Everybody wants to go on organic food. One way of achieving that is to get your own meat through hunting. Tatiana Orosova from Slovakia is one of the finalists in the Ultimate Extreme Huntress™ 2019 competition. Tatiana joined the competition to see what she is capable of. Wanting to inspire women, she urges women to try the outdoors and get into hunting to bring their families healthy and good food. Tatiana shares her experiences in the competition and how she learned the American style of hunting and long distance shooting.
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Extreme Huntress 4 – Finalist Tatiana Orosova
Welcome to a special episode of Whitetail Rendezvous for Extreme Huntress 2019. We’re heading to Slovakia and we’re going to be meet up with Tatiana Orosova. She is a huntress, a wonderful person and got a rich hunting tradition. Tatiana, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I’m very honored to be here.
Why Extreme Huntress? What was so special about getting in this contest?
It was very interesting, even the name of Extreme Huntress for me like, “What is extreme?” I wanted to see what I can do and what I’m capable of. I wanted to challenge myself. I was hunting mainly in Slovakia and in Europe. I wanted to try something else and see what I can do. If I can do it whenever I’m home, if I can do it also in other countries especially in the United States, in Texas. I want to inspire people and I want to inspire women. Extreme Huntress is mainly watched by women. I would like to get women outdoors, get them into hunting and not be afraid of it, try it and bring their families healthy and good food.
Everybody in the world wants organic food. Being a hunter and going out, harvesting and getting game and then processing it and putting it on your table, you controlled the whole process of bringing meat from field to plate. Let’s talk about how important that is no matter what country or continent you live in.
It is very important to learn to harvest and to bring home your own meat. When you want to harvest in any mode or to bring home meat, you need to know something. You need to have skills, experience and knowledge. It challenges you. You need to go out there, you need to stalk and you need to track. It’s not easy how some people are thinking about it. If you bring home your own food, your own meat that you harvested by your own hands or with your own rifles, you are much more thankful and more appreciative of it because you went there, you made the work, you brought it home and you needed to process it and skin the body by yourself. You need to prepare the food. You need to pack it and everything. All the work you are doing makes you appreciate it more than going to the supermarket and buy it in the freezer or fridge.
Don't be afraid of anything. Do what you want and what you are passionate about. Share on XWhy do you think women are being attracted to the out-of-doors in record numbers across the globe?
We also want to bring food to our families, not just men and that we want to explore stuff. We want to explore nature and understand it. A lot of girls have a pretty big connection with animals. They love animals and it’s all about understanding it. This is the main part of why they want to be hunters. They shouldn’t make a sport out of it. It’s not a sport. It’s something that needs to keep the population in some numbers strong and healthy.
When you harvest an animal, what is the tradition that you do?
When I harvest an animal, I take three long leaves from a tree or some branches and put the leaves on the animal. One is going into the mouth. It means that it’s the last bite of the animal. The second leaf is going on the wound of the shot and it needs to be turned the right way. When it’s a male or trophy animal, it’s pointing on the head or on the trophy. When it’s a female, the leaf should be pointing on the reproductive system. The third leaf is going to the successful hunter and usually, you are putting it by your head on the right side or if you have a cap. Some of the companies are starting to make the caps with little bit of straps that you can put the leaf on it.
That tradition is thousands of years old. What’s the reason behind that?
The reason is that we want to be thankful and we want to pay tribute to the animal and to nature that we got the opportunity of harvesting this animal. That we could go out there and we could hunt. We want to be thankful for everything.
We’re thankful that you’re part of the Extreme Huntress contest for 2019. What drew you to hunting?
I was pretty much from my childhood interested in it. My father brought me everywhere to the woods and to the animals, telling me everything like how things work, how to track, how to train dogs, how to shoot and everything. I was drawn into this environment and I was all the time in nature, outdoors and in the mountains. It’s a part of me that you can’t take out.
When you think about the Extreme Huntress contest and you were named the finalist, you joined three other women in Texas. Let’s talk about that experience.
It was a very interesting experience. I was very excited about Ulrika because I was in Sweden a couple of times. I love Sweden and she’s from Europe also. I was thinking that’s very good because we will have the same style of hunting. It was pretty much the same because we have very similar nature and also it was very interesting to see the American girls. Their style, how they are hunting or what they are doing, what I can learn from them and what are their different traditions. It was very different in all aspects of the competition.
They said they learned a lot from the shooting range and they had instructors. What did you take away from that experience?
Not to be risky because I burned myself when I tried to be risky. I wasn’t prepared for it. Safety also, you need to be handling your gun safely all the time. Not pointing everywhere you want, not to have your finger on the trigger and handling your gun stands. I love long-range shooting. I was also pretty interested before the competition on long-range shooting, how the wind ditch works. Everything about ballistics, about bullets, the grains, the weight of the bullets and how it works in different conditions. It varies in high temperature and low temperature. Even the basics all hunters should know.
When you talk about long-distance shooting, do you shoot long distance then in Europe?
I shot some miles, maybe 300 meters but it depends where you are hunting. If we are somewhere in Austria, in the big mountains and you’re hunting chamois, you don’t have other possibilities to get closer. It is very important to know all this stuff and how to do it. You can’t go there with no training, you can but you are risking that you will injure the animal and we don’t want it. I like to go on the shooting range, practice it and see how it works. I’m interested in ballistics. At first, I was pretty surprised about this training but then I was happy because it was very different. I thought that we will do some bow shooting or compound bow and I was afraid of it. I never shot a bow. I was afraid that I’m going to do bad with it. When I saw this, I was happy and I enjoyed it.
What’s the importance of a ballistic coefficient?
It is important because you need to know the ballistic curve, how the bullet is flying and how many meters it’s drawing. If the ballistic curve’s flat or if it’s rounder, if you are shooting long-range and you don’t have something that can count it, you need to know these things to count it by yourself.
There’s so much that goes into shooting. First, it’s your barrel, your trigger, your bullet, your cartridge, the case and then the propellant. There’s a lot into it.
You can have the same bullet but if you’re going to be shooting with a different kind of barrel, different kind of rifle, if it’s a stainless barrel, all barrels behave differently, short barrel or long barrel. It’s a much longer debate.
Tatiana, how do people vote for you on Extreme Huntress?
You need to go on the ExtremeHuntress.com website. In the right upper corner, you have a button 2019 voting. You will have to click on the button and then the four contestants will show up. There is me, Ulrika, Jamie and Meadow. You need to select the one contestant you want to vote for. Me, please. You click on the contestant and confirm. You need to write your email, again you will confirm and at the end, please don’t forget to confirm your vote by email from Polldaddy that you will get it afterward. It is very important because if you will not do it, the vote will not be valid anymore.
There are over 600 votes that aren’t confirmed. That’s a shame for whoever’s supposed to get the votes.
Maybe you need to check on your spam because if it will not show up in your main messages, maybe it’s in the spam hiding.
What are the three things that you want to leave about the Extreme Huntress contest?
If you want to learn a lot, if you want to challenge yourself, get new experiences, new skills and meet amazing people. You need to go out there. Don’t be afraid of anything. Do what you want or what you are passionate about and watch the episodes.
Tatiana, it’s been such a pleasure to visit with you. I wish you well in your quest to be the 2019 Extreme Huntress.
Thank you very much.
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About Tatiana Orosova
My name is Tatiana Orosová. I am 26 years old and I am a huntress, a horse rider, an outdoor enthusiast and a veterinarian in one person. I am from Slovakia in Central Europe.
Since I was a little child I have always had a close relationship with animals and nature. I loved all the moving creatures in the world. This is mostly because my father was a veterinarian and a hunter. He taught me a lot about animals, nature and of course hunting. I was spending a lot of time around him when he was doing his veterinary duties, he was taking me hiking and on the hunts and explaining how everything works. He was the most passionate hunter I have ever seen. He knew everything about the hunting ground, every tree, rock, wild game, and their tracks and where you could find it. Hunting was his whole life and I am very grateful he managed to pass his qualities on me and for bringing me into these two exciting worlds.
I think that being an extreme huntress does not only mean to be an excellent shooter and to know different types of hunting weapons and make a sort of sport out of hunting. Hunting is not a sport, this is very important to remember and to present hunting to the public in this way. As a good hunter one must be familiar with the hunting ground, literally every inch of it. At the first place, we should help animals to get through their difficult times in any season. We must be thankful to the nature for possibilities we have and taking care of and protecting it. This is the crucial part of hunting, about which a lot of hunters forget. When it comes to shooting the wild game, of course, a hunter must train to make shooting skills as good as possible to avoid unnecessary mistakes and to educate ourselves in every way – guns, ammo, nature, animals, diseases of animals, etc.. We should always properly select which animals we can and which we cannot shoot. For example, in our country, we have very strict rules and selective hunts. We need to pay attention to the age of the game (like deers, mouflons, etc., are divided to several age categories), to sizes and shapes of the horns, antlers and health condition. Based on those, we will be able to select will be left for the next breeding and which one is alright to be shot. According to this, we are keeping the strongest wild game alive, so that they spread their favorable genes in the population. I also often hunt with my two hunting dogs which I train myself and they are a big part of our family. I am using them for wild boar hunts but also for other types of wild game and for tracking. I can say, there is nothing better than to see or hear your doggy partner working and helping you during hunts. At the end, I think that we should appropriately pay tribute to animals we harvested.
We should be hunting for a healthy source of meat, great memories, and experiences we can get, which are making all of this unforgettable. I think the amount of knowledge and skills we must know make the huntress extreme.
List of accomplishments of merit, special awards and organizations involved with:
I’m cooperating with Leica Sport Optics, Hornady in Europe. I was making a few promotional videos but our biggest was for the German Leica Sport Optics. I’m very interested in promoting hunting and filming hunting promo videos and movies from hunts.