THESE GIRLS CAN HUNT
AN UNCLE FINDS PERSPECTIVE IN WATCHING HIS NIECES THRIVE IN THE FIELD
BY BJORN DIHLE
H
unting is often thought of as a tradition that’s passed down from father to son. For me and my two brothers, growing up in Southeast Alaska, that was the way it was. During much of my boyhood, though I was chubby and near-sighted, I dreamed of becoming a hunter who would rival Daniel Day Lewis’ character Hawkeye from the movie The Last of the Mohicans. I spent a significant amount of time staring into the mirror, shirtless and flexing, while repeating tough one-liners like “I put Copenhagen on my Cheerios” and “You call that whiskey? Tastes like apple juice.” To train to become the ultimate man-predator, I’d strip down to my underwear, stumble through the woods and attempt to leap over downed trees while yelling things like “Wolverine!” and “I will find you!” During this era, I believed that women were unable to hunt and found it distasteful. A few years later, though, my older brother Luke and his wife Trish had three little girls. Kiah, Adella and Braith – from eldest to youngest – taught me that just about all my conceptions of what it meant to be a girl were wrong. Sure, on occasion they’d do things like pretend to be a princess or a fairy, but that didn’t prevent them from helping butcher and process the deer and salmon that make up the bulk of their family’s protein. I’m convinced their wearing butterfly wings, gowns and high heels only made them that much more efficient with a knife. When the girls got older they began accompanying their dad on hunting trips. Often, Luke invites me along to teach them life lessons. The girls love my long-winded lectures, which range from me elaborating on the limitations of existentialism, to pantomiming how to explode a charging grizzly bear’s heart using a five-finger death punch, to explaining why it’s OK for guy hunters to wear pink. In fact, due to a lot of people’s negative feelings towards hunters, it’s
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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL
AUGUST 2022 | aksportingjournal.com
