Are Maine deer camps ready for women?

By V. Paul Reynolds

By tradition, American deer hunting camps have been a place exclusively for men. 

Robert Wegner, in his superb book “Legendary Deer Camps,” writes, “Yet despite the longstanding involvement of women at Ten Point, women were an aberration at traditionally male-oriented deer camps nationwide.”

Ten Point, or the Ten Point Club, according to Wegner, was one of the most well-known deer hunting camps in Mississippi, if not in the country. “While Ten Point was primarily a male-dominated camp, the presence of so many female deer hunters made the camp unusual. Although they did not vote or reside as official members, women participated in the hunts.”

This was long before the feminist movement took root. With regard to women, much has changed since the days of the Ten Point deer camp along the Yazoo River in the Mississippi Delta. 

There is strong evidence that the old norm of men-only deer camps (or hunting camps) in the U.S. is shifting. The change is gradual and uneven (lots of places still hold onto old traditions), but multiple sources show that women are increasingly participating, and that hunting culture is being pressured to become more inclusive. Women now comprise about 22% of licensed hunters in the United States, and their numbers are growing.

Evidence suggests that when it comes to the acceptability of women at deer camp, the cultural shift is hardly uniform. Male hunters are divided over this issue even today. And, while you may surmise that the division is based on age or generation, that is not always the case.

A Maine deer camp that I helped found more than 50 years ago, the Skulkers of Seboeis, is engaged in this discussion. In the camp’s founding years in the late 1960s, I can tell you unequivocally that when it came to female members, there was no inclusivity, period. Open and shut case. The subject was not even open for discussion.

Changing times.

Our deer camp is now having this discussion. The question goes like this: “What if a woman, a family member or a friend, who has shown to be a capable and serious deer hunter, wants in?”  What do we do? 

In the interest of full disclosure, my late wife Diane was a veteran hunter and shared my passion for the hunt. She also was an aunt and mother to some of the hunt club members. 

A couple of times, without a vote of our club, I brought her to deer camp for a couple of days in the early part of hunt week before the full club membership arrived. This raised a few eyebrows, but no open resistance or discussion. 

For what it’s worth, she killed deer, moose, bear, elk, wild pigs and turkeys — and field dressed them all. At the gun range, her shot groups at 100 yards were always closer than mine.

Did she aspire to becoming a Skulker of Seboeis? I honestly don’t know. She never said. Was she Skulker material? Did she measure up? Absolutely. She also knew her way around a cribbage board or a poker table. And, ironically, it was her father, the late Ken Davis, himself a deer hunter, who steered us to the Seboeis Lake area in the late 1960s.

I suspect that at the annual business meeting during the annual hunt week of the Skulkers of Seboeis that this issue will be on the front burner for discussion, and that the debate will be robust. Early chatter suggests that, not unlike other deer camps from Maine to Wisconsin, we will be a house divided.

My mind is made up. As the old guard of Skulkerdom and the only attending founder, I have decided to risk the ire of my contemporary founders, living and deceased, by voting in the affirmative, to at least open the option to the right woman if and whenever that time should come.

The Maine hunting legacy cannot long survive without new blood, regardless of gender. Not all women belong at deer camp or would find it within their comfort zone. But some do. If they live for the hunt, the smell of the deer woods in November and don’t mind smelly socks drying over the wood stove or a little rough talk — by all means, put it to a vote.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books. Online purchase information is available at www.sportingjournal.com, Outdoor Books.