I can’t recall the first time someone referred to me as a “huntress” – maybe it was on social media, maybe at an expo. What I do remember is the instant feeling of disgust and distaste I had about it; it made me flinch. Like being handed a smaller trophy for the same finish line as the men.
Looking at how language has done this before. Actress. Authoress. Aviatrix. Every one of those words told women, you can do the job, but we still need a separate word so everyone remembers you’re not quite the real thing. Most of them have quietly died out, because we figured out the job doesn’t change based on who’s doing it. A pilot is a pilot. A writer is a writer. So finish this sentence with me: “A huntress is a hunter, but ___.” Whatever word almost fell out of your mouth there — smaller, softer, less — that’s the whole argument.
What about in the field? A man on his first hunt ever and myself in my 20+ years – both of us harvest a deer. Put in the same time, the same work, the same effort. So why might only one of us gets the title of hunter? My experience, my effort, my skill, my passion doesn’t get me the title. Instead, my gender earns me a lesser one. Huntress doesn’t feel like a compliment, it feels like a footnote.
I do want to be fair to the other side, because some women in the industry I find do like this term – maybe to them it feels celebratory, not diminishing. It just lands so differently for me. I am not asking to be special or for a new unique name. I am asking to be on the same playing field. I want to be on that playing field in the outdoors community and seen and respected the same way that my fellow hunters who are men do. I am not asking to be special. I am asking to be seen simply as a hunter.
Ironically, I think this is the same reason that some men can’t stand women moving into this space – the assumption that we want extra credit, a separate lane, or a gentler curve. I don’t. What I do want is for my actual differences to be respected in the industry – my body is built differently than a man’s so my gear needs are different whether it’s how my clothes fit or the weight and draw of my bow being smaller than that of a man; let’s respect the differences that are real, but not use this invented title for ones that aren’t.
If a man were to say “I don’t get it, it’s just a nice word” I would be inclined to explain the way that they have never had to claw their way out of a stigma. And let’s face it, even tho I feel like I have mostly made my way out, some days I find myself still clawing. This is a male dominated space, and it’s taken me and many other women a long time to be considered relevant. It still happens often when I am making general conversation with a man that learns we have hunting in common. It always seems that I have to “prove” in our conversation that I know enough about what we are both talking about to be taken seriously. Sometimes it’s as simple as the man expressing surprise at the extent of my knowledge on what we are talking about; other times it’s like rapid fire questions at my from the man in the conversation almost as if he’s trying to catch me faking my passion or knowledge for these sports. If I were a man it would just be a pleasant conversation about our camaraderie over the sport and talking about their favorite hunts.
This is not a new thing to me, but the way that I have been led by example. My mother always hunted with the men, in fact she was almost always the only woman in camp. She never asked for a separate title or recognition. She never asked for special treatment. She never asked for or assumed that she’d have a leg up because she was a woman. She did everything that the men did – and more often than not she outhunted them. Nobody ever tried to give her a special word either to fit her success, they just watched her do it and cheered her on.
Simply put I am a hunter. There’s no replacement word. That’s it. No modifier, no asterisk.
I am a hunter.
Wild Woman 