Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

When you grow up in a hunting family, you learn to (at least) appreciate the tradition.

06—It was so different from what I grew up with and from anything I knew, that I wanted to know more about it.

Journalist Lily Raff McCaulou moved from NYC to Bend Oregon to write for a small newspaper, many readers of which were anglers and hunters. To connect with them and the food she ate, Lily learned to hunt.

22—You know, the locavore movement was starting to take hold, and I’d been a meat eater my whole life, and was wondering: do I really have what it takes to hunt and kill my own meat. And wanting to know what I could get from that experience — and that closeness to my food. So, it was a combination of all these different factors that made me decide this is something that I want to try.

It took a year from the time she completed hunter education, to participating in a pheasant hunt during a Becoming an Outdoors Woman Workshop. Even so, she wasn’t sure she’d take a shot, but then…

25—All the other women in my group had shot a bird, and I just started feeling like, ‘Hey, I’ve come all this way and it’s been a year in the making, and I want to take a shot, too.’ Eventually, all the stars aligned and the dog that I was with sniffed out a bird and held it on point [and when it flushed], and I got it; I took the shot and the bird fell immediately. Rather than feeling all the guilt and remorse, I felt empowered.

Lily Raff McCaulou writes about her experience in her book Call of the Mild.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.