Exclusive Girls With Guns Clothing

Being a woman in the hunting world can be intimidating for some people. However, Jen O’Hara doesn’t let that get in the way of doing what she loves most. Jen is the co-founder and CEO of the successful apparel company Girls with Guns along with her friend and business partner Norissa Harman. She shares how she and Norissa conceptualized a clothing and gear business for hunters by bringing both of their styles together. Jen talks about her advocacy in teaching kids about the fundamentals of hunting including gun safety. As she recounts her hunting experiences in South Africa and in Kansas, Jen divulges that she gained great relationships while doing the thing she loves outdoors.

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Exclusive Girls With Guns Clothing – Jen O’Hara

It’s time to head out to the West Coast, to Northern California. We’re going to meet with Jen O’Hara, and Jen is the CEO of Girls with Guns Clothing brand. She’s got a great story. You need to pay attention to her because she’s done something a lot of people haven’t done. She and her best friend Norissa started Girls with Guns. Jen, what’s happened?

A lot has happened, Bruce. I can’t even believe it’s been that long. Norissa is my best friend and somewhere along the way I ended up marrying her brother, so she’s also now my sister-in-law. It’s a whole other story. It was not planned. We basically started along the way. To preface, Norissa would normally be here, we normally do everything together, but she is in South Africa hunting with our friend and the marketing director. Usually, we complement each other on these, but I’m going to tell you the whole story in my words. Norissa and I were doing separate things. I had started my real estate business and it was becoming extremely successful, even in the downturn of the economy. I very much have a business head on my shoulders, Norissa very much has a creative head on her shoulders. She owned an embroidery shop, and she worked at a helicopter company at that time doing their front desk work and dispatch, and all those things. We had two totally separate things going on, but we would always meet together to go boating and wake boarding, snowboarding, hunting and all of these things in the outdoors. That was our friendship.

Norissa started talking to me about how Brian would bring home T-shirts. Her husband is Brian and he’s a big hunter. He would bring home T-shirts with bucks with flames on them for her and she couldn’t stand it because she’s very fashion-forward. She had said, “There’s something missing for women. What do you think about starting a company together?” To be honest, I’m not a super fashion-forward person. I love my jeans, my cowboy boots, my T-shirts and usually a ball cap. That’s something where we differentiate. What’s funny is what brings our brand together is both of our different styles. At the time, we started as a T-shirt-only company. We were embroidering in her garage and also hand-pressing all the rhinestones at the time that we put on them. I found not too long ago, old Excel sheets of us keeping track of our inventory. It was a fun thing to do together and we never realized how far it would come and that it would become a career. It was late nights and weekends. We gave up a lot of our time. I was busy with my job. I probably worked 60 hours a week selling real estate and I was at her house at night, and she and Brian would have dinner cooked for them. I was single at the time and we would go straight to her office or the garage and we would continue working on the business.

I was into sales at the time, and I started trying to sell the brand. Our first stop was a trade show in Reno, Nevada. My brother lived over there and he was helping us at the trade show. He and Norissa had gone to grab us lunch and I sat down in my 10×10 booth and some guy came up and he said, “We need this product in Scheels.” I looked at him and I said, “What’s a Scheels?” I didn’t know because I lived in California, we don’t have Scheels here. We continued to talk and he told me a little bit about what their store was. When my brother and Norissa came back, my brother was freaking out and he was like, “There’s a huge Ferris wheel in the middle of the store and it’s like a Disneyland for hunters.” Norissa and I picked some of the items, we put them in a camo plastic bag with a handwritten note, and we drove to Scheels to drop it off to the buyer. Unfortunately, the buyer was out. It was Sunday evening and he had gone home for the day. We left it with my brother and on Monday morning he drove back and dropped it off. I plagued out that buyer’s life for the next four months with phone calls, “How are you doing?” He ended up placing a PO, Norissa and I did not know how to even fill our first PO. It took us three weeks to order everything, get it in, and late nights and weekends hand-pressing and getting it done.

We went forward and the first weekend, they sold seventeen pieces and re-ordered and it was literally within the next six months that every single Scheels wanted us and were at Sportsman’s Warehouse. It was a full-on panic. I remember we delivered our first spring line. Spring is due in February. We delivered it in June and they still sold out of everything. That’s how popular the brand was. We continued to do what we did. We were backwards at first, we had no clue what we were doing, but we started picking out stitch types and red colors and what kind of black you want. That wasn’t my wheelhouse, but Norissa loved all of that. We started working with a designer locally, and she was the one who had flipped it around when she and Norissa were sitting together talking about how do we make this unique, how do we make this different. It’s been a culmination. We had a friend who took us to Asia, and we went over there and continued to work with factories. We negotiated our own terms. We did not have a clue what we were doing, but we kept doing it. I think that was the most important part, was to go forward. My dad has always been a very hard worker. A lot of drive was what powered Norissa and me from our past and growing up.

Let’s take a break there and recap. You said a whole lot. Let’s recap because there are people out there saying, “I want to be in the outdoor industry.” I can’t tell you how many phone calls or emails I get and say, “Bruce, how do I get into this industry?” If you did nothing and said, “What did they do?” One, they had a friendship, they had a relationship. They were willing to work after hours. They had some skill sets because Norissa was already doing some of it. They said, “Where’s this thing going to go? Let’s see.” There was no grandiose, “We’re going to go to Africa and spend a gazillion dollars and shoot game off the sale of T-shirts, hats or whatever.” It was, “Let’s see where this goes.” Many times, I think people say, “I need this and I need that and I need all the ducks to get lined up before they start.” That isn’t the case. Over and over again, if you read enough white papers on businesses or whatever, you’ll see that they said, “This is where we’re going.” Where they’re going to end up, they have absolutely no idea.

You were willing to work a full day, go over to Norissa’s garage and crank it out. You had the wherewithal to stick with Scheels and then you got launched. It didn’t happen overnight. That’s the other thing, you’ve got to be patient. One, you have to have a product that sells because nobody is going to buy a product, no matter how much they like you, unless your product sells. At the end of the day it has to sell. All the rest are details. If you can’t figure them out, somebody else will help you figure them out. How is that for a recap?

That’s a great recap. We’ve had stuff along the way that hasn’t sold. We’ve had our fair share of figuring out that the fashion world wasn’t our world, that the sporting goods stores love T-shirts. Different things along the way, what worked for us, what didn’t, sizing issues. If there’s been a problem, I think that it’s been in our orbit. Being best friends, Norissa and I both rely heavily on our faith as well. Those are two of the things that have gotten us through, as well as the support of our husbands and family.

That works, what you said. You’ve got family, you’ve got faith, and you have belief in each other. You don’t quit. Let’s take a little break and talk about taking those same things and switching over to hunting. You’ve got some nice critters up on the wall, but when we hunt, it’s the same thing. You prepare for your hunt, you get your tag and then you go hunting, but you have no idea what’s going to happen, unless you’re on a private ranch or something, and then the odds are a lot swayed. On DIY hunting, it’s still hunting, unless you’re high-fence hunting, then that’s a different game. When you go to South Africa, people think you go to South Africa and go inside these farms. Talk a little about South Africa because a lot of people have some misconceptions about what the type of hunt is. In South Africa, there are a lot of farms. There’s no question about it, but they’re not the same as you would think a farm in the States would be.

To preface, I hunt and I believe in all types of hunting as long as it’s a fair chase. I draw a tag about every four years in California. Unfortunately, that’s how long it takes here. I go out and hunt whitetail in Kansas with one of my girlfriends at Wicked Outfitters. I hunt in Argentina. I’ve hunted free range there as well as high fence. I’ve hunted free range and high fence in South Africa, although free range is very limited. I also hunted moose in Canada. I could go on and name several different things that I’ve done. I do all types of hunting. Fair chase is what matters to me. If an animal is standing around and they’re your pets, I’m not going to hunt them. I know that some people have a misconception of that’s how it is. I’ve never been to a property that’s like that. I’m getting ready to go on my eleventh trip to South Africa and I’m taking eight kids there for their first opportunity.

Props to you. I could give you a big hug and a big kiss. Tell us about the outfitter, where you’re going, and what’s on the bucket list. Is it plains game?

It’s a plains game. I didn’t want to hunt any dangerous game while we were over there with the kids. Most of them are new. I sit on the board of directors for an organization called Kids Outdoor Sports Camp and it’s a volunteer gig, I’ve been doing it for years. We raise $150,000 to $200,000 a year here locally in our small town of 13,000 people and that money goes to help sponsor kids to go to camp to get their hunter safety, learn firearm safety, and the fundamentals of the beginning stages of hunting, as well as archery and fishing. I basically have sat with this organization and helped them throughout the last eight years. In the last two years, it’s become more and more of my passion as I’ve gotten away from other boards that I sat on in California.

California is under attack big time. I’m taking this a little different direction. The biggest thing is investing in our youth that we have hunting left here in California. This opportunity came up and I was at Rhinoland Safaris with a couple of girlfriends that we took over who wanted to go to South Africa. I was trying to finish my spiral horn slam and we enjoyed focusing on the girls. They didn’t have as much opportunity to hunt as Norissa and I have had. It was awesome. I decided to do that for youth. Rhinoland Safaris is owned by Marius and Heleen Kotze and they are good friends of ours. Their whole family, we keep in touch year-round. They were the very first place that Norissa and I visited in South Africa when we started the TV show.

It was 2013 in August, our producer Kathy took us over there. I had always wanted to go to Africa and I absolutely fell in love. What I love about South Africa is the property that we hunt on, their concession is about 40,000 acres. Most public land areas are that big. You’ll go out to an area, you’re not hunting more than that much property in any given day. It’s very much fair chase. The fences, they aren’t there to keep the animals in. They’re there to keep the poachers out. Poaching is a huge problem over there. They lost a black rhino mama. The baby, I’m going to be able to take the kids to see little Mickey. I’ve been following Mickey on Instagram and Facebook, and we’re going to take the kids over to see Mickey. They rescued the little rhino and there was another male that was shot with a .22.

There are certain reasons behind the way that they hunt in South Africa. Other areas that I’ve been to, the plains game and animals were almost extinct because the farmers back in the day would kill off all the wild game to make room for the animals that they were farming: sheep, goats, cattle. A lot of what I’ve heard from these gentlemen, these outfitters, is that the only reason that now they have these animals is that they have value. People come and hunt them. One place in particular in the Eastern Cape, they had gone down to three different species that were left over, and now they have over 30 species because they started a hunting concession. They still farm, as well. It’s a completely different feel over there that a lot of people don’t understand unless you’ve gone. Luckily, I’ve been blessed by these outfitters who have sponsored Norissa and me to go over and hunt with them. We do a trade with them with the show and booking and all the different things that we offer for them.

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I’m thinking of private ranches. There are some 100,000-acre private ranches in Colorado where I live. In Montana and Wyoming, there are even some larger ones. There are also a lot of ranches that are at 30,000, 40,000, 20,000. To hunt elk in there, you’d never know if there’s any sort of fence, but there is a fence because they run cattle and other things like that. It’s a low fence, not a high fence. You think about that and you go into these areas and you never see a fence. The misconception of farming sometimes gets mixed up. The one thing that I don’t know, and please correct me, is they do a lot of waterhole hunting especially for archery hunters. You get up into a box or a hide. You’re in a hide and the animals are coming to you. Is that any different than sitting over a waterhole for elk or deer or anything in the States?

Yes, and even putting down corn in some of the areas, which we can’t do in California. I’ve hunted whitetail over corn piles. It’s the same concept. I think a misconception people have is when they mix up what is exotic game and endangered. That’s a lot of the things that I hear or they think it’s easy. It’s not. It’s more opportunity. There are a lot more animals per square mile than there would be in the United States, and that’s what I see. With the best of them, my number one hunt was my moose hunt. There’s a completely different feel when you go and there’s more opportunity. They’re equally amazing, but they’re different. That’s what is important. One of the things that are important for hunters to do is stick together with things like that, as long as somebody is respectful of the animal and fair chase, there can be all kinds of kinds like Miranda Lambert said.

The other thing is the journey of hunting, and people sometimes don’t equate that. I’ve been blessed to be some places as far away in North America as you can get and sharing campfires and reaching common ground with Inuit elders and listening to their stories, which are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. You get the same thing when you travel to South Africa or Australia or New Zealand, which a lot of our readers do. You meet different cultures, you eat different foods, and you get to see the sunrise and the sunset and the Southern Cross and all these different things that you never would. That’s a part of hunting that has the adventure part of it. We all love to hunt. We all love to put heads on the wall and eat the meat. In Africa, if you take down a 1,000-pound kudu, every single piece of that meat is used and shared, if not in camp, but with all the trackers and all their family because it’s protein and it is huge. I wanted to add that it’s the journey that you take back home, and also the friendships you have with that family that you continue to go back to their farm. What a wonderful thing.

Rhinoland Safaris is where I’m visiting. Anyone, if they ever have questions about South Africa can reach out to me, @GWGJen or Facebook, Jen O’Hara. I felt compelled to teach people, and especially our youth, hunting and what it brings. One of the most important parts for us, if we’re going to fight back against the anti-hunters is for us to stick together. Whether someone shoots archery or a rifle or whatever is next, a trapper or a fisherman, we’re all outdoorsmen and women and sticking together is going to be the biggest challenge because so many people sometimes don’t remember that. They don’t remember that this is what we’re here for. We’re here for the journey. There have been many hunts that I have gone on and not brought something home. Is it disappointing? Absolutely, but getting there and the journey is what it’s all about. It’s been the same way for Norissa and me with Girls with Guns Clothing. Part of why I’ve gotten into youth mentoring and taking these kids to Africa is I started taking young girls who didn’t have the opportunity to hunt on turkey hunts every year.

I got more excited than they did, I think, because I knew what was coming. We would hunt together from the start, from the process of how to properly use a shotgun to patterning in with their turkey load to shooting clays, to outfitting them from head to toe and drawing their face paint on that morning as we’re getting up at 3:00 AM to go and shoot turkeys. It’s the most exciting thing to see their excitement. I’ve killed a lot of turkeys. I’ve hunted a lot of animals. I’ve been everywhere. This is a whole different thing that I enjoy. When you get there, you’re spending your time with your youth. In particular, I have one little girl that we let shot last year. I called in a three-bearded tom. I’ve never even shot a three-bearded tom. It was her very first turkey and that’s what she shot. It was the most exciting, crazy, fun hunt. At the end of it, her whole family came over and I cooked them my famous wild turkey enchiladas.

I wish I was there. What’s the one thing you wish you knew five years ago or ten years ago about hunting that you now know? What’s your one big thing that if you knew sooner would have changed the way you’ve hunted now?

I’m a perfectionist and I’m hard on myself. I think that there have been times where maybe no one else would know it, but I’ve ruined the tail end of my hunt because I’m human. I’ve missed a shot or done something that I didn’t think was up to par. It’s enjoying the journey as you go and not focusing much on what’s at the end of it, but what’s in between. Hunting is about getting outdoors. It’s about finding our place, whether it’s with our best friend or I love hunting with my dad and my husband. I don’t have as much opportunity hunting with them, but it’s taking the time and enjoying hunting for what it’s about, being in the outdoors, I do that now much more than I did years ago. I had a bucket list and I was hunting and I love to cook wild game. I wish they let us bring over the wild game from South Africa, but they don’t. That’s our government. That’s not their fault. It’s something about the entire part of the hunt, that’s what I love about it. I hope that other people find that, too, and that respect for the animals, as well.

You mentioned something about anti-hunters and I let it slide by a little bit. Especially for women, I’ve had some conversations with ladies at ATA or Safari Club or different shows where I’m aghast at how other women are attacked. I’ve put my wolf photos out and I’ve put my grips and grins out and nobody has said much of anything. I think I’ve had one person and I blocked them and unfriended them or whatever and that was the end of it, but it seems in your realm with women, that it’s brutal. Why is that?

I hate to put stereotypes, but I do think that a lot of different men and women outside of our industry, they may feel like a woman has her place and it’s not with a gun or it’s not hunting. I feel a lot of us women who are hunters in the outdoor industry and hunters on a day-to-day, we’re fiercely independent, we’re strong, and we know how to handle ourselves with a firearm. Those are things that maybe some people feel threatened by. I’m not sure, but I do know that those people are filled with hate and I don’t even waste my time on them. I have had people tell me they want to hang my head on a wall. I don’t have children, so I haven’t had anyone attack my children. “I hope you fall down and shoot yourself,” the stupidest things. One of the most important things to me is what you said. I block them, I delete their comments, and I don’t feed into that. A lot of people try to argue. You can’t argue with stupid, and they have the stupidest comments. I know that’s horrible to say, but it is the truth. They don’t want to understand who we are, they have no desire to.

If I have someone who comes on my page and maybe makes a slightly snide comment but asks a question, I will answer their question. As long as there’s not name-calling or brutality or anything like that, no threats because those people are the ones that we want to reach. Those are the ones that are in the middle that are willing to listen to what we have to say. The other people, they’re gone out of my life. I don’t have time for that. I love what I do so much and I used to let it upset me. I would get mad and enraged, and I would be a keyboard warrior and write back. I remember my husband looking at me and saying, “You’re better than that. You don’t feed into them. You don’t need them.” I decided at that moment that I was going to stop.

I shot a lion and when the Cecil debacle was going on, we were supposed to be airing on the Sportsman Channel with my lion episode. I had spent years researching and I knew I wanted to hunt a lion and I knew why. No one could take that away from me. We did a great episode on conservation and why I chose and there was a lot of me talking about why I chose to hunt a lion. They wouldn’t play it. They would not let us go forward with that episode. It was in season two. We had to postpone it and put it out in season three.

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There’s one picture that you will see, and I did an article for a magazine talking about all the conservation. I didn’t let anything get out there and made sure that it was respectful. I also make sure when we do photos there’s not blood. I know that’s hard for a lot of us who are hunters, we’re like, “Blood’s part of the process.” Sometimes I do the first kill and put a little blood on my face or the kid’s face. Sometimes some of those I have to be cautious with, especially with the lion, I did not do that. You have to be careful because people don’t understand it. I try to educate instead and it worked. I only got a few death threats. I did get asked to do an interview with CNN Headline News and I went ahead and turned it down for the sake of our clothing line.

I think they could have torn me to shreds. I’m not somebody who’s in the media and I’m not trained for that. I passed them over to Sportsmen’s Alliance, and Sportsmen’s Alliance is a huge supporter of Norissa and I and what we do, and we are a huge supporter of them. The President at the time, Nick, he took that interview. I didn’t have to get on and talk about things that they could have maybe tried to trap me or make our company look bad. I’m cautious about it. It’s not a fight that’s worth fighting because they’re not going to listen. I spend my time with our youth and the women who want to learn, educating them properly, because those people are who are going to make a difference as hunters.

Ladies, that probably can’t be said any better of how to handle those situations. Sometimes we like to be keyboard warriors, and that’s bad on us as far as I’m concerned. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, but I learned it. It doesn’t serve any purpose because you’re getting sucked into a battle that you never can win and it will make you more furious if you want to use that word, or frustrated. One, if they ask a question, say, “I don’t understand why you think killing a lion is a cool thing to do or a fun thing to do or should even be done,” but they ask a question, then you can go back and answer that question. If they are flaming you, delete it. Put it away and say, “There are too many other wonderful people out there, beautiful people that I know I respect, not only in my industry but my customers. I’m going to make sure they understand what the leader of Girls with Guns stands for, and I do stand for ethical hunting, fair chase hunting. That’s what I stand for. I’m going to hunt and here’s why.” That helps empower other people, in my point of view.

I feel like educating people, especially about international hunting, because it has such a stigma for only being a wealthy man’s sport. I’m taking eight kids over. Each of these kids, with their flights included, spent $5,000 or less on this trip and are hunting three animals. There is an opportunity. People spend that to go out moose hunting. More than that, on the way, I’m going to educate the kids by taking them to schools and we’re going to be donating our meat to those schools, they’re going to be seeing how other kids live. It’s important to understand that we’re not the ones who don’t want to bring the meat back. We don’t waste any game in Africa, I can tell you that. Africa is near and dear to my heart, but I’ll tell you what. I’m a North American hunter, I live in Northern California, and I do a lot of hunting back home, too. It just happens to be that I can get to South Africa.

When you go to South Africa or Africa, do you take bags with you? I know when I was active with Safari Club, when the guys would go over, they would fill up duffel bags with books, tennis shoes, soccer balls, crayons and stuff like that. Do you guys do that when you travel?

Norissa and I have done all kinds of things. We got a deal from Old Navy where we got the shoe size for this school for every single kid. There were 100 kids in the school. They had dirt floors too. We brought one box and hats, and then we brought over their dollar flip-flops that they let us have a great deal on them. We’ve done that almost every single time that we’ve gone over in Namibia and Zimbabwe. In Namibia, we did a retirement home as well where we took a gemsbok and food. Wild game is common over there for people to eat, but they don’t have the means to go out and get it. Last time we did supplies such as toothbrush, toothpaste and little backpacks. All of us try and donate and give a piece to make their place a little bit better. Norissa is in the Free State. As soon as she’s done there, she’s going to do a mission trip in Johannesburg with the schools there. I’ll be joining over to do the hunt, but we’ll go visit schools. We both have our different passions and things that we’re doing with the hunting and taking it to a different level.

You mentioned you go to Kansas, and let’s chitchat a little bit about when you go whitetail hunting in Kansas. How does that work and is that as an archery hunt, a muzzleloader hunt?

I wish I was an archery girl. I’m not. My husband, we have an 18-target archery course on our property and he’s built it. He is awesome. I am not. I’m okay. I enjoy shooting, but it’s not something I feel, like with my firearms. I’m an NRA pistol, shotgun and rifle instructor. I take time every week to go out and shoot and to keep my skills sharpened, and I don’t take that time with archery. One of my close girlfriends lives in Kansas. Her name is Whitney Fouts, and she is big-time archery. They own a place called Wicked Outfitters. I’ve been there and I’m taking my husband there with his business partner and they will be archery hunting. I’m usually in December for a rifle hunt. I think we’re going to go turkey hunting, Whitney and I. It’s awesome. It was the first place that I ever hunted whitetail and it was years ago.

I remember I had a TV show, I’d been to Africa several times, New Zealand, Argentina, and I had never shot a whitetail, which was weird to some people. Here we shoot black-tail and mule deer and that’s what we hunt, and I never had an opportunity to travel across the U.S. to do that. I jumped on an airplane and went over. Whitney and I had become good friends. It was a completely different way of hunting. It was me and the cameraman. I didn’t have a guide in with me, I was judging whitetail, which I had never hunted before. It was interesting. It took me a little bit of time to figure everything out, but that’s part of what I enjoy. Whitetail, they have bigger bodies than a black-tail, and their horns might look smaller but they’re an older, more mature buck.

It was something where I had to start learning about that. Whitney helped me a lot. I harvested my first whitetail over there, and then I went to Quest Haven Lodge in Pennsylvania, and then I came back to Wicked last year. Whitney sat with me because at this point, we had been friends for years and now we’re good friends. She’s part of our pro staff. She wears our gear. I turned this buck down three times that was about the size of my first whitetail, waiting for the big boy to come and he didn’t come. It was one of my favorite hunts. She hunted with me and we got to watch deer. We were out checking trail cams and dropping corn, and I got to experience the whole thing, and that’s what I love about hunting. She took me on her day-to-day and what she does and going through all the SD cards. I call her the Deer Goddess. She knows it all, and she is awesome.

Let’s get her on.

I know. She needs to be.

She needs to be on, for sure.

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I will definitely hook you up, Bruce.

The Deer Goddess, I haven’t had a title name like that. That would be good.

She is well-known and amazing. I met her at the World Turkey Hunting Championship years ago. They hosted it at Wicked and they still do every year. Norissa and I went out and what a blast. Some of the top names in the industry out there are hunting and we enjoyed it and we hit it off. We’re both tomboys who love to hunt and we became very good friends. One of the cool parts about this was when you hunt in different terrains, whether it be from South Africa to Canada to North America, or even heading back into Kansas, it’s completely different hunting styles. Over here on the West Coast, that’s what we’ve always built for gear. I sat in the blind this December and I froze my butt off. This is how we learn. I’m not somebody designing something because I think it needs to be designed. I’ve lived it. Whitney sat in that blind with me and we wrote down all of our notes and ideas and essentially started designing in our heads an insulated lineup for Girls with Guns. That line is going to be our next and I’m excited about it.

Norissa is working with our design team on it and we have the new camo pattern that we’ll use for it. How cool is it to be able to sit there with one of your closest girlfriends who knows that industry? Any time we have any changes, cads or anything, I send them to her, “What do you think?” She lives it. When we’re designing gear, we aren’t just designing gear because we think it looks cute or size it down from men’s gear. We’re designing because we’ve gone out and hunted it and realized that there was something missing. There are some companies that have that insulated gear, but obviously I think we can do it better and we’re going to continue to try.

That’s innovation. That’s all it is. You figure out what didn’t work, and its lessons learned for hunting, lessons learned for your gear. You’ve got Vortex Optics. They learned a lot of lessons from other manufacturers. I love Vortex. They’re out of Madison, Wisconsin. They’re great people and I have a lot of their gear and it works. For the right conditions, I’ll put them against any glass made, and that’s Swarovski, Leica and Zeiss and all that. I proved that to myself on a sheep hunt. Needless to say, you have to innovate. Let’s take our discussion here. You hit upon a good thing, that hunters, when something isn’t working, figure out what isn’t working and then make it better, change and adapt. That’s what Jen has been talking about. It’s the adaptation of different ecological places, environmental places. Everything changes in hunting.

If you’re fortunate as Jen has to hunt at a lot of places. I’ve hunted from East to West all over North America, and every time you go you have to think a little bit differently because it isn’t like the back 40. It’s volcanic in California. There are volcanic rocks or something. It’s open country. I went to Tolay Lake once and hunted and we traveled through a lot of that country and it’s different. If you’re after black-tails, where they live and how they live is different than your neighborhood whitetail. You’ve got to innovate.

When I killed my first black-tail, it was 105 degrees out. It was my first experience with being out all day. I learned about conservation right off the bat because my brother-in-law, Norissa’s husband, is big into letting the deer grow up and shooting a mature animal. It was a private piece of land he took me out on. It was probably about 10,000 acres. It’s low fence, obviously, because we’re in California. We went out there where his family had their cattle and we were hunting. We must have seen ten bucks that day. He kept saying, “Nope.” I didn’t understand why. I was like, “This is my first hunt for big game. I want to shoot it.” This was years ago and I didn’t understand it. I wanted to hunt and shoot. I had been doing a lot of upland hunting and turkey at that point and hadn’t had an opportunity. At the end of that day, he saw two mature bucks bedded down and it was hot out. I remember crawling up and I remember he was shaking as much as I was and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to fire. We got up on a ridge and they were bedded down, but we had snuck all the way around a couple of miles because he had spotted them so far.

That day I learned about having good optics, learning how to glass, looking where you can find the animals. He taught me a lot about conservation and learning to for a more mature animal. I think all those things combined are things that years ago if you’d had told me that I know as much as I do now, I wouldn’t have believed you. I still feel like I only know a fraction of what’s out there. There’s so much. I’d love to know more about duck hunting. I’m horrible with my turkey, with my mouth call. I’m still trying to conquer that because I don’t spend enough time. I’ll do my slate call and box call all day long. There’s always something else to better yourself with hunting and that’s what’s fun about it, because there are many different animals and species and I love learning about them and teaching other people about them, as well.

Have you ever considered shooting a crossbow?

I don’t know if we can in California.

I’m thinking of Kansas.

I definitely would. I’m not opposed to trying anything. I know that when I go out there, my husband, he’s going to be in a tree stand and with a bow and I haven’t taken the time to learn. That’s definitely not a bad idea.

I shoot Excalibur’s ever since my shoulder went and I couldn’t shoot my compound anymore. I shoot Excaliburs. There’s a lot of great crossbow manufacturers out there, but an Excalibur is the simplest because all it is a recurve bow on a rail. That’s all it is. There are no wheels, no pulleys, no anything. Mine shoots 380 feet per second and it shoots a bolt. I was reading something from Deer & Deer Hunting. Crossbow hunters in the deer hunting for archery match the take or the kill for traditional horizontal bows. You’ve got horizontals this way and verticals this way, so vertical bows, and horizontals are the crossbows. For people that have situations with their body, with their health or with the youth, it’s a great way because it’s a lot easier for them to shoot a crossbow. It’s a lot like a rifle. I can shoot mine at 80 yards. I don’t because most of my whitetail shots are 20 or 30 yards. That’s what they are. It doesn’t matter. Even with a rifle, they’re that close. I wanted to give a shout-out for Excalibur Crossbows because they’re owned by Bowtech now. They’re a Canadian-made company, but they’re very simple. It’s as simple as you can get with a crossbow. Think about that.

I’m always open into new areas of hunting because it changes. When I started messing around with my bow, it was because I wanted to hunt in a different way and try something different. I know a crossbow doesn’t take as much time to dial in. Is that correct?

Right. You already know your trigger squeeze, you already know how to breathe, you’re an NRA instructor where you’re squeezing a trigger on something. The crossbow is very similar. You set it up with hunting sticks, shooting sticks and you have a stable rest. It’s an easy way because to become proficient like your husband, he’s got a course set up and he shoots a lot of arrows. One, because he likes it and it’s enjoyable, but it’s also perfect practice.

He was out there for an hour and it’s roughly 100 degrees here in Red Bluff on a daily basis. That’s what he enjoys. Why I picked up a bow was because I love being outdoors. When I hunt, obviously I’m outside when I’m training, when I’m practicing with my guns, but I didn’t have something that he enjoyed that we enjoyed together. I picked up a bow and I shoot for fun. I enjoy it and it’s something else that’s different. I’ll tell you what, there is a lot to know. I feel like my brain might explode if I had to learn one more thing.

One of my goals is to shoot a kudu with my crossbow in South Africa.

When you’re ready to go, I’ve got a lot of cool places.

I’m sure you do, and that’s going to happen. How do people reach out to you? Let’s let the readers know how to reach out to you. How do people get a hold of you or Norissa?

We need to stay true to who we are. We need to work hard and work together to be one. Share on X

Norissa and I both have our personal pages, which is @GWGJen, and then @GWG_Nur. Girls with Guns Clothing has a Facebook page. We’re nearing 500,000 followers. There is a girl in the next office over from me that answers every single one of those requests, and they will forward them to Norissa or I if you reach out there. We also have Instagram, @GirlsWithGunsClothing. You can find us on Pinterest. We have our website, GWGClothing.com. All of those emails will filter through my staff and they can come to Norissa or I. Honestly, we answer everything that comes through. I still help out different women and kids in the industry, people who contact us. We want people to reach out to us, we want to be a platform for women to feel comfortable to ask questions. Obviously, it’s not our primary focus. We are a clothing company and gear, but it is something that we’re passionate about. We encourage them to reach out and any questions they have, we’ll do our best to send them in the right direction.

Thanks for that. Where do you see the future of hunting?

I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit scared for hunting in California. I’m scared that if people don’t get on board to help California, that it’s going to carry over into other states. I feel we’re blessed to have the president that we do that supports outdoorsmen and women and the NRA, but I think that’s where a lot of my passion comes with our youth. I have talked about it a lot because I am passionate about it. We need to carry on our hunting heritage. We need to stay true to who we are. We need to work hard and work together to be one. These anti-hunting people and their anti-hunting propaganda, they’re coming at us as hunting, but we all have the anti-gun people. Those people are going to continue to come at us, so I feel like we need to unite and stick together and that’s the only way. That’s the way that we got the president elected. We have to continue to do that because I feel those same people, we have a lot of the same values and beliefs, and that we have to stick together to fight for our hunting rights or they’re going to be taking away one right at a time.

I cannot buy ammo over the counter. I have to get it through an FFL dealer. I have a ten-day waiting period for my firearm. I’m okay with that. I believe in background checks because of the fact that’s the only way we can keep them out of some people’s hands. That doesn’t bother me. We can’t use hounds with bear hunting. They are slowly but surely taking away all these little laws, and now they’re going after our guns. I think that’s a focus for each and every one of us. It’s not so much to focus on ourselves, but to focus on the other people out there, and educating them and helping them to understand what we all love. I love hunting. It is a part of who I am.

I grew up with a dad and a brother who hunted, and I was the girl that tagged along. Girls didn’t hunt back then. That was almost 30 years ago. As I’ve gone through when I was ten, eleven years old, my brother was hunting with my dad and I would cruise along with him. My brother has always said to me, “I’ll trade you for what you get to do now,” because he didn’t have the opportunity that I had as an adult. I think that it’s important for us to build up those people, the women, the men even, even though I know a lot of men will go out on their own, and the children, and help them to understand what we love about our hunting heritage.

That’s going to be a wrap with Jen O’Hara, CEO of Girls with Guns Clothing brand. Jen, it’s been a pleasure. I’m smiling because it’s much fun what I do. People say, “How do you do that?” It’s so much fun because you get to sit and chat. I’m sitting right in your room and we’re talking about hunting and the things that are important to us. Everybody might not agree with us, we acknowledge that, but at least meet us halfway. Let us have a discussion. Some of my best hunts, I never killed anything, yet I came home with memories that I’ll have until the day I die, and then there’s the thereafter, the everlasting life, which is another conversation in its entirety. With that being said, you’ve been a joy to have as a guest and I look forward to having Norissa on. I’d love to have the opportunity to talk to her. With that, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of readers, thank you much for being a wonderful, gracious guest on Whitetail Rendezvous.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

About Girls with Guns® Clothing

Girls with Guns® Clothing is located in beautiful Northern California between Redding and Chico, a few hours south of the Oregon border, in the small town of Red Bluff, California.

Founded in their garage by two best friends, Girls with Guns® Clothing (GWG®) was born out of a dream and fashioned through a partnership that is one part risk-taker and one part conservative. After nine years of hard work and determination, we are now pursuing our small-town American dream both locally and internationally. This is an amazing accomplishment for us to not only have made it past the hardest part of starting a new business but also to see the progress that our brand has made across the United States and around the globe.

We are excited about the new direction our company is taking! We are proud to announce our the launch of our new CCW range wear line and our exclusive new camo pattern, Shade. Girls with Guns® Clothing has always been designed by women for women – we are inspired by those out in the field and on the range, and we strive to perfect and innovate the latest and greatest pieces that fit a woman and are functional for all of your outdoor adventures.

As two small-town girls, we are happy to be a part of a movement in our country and small town. We strongly support the rights of gun owners and we are working hard to keep our hunting heritage alive, both in our local community and worldwide. We would never have made it this far without the support of our family, friends, and loyal customers.

We live our lives to the fullest just like you do…. It’s our trendy West Coast California lifestyle that separates us from the rest. We know who our customers are, and we are committed to uplifting and uniting all women hunters and shooters.

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