Itâs a dry January, which means two things on this girlsâ trip to central Arizona: weâre all skipping the margaritas tonight, and the river will be low enough for our Tacoma to cross in the morning.
Crowded into a booth at a Mexican restaurant in a small town near the edge of Tonto National Forest, swapping names and where-are-you-froms, we are a motley crew: two millennials wearing camouflage and eyelash extensions, an overalls-clad photographer who lives in an Airstream, and me, a San Francisco food writer soon to be out of her comfort zone.
Our server, Penny, flower pen poised over her notepad, is confused. âI have to ask,â she says, inspecting us through rhinestone-studded spectacles. âWhat are you ladies doing here?â
Rihana Cary, 33, and Amanda Caldwell, 32, friends who met on Instagram, look at each other. Theyâre used to this question.
âWeâre going hunting,â Amanda explains.
âWhat? Four ladies hunting? All by Âyourselves? Well,â says Penny. âThis is rather interesting.â She wishes us luck.
Apparently, weâre going to need it. What we have, I learn, is a late-season, last-minute, over-the-counter, nonresident, archery-only antlered-deer tag on public land. Weâll be hunting mule deer: an animal thatâs flighty and fast, with 310-degree vision, a sense of smell a thousand times stronger than ours, and ears twice the size of Alfred E. Neumanâs. The $300 tag will be difficult to fillâodds of success are just Â10 percent. In other words, it will take serious luck to bag a buck in the next five days. But also serious skill, which these ladies definitely have.
Ladies they donât mind. Just donât call them huntresses. âWe hate that word,â says Rihana, who lives in Layton, Utah, and works as a marketing director for Mtn Ops, a company that sells nutritional supplements and clothing for hunters. âItâs too sexualized, like temptress or seductress. Why does everyone try to put us in our own category? Weâre huntersââlike hikers are hikers and runners are runners. Amanda, a realtor from rural Montana, agrees.
The style of bowhunting weâll be doing, called spot and stalkâspotting an animal from afar, then stalking it until weâre within shooting rangeâis popular on the vast public lands open to hunters in the West, and itâs much harder than, say, deer hunting from a tree stand, which is more common in the East. âThere will be lots of highs and lows,â Rihana warns. âBut if we do get a deer, itâs going to be epic.â
I want epic. I think. As a liberal, urban, coastal-living walking clichĂŠ, I care where my food comes from: Iâll pay for the precious $4 peach, the $8 carton of local eggs, and whatever my bougie butcher counter charges for its organic grass-fed beef. But I have never cared quite enough to take it to the next level and harvest my own. Thatâs why Iâm here, to fulfill my moral obligation as a meat eater. To experience what it feels like to, if not kill the animal myself, at least watch it die. And then, you know, help dismember it before sitting down to dinner.
Modern-day omnivores have long outsourced the dirty work, of course. And in doing so, weâve created something even dirtier: factory farms and slaughterhouses. Things most meat eaters like to ignore for the ease and inoffensiveness of picking up a pound of plastic-wrapped chicken breasts on the way home from work.
âOhhh, heâs so killable!â whispers Amanda, her long blond locks free-flowing around her moon-shaped face.
In 2004, David Foster Wallace wrote in Gourmet about lobster, though the same holds true for steak: âAs far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of Gourmet wish to think hard about it.â
But today, food has come to dominate our collective conversation. âWho makes the best ramen?â is the new âIt looks like rain,â and photos of Early Girl tomatoes get nearly as many likes on Instagram as photos of cute kids. At the same time, weâre increasingly concerned about the environment and climate changeâaccording to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock contributes 14.5 percent of the worldâs human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions. The result is our fervent desire to know the source of everything we eat, from our honey to our halibut. Consumer interest in sustainable food increased 23 percent from 2018 to 2019, according to a recent study by Tastewise, a data platform for the food industry. Harvesting your own meat is a way to opt out of the distasteful aspects of factory farming.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened our interest in self-sufficiency, from gardening to raising backyard chickens to hunting. While people panic about meat shortages, having the ability to secure your own supper is an attractive idea.
Hunting in America has long been associated with gun culture, something for dudes who love to drive big rigs and drink beer and shoot things. But shouldnât it also be associated with food culture, something for women like meÂâor, really, anyoneâwho love to hike and drink wine and eat things?
We leave our Airbnb and roll into the desert before first light. Everyone but me is dressed in top-of-the-line camo. Rihana wears Under Armour, which has sponsored her as an athlete since 2015. (The company started making womenâs hunting apparel in 2011.) Amanda has on more than $700 worth of Sitka gear in Gore Optifade. Iâm rocking a pair of baggy REI zip-offs circa 2006, which I pulled from the depths of my dresser because they were khaki, and a puffy jacket, which is lime green. (I know. Itâs all I had.)
Clouds stutter across the sky as it glows gold. A thin frost coats the hard, reddish ground, crunching beneath our boots. Snow-dusted mountains rise in the distance. Rihana and Amanda, whose hair and makeup look better at dawn in the desert than mine would at a black-tie dinner, break out binoculars. They begin to glass a hillside across a broad, flat valley. Birds chirp. ÂCoyotes take roll call. Otherwise itâs still and quiet, as it should be when youâre scanning for animals that have hyperacute hearing. Then I slam the truck door. Rule number one: âNo slamming doors,â whispers Jen Judge, 48, the photographer for this story. Jen bowhunts, too. But without a tag, all she can do on this trip is glass. Sheâs goddamn good at it.about:blank
âI got deer,â says Jen, not long after sunrise, describing the animalâs location in the beige and sage landscape like sheâs giving directions to a lost spa-goer in Scottsdale. âLeft of the outcrop, left of the saguaro, in the drainage, in front of that tree.â Which tree? Rihana and Amanda sync up within seconds. Bouncing my binoculars around, I just make myself dizzy.
Doe. Itâs the rutâmating seasonâwhich means odds are thereâs a horny, aggro, testosterone-fueled male on the doeâs heels. Through the spotting scope, Rihana confirms: buck. Bedded under the bush, about 1,200 yards away, the four points on each of his antlers blending seamlessly into the branches. How the hell did they see him?
âOhhh, heâs so killable!â whispers Amanda, her long blond locks free-flowing around her moon-shaped face. (No hair tie for this hunter.) Heâs napping below the chapparal-shrouded ridge, 40 yards from the top, which means Rihana can hike the long way around and over and be within range when he wakes and stands. Sheâs never gotten a mule deer with her bow before. âIâm so excited for you!â says Amanda. She and Rihana clasp hands and squeal like tweenagers before a BeyoncĂŠ concert.
Rihana plots the buckâs approximate coordinates using OnX Hunt, an app with topo and aerial data that allows stalking hunters to mark and share an animalâs location. She sprays what looks like a Visine bottle, testing the wind. If itâs blowing the wrong way, heâll catch her scent. The breeze is good. The hunters clink slabs of homemade elk jerky. Rihana readies her bow, tosses her dark, auburn-streaked braid over her shoulder Katniss Everdeen style, and sets out. But not before putting her leopard-print-cased phone into selfie mode, turning the camera on herself, and pressing record for her 65,000 followers.
Rihana and Amanda are part of a growing scene of what Iâll call huntstagrammers, social-media influencers who are quite literally changing the face of hunting. Sure, men like Cameron Hanes and Sam Soholt have helped make hunting look hipper and more handsome on Instagram, too. But itâs their female counterparts who are shifting perceptions, with feeds that are also filled with rifles and camo, bloody fist bumps and butchered backstraps.
According to some industry groups, women are a fast-growing demographic of hunters in the U.S., during a time when overall participation has declined. Four percent of Americans hunt, the lowest share in three decades, says a Fish and Wildlife Service survey. But according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, female participation increased 59 percent from 2010 to 2019, while male participation dropped 4 percent. (Stats from the Fish and Wildlife Service, which uses a different data set, conflict with these numbers, and indicate a slight decline in female hunters.) Today the NSSF says women make up 22 percent of all hunters, compared with 12 percent in 2003. Artemis, a group of sportswomen-Âconservationists founded in 2017, already has some 11,000 community members, the majority of whom are between the ages of 25 and 45.
Women have always hunted, of course. Research suggests that Neanderthal women helped men hunt big game. In the early 20th century there was Nellie Neal Lawing, known as Alaska Nellie, who left Missouri (and her first marriage) in her forties to open a roadhouse along the Alaska Railroad and became a famed trophy hunter. In regions where itâs part of the culture, generations of women have long hunted, often with men, though all-women groups are not unheard of. (The Swamp Witches, a crew in Mississippi, have been duck hunting together for two decades.) Amandaâs mom hunted, too, and so did her grandmother. None of these women had social media, however, or the impulse it breeds to broadcast their skills, and kills.
Today, women hunters are more visible than ever. âItâs exploded,â says Curt Wells, editor of Bowhunter magazine. He says social media has played a major role. Before it, he explains, when women did show up in traditional hunting media like TV shows, they were often portrayed as sidekicks or cohosts. (Wells cites examples like Ralph and Vicki Cianciarulo, âAmericaâs favorite hunting coupleâ on the Outdoor Channel, and Lee and Tiffany Lakosky of the show Gettinâ Close, on the same network.) Now a new school of young women are becoming stars in their own right, using the Hefe photo filter and hashtags like #girlshunttoo and #womenwhohunt to garner huge followings. Thirty-two-year-old Eva Shockey, for example, is arguably the queen of huntÂstagram, with more than two million followers across platforms and her own television series, My Outdoor Family. (Shockey also cohosts a hunting show with her father, celebrity hunter Jim Shockey.)
âI had such a heavy heart. So much adrenaline. I was crying,â Rihana says. âTaking a life is always emotional. Once itâs not, you should probably stop hunting.â
Hunting brands are embracing the trend. Following Under Armour, Idaho-based apparel company First Lite launched technical womenâs gear in 2015. And legacy brand Orvis, which makes upland (hunting for certain bird species) apparel for women, began expanding its options around the same time. Between 2016 and 2019, Orvisâs womenâs upland-hunting business grew 210 percent.
Prior to that, pickings for women were slimâand what existed was often too big, bulky, and unbreathable, or made with cheap materials. âWe used to have to wear menâs stuff,â Amanda recalls. âRemember when they came out with pink camo?â She and Rihana scoff.
âKind of defeats the purpose,â Rihana says.
In the mid-nineties, companies began making womenâs compound bows. Like the menâs versions, these high-tech bows use a levering system of cables and pulleys, thus requiring less strength to draw and hold than the longbows you might recall from summer camp. Womenâs compound bows are smaller and lighter, with typical draw weights of 40 to 50 pounds, compared with 60 to 70 for menâs versions. Womenâs participation in bowhunting increased by 260 percent between 2003 and 2017, according to the NSSF.
âCompanies are realizing women are a way to make money,â says Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf, an associate professor and social scientist at the University of Montana who studies hunting. âTheyâre designing gear and investing in influencers and social media, and itâs spreading awareness.â In 2018, Metcalf started coteaching a course called Hunting for Sustainability; the majority of students who signed up were women.
Society is used to the image of the burly dude posing with his trophy kill. What challenges expectations more: millennial women like Rihana and Amanda, done up like Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, boasting draw weights of 60-plus pounds, elbows-deep in elk guts.
As Rihana treks toward the buck, Amanda assembles her Phone Skope in hopes of recording the kill. An adapter that allows her to use her smartphone to magnify the view through her spotting scope, itâs much better than my nausea-inducing binoculars.
An hour later, I see Rihana peeking over the ridgeline, then creeping downhill, each step as intentional as a dancerâs. Hunkered behind a bush, sheâs 88 yards from the deer. She needs to get within 60 to shoot. Popping almonds like popcorn, I feel like Iâm watching a silent thriller. I thought hunting was supposed to be hard. Weâre only three hours into day one and Rihanaâs already poised to shoot a stately looking senior? Too easy.
Doe up! She senses something. Now the buck is standing. Heâs chomping a bush. Amanda makes a bleating fawn sound to distract the animals, allowing Rihana to inch closer. Rihana is at one with the hillside, as much as the deer and the dead ocotillo shrubs are. Itâs primordial. The hunter and the hunted, in one real-life frame. Iâm breathless. And then, just as sheâs about to draw, for some reason the buck busts.
Smart guy. Inside, I cheer.
Rewatching the grainy clip later, weâll realize that it wasnât Rihana who spooked the deer. It was a bobcat, leaping off the top of a saguaro in the same frame. Holy fucking nature: bobcat saves buckâs life.
âThat could be it,â says Amanda over Oscar Mayer honey smoked turkey wraps at lunch. âWe could go the rest of the week without seeing another buck.â
But that afternoon, weâwell, theyâspy three more, including a big guy going nuts for a doe, who is not in the mood. âHow are we gonna kill him?â schemes Amanda. Itâs her turn to stalk. Two hours later, she texts. The wind was bad. Buckâs gone. So Rihana and I traipse up the ridge to try to find him. A needle in a haystack has got nothing on a deer in 2.9 million acres of national forest.
By the time we get back to the truck an hour or two later itâs dark and raining, and Iâm pulling cactus needles from my calves. On the drive out, I wonder why anyone bothers hunting when thereâs Uber Eats. Canât we just get burgers?
Rihana hasnât had a greasy beef patty in years. She lost her taste for fatty cow meat, she says. She eats wild game now, mostly elk. Her six-foot-long freezer at home is full of itâsome 300 pounds of meat that she harvests annually, everywhere from Utah to North Carolina to New Zealand.
Thatâs quite a feat for a former vegan who grew up in Ashland, Oregon, where the only thing her family hunted was mushrooms. In college, Rihana worked at a Macyâs makeup counter and ate McDonaldâs. After graduation she enrolled in nursing school, where she researched a paper on factory farming and was appalled at the animalsâ squalid living conditions, how they were pumped with antibiotics. She couldnât afford organic meat, so she gave it up altogether for a while. Then she met a guy. (Itâs always a guy.) He brought her on hunts. She loved the sounds of the forest, the way her senses heightened, the reverence she felt for the animals, and the fact that from life to death to dinner, she controlled every aspect of the meat she ate.
The guy gave her a ring. But her 23rd birthday brought the better gift, the one she kept: a bow.
âI used to think hunting was horrible!â says Rihana, who now, nine years later, spends some 200 days a year in the field for her work with Mtn Ops or just hunting with girlfriends. (Her new boyfriend doesnât bowhunt, and Amandaâs boyfriend doesnât hunt at all. But they both plan to teach their men.) Before killing her first animal, a black-tailed deer, Rihana remembers looking at it and thinking, Can I really do this? She pointed her rifle and closed her eyes. âYou donât close your eyes!â she laughs, recalling the moment now. She missed. âOn purpose, I think,â she says. Then she got a rare second chanceâand dropped the deer. âI had such a heavy heart. So much adrenaline. I was crying,â she says. âTaking a life is always emotional. Once itâs not, you should probably stop hunting.â
Rihana learned to shoot both a rifle and a bow in the same summer, but it would take several more months of archery practice before she felt strong and proficient enough to shoot an arrow in the field. Thirty-eight percent of gun owners cite hunting as one of their primary reasons for owning a gun. Contrary to what many may think, not all hunters are members of the NRA. Jen says that in her small circle of hunter friends, not one is. Amanda is an NRA member; Rihanaâs membership lapsed. Both women still rifle-hunt and carry for protection. But they prefer bowhunting. To them, itâs the epitome of fair chase, an ethical approach to hunting that emphasizes honorable pursuit of an animal.
The difference is ultimately a philosophical one: with a rifle the hunter arguably has the advantage; with a bow the prey does. An experienced rifle hunter need only get within several hundred yards of an animal, whereas on this hunt, Rihana and Amanda must slip within 60.
While learning to outsmart an animal, to stalk close enough to shoot, Rihana says she developed the patience and persistence and confidence sheâd lacked in her aimless teens and early twenties, when partying was her priority. She felt like sheâd unleashed a natural ability. âIâm 25 percent Native American,â she says. Her grandparents were JuaneĂąo and Cahuilla, tribes that historically bowhunted. âI feel like itâs part of me.âÂ
Hunting is in Amandaâs blood, too. âI was born in a camo onesie,â she jokes. Hunting has always been her primary means to a meal. Finances were tight in her family, so once she was 12, old enough for a tag in Montana, her father took her out. âAt dinner my mom would say, âThis is your buck, Amanda.ââ
In the fall of 2018, after her mother passed away, Amanda spent three weeks alone in the Montana wilderness (she wonât say whereâhunters never reveal their spots) before shooting her biggest elk yet: a mature Rocky Mountain six-point she stalked for six hours with her bow, coming within five yards of the bull. She harvested a yearâs worth of meat.
Processing and packing out an animal is not for the squeamish. Amanda uses the gutless method, which requires slicing open an animal head to tail down its backbone. She peels off the hide, pulls out the backstraps, then the front shoulders, then the hind quarters, and debones. She hangs whatever meat doesnât fit in her pack or on her horse and returns for the rest, sometimes multiple times. She once carried 95 pounds on her back over six miles and crushed a vertebrae. It took her two months to recover.
âTelling a woman not to wear makeup in the field is like telling a guy not to fart in the field!â Rihana says. âWhy would I change who I am when I go hunting?â
Amanda posted a photo of that six-point bull to her Instagram feed, and it remains her most liked post to date. âYou were completely solo?!?â commented @mountain_momma_1102, with a mind blown emoji. But not all female huntstagrammers are willing to post photos of fresh carcasses. Some stick to selfies in cute orange hats or bowls of venison bulgogi. Rihana doesnât shy away from gore. âIâm not afraid to show blood,â she says. âIâm not afraid to show the reality of it.â
No matter what #womenhunters post, they receive the same thing male hunters do: hate mail. But more of it, some say. âIâll get stuff like âI hope your family dies,ââ Rihana says. âIâve probably blocked 1,000 people, including friends from high school who wrote that they donât understand who Iâve become.â She and Amanda also get asked out at least once a day. âCan I take you hunting?â is a recurring DM. Both say their followers are 75 to 80 percent male.
Ultimately, though, the âYouâre an inspiration!â messages far outnumber the nasty comments. Rihana and Amanda are on social media to share their love of hunting, they say. To show women they can do it, too.
Day three, and weâve rented a UTV. Itâs a full moon, which supposedly keeps deer up all night and bedded down all day. Still, Jen spots a buck, hot on six does, within minutes of Âadjusting her binocs. Later, Rihana superheroically spies another from 1,200 yards away.
After two long, ultimately failed stalks, we meet Rhonda, a sweet, gangly fifty-Âsomething mom from Flagstaff wearing camouflage. Sheâs with her husband and son, and the three of them are also bowhunting for mule deer.
âI saw you two earlier!â she says to Rihana and Jen. She looks at me and Amanda. âAnd then I saw two more! I never see women hunting together,â she says with a mix of awe and envy.
I want to tell her I donât really count. But then I realize, heyâIâve been out here 12 hours a day, and now Iâm wearing borrowed camo and cooler khaki pants and even picking out puffy white butts hidden in the brush, so maybe I do?
In the afternoon, we gorge on Sour Patch Kids and go after a bedded dude with two does who eventually busts. As the sun dips behind the mountain, Jen again has deer. A buck, two ridges over. Itâs 30 minutes until dark. âWe still have a shot!â Amanda cheers. As the sky bleeds purple, we speed off in the UTV, rumbling over rocks, through creeks. Four women chasing a nice-looking male we can no longer see.
Women hunters might be all over Instagram, but as Iâm learning, the idea of us hunting IRL without men is still a new one. âWhereâs your husband?â is a question women told me they occasionally hear, in the woods or at Cabelaâs. And though more women are trying hunting, retention is a struggle. In the West, on average, 36 percent of female hunters donât renew their licenses each year, compared with 22 percent for men. In the Southeast, itâs 48 percent (32 percent for men).
âWeâre working through it,â says Ben OâBrien, host of the Hunting Collective podcast. Last spring, it dawned on him that heâd put together 54 episodes and hadnât had on a single woman hunter. For episode 61, he reached out to Jess Johnson, cofounder of the conservation group Artemis. âIs this a space that feels good to be a woman in?â she asked. âThere are times it doesnât feel welcoming.â
Rihana would reluctantly agree. She gets occasional jealousy or condescension from men, she says, but both she and Amanda have sensed judginess from both sexes for looking the way they doâthough they suspect that if they werenât such successful hunters theyâd feel it more. âNo one says anything to our faces. Itâs just a vibe we get,â says Rihana, inky liner curled above her eyelid. âTelling a woman not to wear makeup in the field is like telling a guy not to fart in the field!â she adds. âWhy would I change who I am when I go hunting?â
Amanda agrees. âMakeup makes me feel good,â she explains. âAnd if I feel good, Iâll have a better hunt.â
There are gradations and nuances among the women of huntstagram, and among those who follow them. On one end of the spectrum are the âgun bunnies,â influencers whose feeds are all skimpy bikinis backed against big trucks and booty shorts stuffed with handguns. Some of these women have follower counts in the hundreds of thousands, dwarfing Rihanaâs and Amandaâs combined, but they question the authenticity. âYou canât actually hunt dressed like that,â says Rihana. âEspecially not with all this cactus!â
Then you have more homespun, seemingly Maybelline-free huntstagrammers like Allie DâAndrea, whose tasteful feed focuses on her white lab and the beauty of public lands. (Sheâs a cofounder of Artemis.) Known as @outdoors_allie, she has 116,000 followers, Jen among them. âWearing makeup in the outdoors just doesnât compute in my brain,â Jen says. âI have a million things Iâm thinking about when Iâm hunting: the wind, my scent, my noise. The way I look is not one of them.â (Still, Jen declared Rihana and Amanda âthe real dealâ by day one.)
The huntstagram chatter is reminiscent of high school and its cliques. The unadorned (like Jen) evaluate the âBarbie dollsâ (like Rihana and Amanda), who judge the gun bunnies. Jess Johnson of Artemis states the obvious yet often unspoken fact about all this scrutiny: âNo one ever picks apart men. Iâve never been like, âThat guyâs pants are too tight, he must not be a legit hunter.â Women have to scramble harder for validity.âabout:blank
Predawn on our penultimate day, we begin as we have every morning, with HotÂHands in our pockets and binoculars in front of our eyes, scanning for the flicker of an ear, the shimmy of a cotton tail, beige racks between beige branches. Before long we spy a four-by-fourâa buck with four points on each antlerâwith a limp, all by himself, 400 yards away. After a two-hour stalk, the deer bounds off.
Then Jen spots a funny-looking fella chilling under a tree. Debate ensues until the spotting scope confirms: a one-antlered buck. Bedded. We send OnX coordinates to Rihana and Amanda, who pivot from one stalk to the next. Then Jen and I sit in the desert sun, whisper-talking about old boyfriends and death and family and Trump and whether Rihana and Amanda will vote to reelect him (they will). We watch and wait and watch, riveted by one spike of one antler, tucked beneath a distant tree. Iâve never sat so still for so long, glued to something so unexciting and yet so exhilarating.
âI love this buck,â says Jen, peering through her binocs. âHeâs a misfit like me.â
Hunting, Iâm realizing, is an entirely different way of being outdoors. As hikers, campers, or photographers, weâre nonconsumptive land users, the type of nature lovers who frolic among the flora and fauna without firing, appreciative participants merely passing through. Hunters, thoughâthe good onesâbecome part of the land and everything in it. They attune to behaviors and tracks as they crawl from cactus to cactus, bush to boulder, stepping as swiftly and softly as humanly possible, another animal in search of supper.
Hiking suddenly seems oddly aimless.Glassing from the UTV (Photo: Jen Judge)
Our last morning, our last chance. Before 7 A.M., Jenâs got deer. âA really. Big. Buck,â she says. Biggest one yet, another four-by-four, 800 yards away, eating breakfast. Nowâyes!âlying down.
Rihana, wearing convertible fingerless camo gloves, plots his location on her phone. She tests the wind. Amanda applies a fresh coat of lip gloss and theyâre off. Two scents, two soundsâitâs risky, but it might allow for more opportunity.
Jen and I set up on a knoll. Iâve grown rather expert at spotting by now. Heâs to the right of the auburn bush, buried deep in a dead ocotillo. We keep our eyes on what we hope is an antler while he takes a nap of Rip van Winkle proportions.
âI have to pee,â Jen says, three hours in.
âYou canât,â I whisper.
Rihana and Amanda relay word via text that theyâve split up and are each closing in. Rihana is hidden in the drainage, about 130 yards away. She canât get closer though, or heâll see her. Amanda reaches the ridge, then creeps in her socks between prickly pears to within 25 yards. Rihana can see both Amanda and the bedded buck, and texts her a snapshot of his spot in the brush: âJust wait till he stands.â We wait. Amandaâs arrow is nocked.
Holy shit. My binoculars are shaking. This sweet deer is about to die.
Except, as soon as we see him stand, Amanda doesnât. Thereâs a slight drop in the terrain, hiding him from her view. Heâs up! Heâs up!, we attempt to mind-meld Amanda. Maybe he scents her. Maybe that airplane is flying too low. Whatever it is, before she ever sees him, he trots offâright toward Rihana.
They attune to behaviors and tracks as they crawl from cactus to cactus, bush to boulder, stepping as swiftly and softly as humanly possible, another animal in search of supper.
Sheâs ready, at full draw. Amanda makes a bleating call and the buck stops: ten yards from Rihana, and behind a sprawling bush. Itâs too thick; she canât see his body. His head is exposed, but to be confident that sheâll deliver a lethal hit, Rihana needs to target his lungs or heart. They lock eyes, and he bolts.
âIt wasnât a clean shot. I just didnât have an ethical shot,â Rihana says, trudging back through the saguaros. She says it again and again throughout the day. The one that got away, as they say.
We have only three hours left to get a mule deer. And after more than 60 hours of trying, I realize that I, of all people, want a mule deer.
Itâs true that Iâve never hunted before, but hunting with women feels different.
In her research, Metcalf found that women hunters are motivated in different ways than men. Theyâre generally more family oriented, more about feeding people, she says. Men view hunting as an individual pursuit, with internal motivations like solitude, skill development, and outcome.
That squares with Jenâs experience. âItâs like my way of feeling maternal,â she says. She usually hunts with her husband, a cyclist and rock climber. (She got him into it.) âHeâs more success oriented than I am. Yet Iâve had more successes.â She smiles. âThis hunt is a true team effort. Iâm loving it.â
We persist. Glassing a gorgeous canyon weâve nicknamed Heaven, Jen, holding her binocs, can barely believe it. âItâs a fawn. And, oh my God, a fucking buck. My heart canât take this!â No one thought weâd have another stalk today. Now here we are, 700 yards from our farewell dinner.
Jen and I keep watch, as we do. And then another UTV rolls up. Itâs the Flagstaff familyâRhonda and her two guys. Because weâre nearing last light, they set up their scopes to help us glass. We text Rihana and Amanda that theyâre here, that weâve got backup. Five pairs of eyes on a flighty forky (hunter slang for a two-point). The camaraderie of stalking an animal.
Rihana and Amanda creep, in socks. At 51 yards they stop, exposed. The buck is busy eating. And soon, standing broadside. Amanda pulls out her phone and Rihana pulls 61 pounds. With the buck looking straight at her, ears perked, she shoots.
And just as her arrow arrives, he dodges it.
And then he bolts in our direction.
âRhonda! Get ready!â Jen and I whisper. At the same time, Rihana sends a text: âTell that gal to get her bow.â
We drive out after dark, in cool open air, feeling aliveâbut empty-handed. Rhonda disappeared for a good hour into a drainage, but the buck darted before she could get close. Well, at least I donât have to slice open an animalâs anus. Still, isnât that what I came for? The full experience? And then I realize that is what I got. Itâs the thrill of the hunt, not the guarantee of the grocery store.
Weeks later something will be lost. Iâll find online photos of people beaming beside dead deer as creepy as I always did. But in the moment, back in the desert, itâs different. This wilderness has come to feel like my neighborhood. The red rocks and morning frost, Heaven and the howling coyotes, my trusty little auburn tree and that saguaro that looks like itâs giving us the finger. And Rhonda and her family, the misfit and the limpy buck, and a lucky two-point who gets to live.
Our last supper may not be mule deer, but it is elk, grilled over an open flame. Elk that Rihana stalked, retrieved, packed out on her backâ300 pounds, which she (with her boyfriendâs help) hauled over six miles in two trips at 2 A.M., and butchered in her kitchen, then brought here, to share with strangers whoâve become friends. Before we feast, she shows us footage of the kill from last fall.
We hear the bull elk bugle and watch Rihana, crouched in camo at full draw, as she waits for the hulking creature to round the bend. We see her arrow fly and sink into the animalâs skin behind its shoulder, a clean shot to the lungs, and the elk sprint off before it falls. We watch Rihanaâs jaw drop and her big eyes grow bigger as she stands in the woods, filled with shock and awe and disbeliefâeven though sheâs done this many times before.
And then we eat. Tenderloin brought from trees to table by Rihanaâs two hands, not 200 othersâ. Itâs rosy pink and pure, lean and tender and deeply flavorful. I feel a gratitude for this elk that I never have for even my favorite $21 burger. And for Rihana and Amanda and Jenâfor sharing their animals and their stories, and for being women who cook and clean and kill their own dinner.
I got a taste. And Iâm going back to San Francisco wanting more.
RACHEL LEVIN
Rachel Levin is a San Franciscoâbased journalist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Eater, where she was the first San Francisco restaurant critic. She is the author of LOOK BIG: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds (Ten Speed, 2018) and EAT SOMETHING (Chronicle Books, 2020).