What’s in the gift package? From my own blues band, Diezelfitter, I am contributing our CD, “September Days.”

But there’s more … a lot more, including a $100 gift card from Cabela’s, courtesy of The Sportsman Channel. Where is that prize you ask? You’ll see – if you check the other bloggers’ sites, too.

The Hunter’s Wife

Walkin’ with the Wild Woman

A Focus in the Wild

And, of course, right here at The WON, Babbs in the Woods.

Enter once at each site to increase your odds of being chosen. Each outdoor blogger will choose one winner. Then, we will combine our winners and choose one from that pool. So, you might even be entered to win two or more times, depending on the luck of the draw, and if you entered the contest at all our sites!

To enter here at The WON, answer this question:

How would you protect yourself from flying carp?

The deadline is midnight on Monday, Aug. 15, 2011.

Paige Eissinger is Associate Editor of The WON and plays bass in her own blues band, Diezelfitter. Note the Smith & Wesson tee. Photo by Barbara Baird.

Meeting Barb was an external change in my life. Embracing firearms was an internal change. Meeting Barb was the catalyst. I’m sure she’ll tell you that not every woman she meets has become a huntress or even shot a handgun, much less gone out and bought one (I now own two). What Barb did for me, however, was to encourage me to look beyond my limited view of hunting and firearms in general.  Why was she able to do that when my sweetie had been trying to do the same thing for years unsuccessfully? I can think of several reasons:

1. She made hunting sound like fun. I never understood what was so much fun about getting up at the crack of dawn (or before) to spend the day sitting around waiting for a deer. To me, it was a “guy” thing.
2. She didn’t tell me I SHOULD learn to shoot or hunt. She told me I COULD learn to shoot and hunt.
3. She invited me to join her at the range and when she went hunting.
4. She was patient with me. When I showed up in a navy blue snowsuit, a big fuzzy brown hat and a camera to go hunt with her, she didn’t laugh at me.
5. She never made me feel like I should know what I was supposed to do. She showed me what I was supposed to do.

I love my sweetie and since Barb became my outdoor mentor, he and I have deer hunted together and regularly enjoy target shooting.  I got a deer the very first season he and I hunted together. I think he was more excited than I was! It’s a great feeling to know I helped fill the freezer with venison which has always been our choice of meat. I’ve even been able to give Sweetie some pointers when we’ve been shooting targets together that actually improved his accuracy.

Do you have an outdoor mentor? Is your mentor a spouse, family member or friend? During what part of your life did you discover outdoor activities? What’s your favorite way to spend time outdoors? Leave us a comment and let us know what prompted YOU to fly the coop!

Our goal has always been and continues to be to provide an interesting, informative and user-friendly online place to go for women who enjoy shooting, hunting, fishing, archery and other outdoor activities either alone, with a partner or with friends and family. Let’s say we strive to bring the outdoors indoors just for you! Since we’re doing this for YOU, it’s important that you let us know how we’re doing. Your feedback is what drives Team WON and we’d like to know what you think of our new home. Please help us by filling out the form below or by leaving a comment underneath my bio. We will do our best to make The WON your favorite outdoor site to visit!

We gladly said bye bye to the old template and its dated look and clunky style.

Barb Baird and I started talking about a website upgrade several months back, actually at the beginning of the year. Our adventures with WordPress began in October of 2008, along with our first experience with Studio Press, then called Revolution, premium themes. When I say we’ve come a long way, baby, I mean we’ve come a long way! We’ve shed our old “print” look for a more visually attractive appearance that relies more on photos to help tell our stories. If you’re looking for a premium WordPress theme for your site, you can find a variety of layouts on StudioPress.com.

If you want to have a truly interactive relationship with your website visitors, you can’t do better than WordPress. Unlike a traditionally designed website, WordPress is a complete content management system, or CMS. It allows you to integrate static information pages with new content in the form of posts and puts all of it into a structured, flexible format. From the viewpoint of the website owner, that means updates are much simpler and access is a matter of logging into your WordPress site. No special software, no need to know tons of code to “make it work.” From a visitor’s viewpoint, it means being able to keep up with the latest updates in your e-mail inbox or your RSS reader. Sure, we visit The WON everyday, multiple times a day, but that doesn’t mean our readers have to do the same thing to keep up with all the new articles from Team WON. Just subscribe to your preferred method of receiving updates. If you’d prefer to subscribe to view updates in your RSS reader, there’s are links in the top right navigation bar to subscribe to both Posts and Comments. If you like getting your updates once a day in your e-mail inbox, you can subscribe to e-mail updates on the right underneath the featured post slider.

If you’re a frequent commenter on this site (or any WordPress site), you can add a personalized graphic to your comments by visiting Gravatar.com and attaching a photo to the e-mail address you use when you post comments. If you’re a contributor to a WordPress site, your Gravatar becomes part of your profile and will be displayed at the end of each post you author as long as you choose to enable the author’s box on your posts. You can see a great example of how Gravatar.com integrates with WordPress on our Team WON page.

If you’re interested in advertising with The WON, we have the ability to display ads from 125×125 to ads that are 498×60 and just about any size in between. We can also position your ad according to your preferences and link it to any website or webpage you choose. Advertisers, contact Barb for details on what we can create for you as a member of our advertising family!

If you’re a writer who would like to submit content, you can do that too by completing the form on our Contact page.

I could go on and on about the features you can expect from The New WON but we’re still adding them. Look for a Guestbook in the near future!

Thanks to all of our readers for your continued support for women who enjoy participating in outdoor activities like hunting, shooting, fishing and archery. You can stay updated with the best news, reviews and stories about YOU and your adventures in the outdoors by subscribing to our site, liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter!

Resources:

• WordPress
• StudioPress
• Gravatar
• Team WON on Twitter
• The WON on Facebook

One of the few discussions that I’ve actually been involved in took place this past Sunday between the members of the worship and praise band at my church. I play bass in the band and my sweetie plays acoustic guitar. Between the first and second services, we generally get together to run through our songs and then have breakfast together at a local Burger King before time to play. This past Sunday, one of the band members made the comment that he was glad Osama Bin Laden finally met his demise and he was glad that it was the United States who caused it. Several others in our group echoed his sentiments. That led into a discussion about whether or not it was “Christian” of us to feel elated by another human being’s death. After all, aren’t we supposed to “turn the other cheek” when somebody treats us wrongly? Does that mean I’m supposed to give up my life willingly to somebody who values it so little that they’ll take it for their own selfish reasons?

Bin Laden aside, I can’t help but think about to what extreme I would be willing to go to protect myself or my family. I can remember having a conversation with my sweetie right after we got married about whether I’d be willing to kill someone who was threatening my life or his. At the time, I just couldn’t see ever being able to take another human being’s life. Not having ever experienced a life-threatening situation caused by another person, I guess I just had a hard time putting myself into that position. Also, I’d never learned to use a gun, so like a lot of people, I didn’t consider using it as a tool to protect myself. I only saw it as a tool of destruction.

A lot has changed since then. No, I still haven’t been in a life-threatening situation, although my sweetie did meet a couple of deputies doing a foot search across our property looking for a man who ran from the scene of a meth lab bust not far from here. In the rural area where we live, the meth trade is flourishing and if you know anything about the people who use meth, you know they’re not too concerned about much more than where they’re going to get their next high. Yes, I have learned to handle various types of firearms. That doesn’t mean I’m just waiting for the opportunity to go out and shoot somebody. What it does mean is that I’m ready to use deadly force in the event my own or a member of my family’s life is threatened. How did learning to use a firearm change my mind? I’m not really sure. I think maybe taking the time to understand that the same tool that someone could use to harm me could also be used to prevent them from harming me.  I adhere to the definition of self-defense as espoused by Mark Rogers on his website, Christian Gun Owner:

“SELF DEFENSE: The absolute necessity to, by force of violence, protect oneself from great bodily harm or death at the hands of someone who will not abide by the rules of a civilized society. Generally self-defense for a Christian will be exercised when assaulted or gravely threatened by a criminal who is intent on robbing, raping, or killing them. Not to be confused with “turning the other cheek”. That statement of Jesus referred to persecution for His name’s sake and referred to less than lethal force. Self defense is for a criminal not interested in a Christian’s object of faith, but only in harming them for personal gain. The Christian gun owner understands the human right to defend oneself, and their gun as a constitutionally granted tool for self defense.”

What about you? Are you torn between your Christian beliefs that life is sacred and your responsibility to your family to protect them from life-threatening harm?

Resources:

Christian Gun Owner website by Mark Rogers

Yesterday was my 14th wedding anniversary and it was one of those beautiful, clear, brisk spring days that just begged to be enjoyed out of doors. My sweetie took off work and we headed out to Defiance, Mo., for a winery tour. On our way to Defiance, we stopped in at Blumenhoff Vineyard and Winery in Dutzow and Montelle Winery in Augusta. We had lunch at Wine Country Gardens in Defiance (the portabello mushroom and artichoke heart sandwich is delicious) and ended our tour at Sugar Creek Vineyards and Winery, also in Defiance.

Squirrel Musicians at the Squirrel Bar in Defiance

One of our primary destinations was “the squirrel bar” in Defiance. A co-worker of my husband’s told us no trip to wine country was complete without seeing the stuffed squirrels at one of the taverns there. We didn’t know which of the two taverns in Defiance displayed the squirrels when we got into town, so we picked the one that looked the most like a squirrel bar to us. Don’t ask me what our criteria was. We just both said, “Let’s try that one first,” and headed into Terry and Kathy’s where we met Grace, the bartender, who told us we’d picked the wrong tavern. We stayed and talked with her for a bit before heading across the street to The Tavern where the dead squirrels decorated the ceiling. Not only were there stuffed squirrels in glass boxes attached to the ceiling, but they were all engaged in different activities. One is dancing with Barbie, another is riding a Harley, and four squirrels are playing in a band (my favorite). There’s a squirrel fishing, and yet another is putting a golf ball on an artificial turf green. There are even two squirrels mounted to the back bar that are in the middle of a game of horseshoes. The squirrels are hanging upside down from the ceiling because they’re mounted on a wood base, which would make it hard to see the squirrels if they were hanging rightside up. They used to be displayed on tables, but there were too many close calls, either from being knocked off a table or disappearing from sticky fingers, so the owners fastened them to the ceiling.

Paige and Anders at Montelle Winery

Di and Sweetie at Sugar Creek Winery in Defiance

Wine Country Gardens in Defiance

We had a wonderful day, enjoyed the lush greenery that was everywhere and met some friendly people at each of our stops. It made me remember what it’s like to be outdoors and how much I look forward to more roadtrips this summer. If you’ve been depressed with the weather, just remember that everything has a season and we’re now into the “May flowers” season, so put a smile on your face and head out the door. Your lawn probably needs mowing anyway.

Resources:

• Blumenhof Vineyard and Winery
• Montelle Winery
• Terry and Kathy’s Tavern
• The Tavern at Defiance
• Wine Country Gardens
• Sugar Creek Vineyards and Winery

Jerry Miculek and Gwen Cox. Photo by Paige Eissinger.

Once we arrived, fearless leader of The WON, Babbs, and Camo Mom, Tammy Ballew,  met us with open arms and a couple of brand new burgundy baseball style caps emblazoned with the colorful WON logo.  It was a hot, sunny day and we were excited to be hanging out with the “big guns” in the world of competitive shooting.

Mom (aka, Gwen Cox) is a big fan of Jerry Miculek. She watches him on TV all the time so getting to see him do what he does best live and in person was a particular thrill for her. We were both lucky enough to meet Jerry at his home range in Princeton, La., when we attended the Babes with Bullets camp there as part of the staff in April of this year. We got to see a lot of Jerry as he tooled around the range in a golf cart making sure everything was set up properly for the campers but we never got to see him in action as a shooter.  Needless to say, one of the first photos I took was one of Mom and Jerry.

Paige Eissinger and Marshall Teague. Photo by Gwen Cox.

One of the matches during the Speed Event featured celebrities who are also shooters. I don’t remember who they all were but I do remember one in particular. Marshall Teague is an actor who has appeared in movies and TV shows since 1979. His most recognizable films are Roadhouse and Armageddon. I knew him back when he was a police officer for the Memphis Police Department who talked about becoming an actor. Sure enough, Marshall  ”flew the coop” to Hollywood where he’s been an actor for 30 years.  This time, Mom took the photo of me with Marshall, still hot after all those years (love those dimples).

Mom and I also got to talk to Julie Golob when she and I were admiring each other’s shirts. Julie was wearing her Team Smith & Wesson shooting shirt while I was wearing my own S&W t-shirt with “Yeah, I Shoot Like a Girl” printed on the front.  Julie has been on Team Smith & Wesson since 2003 and has been shooting since she was 13.

Paige Eissinger and Julie Golob. Photo by Gwen Cox.

Julie recording the event. Photo by Paige Eissinger.

I was impressed by how friendly and willing the competitors were to pose for pictures and spend a few minutes talking to the members of the press, and there were plenty of press representatives on hand to capture the event.   I could tell that many of them were old hands at covering firearms competitions. The camaraderie among the competitors and the press was great to see, especially since I was somewhat intimidated as a new member of the press myself. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was well-behaved and the competitors exhibited skill and class. The Bianchi Cup 2010 may have been the first shooting competition I’ve ever attended, but you can bet it won’t be my last.

For complete event coverage, visit The NRA Blog.

Paige and Babes Video Goddess, Marilyn Vogel. Photo by Gwen Cox.

Our trip to camp came about when I started working with Deb Ferns on the babeswithbullets.com website. I’ve always wanted to meet Marilyn Vogel, the video goddess of Babes with Bullets, and Deb was happy to have someone who was willing to actually work with Marilyn on shooting and editing video during camp so she invited me to be part of the video team at the April 2010 camp in Princeton, La. The third member of the team was Melita Ellington, vice president of The WOMA and fearless leader of the membership team. Not liking to take solo road trips, I invited my mom and Suburban Housemom for the Suburban Housewives, Gwen, to go along. Deb gained another staff member when Mom pitched in and helped gourmet cook, Maryann, in the kitchen. That’s how we ended up on the road watching out for Dollar General Stores.

We arrived in Princeton just in time to meet and greet the 32 women who gathered at the Lake Bistineau State Park the night before camp started at the Shootout Range. The ladies bunked in deluxe cabins at the park during camp and the get together the first night gave campers, instructors and staff the chance to learn a little something about each other.  Everyone enjoyed pizza, salad and talking about how excited they were to be at camp with other women who enjoy shooting.

Gourmet cook, Maryann Dabney, with kitchen assistant, Gwen. Photo by Paige Eissinger

As staff members, Mom and I bunked at the “cookhouse” on the range with Deb, Maryann, Marilyn, Melita and a couple of women from Otis Technology, Nancy and Barb, who were attending camp for the first time. When camp started early Thursday morning, Nancy and Barb joined the rest of the campers on the range while Melita and I grabbed video cameras and headed out with Deb to record an interview with Christy, the contest winner of a place at camp from a local radio station, KRMD, and Susan, the station’s general manager.

After that first interview, the rest of the week went by in a blur. Melita and I captured video footage on the range and delivered it to Marilyn back at the cabin where she used her Macbook Pro and Final Cut Pro video editing software to turn it into something you’ll be seeing soon on the Babes with Bullets website. I learned a lot about how to shoot video and developed a yearning for my own Macbook Pro with Final Cut Pro. My mom not only helped Maryann with food preparation, she also iced Maryann’s ankle when she took a fall in the driveway on the asphalt.

Needless to say, we didn’t stop at any Dollar General Stores on the way home. We were too tired to shop! Would we do it again? In a heartbeat!

OK, I realize that 2009 wasn’t the best year for our economy and there are many people who no longer have jobs or homes.  I realize we still have young men and women in hostile foreign countries, some of whom return wounded or in a flag draped casket. I hear the arguments on the radio/TV and read the articles in the paper and on the internet, both for and against, about whether or not Barack Obama is fulfilling our expectations as president.  I could go on about the negative things that happened during 2009, but I won’t. God knows, there are enough members of the media already who seem to be obsessed with it.

I choose to be grateful for the many blessings I received in 2009. I flew my coop on many occasions to try new activities and meet people who became my friends. I saw relationships I’ve had for years become richer when I hunted with my husband and with my friend, Dionne, for the first time in 2009. I watched The WON grow from an idea in Barbara Baird’s head to a thriving online community of men and women who enjoy a variety of outdoor activities. When I look back at 2009, I have so much to be grateful for and that’s what makes me look forward to 2010.  I look forward to becoming a more accomplished user of the firearms I now own. I look forward to seeing The WON continue to grow and change to meet the needs of its readers. I look forward to a continued personal and professional relationship with Babbs and watching Tammy Ballew make a place for herself as an associate editor.  I look forward to flying the coop for new adventures with The Suburban Housewives.

Instead of dwelling on what you don’t have, spend some time being grateful for what you do have.  You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.  I’ve made it a daily habit to share my gratitude with others on GratitudeLog.com, a website with the sole purpose of bringing people together to celebrate life’s happy moments with each other.  I’d like to wish you a very happy 2010 with a quote from Oprah Winfrey:

“The single greatest thing you can do to change your life today would be to start being grateful for what you have right now”

Thanks for supporting the Women’s Outdoor News.  We couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you!