Born and raised in the swamps of southeast Georgia, it was only natural that I'd be exposed to outdoor life. Especially since the house I lived in for the first few years of my life was, well, kinda outdoors in its own way. I could lie in bed and watch the stars through the cracks in the siding on the walls, hear the whip-o-wills calling me at night and the bobwhites in the morning. Food was mostly what we grew, caught or hunted, and I ain't as old as you may think! Maybe because life was hard in the beginning, everything seems like luxury to me now.

At eight, I got my first rifle. I'd been shooting anything anyone would hand me since I was old enough to stand up, but this was MINE... a Remington single-shot .22, that had been handed down from my Papa to my Dad. The men and women who raised me never discouraged me from anything I wanted to pursue in life, particularly when it came to hunting and fishing. I was always one of the "boys", except on Sunday, when they made me wear those scratchy crinoline thingies and dresses.

Then we had to move to the Big City (Hey, Jacksonville is the biggest city, land-area wise, in America!) and the outdoors life went sideways for a few years. Adulthood happened, and along with that relationships, and work, work, and more work, all keeping me out of the woods. Caught a husband, who is still my best friend, and added to the gene pool with a son who seems to have inherited all my best and worst traits. But as I aged, and not very gracefully, I found that what I needed most was what I took for granted as a child, the solitude and adventure that comes with the outdoor experience. So I went back to my roots, still working in the Big City at the sheriff's office, but looking forward to each day off I can spend back in the midst of the cypress and blackgum, getting scratched by briars and eaten by mosquitoes and yellowflies. It just don't get any better than this! Except maybe when I retire and can stay out all the time!

For those of you who really need the serious qualifiers, just for your own edification, I persevered and jumped through the hoops long enough to get a BA at the University of North Florida, Criminal Justice major, and am just stupid enough to try for a masters in the same subject, while I don't know that I'll survive that yet. I've gone this far, might as well keep going. I'm an adjunct instructor in criminal justice, firearms, chemical weapons and human diversity at the Northeast Florida Criminal Justice Training Center and Florida Community College at Jacksonville. I teach concealed carry classes with Practical Weapons Training Services Inc., I'm a life member of the NRA, and all around expert on things I know nothing about. That's the main thing I learned in college.

I still have that .22 rifle, and it shoots better than any of the fancier guns in the vault of my deferred compensation account, which is better than any of y'all's Roth IRA's. You don't think those guns grow in value? Just watch that Blue Book of Guns each year. And they replicate as well. I can't name the number of times I've opened the gun safe and found new additions in there. I still have a little trouble believing my husband's explanation for it, though...

I hope I can bring to you some reasons to laugh at ourselves, as well as some reasons to think about WHY we have chosen to take a different road than many of our sisters. There is the chance what I say I may be controversial, or on occasion, just plain contrary, but I do it in the spirit of encouraging other women to join the sports we enjoy. There is no victory without competition, no failure without success and no fun unless you look for it in the most unlikely of places.