Montana hunters are getting ready for the beginning of Archery season Labor Day weekend. Hunting has always been a predominately male sport, until recently. More and more women are taking to the field, and they are looking damn fine doing it. Take my hunting crush, Eva Shockey. Her Dad, Jim Shockey. has been the host of his own hunting show for years, and Eva is following in his footsteps. Check out footage of Eva getting ready for archery season whitetail, in a promo clip from Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures.

The number of female hunters in the US continues to grow each year. According to Realtree.com

  • Hunting participation among females (firearms and bowhunting combined) grew from 2,691,000 in 2007 to 3,675,000 in 2016. This means that females accounted for 13.3% of all hunters in 2007 and 20% in 2016.

 

  • Participation increased in all 11 major categories of hunting and shooting sports studied (see chart below), but bowhunting has seen the biggest surge in participation: from 445,000 in 2007 to 1,656,000 in 2016, a whopping growth of 272%! According to the report, 28.3% of all bowhunters were female in 2016, compared with only 7.7% in 2007.

 

  • Hunting with firearms also saw a healthy increase in female participants, growing by 27.4%, from 2,521,000 in 2007 to 3,212,000 in 2016.

 

  • One of the most remarkable surges when looking at age categories came in the hunting (firearms and bowhunting combined) category. Some 354,000 women age 25-34 hunted in 2007, but their numbers had nearly doubled to 665,000 in 2016. Not surprisingly, that age group also saw the biggest surge in the bowhunting category, growing from 73,000 in 2007 to 391,000 in 2016!

Eva was also the first woman ever featured on the cover of Field and Stream Magazine. Hear her talk about how she fell in love with hunting.

 

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