It is an exciting time to be a hunter! I grew up with a dad, Craig Boddington, that hunted all over the world, but it wasn’t until after high school that I got into hunting. I started attending the SCI Conventions the year I graduated high school in 2003, and I haven’t missed one since. The annual SCI Convention gives me a chance to reconnect with friends from all over the planet, but it also reminds me yearly of all the work that must be done to keep our hunting heritage alive. It is so critical to get kids interested in the outdoors. We live in an age of screens and tech, which can overshadow simple pleasures like playing outside. We need the next generation of hunters to understand the passion that we have for the outdoors.
“With all this talk about gun control and anti-hunting in the news and media, it is more critical than ever before to fight to save our way of life.”
It is in this spirit that we started the She Hunts Skills Camp. Our mission is to educate women and kids on the basics of hunting to try and ignite that passion that we share for the sport. The simple truth is that if mom hunts, then the kids will hunt too. Women are the fastest growing demographic in the hunting industry, which is why this is such an exciting time to be a female in the hunting world. We need to push forward with education and give ladies the skills they need to be strong and independent hunters that feel comfortable taking their kids hunting with them.
Safari Club International Foundation is a sponsor of the She Hunts Skills Camp. Their support gives us the ability to reach more ladies and to give them a better program with more skills and more information to take home to their families. We get a lot of ladies that have lost their hunting partners either to death or divorce, and would still like to give their children a childhood filled with adventure and hunting in the great outdoors.
I applaud the bravery of these ladies to come to us with that goal, and it is incredible sponsors like SCIF that enable us to help give them what they need, which in some cases is knowledge and in other cases it is the healing of spending quality time in the outdoors with other likeminded female hunters.
We have had had so many success stories come out of the camp, but one that always gets me is about a young lady that was married to an avid hunter, but was very gun shy. She enjoyed the hunt, but hated the guns. She had even tried doubling up on her ear protection at the range, but still had tears coming down whenever she pulled the trigger. She left the She Hunts Skills Camp with a new confidence in handling her firearm and a renewed passion for hunting, which she planned to share with her young daughter. A week after the camp, she posted on her social media that for the first time in her life, she went to the gun safe without her husband and took her rifle to the range by herself. She didn’t do it because she felt pressured to, but rather because, for the first time ever, she actually enjoyed shooting.
“I could go on and on, but the reality is that we couldn’t do these programs without the generosity of people like you and organizations like Safari Club International Foundation. We greatly appreciate your continued support of our efforts and wish you all happy hunting!”
Now, more than ever, we need every single person to stand with SCIF and ensure that the next generation is prepared to take on the important role of hunter-conservationist! Wildlife around the world depends on hunters and hunting for its very survival, and recent studies show significant declines in the number of new hunters in the US, underscoring how critical our education efforts have become.
Brittany Boddington
Co-Founder She Hunts Skills Camp