Ladies on the Hunt

As part of our mission to promote recruitment into the sport of hunting, the CMDA along with support from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Outfitters Association, expanded our hunting outreach program in 2012 to include “Ladies on the Hunt”, a ladies first timers archery hunt. That year, five ladies were drawn from a field of nine who signed up for our first Ladies Hunt. Hunting with Camp David Outfitters the ladies experienced their first deer hunt.

In 2014, the Colorado Traditional Archers Society (CTAS) teamed up with the Colorado Mule Deer Association to host the “Ladies on the Hunt” program.  Originally seven women were drawn from a group of fifty-three, four Compound shooters and three Traditional Shooters.  But when the end of September rolled around, we lost all of the Compound shooters.  We picked up two Ladies, Lauran Truitt the event coordinator for Cabela’s in Grand Junction and Vallerie Krunz who was on last year’s Ladies Hunt.  Both were shooting recurves.  Then two weeks before the hunt, Tom Clum one of our mentors from last year, told me of a lady, Linda Walsh, who was really interested in going on the hunt.  Linda contacted me and filled the number six slot. Amazingly, we ended up with six traditional shooters on the hunt: Betty Johnson, Theresa Gonzales Tameler, Nikki Moody, Lauran Truitt, Vallerie Kunz and Linda Walsh.  The CMDA had been invited to host the hunt on Clay Hill’s Ranch near Kremmling CO. Clay’s Dad, Jodi Hill, helped us set ground blinds two weeks before the hunt. The weather cleared on Thursday as the hunters began to arrive. We had four days of perfect weather. The Ladies were seeing deer from every ground blind. Two of the Ladies took deer on Saturday, Betty Johnson and Lauran Truitt. The other Ladies all had opportunities for shots. It was an exciting hunt; lots of game and the Ladies said they totally enjoyed getting to meet each other and sharing their experiences. The Hills have asked two adjoining ranches to participate in this year’s 2015 hunt. Therefore will be expanding the number of Ladies to eight. So Ladies if you have never shot a deer with your bow, and you want to start hunting, get signed up for an opportunity to win a hunt. You can sign up on this site or you can sign up at the High County Shoot registration booth.

In 2015 seven Ladies were drawn from a list of 162 women that signed up for the drawing for the hunt. This was another archery hunt, but this time it was for elk with J-Bar-H Outfitters. We were hit with a 17″ snowstorm at the base camp with 24″ farther up the mountain. Needless to say, the hunt was very difficult, but our ladies were real troopers and bucked the snow and hunted.