Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / ASCEND: Finding Your Outdoor Community: How Women Build Confidence Together (Ep 748)

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ASCEND: Finding Your Outdoor Community: How Women Build Confidence Together (Ep 748) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:00
  VO: Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Welcome
• 0:06
  VO: to the Ascend podcast, a podcast by and for women in the outdoors. Every episode delivers real stories, practical how to's, and a welcoming community to help you start, sharpen, or rediscover your passion for the outdoors. Authentic women, real stories, outdoor adventures, Ascend. Presented by Ducks Unlimited, the leader in wetlands conservation. Your next adventure starts here, the Ascend podcast. Don't forget to rate and review the Ascend podcast.
• 0:44
  It's the best way to grow the podcast and help other women discover the next step on their outdoors journey.
• 0:50
  Bethany Beathard: Alright, guys. Today we're diving into all things community. Women don't even go to the bathroom on their own. Why are we gonna go into the outdoors on our own? Let's talk about learning, growing, and educating one another.
• 1:02
  You guys aren't gonna wanna miss this episode. Let's talk community. I'm your host today, Bethany Bethard and we are talking about a topic that is close to my heart and probably a lot of women. Community is something so special and so I have a really good guest today that's gonna talk all about community that's actually kind of a foundational member of the women community in the outdoors, someone that a lot of people know. And so Jess Rice, will you please introduce yourself? How you founded Wild Herness and, yeah, how you got started in the outdoors?
• 1:38
  Jess Rice: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Bethany, and those are awfully kind words to be saying, so I appreciate those as well. Wilderness is just an artifact of never really having a community myself. I never felt that I truly belonged anywhere, you know. They had always felt that you needed to be just a little less and shrink down just a little bit.
• 1:58
  And out of that, plus my experiences at so many different other women's events and women's organizations, you know, within National Wild Turkey Federation, there's the women in the outdoors initiative. Everyone's got kind of their own little their little niche that is the the token women's or, you know, part of their organization. So through those experiences combined with the fact that I never felt holy myself, that's where wilderness was developed. And I really didn't realize that it was out of a need for myself until I saw so many other women finding community through wilderness. It made me reflect a little and realize that it was something in me that was missing that I created this where other women can feel, you know, safe, supported, and loved while they're going through what can be very transformational, you know, becoming involved in the outdoors.
• 2:58
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. So let's like talk about that for a moment. Just building a movement of community in the outdoors. I feel like, you know, like you said, there's all these segmented groups, but they're all kind of flourishing because women want that community. And that was something for me.
• 3:15
  I actually got involved with the same type of group in Oklahoma and I, like out of that burst some of my best friendships. Like I talked to these women every day. We're going on beyond hunting, you know, we're going on trips together, we're meeting up for late lunch, you know, sending reels back and forth, that community where, you know, we can't just go to our local chapter meeting, our local, you know, wildlife department get together and find where the majority is women. So out of that, we're birthing like all these organizations and Wilderness has really taken it beyond like an online platform. You guys actually have meetups in person.
• 3:57
  Talk a little bit about like how like the that first started to like where you guys are now, like those out the meetings that you guys are creating.
• 4:05
  Jess Rice: Yeah. It so we started with just the basic idea that we wanted a place for women to come so that they could learn skills and we saw those the the learning of those skills translate into this incredible confidence. These women would leave our events and they'd be walking taller and their heads, you know, held a little higher and that is where we realized that we were empowering women. We weren't just finding a place for them to come together and do something. We were changing lives because we were teaching them that they were part of something that they had always been excluded from for one reason or another.
• 4:45
  So wilderness came as as an artifact of wanting to break down some of those barriers. Wanting to make the outdoors and everything associated with nature accessible for everyone. So we have kind of a tagline at Wilderness. It's authentic accessible adventure. And that authentic really comes from the fact that we expect people to show up in their authentic form.
• 5:10
  Whatever that is that day, you're gonna be loved and you're gonna be accepted and you're going to learn something with people who are totally different from you, but really have a passion for one thing, and that's the outdoors. Accessible just means that we want costs to not be a factor. There are like we've talked a million times, Bethany, just on our own about the multitude of barriers that there are for women in terms of getting involved in the outdoors. Cost is when we have a little bit of control over, so that is where the accessibility comes in. Additionally, we really like to do outreach for disabled veterans and handy capable people.
• 5:51
  So, accessible also translates into that. And then adventure, that just looks like whatever it may be for you. We have women who come who are who are hunters already, and then we have women who have never picked up a gun. And we have women who just want to learn how to take care of themselves and their families using, you know, basic ingredients. We have people who want to learn how how to homestead.
• 6:18
  So providing adventure is really kind of the the third essence of that of that tagline.
• 6:25
  Bethany Beathard: I love that because, know, we talk about the number one way to get in the outdoors is mentorship. And if we go back to, you know, I grew up where deer camp was kind of like the boys thing. Like I was never involved with that, you know, but that out of that spawns like, hey, we're at Deer Camp but we have a fishing trip coming up, you know, next month, you should come. Women, a lot of times didn't get that. And so this group that you've created is really giving women the interest like, you know, oh, well I love the, you know, mentor hunt that they had, but now they're having like a canning seminar, you know, like that's I love that because it's kind of giving them the ability to do something else in the outdoors or, you know, like you said, gain another skill that frankly, we're we've lost a lot of these hands on skills.
• 7:17
  Like we've lost, like I've taught myself how to can, like we've talked about this, like, I've taught myself how to can, you know, pressure canning, water bath canning and it's scary. So like you said, if you've never picked up a gun before, that could be scary to somebody. You talked to me like before about a recent event you guys just did, your first event in Maine. I want to hear about how it happened, like what does that look like? Tell me about it.
• 7:45
  Jess Rice: So that Castine adventure was coastal Maine kayaking. We went to a place that is known for bioluminescent plankton. Just little guys that glow at night, so we had a night paddle underneath the Milky Way. It was the clearest night. We had 12 women show up.
• 8:05
  It was an incredible group of of humans just all to get I have goosebumps talking about this right now. All came together from as far as Wyoming. Some of them knew people, some of them came in pairs, and some of them came solo. But the group itself just meshed so easily. We went out and we were glowing above the boat, we were going below the boat.
• 8:27
  It was magnificent. Our downtime was spent in this incredible historic inn there in Castine, and we went on a walking tour. We were able to see all sorts of maritime history. They're in this little coastal town where the streets end in the ocean. It was like a postcard.
• 8:45
  We have plans for next year. We're making it an annual thing. It was spectacular.
• 8:51
  Bethany Beathard: Man, I'm definitely need to put that on the bucket list because that sounds so fun, but something you said sparked a thought in me. You said not everybody knew each other and so go back to COVID, you bought a hog hunt, you couldn't go because you're going with somebody that got COVID and I bought your slot. I show up to this hunt, I had no anything about it. Like, you were just like posted like, hey guys, sell in my spot. I had no idea the women that were going.
• 9:19
  I had no idea. Like all I knew was we're going on this hog hunt in Texas and it wasn't too far from where I lived and I just did it. Out of that came some of the coolest relationships. Matter of fact, I had talked to a lady there that used to be a freelance writer and I was like, yeah, I kinda wanna get into that and that's literally what I do now is outdoor freelance writing and she like helped me do that. And my roommate was a 65 year old lady that showed all of us that killed the first hog, had better year than all of us.
• 9:50
  It was amazing and so I love that. So yeah, a little backstory like how we I mean, like we had followed each other for a while online, but Yeah. Bought your hunt hunt and I met some really good friends.
• 10:03
  Jess Rice: One of the gals on that hunt is our treasurer now, Jenny Anderson.
• 10:08
  Bethany Beathard: Yes. She was Yeah. I mean, it was it was a crazy hunt, but I'm so glad that I went. Like I met just some amazing people. And so, yeah, I love that.
• 10:19
  And I think, you know, and that wasn't even a wilderness thing, that was just a community women said, hey, let's get together and do a hunt, you know. Yeah. And I think we are finding a lot of that in the outdoors. Like we're seeing a lot of women just, I want to be around other women doing these things. Yes.
• 10:36
  What does it look like whenever you guys put an event out? Like, it just like, you're filling up fast? What's the interest? Where are how you guys gauge in that?
• 10:44
  Jess Rice: You know, it depends on what it is and the time of the year. Things are slow right now and, you know, just the economy kind of sucks and people aren't really spending their free money. But we, like I mentioned, try to combat that by offering things on a free to low cost basis. And right now, we are looking at our annual Go Wild event, which stands for Go Outdoors, where you lead discovery. That is our second annual one in Oklahoma.
• 11:10
  We've done it for five years in a row in Missouri. So we've got it going in two states, but it's a weekend long retreat that has sold out in the past, and this year, we're about at half capacity. So, you know, things like that sometimes go well and sometimes don't. But the things that always do really well are when we offer a learn to experience. We offer many learn to hunt, learn to fish camps where women can come together for an entire weekend.
• 11:41
  They have kind of a cohort and they go through an experience that is very raw and very real and truly it's primal. You know, tapping into some of these skills where you're learning how to feed yourself, to to provide food for yourself, and then, you know, taking the next steps to process it and then actually eating it, that's a really intimate and transformative experience, particularly for women. You we've we've kind of talked on this subject before, but as a woman, after creating life, it can be very difficult to take a life. So those experiences really bond women together. So we find that women who attend in those deer camps for instance, within that cohort are just very bonded together.
• 12:31
  We'll see them take off together on hunting trips out in the woods, or they're they beat up to go bow fishing or frog gigging. And maybe it has nothing to do with deer hunting. But going through those experiences together really bonds them to one another. And that's what it's about for us is it's not just teaching women these skills, but it's offering the opportunity for them to embrace a lifestyle change with people who also love the outdoors.
• 13:02
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. I I can be a testament to that as well. You do get bonded with these women and you find often that you feed off each other's strengths, you know, and the outdoors is something that will test you. And I have suffered, like for real, you know, negative three duck hunts, you know, solo elk hunting in Oklahoma, like, it's it's rough. And my outdoor women besties are the ones that have encouraged me.
• 13:33
  And, you know, there was times when I'm like, man, you know, walking into the woods is scary on public land by yourself, you know. But then I'm like, well, you know, I'm my best friend Sierra does it over in the Osage, I can do it over here, you know. And so you like really having like that back and forth, those encouragement. How do you find that for yourself as kind of like the leader? Do you have your own like group of besties that you can, like, call on to encourage?
• 14:00
  Jess Rice: Absolutely. Everybody in a leadership position within Wilderness, I feel like I could call in in a heartbeat and they would commiserate, they would uplift whatever I needed. We have a really great team of women between our executive committee, our board of directors, and all of the women that are doing coordination of events. So I'm really proud to to call most of those women good friends.
• 14:26
  Bethany Beathard: That's awesome. Yeah. I know that you spend time in the outdoors a lot. How are you pulling yourself away is like, I feel like once you get established in a community and it's been for me, you start climbing the ranks of like, okay, well now I know this, I'm gonna pull somebody in and you start that mentorship. How are you finding time for yourself and you're also a mom, so I know your outdoor time is probably also split between bringing littles too, you know?
• 14:52
  And I thought that's a part of like mental health just like kind of doing your own thing. Do you find time for that? And like, what's your encouragement to a mom that finds herself in that space?
• 15:01
  Jess Rice: I have I do find some time, but I've also found that my enjoyment of the outdoors really is exponentially more pleasurable through the eyes of someone else. I've done I've done some things and I've I've been on hunts and I've been on hikes and I've been I've challenged myself and to be with someone when they're getting to do that for the first time, whether they're four or they're 44, it's fulfilling in a way that it's it's very difficult to describe. And that's how we get paid at Wilderness is is seeing those changes in women when they thought they couldn't do something and a group of other women around them assured them they could do it if they just tried. So that's my advice to any mom. Take your kids.
• 15:52
  Get out there. Lag behind. Take those few seconds of solitude while your kids are running up the trail. Enjoy it. Make a scavenger hunt.
• 16:01
  Get them out from underneath your feet and make it fun for them. Enjoy a little bit of silence in the woods for yourself. Because the childhood is fleeting, you know? So you've gotta gotta make it as fun as you can. And it kind of referenced to what you were saying, you know, you just gotta do it scared sometimes, even if it's finding a new community when you've moved halfway across the country, or, you know, walking into the woods and is in the morning and it's dark.
• 16:31
  You just sometimes have to do it scared. So that's my advice.
• 16:35
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. You know, one of the things that really resonates with me about wilderness is the emphasis on mental health and, you know, how the outdoors can be empowering, how it can be healing. And I, you know, we as women are just more just emotional. How are you seeing like the women like in the group just, you know, come back after a weekend, you know, on like that high? You know, I'm sure you feed off of that yourself.
• 17:03
  Jess Rice: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 17:04
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, what are your guys', you know, how do you encourage? How do you keep that spark going? You know, what's the after the hunt, after the event, you know, what is that like?
• 17:17
  Jess Rice: You know, it's mostly in an online community. We have just a a Facebook group where anybody who's attended an event at any point in time is more than welcome to join up. That's where a lot of those meetups happen. And, you know, they are not affiliated with wilderness whatsoever. We had a big group of gals this summer meet up and go float on the Buffalo River in Arkansas.
• 17:39
  They camped and had nothing to do with wilderness except for that they all met at wilderness events. So we are very emotional, and I think that that's what makes these experiences hit so hard, and the friendships develop so quickly and so deeply. It is pretty special though to to watch the change in a woman who comes in on a Friday and leaves on a Sunday to a wilderness event. It's really special.
• 18:08
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. I think we just need that recharge, you know, we need that and I think just humans in general, like I think we're craving it in this today's society, we're just we're on screens all the time, we're indoors all the time, you know. I know for me, if I'm hunting a weekend, by the end of it, like I can just hear more. You can be just breathing fresher. I can't, I don't know, like everything is just, your senses are just more heightened, like, I don't know, Yes, it yes.
• 18:38
  You know, like you're just like, man, I love that, you know, I think just as a mom, I'm indoors, I tune my kids out, but in the tree stand with them, I'm hearing every crinkle of the bag of chips or whatever that they're, yeah, they're digging into, you know. And I love it though. I think, you know, some of those, like you said, experiencing it through somebody else that's my kids have given me that and seeing them, you know, me and my son, a couple, this is last year, he wanted to go hunting with me and I was like, okay, and I was bow hunting and so we're out there and we see no deer and we're just like waiting and waiting, you know. And then here comes these two massive bull elk. Of course, we can't, you know, harvest them because it's not elk season on post, but they start like tussling and then two mom cows came out with their calves and they're literally, you know, I mean, I had the video of it, maybe fifteen, twenty yards from us, wind was perfect.
• 19:40
  He's shaking like a leaf and I'm like, okay, this is how you put your, like, be slow, put your binoculars down, you know, like lift them up. It was amazing experience. No harvest came from that. But to be able to see my son witness that for the first time, that's one of my best, like outdoor memories, you know. Can you share with us a story of just one of those warm you like with your kids, with other women, you know, those first times of experiencing, people, you unless you've experienced it, like, you know that feeling like, oh, man, like that was their first time ever seeing that in the outdoors.
• 20:17
  Jess Rice: Yeah. I actually was mentoring one time. It was a the daughter of a mother daughter pair, but the mom was there. So a deer came out and it stomped at us and shook its head, you know, and blew at us a little bit as we're sitting in the blind, and decided we were nothing to be scared of and quartered away. So she took the shot and brought down her first deer.
• 20:46
  And not only did I get to see her reaction to that, but her mom's reaction to her daughter's first year. And it was so it was just like kind of doubly special, you know, getting to see the reaction to the reaction to the reaction. And being there as part of that is always is always really incredible. Being part of somebody's first harvest. It's kind of a sacred thing, you know.
• 21:18
  You have to really sometimes you have to walk women through it. It can be difficult and being respectful of everyone's different ways of handling hunting can can get tricky, but that was one time that I really that that will always stand out to me.
• 21:39
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. That's awesome. How, you know, you said walking through everybody's different ways. I don't even know how you would prepare for that, you know, being around people, like, there's just no preparing, you just kind of roll with the punches of, you know, because it doesn't bring a lot of, you know, I grew up with it. You know, like I grew up around hunting.
• 22:03
  Hunting was a thing, but then I meet people and they've never even thought of it. I'm like, yeah, you should come hunt. And then Eric, well, there's this list of fears or, you know, apprehensive. I think with the movement of, obviously COVID kind of sparked a movement like grow your own, harvest your own. I think we're kind of seeing kind of a dial back of some of those fears.
• 22:25
  Like, okay, well, I'm more afraid of not eating, you know, I'm more afraid of not providing for my family. Have you guys seen the transition and, know, you know, there's really has been a rise on the women's side of getting the outdoors and really getting the family involved in the outdoors because of that. How do you feel about kind of that that self movement, that self sufficient movement that's going on? You know, you've kind of, you've moved from Kansas, now you're
• 22:51
  Jess Rice: in Maine
• 22:52
  Bethany Beathard: or you are in Maine, Missouri. So totally different spectrums. How are you see are you still seeing the same response where you are in Maine for that?
• 23:01
  Jess Rice: First of all, we're the only state here in Maine in The United States where women and men are buying equal number of hunting licenses. So that itself is diabolical. Right? But in general, women here have embraced hunting and it's just part of who they are. I haven't really encountered anybody that I need to teach something.
• 23:26
  I've not seen a need like there was back home for a genuine community. These women here just seem to have figured it out. They love to do things together. I don't mean that there's not there's not a need for community in general, I mean that there's not a need for the learning part of that community. The the adventure certainly is there.
• 23:48
  They're they want to do the things together, but it's they feel more self sufficient here. So So interesting. It is. It is.
• 24:00
  Bethany Beathard: I think it kind of goes back to like, you know, Missouri similar to Oklahoma, Kansas, you know, Texas. Yeah. I feel like we grew up in a time where just deer camp was the voice thing, you know. Not very many girls actually got to go or did go and it was later, you know, later in life and you know, I decided later in life, I wanted I wanted to hunt, you know, and I kind of went on this whole self journey to do that. I grew up on 55 acres.
• 24:27
  We did predator control. We did like, you know, I helped with the my dad when got the deer came back, we helped butcher it type thing. It's interesting to see, you know, when I think of Maine, I think of moose bear, you know, it's like Montana. You meet a Montana girl and like, she grew up with it too, you know, like, I'm like, oh, she's a Montana girl, like she did she grew up doing it. I feel like it's so crazy the cultural difference that we find.
• 24:53
  And that's kind of the beauty of wilderness though, because we all meet kind of like on this central hub of what's online, these communities, and then can kind of grasp somebody else's like, you know, they're pulling me up their knowledge, you know. But it's really interesting to see, I feel like the same kind of thing here in Georgia, you know, this is our second kind of time being in this area. My husband's in the military and we're back here. I feel like women kind of just, you know, we had a hunting club before, the wives were always there. Their kids were always around, you know, and it's a lot there's a big dog community down here and I feel like that automatically kind of brings a lot of people together, running dogs, the hog community, the the coon hunting community.
• 25:40
  There this is a family thing And I don't know, maybe Maine's the same way. I know people that take their dogs to Maine that do the hunting with up there, but, and I don't know, do you feel like that's kind of like the same thing? I feel like in Oklahoma, it's like kind of segmented maybe, you know, this is my deer stand, this is my plot of land. Is there a lot of public land in Maine?
• 25:59
  Jess Rice: Not not a ton of public land. And once you get up north, there is. We're down south and kind of coastal. So in our immediate area, there's not a ton of public hunting land. I do have a a very exciting hunt planned.
• 26:13
  I got my husband for his birthday. He's a big upland hunter, has been for his whole life. So we are going grouse and woodcock hunting at the end of the month. So I'll report Yes. Back on hunting conditions in
• 26:27
  Bethany Beathard: Do you guys have your own dogs or are you guys going with like a guide service?
• 26:30
  Jess Rice: We're going with a guide service. We do have a dog, she has not hunted since she's been through training. So she's very green. Yeah. I don't know that we're gonna take her just because she's out of practice right now.
• 26:45
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah.
• 26:46
  Jess Rice: Yeah. So Yeah. That's exciting. And then I was mentioning, you know, you were talking about all of these different women's groups. There is one that is very very active here in Maine called Maine Women Hunters, and I got in a lottery for a hair hunt with dogs in November.
• 27:04
  So that'll be coming up as my second opportunity to hunt while we're since we've moved here.
• 27:10
  Bethany Beathard: That's exciting. Like beagles?
• 27:12
  Jess Rice: I think so.
• 27:14
  Bethany Beathard: I don't know if you know what I have a beagle that one of my Instagram followers has a a rabbit dog kennel and gifted it to us. We've had him for like three years. He's amazing. He actually escaped this week and was running rabbits in the patch of woods. We had to like go in there and get him.
• 27:31
  But I actually just have him this week, so that's exciting to have to report back and let us know. Yeah. Yeah. Like share, tag us in whatever Oh, or for non harvest or whatever it looks like. But this is a great time to take a break and thank our sponsors and we'll be right back.
• 27:55
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 28:11
  Bethany Beathard: Alright. We're back and let's talk about maybe there's women that are listening and they're feeling inspired to get involved. How do they do that? What is your advice to this woman like trying to find a community because they might not have one. That's the reality for most of us.
• 28:28
  We have to kind of go seek that out. What do you say to women that are looking for that?
• 28:34
  Jess Rice: My advice to anything to find a women's community is to look with their state becoming an outdoors woman program. That is the longest running women's outdoor education platform here in The US, and in fact, it's international at this point. There is a becoming an outdoors woman event in I think all 50 states and several different countries on top of that. So you could even go to Antarctica and do snow play with becoming an outdoors woman, or you can go down to the Baja Peninsula Of Mexico Mexico and and snorkel with whale sharks as one of your afternoon activities. So becoming an outdoors woman is a wonderful resource for anybody that's looking to start that community, to find that community.
• 29:24
  That's where I got my start between that and the National Wild Turkey Federation women in the outdoors. It's the second most widespread women's platform out there. Those are my two biggest recommendations. Then looking for women specific organizations like Wilderness, Sisterhood of the Outdoors, Artemis Sportswomen, American Daughters of Conservation. There are chapters of most of those organizations or they host events all over The United States.
• 29:54
  So there's an opportunity for you to get involved regardless of where you are. You just have to take the set and be brave enough to come because once the journey once the journey starts, you'll never be sorry that it did.
• 30:09
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. I can definitely test that as well. I signed up and I went on my first dove hunt and a fun fact, I don't even really like birds, but I always I hunt more birds than anything, I think. Yeah. And anyways, I signed up for this hunt and I that's where I met my two best friends and we have went on so many, mostly bird hunts together and we I I see all these events, like, the Sisters in the Outdoors, like they post great content, Daughters of Conservation and on the side of conservation, that's we've kind of collabed on that.
• 30:46
  We did the Rawa, you mentioned, we did the Rawa act together, kind of promoting that. And I think that's something that was kind of scary to me at first, like I really want to be involved in the outdoors but I don't know how I can be involved in conservation. And it's as simple as, like, you've done a lot of conservation work, you know. It's not all about the hunt, it's about conserving this, preserving it. And some women really find themselves on that side of it, like, you know, what have you done in the outdoors and as far as like conservation and promoting that?
• 31:20
  Because I feel like that is also an entry way for people because they might like a non hunter, they support hunting and they support, but they really support conservation more. And I feel like there's a big heavy presence that we could, you know, maybe funnel women into.
• 31:36
  Jess Rice: Absolutely. That's kind of at the core of what we do at Wilderness is giving them something to care about. You're just illustrating, look at all the beauty there is, and don't you want to preserve this for future generations? Even if you don't have kids of your own, people need to see this. They need to have this experience of of walking a field and flushing a wild bird, and it's scaring the absolute bejesus out of you.
• 32:00
  And everybody needs to have that experience once in their lives. And the more you expose people to something, the more they realize what there is to care about. And so essentially, that's what we're doing at Wilderness is creating conservationists by showing them all all there is to do in the outdoors.
• 32:21
  Bethany Beathard: Some of my favorite parts of hunts that I went on has been not even the hunt part. Like, was hunting Osceola in Florida and one of my most memorable parts about that hunt was these hoot owls in the morning started like hooting at each other. They're laughing like, you know, like they do like the little laughing back and forth. It was a I have so much like audio of that happening and I was actually the guy that was calling for me was like a competition outcaller, so they would kinda like calm down and then he would like do another call and then they would just start like and they was just there were so many of them. I I've never been I was like at the middle of like six or seven part of, like just going back and forth at each other.
• 33:09
  It was amazing. Of course, as soon as the sun started coming up, now we have like these gobbles and it that was just like an amazing experience to just like, I immersed myself in that fully and I still think about that and it really made me want to work on my alcohol in because I was like, I I want to recreate that again, you know. Yeah. As a mom, those are the experiences I want to give my kids. And if we're not doing conservation, they're not going to experience those things, you know.
• 33:35
  Not sitting on the ground with their back against a tree and, you know, seeing all this stuff, you know, like bring up the elk is one of the biggest conservation stories in Oklahoma aside from the bison, you know. Oklahoma elk were hunted to extinction, like completely gone. The elk that are there now are actually Wyoming, you know, transplants.
• 33:54
  Jess Rice: Transplants. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:56
  Bethany Beathard: And they went from like 12 to a huntable measure of 5,000 is what there is Amazing. So I'm like telling my kids, you know, we went to the museum there and they got to see like a picture of like the original Oklahoma elk or which are really similar to what we would say like a New Mexico, Colorado elk. But now the elk that are there now are a lot smaller. Like, they're just not as big as they used, like the original Oklahoma elk work. And so it was really good talking point to talk with my kids about and share conservation.
• 34:30
  And I really bonded with other women on post because I hunt mostly military. But like talking about elk hunting in Oklahoma, people don't even know that they have that, you know. Yeah. And they actually have that in Missouri. People don't know that either.
• 34:43
  And that's a really a lot harder of a hunt to actually get.
• 34:46
  Jess Rice: Did you
• 34:47
  Bethany Beathard: ever put in for that?
• 34:48
  Jess Rice: I did not, but I do have a friend, and I've told her story many times before. She came to a wilderness event, a vegetarian, had never picked up a gun in her life. She came and she took a shotgun in class. And she sat down with me after that class and she had tears in her eyes and she looked at me and she said, nobody ever told me that I could like guns without killing anything. And it just completely changed her entire perspective of her life on guns, and she is now coordinating deer camps for us.
• 35:22
  And this year, she put in and got a bear tag. So within the last three years, she's gone from non hunter to she's gonna do it solo this year in I
• 35:32
  Bethany Beathard: love that. Yeah. That was also my kind of thing was like, I'm just if I don't have somebody to go with, I'm going solo, you know, and I've I've done a lot of solo hunting and I feel like that's a space that as women, we do find ourselves and we don't always I mean, statistic is that like 89% of women hunt with a partner or on like land where other people are hunting. But there are a lot of women. I think it's growing, the amount of women, especially I feel like on the Western Side and we'll have to like get back.
• 36:05
  Erin is one of our Yeah. Other hosts and she's awesome. But I feel like women going out West is like getting, like that's kind of growing. I got, I don't know, I see a lot of people online and I feel like that that's an encouragement. If she can do it, I can do it, you Absolutely.
• 36:20
  And I I don't think we we ever had that before, you know. No. There there was not an example. We weren't, I mean, when the last maybe fifteen years, we had like a woman's section in the hunting catalog. Yeah.
• 36:33
  You know? Yeah. And the women you see here? Yeah. And the women you would
• 36:38
  Jess Rice: see, they weren't hunting. They were, you know, hypersexualized and and Yes. You know, models. They they weren't actually out doing the dang thing. And I think that that's another real important duty of us as women in the outdoors is posting our adventures.
• 36:54
  Because I can't tell you how many times women have come up and they're like, you know, I saw you did this, and it encouraged me to do this. And I really think that that is a responsibility that we shouldn't take lightly. And we were we were chatting a little bit earlier about conservation. One time, habitat conservation. It's just so important.
• 37:16
  Right? If there's no habitat, there's no animals to hunt. There's no birds to bird watch. There's, you know, nothing. There's no flowers to press.
• 37:25
  So we partnered with our local Pheasants Forever chapter and went out and hand seeded a half acre at some public land. I took my two and a half year old daughter and put a seed cup in her hand and was like, sprinkle, baby. Sprinkle. You know? So I think it's there it's never it's never too soon to start talking about conservation, whether it's like, you know, getting to hear an elk bugle or, you know, physically going out and and spreading seeds.
• 37:51
  I think, we owe that to our kids, like you said.
• 37:55
  Bethany Beathard: For sure. Yeah. One of my biggest actually, I have a picture of my son. He was probably, maybe five or six and we used to be a part of this homeschool group. It was a nature group and we met like once a week and we would do a nature outing and we went to like a marshland.
• 38:12
  It was when we lived in Florida and I have a picture at the end of the hike. He had picked up trash the entire time and he has like these like, he had like a jug and all this stuff and he was so proud because he was helping the little animals at the La Marsh area. And I loved that because that's just like little seeds you plant in your kids, but that is just like a ripple effect to, you know, now those are gonna that's the next generation of outdoor activists. They're the ones that are gonna be voting to protect it. They're gonna be the raising the next generation.
• 38:44
  Your daughter's gonna be the next woman mentor for the next generation, you know, and it's just such like a, like, it's a ripple effect that we're creating. I don't think that women realize the impact that they are having. And, you know, go back to what you said about, you know, changing people's lives, like someone that thought that they couldn't love guns or, you know, outside of hunting, you know, having more accessible things like women range days. I loved all the women range days that I attend. I actually, if I see one, I wouldn't make God my way to go because I just love being around other women experiencing those things.
• 39:27
  And when they say that women are the fastest growing demographic, but we're also the fastest leading demographic that's hurting me because I'm like, man, if just like the woman that left, like if we could just take her in, like, you know, why did she leave? And I really think a lot of it is the lack of community that some women experience because all the women that I know that start getting in to the outdoors and have a community, like they're still in it. They're still doing it. So I really just like, I hope that, you know, just seriously, is why we're doing this, you know, trying to reach people. Yeah.
• 40:06
  So let's go kind of back to some of the events that you guys are putting on because I know we talk a lot about hunting because we love to hunt, but you guys put on other events and Yeah. Sounds like the go wild. What what other things are you guys doing that, you know, you're seeing women just engage in the outdoors? It's not all about hunting and shooting, it's also about what else? What are you seeing like that you're like people are really interested in?
• 40:30
  Jess Rice: People are loving survival stuff right now, you know, with shows like Alone, and, I mean, I guess we could say Naked and Afraid. It's that whole survival instinct is something that people really, are into right now. You know, like you mentioned with COVID, we saw a surge in homesteading type of activities. Those are still incredibly popular. Typically, if we have a a butchering class of any kind, it quickly fills.
• 40:58
  And, you know, we've talked about those being really in kind of an emotional class, but we try to offer any activity no matter how peripherally related to the outdoors it may be. Because like I just mentioned, if we show people what there is to care about, then they're going to protect it and keep it for future generations. So, it might not seem pertinent to the outdoors to offer a butterfly pinning class, But I can talk to you about native butterflies. I can talk to you about pollinators. I can talk to you about, things that you can plant in your yard to get these butterflies so that you can make your own art after they die.
• 41:36
  It all comes back to conservation at the heart. I mean, even things like wildlife identification. We were talking about how scary it can be to walk out to your sand in the dark in in the morning. But if you have an opportunity to go to a class that tells you what animals you can find in your area, what they look like, what the likelihood of them coming to you is, that can reduce that can break a barrier down for a woman, you know. So we don't stop at the hook and bullet at Wilderness, because we just think it's shortsighted.
• 42:11
  There are so many women that are begging for outdoor recreation opportunities in a community setting that don't necessarily contribute to Pittman Robertson taxes, and that's they're valuable and worthwhile. We need to get kayakers out because they're gonna vote to protect waterways, which means that it helps everybody around, you know. Long story short, it hard the conservation is at the heart of what we do.
• 42:36
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. And I think, you know, we segment it, like you said, like you had the hook and bullet side and kind of like the REI hiking side, you know. Fun fact, you guys have to make it up to OMS, which is like the Outdoor Media Summit. I don't know if you guys have been yet, but I went to that and the Hug And Bullet side is like really the smaller of the event. I was a speaker and it was really just like opened my eyes, like it was so many fun things, but Wilderness would be great just like for your leadership team to go to, to see just some of the stuff that they had.
• 43:07
  You know, you had, you know, editors from fly fishing magazines all the way to people that built like the little camper shells that go on your your car. And I love talking to other people on the other sides of the outdoors because I'm like, I care about the same things that you guys care about. And I I would love having those conversations. We actually floated the river as a family this year, camped in tents with all of our five kids and they still talk about like going there and doing that stuff, flying off like the rope swings and I was saying like, you know, everything that you guys do for conservation is protecting the waterways that we have here too, you know, like Oklahoma, it's a big thing to go float the river. They were like, really?
• 43:53
  You know, picking up trash, like all those things that some of my kids are big into fishing and like they they fish all the time. They literally, they could tell me about stuff that I don't even know about fishing. I don't know about it. And I love that. I love seeing just, I don't know, just the conversations, the things that spark.
• 44:11
  Do you have kids that love to hunt, that love to fish, just outdoors, or they kind of just like, I don't know, each one of my kids, I'm like, you know what? They kind of like doing this. Are you kind of starting to see that with your kids?
• 44:24
  Jess Rice: So right now, they're big on on hiking and finding things in the You know, we go on mushroom hunts a lot. That's a big one right now. My daughter has been out a few times with my husband hunting, and she enjoys it, but since we moved here, we have moved a couple of times, so it's been kind of hard to find the time to hunt here to develop that. Yeah. My son's a little young.
• 44:49
  He's still just two, so we haven't taken him out much other than hiking yet. So but, you know, I women are just kind of as a whole. We are very, persuasive group. So getting a group of women out together, even if it's something that's not necessarily like hook and bullet related, having an opportunity to discuss it with other women and maybe be persuaded just a little to try something, I think is the other benefit of having community is that we can see women try things that they might not otherwise have tried, just
• 45:29
  Bethany Beathard: at
• 45:29
  Jess Rice: the insistence of their newfound friends. And I think that that is is a real testament to why the community is so important.
• 45:39
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. And it also a lot of it has to do with access too, you know, there's people that have invited me to like my first turkey hunt. I didn't have any property that had turkeys on it where I was hunting, didn't have a turkey season allotted on the post. So I just didn't get the turkey hunt. But I got invited by another woman that had a safe space to go that was, you know, and that was my first turkey hunt, my first experience, it was amazing.
• 46:05
  And I think that's a lot of the thing for women too is, like you said, not every woman wants to walk out on public land, dark, you know, and all the things, but having another woman like, okay, well we went on this group hunt together but you should come back and I have this hunt to offer or we can do this together. I think women are finding that also beneficial because a lot of women are scared to do public land, you know, like that's kind of like a separate whole other thing, you know.
• 46:32
  Jess Rice: Whole other thing. It's just nice to have a space where you're not necessarily intimidated by somebody who's been doing it for twenty five years or thirty years or whatever it may be. Finding somebody that can can encourage you without the intimidation factor is is really important as well.
• 46:55
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. Except like the outdoors itself is intimidating, you know, just all the things that goes into just doing anything in the outdoors, you know, let alone adding, you know, other people in that. And I feel like that is a lot of thing. We as women sometimes want to feel like we already have arrived, we're already the expert, we're already, you know, comfortable. And so it's, it is hard, I mean, for anybody to kind of, okay, like I'm new, I am the beginner, I am still learning or I'm entry level.
• 47:27
  It's a vulnerable space to be really. Yes. And if you're not confident with shooting, tracking or whatever it is, and that can be like a scary thing and I feel like that's where these groups come together because I feel like women find that relatable and be like, okay, well, we can do it together, you know? Yeah. You know, we can like, hey, like, oh yeah, this is what we do, you know.
• 47:52
  I went on like a duck. So I love duck hunting, but I'm not the best deck caller because I usually hunt with people that are just better deck callers. You just let let them do it, But you I have been with some really great people that's like, hey, you should try, like the more the merrier, you're never gonna be able to do it if you you don't do it, you know. That has been a really big encouragement for me because if I hunted with some of the guys that are like amazing, I'd be like, I'm not even bringing this out of my pocket because they're amazing, you know. But I find it with girls that are like, yeah, girls, just do it, you know.
• 48:25
  And so I love that, you know, I've been in that space before and can just say that it's, women just need to find the community, you know. Absolutely. There's nothing, you can't duplicate it, you know. And, you know, I'm fine with being the only girl every once in a while, but it's better whenever it's only girls. And Yeah.
• 48:46
  Yeah.
• 48:46
  Jess Rice: It definitely is. And going back to your point about women women needing a lot of the information all upfront, I think that that is another reason why women learning in a woman taught or women centric environment is so impactful, is we're able to break it down to the way that we wish we would have learned when we were learning it, you know. And and put all the the the education part forward and then the doing part in kind of the the back end. So far, it works pretty well for us.
• 49:21
  Bethany Beathard: Yeah. I think, you know, the people that are teaching, a lot of us have are kinda like that on that trailblazer side where, you know, we were mod podging the camo to like make it fit, you know. Now some of these girls are coming in, can buy it that's already fit, you know, or we were using our dad or grandpa's gun that was ill fitted, you know, it's heavy, it doesn't fit right and like now there's so many options, you know, customizable guns, you know, just there's so many things that women can do now that I feel like it's more comfortable, accessible. There, like some of that learning curve, they don't have to go through because we're like, listen, it's kinda like a new mom, you know. You're like, oh, you don't need that.
• 50:03
  You don't need that baby bath. Put him in the sink or whatever.
• 50:07
  Jess Rice: Those are
• 50:08
  Bethany Beathard: kind of things that you can as like women that have kind of like been in it longer, I feel like those are like, know, you don't need that. You can do this or Certainly. And social media, like a lot of people are against it, feel like. And in a way, I feel like it does push some negative things, I always feel like the women that are out there sharing like authentic voices like you went back to say, that that story. Yeah.
• 50:36
  I can also say like countless times where women have said like, hey, you share this and now I'm doing this or, hey, guess what? I went on my first pheasant hunt, you know, and I never even shared about pheasant hunting, but because I talk about hunting, they was an accessible thing for them to do and now they're doing it. Yeah. And I love that. Like it did like, I'm doing the feather art and I have women that shared with me that they took and they were actually took the pheasant, it's the same lady and she was doing pheasant feather art and I love seeing that because, you know, never before could we connect with women like that.
• 51:09
  And now we have this flourishing online community and Wilderness has a really good page. Like you guys share a lot on there and I love that. Yeah, you guys have that, that's like available for women to, it's like a hub, you know? Yeah. And like you said, there's so many organizations, but women are finding other women and I hope that more women find women because Absolutely.
• 51:36
  We just yeah. There's and also like going back to like, just like the nitty gritty of, you know, funding conservation. Women hold like 86% of the buying power for a household, like that's like the statistic. If you get the woman buying into the outdoors, like that's another part of keeping conservation funding alive.
• 51:59
  Jess Rice: Yeah. And they're ready to bring their whole family to do it too because they're like, hey, I don't wanna do this alone. You guys are coming with me. Come play in the woods. Yeah.
• 52:07
  Bethany Beathard: A 100%. Yeah. So like, it multiplies. It multiplies the licenses. It multiplies the people that are out there for management that are harvesting it.
• 52:16
  There's just like, there's so many things that go into that. Yeah. I and I I think that's why we have a sin. Like we're trying to share authentic voices for women all over The United States that have totally different backgrounds, but we all have one thing in common and that's the outdoors.
• 52:35
  Jess Rice: Absolutely. And I encourage anybody out there just to try the different groups. Untried outdoors women for those in the West, there's per wilderness, they're doing things all across The United States. I there are so many groups out there. You are welcome to reach out to Wilderness at any time and that's wild pernesswithanh,uh,.org, and we're on Facebook and Instagram.
• 53:00
  I would be happy to repeat any of the resources that I have mentioned in this particular podcast, and let you know about things that are in your area. That's really kind of the whole point is community over competition. I don't care if you come and explore the outdoors with Wilderness or Artemis Sportswomen, as long as you do it. That's what matters.
• 53:25
  Bethany Beathard: Yes. And that was actually in a role in my my next point was where we can find you and we'll make sure that we tag all that below and and where people can get connected because, I definitely think this is something that is just special to me because I've lived it. I've lived the women community, I have reaped the benefits and I've sewed back into it and I just it's ingrained and I think that's why all of us, over here on the Ascend side are doing this because we see the need, we love it and, we just wanna share the story. So thank you Jess for joining us today and sharing your perspective. Make sure everybody goes and tries to follow you and and just builds the community.
• 54:06
  Jess Rice: Thank you for having me and, just you know, keep on keeping on that community.
• 54:10
  Bethany Beathard: Thank you Jess for being so inspiring and coming on today. I hope that all of you guys find community here at DU Ascend. If you guys will stay tuned to the next episode, we have more adventures coming your way.
• 54:25
  VO: Thank you for listening to the Ascend podcast. New every week, the conservation driven podcast one week and our adventure video series the next. Watch the Ascend adventure episodes on the Ducks Unlimited YouTube channel, and be sure to like, share, and subscribe. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, follow your outdoor story wherever it leads you. Ascend.
• 54:54
  VO: Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
• 55:16
  Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.