Women who hunt deer
By Sherry Crouch, wildlife planner, and Dee Pfleger, wildlife manager
Arizona Game and Fish Department

For this issue of Hunting Highlights, we invited some of the women here at the Arizona Game and Fish Department who hunt deer to share their stories with readers, as a way of encouraging other women to get out hunting this fall. Sherry Crouch and Dee Pfleger responded to the call. We think their words express quite clearly that women who hunt are not much different from men who hunt. They have the same excitement and concerns—and about the same luck. ~The editors

Sherry Crouch
Growing up in Arizona, I spent a lot of time exploring the outdoors. My dad hunted small game, and I’d watch fascinated as he cleaned each animal. At that time, I didn’t hunt, but did enjoy target shooting with handguns.

In college I met my future husband, Pat. Through him, my interest in hunting grew. Pat went with me through a hunter education course and spent hours helping me hone my shooting skills. I drew life-sized silhouettes, and then Pat would have me practice shooting. With his help, I was soon shooting accurately. It was the next year before I drew my first antlered deer tag.

On an October morning we started hiking, looking for deer. Even though we had good binoculars, we hiked instead of glassing. I spooked a mule deer buck but had no chance to shoot. To make a long story short, we went home with no deer, but vowed to use binoculars on the next hunt.

Pat was able to hunt midweek and got a nice mule deer. On the last day of the hunt, I got to go again. This time, instead of hike and hope, we decided to sit and glass. We glassed a lot of country, but saw no deer in the morning, so we waited for late afternoon when the deer would again be active. Glassing across a draw, we spotted seven whitetail bucks.

We built a rest using jackets and settled on a small buck offering a broadside shot. At the sound of my shot, the buck stood alone. The other deer scattered like a broken quail covey. The buck I shot at didn’t flinch. We watched the buck for several minutes, and he didn’t move. We decided something wasn’t right, and moved closer. At about 30 yards, I could see my buck, still on his feet, but barely. My shot had resulted in a low hit. With a final shot, I was able to tag my first deer, a fork-horned whitetail. Elation, honor, humility, delight in having meat in the freezer, relief that this one would be easy to pack out, and awe describe only a few of the emotions running through my mind.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons during that hunt. You can cover more ground with binoculars than with hiking boots, and always stick with the ammo you used in practice. In packing for the day’s hunt, I grabbed a box of .270 shells that were a different brand and different bullet than I had used in practice. Their trajectory was different—thus the low hit. Lessons learned, and mistakes never to be repeated.

Dee Pfleger
On one memorable hunt, three of us had tags in Unit 36C, in the Baboquivari Mountains. I was fortunate enough to get drawn with Tice Supplee, who was chief of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Game Branch at the time. Tice taught me patience, which was required for the hours of glassing for deer from ridge tops. Buns of steel helped too, for sitting on the hard ground. From Tice I also learned the meaning of a “death march.” Tice always believed in getting out, stretching the legs, and taking extended hikes up ridges and around mountains.

On one such ridge, we ran into another group of hunters. I guess the guys were not used to seeing women hunters, because while we were out in the middle of nowhere, on top of a windy ridge, dressed in camo and carrying guns, they had to ask us what we were doing. One of the quicker-thinking gals in our group responded, “Taking our guns for a walk.”

My biggest lesson of that hunt was: Never walk anywhere without your firearm or bow. After sitting on a ridge for several hours (that seemed like days) and not seeing much of anything moving, I left my gun with my backpack and walked over the back side to relieve myself of some early morning coffee. I don’t know who was more startled, me or the young buck that had bedded down just behind where we were glassing. I must have awakened him from his mid-morning nap. I stood there gaping as he bounded off down the hill to some other napping place.