CALL OF THE MILD, 2: Meet a woman who took up hunting 
as a way to connect with her food and her community [07 
" ... that I strove for."] ... ahead on 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 (mik-CULL-oh) 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 (mik-CULL-oh) writes about her 
experience in her book Call of the Mild.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti. 




Total sound bite time:		 0:53.0
Maximum Script time:		 0:32.0 Suggested show time: 85.0 = 1:25