Did Hunting Prepare me for Motherhood? 

The Overlap Between Hunting and Motherhood: Resilience, Patience, and Adaptability

I want to start off by saying this is not a blog I ever thought I would be writing. Five years ago if you would have shown me this excerpt with the words, “Hunting” and “Motherhood” in the same title, I would have thought I was writing a hit piece on someone. Five years ago I viewed hunting as an evil thing the white elite / rednecks did for fun (I’m just being honest). I hate to admit that I probably viewed having biological children in just as negative a light, something I didn’t think I wanted. Yet, it’s now 2024, and I’ve been hunting whitetail for four seasons, spring turkey and waterfowl for three. I’m writing a blog in bed and can hear my four month old rumbling through the baby monitor while my boyfriend is in the kitchen steaming some crabs since it’s that time of the year in the Northern Neck of Virginia.

Before I even get to the motherhood portion, let me just start by saying the old Elizabeth was on and off with a vegetarian diet then later a vegan diet. It wasn’t until Covid-19 removed the normalcy of daily life that I began to question where our food came from, who controlled it, and what I could do to tone down the anxiety I was feeling. Ultimately it led me to look into ethical and sustainable hunting. Ethical is a very loose term I’ve come to realize. What some hunters might consider ethical isn’t viewed the same to others. I think this is probably a half common sense issue and the other half an empathy issue. I’d say sustainable because I’m hunting in my home state harvesting deer that live in abundance and otherwise could be causing car accidents and instead after an ethical kill, I’m taking them home, butchering them, filling my freezer with meat, using bones for broth, attempting to make their hide into a christmas tree skirt (unsuccessfully I might add) and trying to render down inedible deer fat to make non-toxic candles (half successfully). 

So why do I think hunting prepared me for motherhood?

Because when it comes to hunting, you won’t understand it, until you do it. You won’t know what it’s like to walk to a deer stand in the pitch black, get in a tree stand, and watch the woods wake up without knowing you’re there, sitting eye-level with the birds. You won’t know what it’s like to harvest your first animal, to feel all the feels whether that be adrenaline, gratitude, or tears. You can only read so much or watch so many videos, but truly to understand hunting, is to experience it. 

Motherhood is the exact same thing. Outside looking in, you can think, “yeah I don’t want that”. Even being an aunt trying to change my nephew’s diaper while trying not to vomit on him, I never once thought that I wanted that kind of life.  I used to boast about my career and social life because in that stage of my life, I was fully fulfilled by those things. I didn’t think I wanted to have kids or have the responsibility of being someone's mom. I used to silently judge others who claimed their biggest accomplishment was being a mother. But now that I’ve experienced it… now that I’ve carried a child for 9 months, went through labor and childbirth without an epidural, survived the newborn stage, breastfed, and all the other things in between... I can honestly say I’m not the same person. I would quit my job tomorrow and have a million more kids. Maybe not a million but hopefully a couple more…

Elizabeth five years ago?

She would probably be horrified. Just like she’d be horrified to know that I enjoy hunting animals. 

Another way hunting prepared me for motherhood is similar to how, like hunting, everyone has different opinions about what’s considered the “right way” to hunt.

You bet, when it comes to parenting, everyone and their mother thinks there is a “right way” to parent a child. Whether the topic is crossbows or private vs. public, the same thing can be argued for co-sleeping or cloth diapers. Hunting prepared me for motherhood because at the end of the day, I have to make my own decision (with her dad of course) and decide what’s best for us in that moment and go from there ignoring outside opinions.  Just like I did with hunting when I was told it was “too hard” and a “waste of time” to hunt with a compound bow. Or when I was told that public land in Virginia was “dangerous” and that “I’d get shot”. It can be beneficial to hear others out and their experiences whether it be parenting or hunting, but it definitely doesn’t mean you have to take their advice or use their strategies. 

Hunting for the first time in my mid 20’s taught me that it was okay to have certain prejudice prior to trying something and then changing your mind completely once you experience it. It taught me to do my own research about a topic I knew nothing about, whether it be by reading books, watching videos, or scrolling on social media. It also taught me that the research I was doing didn’t compare to actually getting out in the woods and putting those approaches to the test. It taught me that everyone is going to have different experiences and therefore different opinions on topics and that they won’t be shy to share those opinions. I’ve been able to translate each of those points to motherhood and for that I could not be more grateful for finding such an impactful lifestyle as hunting. 

Published Ocotber 17th 2024, by Elizabeth Brownell, Okayest Hunter Contributor and podcast host of the Onset Podcast