to do first pretty much.
Bruce: I would say, you take your background, wherever you’re at and you could be New York city or you could be, as we just said, down in Arkansas or on the White River or near the White River and like to fly fish but there’s something that you like to do in the outer doors or attached to the outer doors. Once you understand that, then you have to go find out one, mentors. We already mentioned that. Two, you’ve got to start being a student of whatever that is. Once you become the student, then you start reading, absorbing and we’re going to talk about social network in a little bit but utilizing social network and reaching out to people that you admire. Do you agree to those statements?
Barbara: Yeah, I really do and I think reaching out to people to whom you admire is important and you’d be surprised. A lot of people think, oh, they’re too busy or whatever. Try it. You never know. When I first started writing, there was a woman who lived near me who worked for Field and Stream and kind of like essays mostly but maybe finding your grandfather’s tackle box and how that brought back memories or whatever. She did a little stint with them and so I reached out to her and she told me how to query and that type of thing. They don’t really teach freelancing in college. I was an English major and they don’t so. . . anyway, that’s important to take a chance and find out how to submit work or who you should talk to or go into Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s, see if you can teach a seminar on something that you know about. You’d be surprised who will see those type of things. I think they’re always looking for qualified people to help them with their classes and stuff like that so that’s another great opportunity.
Bruce: That’s a great segue: Cabela’s, Bass Pro – if you do any research at all, you’d find that the growth industry is women in the outdoors and you have, I know that you have a what’s happening in retail world and retail trends on The WON but just share a couple of minutes of what the impact has been since, I’m thinking 2010, 2011. Is that a good date to start?
Barbara: Oh yeah, National Shooting Sports Foundation has found that the major growth is trending in the women’s markets for personal defense and then rifles and they’re liking to shoot just like men. It just kind of goes across in like white tail first pretty much follows men’s leads. But it’s kind of surprising that coyotes are pretty high, at the top of the list of what women like to kill when they’re out, which I thought was interesting but turkey hunting, of course. So yeah, I think since 2010, we’ve really seen a lot of growth. Like I think I went out from 11% to 17% hunting, women are hunters or of the hunting, not all women, wouldn’t that be great? That would be amazing! No but 17% of hunters are women, from 11% to 17%.
Bruce: Give me, what kind of number does that represent?
Barbara: I think it’s 3.3 million but don’t quote me on that but hey, if you readers check it and get in touch with me at [email protected], we can talk.
Bruce: So ladies, listening to the show, you’re a big part of what’s happening in the outdoors today so don’t minimize that.
Barbara: Oh, I know!
Bruce: Do not minimize that because retailers are smart and they need you to come into their store and they need you to buy their stuff.
Barbara: Right.
Bruce: You never have enough stuff. That’s for darn sure.
Barbara: That’s true, you know women, excuse me for interrupting here, but women. . .I get all excited about this. Like women will have two or three gun cases for the same guy, whereas a guy will probably have the same one for 40 years. Like today, maybe I feel like taking this out to the range with my zebra print soft case. It’s just how we are.
Bruce: Interesting. I had never thought about that.
Barbara: And retailers are starting to realize this.
Bruce: That’s really funny. I bought my first gun case in 1977 and I still have it. It’s a two gun rifle case and I still have it and it’s functional. Yes, I have other cases because things change and you travel more but I still was going to the range and I said to my buddy, I said, “You know how old this is?” He said, “I have no idea.” I said, “I bought it in 1977.” He goes, “Holy. . .” right? And it still works but you’re right, that’s an important point because my wife has a lot of shoes.
Barbara: Yeah, and a lot of bags probably too, right? I have matching bags or not matching or that sort of go with them.
Bruce: Yeah, that’s interesting. Wow! We talked about a lot. . . Go ahead. . .
Barbara: We are. I know! And here’s the other thing that I really thing we should impress upon. The right way to find mentors too and it makes me think of the Diva Wow group because they’re all about animal prints and they’re in Texas but Diva Wow, you should check them out online. D-I-V-A W-O-W.org. Julia Rhodes, good friend of mine, founded this back in the 90s and they teach women how to hunt, three gun shoot, pistol shoot, how to draw from a holster with clinics all over the nation and so, there’s that group and then there’s another tremendous group, the Well Armed Woman. She has chapters in all 50 states about 250 chapters now of women’s monthly meetings where they talk about things like what we were talking about, awareness levels. They talk about different ways to carry, concealed. They go out on the range together and then there’s a Girl in a Gun lLeague. These are the three top leagues in our country right now and they’re everywhere and thousands of women, thanks to these three women, a Girl and a Gun, Diva Wow, and Well Armed Women, are finding mentors and getting outdoors.
Bruce: Amazing, amazing information and I hope listeners, you’re taking some notes. Yes, the transcription will be up when Barbara’s show does come up. But in the meantime, listen to what this lady says because she understands the symmetry. She understands the importance of women in the outdoors in America as I do. I salute every single woman that buys a hunting license here in Colorado or in Iowa where I hunt and Wisconsin where I hunt because we “make sure” that there’s women’s at the restaurant, coffee shop, breakfast place, in their hunting, I make sure that, hey, how did you do today? “Oh, you’re hunting. How did you do today?” And treat them as an equal because that’s so critical for guys, listen, it’s really critical for the future of our sport.
Barbara: Yes it is. I do agree.
Bruce: Any comment on that?
Barbara: Well you covered it so well. Listen and apply, I guess. Just, I think women want to be treated like what you were alluding to. They just want to be treated like pretty much one of the guys when it comes to respect for what we can do when we’re outdoors and same thing with what the industry’s making for us. Please don’t think because you put pink on something that it’s going to be interesting to us. We just want things that work, that function, that fit us and that perform well when we use them.
Bruce: So listeners, if there’s any retailers our there, manufacturers of people that are bringing product and say, “Wow, I want to target the women’s profile.” Make sure it works.
Barbara: And try, a lot of people take the assumption that a youth model is going to work great for a woman, a youth gun in particular. But you have to think about the length between a child’s cheek and shoulder and compare that to the length between a woman’s for the most part. That again is not going to fit her. When you’re thinking about stock measurements and the length of it and everything, comb and all that stuff for shot gun. It’s not going to work.
Bruce: And so ladies, when you go out to buy your first gun, make sure you’ve shot a couple and that’s where the measurements come in.
Barbara: It does.
Bruce: That’s so important. And then, take somebody with you to the gun store and go in and say, “Hey, this is what I’m going to hunt. I’m going to hunt turkeys. I’m going to hunt white tails. I’m going to shoot some bugs. I’m going to shoot some ducks and I’m going to shoot some geese this year. And so, I need. . . tell me what I need and why I should have it and I need it to fit me.”
Barbara: That’s true. And the other thing that we’ve been talking about a lot among ourselves is kind of this where we feel like we have to educate men sometimes in the gun stores and the outdoor shops and it doesn’t have to be rude. It doesn’t have to be because we want them to learn how to work with other women so us being rude in return or just leaving the store sometimes, that doesn’t help our sisters out there so sometimes it’s just good to say, “Could I just talk to you a little bit about what I really need and so if some other woman comes in here, maybe you could sell her something like this shot gun that looks like it would be really good.” And just try that and of course, if the representative appears to be rude again, you can talk to the manager or whatever but I think we really have to be out there and we have to be educating men. They don’t know what’s in our brains. They don’t all know how to sell to us and they certainly don’t get trained for the most part on how to sell to a woman. Do you agree with that?
Bruce: I sure do and that’s where the competence level comes up. That’s where the empowerment, I believe, comes up and says, wait a minute. I’m a customer. I want to be treated as a customer.
Barbara: Right.
Bruce: And if you don’t treat me as a customer, I’m going to go down the street.
Barbara: Yup. You know I think I’ve heard that a lot of women have tried this approach and they’re surprised that the men are respective to it because it’s a delicate. . . it’s delicate between becoming offensive and putting someone on the defense but if you really appear that, “Let’s start this process again because let’s do this. . .” I used to be a teacher. “Let’s do this until you get it right.” No. . .
Bruce: I can see you doing that though. I really can.
Barbara: I think it’s important for the industry because otherwise they lose sales and we don’t really have any other place to go. It’s not like some places have four or five big box stores that you can go to and find something.
Bruce: True. Barbara, we’re well into our 30 minute show and I look forward to having you back. Next time, we’re going to talk about hunting white tails but this show, I really wanted to focus on The WON. You’ve done an admirable job. So now you’ve got a minute or two to give a shoutout to the people that are supporting you in the industry, some people that aren’t on The WON team and how to get ahold of you on social media because we ran out of time and we never got to the social media segment so next two or three minutes are yours.
Barbara: Okay, thank you. And thank you very much for your support of what women are doing outdoors. I know without people like you, Bruce, we wouldn’t be where we are already. And also, if you look at WomensOutdoorNews.com, you’ll see we’re supported by some rather big names: Smith & Wesson, LaserMax, Wauther and Remington Siron, which produces shot guns just for women. So these people have been on board for quite a while and they see the purpose of this. They understand that this is not a shooting specifically online publication but they understand the importance of a woman choosing protection or whatever she’s doing and if it’s a gun, great. They’re happy to help. So in that aspect, I want to thank all of our sponsors and let me see. . . I just want to ask people to follow us, socially, Bruce, on Facebook and Pinterest, Google Plus, Twitter and Instagram. And Mia is busy probably working right now, putting some new photos up. I’m going to be in Wyoming next week at the Women’s Foundation’s Antelope Hunt where they bring in women from all over the country who have never hunted before, getting scholarships, putting them out there on a one shot antelope hunt so we’ll be covering that next week and that’s pretty cool to see women who might even have been vegans before come in completely turn their lives around. So please follow us there and usually just get in touch with me at Women’s Outdoor News. We have a contact form there. And I thank you again. It’s been a pleasure.
Bruce: White Tail Rendez-Vous nation, we’ve been treated to a lady and as I said in the warmup, I’m just amazed at what this lady’s accomplished. This lady is not done.
Barbara: Thank you.
Bruce: She is not done and it’s a journey.
Barbara: It is.
Bruce: Never a destination. You get around some of the people that are leaders in the women’s sports industry and it’s a passion. They’re driven to help you uncover your potential in the outer doors so on behalf of White Tail Rendez-Vous, thank you again, Barbara Baird.
Barbara: Thank you.