Over the last three years, the number of men who hunt in Virginia declined by about 10,000, reflecting national trends. At the same time, about 1,000 more women across the Commonwealth took up the sport.
“That’s a doe. Pretty isn’t it? That’s a perfect shot,” whispers hunter Emily Beasley, before shooting.
It takes Emily Beasley less than two minutes to field dress a deer, and another half-minute for her to toss the steaming offal into the grass a few yards away where it’ll become dinner for coyotes once the winter sun sinks.
“Did she drop?” Beasley asks the man whose Keswick backyard we’re in, who replies, “Got it done, didn’t you?”
“I think so,” Beasley returns. “She didn’t go far, did she?”
Field dressing— the removal of a creature’s internal organs after it’s killed— is second nature to Beasley, 47, who’s been hunting since she was eight.
But even as Beasley’s thrilled to chat up the growing number of women and girls she meets in the field, earning respect as a hunter has been something of an uphill battle.
“You don’t look like a hunter!’” Beasley recounts people saying. “‘Thanks, I think?’ What does that mean? Or, hunting season falls during Halloween and I’ll go to the gas station. ‘Oh, are you going as a hunter?’
“‘No,’” Beasley tells them. “‘I am a hunter.’ Different! You know, it’s gotten better now, but, like, 15, 20 years ago, ‘I’ve never talked to a woman who knew what she was talking about.’ I have to, you know, I probably shouldn’t, but I feel like I have to prove myself, a little bit. I think I’ve done OK.”
According to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR), 1,000 more Virginia women registered to hunt over the last three years, bringing the state’s tally of female hunters to just above 25,000, or about eight percent of the total. A year ago, DWR launched new women’s programs offering hunting, fishing, and outdoor fluency. Some of the state’s professional hunting groups now offer women’s divisions for annual “big buck” contests, some of which Beasley’s won. Females donating their kill to Hunters for the Hungry, which distributes mostly wild-harvested venison to food pantries across the state, rose by 44 percent between 2021 and 2024.
Triggered by COVID-era boredom, love for the outdoors, social media, and an interest in self-sufficiency and thrift, women like Beasley and her daughter, Ryllen, 17, are changing the game. Sometimes they do things a little differently.
“It was funny, one came in, she missed, started crying, and then this buck came in, she got it, she started crying. I said, ‘Pick a lane, girl!’” laughed Beasley. “That’s what I’m saying, the emotions, you know, the highs and lows, are just . . . I’ve tried to pass that onto her that we respect the animals. She knows you don’t sit on them. You don’t take pictures with blood everywhere. You clean up. You know, you make it nice. You make it pretty.”
“You’ve taken something’s life; that’s special, you know?” she said. “To me. I don’t take that lightly.”
Beasley admits there’s a degree of dissonance in being both an animal lover and a hunter, but the magic of harvest hasn’t diminished for her.
“Most hunters do love animals,” Beasley explains. “It probably starts with the desire to be in nature, be around animals. All the ones I know would help a wounded animal. I just, I don’t know, I feel like I want to help something that’s hurt, but maybe outsmart something that’s not.”
Beasley hunts everything from bear to pheasant to turkeys to deer—a lot of deer, four to five each season—which she then processes herself. The family’s freezer is stocked with meat and their home is filled with taxidermied creatures, including a half-dozen antlered bucks and, in Beasley’s bedroom, a trotting coyote.
“Once it’s done, if you could bottle that up, you’d be a millionaire,” she said. “You ask someone who has harvested something that they’re really proud of or really put a lot of time into . . . you just can’t. It’s just amazing. That’s the feeling. That’s what hooks people. It’s like release. It’s just amazing. It’s very emotional, if you care. And I do.”
While Virginia’s hunting season ended in many places January 3, in some counties, antler-less deer may still be harvested using bows or firearms through March 29.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.