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Notes -
It's possible this is a regional thing. But my experience with hunting camp is that wives and daughters might be hanging around, and might be claiming to be shooting, but they're really just there to get their husband or father a bigger bag limit- and will happily take credit for shooting something to outsiders, even trusted ones, for that purpose.
I could see that happening, but yeah, out west we don't do the 'hunt camp' thing as much -- or if we do it's in addition to 'go sit in a good spot (and/or cruise some cutblocks in the truck) for a few hours before/after work'. Nice to have some company for this, but it's also nice to be alone in the woods sometimes.
To be clear the people I'm talking about are ones that I hunt with personally and have observed shooting deer, so you can take that observation with whatever credibility you associate with internet randos (ie. me) -- the one girl who does go by herself is not quite as keen as her husband, but will take a couple horses out for a week ~once a year and come back with meat, so I'm pretty confident she's not secretly meeting up with her husband afterwards to throw his deer in the truck. (although in this case it would also not surprise me in the least if they also engaged in legally ambiguous activities in the event that all the tags aren't filled at the end of the season)
Ah, out west. Texas's hunting culture is an extension of the greater south, whereas the west's is not, so the regional distinction is probably the dominant factor here.
Yeah in some ways it's just that hunting is way easier here -- Easterners talk about hunt camps, deer drives, tree stands and I'm like WTF dude, just go drive around at sunrise +/- a couple of hours.
Doesn't really explain the gender difference though -- women I know (and these are in some cases literal partners in crime growing up; no way they are making up stories about shooting moose to impress me) are solidly either 'why can't you just leave the animals alone' or pretty bloodthirsty themselves -- the middle ground is not there. Cultural I guess.
I think a bunch of this is climate, as well- in the south it’s still too warm to hang deer in November, you have to pack the body cavity with ice, or quarter it in an ice chest, which means you need a freezer to store that ice, which means you need a deer camp with electricity. + there’s less public land, you need to secure permission to hunt on someone’s private land. Militates in favor of hunt camps, and since it’s usually private land with restricted access, there’s no free rider problem to setting up feeders and tree stands.
Deer stalking is a different sport which is more common on public land- heavier forest cover makes the Rockies-style ‘drive around on public land until you see an elk’ a way to not see any game.
The gender difference I’m reasonably sure is cultural, though. AFAIK the intermountain west and northern Rockies aren’t much less socially conservative than the south, so it seems kind of random.
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