Welcome to a special Extreme Huntress 2019 episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. I’m heading off to Slovakia and I’m going to be talking with Tatiana Orosova. I hope I said that right and she is one of the finalists in Extreme Huntress 2019. Tatiana, welcome to the show and I’m so excited that you’re part of this global Extreme Huntress contest. Tell me about how you got involved.
Tatiana: Well, thank you very much for welcoming me and I’m very honored to be here with you this evening or mid-day. How I got involved? My friend from Austria, he introduced me to this competition. He knew that I was hunting a lot, like pretty much from my childhood, and we were on one [inaudible 00:01:04] together and then he said to me that, “Well, there is a competition in America. Maybe you could sign in and try.” So first I was reading something about it, I was watching the episodes, and I saw that “Wow, that’s awesome.” Like all the shooting and experience and learning. All this stuff. So I tried. We made a video and luckily, I got in.
Extreme Huntress – Finalist Tatiana Orosova
Well and you did very well because you were first to semi-finalists, then you were a finalist and recently you went down to Texas and joined the other three gals. Tell me about that experience.
Well, I was pretty excited because I have never been before in American states at all. So I was really looking forward to go there, to see new places, to meet new people, and to see how everything works there. Like it’s different countries, different weather, different people. Everything is different so it was very, very exciting.
And when you went to the ranch and met all the other folks, what are some of your takeaways from that experience?
It was, like, pretty damn good experience. We don’t have something like this, especially in Slovakia. Maybe somewhere in Europe, maybe Germany or Scandinavia. Maybe they have some kind of this training or these ranches, but it’s totally different in your country than in ours. So I’m very lucky that I could get there and to have this training, especially this rifle training. Long-range or dangerous game. So maybe if I wouldn’t get to the competition, I wouldn’t get into these trainings at all. So I’m very, very thankful that I could be there and to improve my skills. So it was pretty awesome.
When you’re on the rifle range, what are a couple of things that you’d like to share with other people that you learned?
“Well, I learned not to be risky”
Well, I learned not to be risky. We were training a lot, especially some long-range shooting and other stuff. In some competitions, I think I was feeling too confident and I shouldn’t. I wanted to maybe risk a little bit to get more points, but I have seen that I shouldn’t do that. Yeah, so don’t be risking if you are not prepared. I think you need to adjust the different conditions and very quickly. Like the conditions can change in every second and you would need to be able to adjust on it. So I think this was, I think, one of the most important things that they learned us, and also your reactions. You need to react very quickly and adjust to different kind of situations. So I think this was very, very important. Especially for me.
You know, when you think about the other women from different parts of the country, all of you, to a women, are proponents of getting women in the outdoors. So right now, what’s your message to all the ladies listening to this show across North America? And it’ll be in Europe because I have two European contestants. So you’ll share it on your Facebook page and such. So what’s your message to women about getting out hunting?
Well, I would like to say to them that they shouldn’t be afraid of it. Like they are…it’s starting to be more popular that women also started to, kind of, go outdoors. Especially in America. Here in Europe, okay, we have in Scandinavia, there are a lot of women who hunt. In Germany starting also, but in some countries, especially in Slovakia and, for example, in Czech or maybe Ukraine, Poland, and all these central European countries, it’s still not so very common for women to hunt. Especially they are taken by other hunters, like especially by men, that it’s something that women shouldn’t be doing. Like in some part of countries, it’s like this. So they are thinking that women should be, for example, in the kitchen and they can’t do it. They can’t handle the gun. They can’t bring the food. So I think they shouldn’t be afraid, especially afraid, like, of what other people will say.
She said that people are more and more disconnected from the natural world, and I think it’s true
We can do the same. Like we can shoot. If we can train, we can shoot. And maybe we are even better than men. We can do the same stuff. We can take care of ourselves. We can bring healthy food to our homes, to our families. So I think this is the message of why we shouldn’t do that. Like it’s very important to connect with the nature, to connect with animals, and Meadow, who is one of the finalists of Extreme Huntress, she said a very, very nice sentence in an interview. She said that people are more and more disconnected from the natural world, and I think it’s true. It’s, like, bad true. They are disconnected and so they should go out. They should learn a lot of because it challenges you. You need to learn. You need to improve your skills. It’s about knowledge. It’s about experience and everything. So, yeah.
Well said and your father was a veterinarian and he got you into hunting? So talk about your hunting tradition.
Yes. My father was a veterinarian and I was pretty much in the nature or with animals, like, from my early age. From when I was a small kid and basically in Europe, also, for example, in Germany, in Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Czech, we have a lot of traditions to animals. We harvest it. So, for example, I don’t know if you know something about it. For example, so if I harvest an animal, so I’m paying a tribute to animal and to the nature that I’ve got the opportunity to hunt it. And the nature was so…how I would say it in English? That it led me to take the animal.
So one of the traditions
So one of the traditions is that we are putting leaves from the bushes and from tree into the mouth. So it means something like its last bite of the animal, and we are putting leaves on the wound. And it also needs to be put on the wound in the special way. So, for example, if it’s a male with a trophy, with the antlers or something, so the leaves should be pointing on the end. When it’s a female, so the leaves should be pointing on the reproductive system and the third part of the leaves, it’s going to the successful hunter. So it’s one of the traditions we have.
Bruce: And that’s the last bunch? That’s how I understood it. European hunters that have come to the United States that I’ve hunted with, you know, they did exactly that. They gave their animal, you know, a tribute as they say and they would just take green and…
It’s something…we are thankful for the opportunity we have got from the nature and that we could harvest the animal, and that we are really respectful that we could do it.
Right and it’s always good to give thanks, you know, from where it comes. Where it comes from and, you know, that’s a deep, rich tradition, you know, that Europeans have had for, you know, thousands of years. Thank you for bringing that up because that’s important.
Let’s talk about we meet in the airport and you say you’re a finalist for Extreme Huntress, and why should I vote for you?
Why should you vote for me?
Okay, so I think you should vote for me because I want to represent women, especially all kinds of women, especially the European ones and to show them that we can do it. We can do the same like anybody else. We can take care about ourselves, about our families, about our children and nature. And that we can…it’s teaching us to survive. So I think it’s important to spread the word about hunting and to educate people about hunting and how to take care about everything. About animals. About nature. So I would like to spread the good word and, yeah, to represent women to go out there and do what they should do.
Well said and thank you for that. To the ladies, you know, listening, what are your three reasons they should become hunters?
what are your three reasons they should become hunters?
So first, I think it makes you a lot, a lot stronger. A lot confident. Lot stronger. So this is the first reason. The second reason is that you will connect with the natural animals, like, a lot. So I think there is no other way of life that you can be so much connected with the nature. And the third part is if you want to have a good food, healthy food, and you want to know, like, from where it comes from. So this is the main reason for it.
Because everybody likes organic food, whether they hunt or not. They want to buy organic food and hunters provide organic food. That’s what we’re providing for our families.
That’s true.
I think it’s the best way to get organic meat
I think it’s the best way to get meat because honestly, I don’t want to support these, like, mass meat industry because I think people stop thinking, like, from where is the meat. From where is the food. They just go to the supermarket and then buy it, and they are not thinking, like, what everything is behind. So if you go to the slaughterhouses or some farms where the animals are kept and when they see the conditions, how people are behaving to them. So they are kept in cages their whole life and mistreated, yes? So I think this is not the best way to support. And when you are hunting the animals, okay, there needs to be selective hunt. Like you can’t hunt everything you want. So there need to be some rules, what you can hunt. What you can’t hunt. You want to save strong population. You want to save a healthy population.
So you need to select and if you shoot the animal in the wild, so it was living a full life, happy life. It was not mistreated. It was properly selected for hunt and you have the healthiest food you can get. So I think this is very important to think about and I don’t like when people are saying that hunters are some kind of killers or something, especially they don’t like, for example, if I take a picture with the animal I’ve hunted. That I’m smiling with it. Okay, it’s not just I killed some animal. That is food for my whole family. It’s the skills behind it. It’s the experience behind it. It’s knowledge I need to know. So I think, like, people should start thinking a little bit, like, from where is the food and…yeah.
I think if people saw the conditions of the slaughterhouses, they would be appalled and they’d never eat another steak in their life. Myself.
Yeah, yeah. I saw a lot of that because I was also studying veterinary medicine and it was during our school, we needed to visit in the slaughterhouses and farms and bird farms and pig farms and cow farms and everything else. And, yeah, it was not a very nice view, all the dead animals, and I really don’t get why people are getting so mad when I have a photo with a dead animal. For example, if you are taking photo with a steak, what’s the difference? Like somebody else has, like, made the dirty job for you and now you have a steak, but they are not thinking what’s behind the steak. So I think this is the main reason why they are like that.
How do people vote for you, Tatiana?
How do people vote for me? Okay, so you need to go to Extreme Huntress – Finalist Tatiana Orosova https://www.extremehuntress.com/main/ and when you go there, in the right upper corner there is a button, like, 2019 Voting. So you’re going to click on the button and then you will see four contestants. There is Jamie, Meadow, Ulrika, and me, and then you need to select the contestant you want to vote for. So, of course, for me and you click vote. Then you add your email. Then again you click vote and at the end, you need to confirm your vote by email you will get afterwards for quality. That is very important because if you don’t confirm it, the vote is not valid anymore.
So it’s really important one, vote for the person, two, put your email in, and three, confirm because there’s over 600 votes that have not been confirmed. So whoever voted, those votes don’t count. So, you know, make up your mind, folks. Vote for one of these lovely ladies and stay tuned for, you know, January of 2019 because one of the four is going to be Extreme Huntress 2019. Tatiana, thank you so much for being a Facebook live guest presented by Whitetail Rendezvous this morning.
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