our lady sportsmen': gender class, and conservation...

"Our Lady Sportsmen": Gender Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873-1920Author(s): Andrea L. SmalleyReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 355-380Published by: Society for Historians of the Gilded Age & Progressive EraStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144412 .Accessed: 11/02/2012 19:11

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"Our Lady Sportsmen": Gender Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873-1920

by Andrea L. Smalley, Northern Illinois University

In 1968 Outdoor Ufe ran a retrospective piece that examined the turn-of

the-century origins of this popular sportsmen's magazine. In the article, edi

tor William Rae noted, with some dismay, that two out of the first three sto

ries in the December 1905 issue featured women hunters, including the tale

of a "tireless Diana" who left her corset at home in order to take to the

fields. "One wonders," Rae commented dryly, "whether men really were

men in those days, as we have been led to believe." Clearly, Rae found the

spectacle of sport hunting women unusual, and he assumed that their pres

ence in the pages of a hunting periodical called into question the masculin

ity of earlier sportsmen. The connection that Rae and Outdoor Ufe readers

made in 1968 between hunting and masculinity remains a commonplace. As

feminist scholar Mary Zeiss Stange argues, hunting "might be, in the popu lar mind, the most male-identified cultural pursuit."1

This "men-only image" of hunting has influenced historians as well, lead

ing them to interpret the rising popularity of hunting, fishing, and camping at the turn of the century as evidence of an emergent primitive masculinity.

Nationally circulated magazines devoted to these outdoor activities such as

Outdoor Eife, Field and Stream, and especially Forest and Stream made their

debuts in this period, and many historians have used these sources to show

that upper- and middle-class white men were reformulating their gender identities, in part, through their involvement in recreational hunting. Other

historians have probed the same sources to prove that these men culturally

transformed hunting through a gendered definition of "sportsmanship," while they legally reformed hunting through conservation. These magazines, historians suggest, provided a forum for the "hunting fraternity" to articu

late both their version of masculinity and to build a political group identity as

"sportsmen."2

William Rae, "Long Live Outdoor Life," Outdoor Life, June 1968, 6. Other outdoor writ ers in the 1960s and 1970s commented on women's frequent appearance in earlier sports

men's magazines and questioned the "men-only image" of field sports. See for example, Margaret G. Nichols, "The Proper Perspective," Field and Stream, March 1973, 179, and Richard Starnes, "To the Ladies," Field and Stream, May 1972, 24; Mary Zeiss Stange, Woman the Hunter (Boston, 1997), 1.

2E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to

Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4:4 (October 2005)

356 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005

Yet even a casual survey of early sportsmen's magazines reveals that they

were never exclusively male spaces. From the start, Forest and Stream

embraced women as part of its potential audience, contending that women's

"countenance and sympathy"

were crucial to the magazine's success. Toward

that end, editors introduced a regular "Ladies Department" in 1877 as proof of the journal's commitment to

being "a ladies' paper"

as well as "a gentle

man's paper." Field and Stream followed suit in the 1890s, creating "The

Modern Diana" column for women. Nearly every issue of these influential

hunting journals?as Outdoor'Ufe's William Rae noted decades later?includ

ed women as the subjects of articles, advertisements, photographs,

and car

toons. The magazines also invited women's "contributions upon all topics," and women responded by submitting articles, editing columns, and writing letters to the editor. Female editors not only conducted special women's

columns, but also wrote regular general

interest features, including Cornelia

"Fly-Rod" Crosby's "Maine Department" in Field and Stream and Ruth

Alexander Pepple's trapshooting column in Outdoor Ufe. Women's conspicu ous presence in these magazines?and sportsmen's apparent advocacy of

their participation?complicates the more familiar masculine image of sport

hunting and begs explanation. What were women doing in sportsmen's mag

azines?3

Answering this simple question exposes the interrelationships between

turn-of-the-century notions of gender and the political/legal

construction

of conservation. Outdoor journals in this period not only popularized field

sports but also promoted wildlife conservation campaigns that demanded

the cultural and legal reform of hunting. By including women in the pages

of their periodicals, sportsmen-writers and editors defined recreational

hunting in a way that disassociated it from subsistence hunting, market hunt

ing, and unproductive indolence. The magazines did not portray the sport

the Modern Era (New York, 1993), 227-32; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilisation: A Cultural

History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995), 23; John F. Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, revised ed. (Norman, Okla., 1986), 22. See

for example, Thomas L. Altherr and John F. Reiger, "Academic Historians and Hunting: A

Call for More and Better Scholarship," Environmental History Review 19 (Fall 1995): 39-56;

Thomas R. Dunlap, "Sport Hunting and Conservation, 1880-1920," Environmental Review 12

(Spring 1988): 51-60; Daniel Justin Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination (Washington,

DC, 2001); Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History

of American Conservation (Berkeley, 2001). 3"To the Ladies," Forest and Stream, August 14, 1873, 10; "Salutatory," Forest and Stream,

January 11, 1877, 361; Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines, 1865-1885, vol. 3

(Cambridge, 1938), 210; William E. Rae, A Treasury of Outdoor Ufe (New York, 1975), xiii;

Julia A. Hunter and Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Fly Rod Crosby: The Woman Who Marketed Maine

(Gardiner, Maine, 2000), 52. Forest and Stream had six women upon its list of frequent con

tributors by 1874. Outdoor Life employed women as "lady representatives" in 1904 and 1914

to publicize the magazine. See "Our Lady Representative," Outdoor Life, December 1904, 879;

Ben East, "Journey of the Outdoor Life Girl," Outdoor Life, July 1973, 61-62.

Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 357

branded on a RIFLE, SHOTGUN, or PISTOL means considerable J^H^^^^^^^^H to the prospective purchaser. UNERRING ACCURACY?HIGH

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Women's images routinely appeared in advertisments for hunting and fishing equipment. As

the gender-neutral language of the ad copy shows, advertisers saw nothing incongruous in

linking women with outdoor sports. From Forest and Stream, January 30, 1909. Courtesy of

the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

as an exclusively masculine enterprise, but instead connected certain of

women's "essential" qualities to "correct" forms of

hunting in contrast to

"common" or even "immoral" methods of taking game. Periodicals like

Forest and Stream associated "our lady sportsmen" with an updated and

upgraded image of hunting, thus linking the gender- and class-based politics of leisure to environmental policy and use.4

Many historians have examined leisure, investigating everything from

cabarets and movie theaters to parks and parades. A number of those

accounts have identified the turn of the twentieth century as an era of cul

tural transformation when leisure became an arena in which men and

women articulated and contested particular formulations of gender identity and class consciousness. Historians have, however, disagreed about the

specifics of this cultural change and the direction of cultural transmission.

"Traditional" accounts pointed to the urban upper and middle classes as the

originators of new social norms, arguing that change "trickled down" to the

masses. More recent studies have argued

that working-class

amusements

4Thomas R. Dunlap, Saving America's Wildlife (Princeton, 1988), 9-12; Reiger, American

Sportsmen, 26; "Our Lady Sportsmen," Forest and Stream, January 15, 1874, 361. For analyses of conservation and class conflict, see for example, Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature-, Benjamin Heber Johnson, "Conservation, Subsistence, and Class at the Birth of Superior National

Forest," Environmental History 4 (January 1999): 80-99.


represented an "alternative culture" that working men and women jealously

guarded as a sphere of "distinctive and autonomous activity" outside the

workplace. Historians have also disagreed about the transformative power of leisure to effect social, political, or economic change, alternatively argu

ing that recreation could be either a challenge to the status quo or an accom

modation to it.5

While saloons and amusement parks have elicited spirited historical

debate, hunting has provoked far less disagreement. Historians who have

addressed the topic usually agree that recreational hunting in the late nine

teenth and early twentieth centuries was dominated by upper- and middle

class white men who advanced a "code of sportsmanship" that combined

manly restraint and self-mastery with a primitive masculinity that empha sized virile strength and wilderness survival skills. Theodore Roosevelt often

makes an appearance in these studies (usually dressed in leather fringe) as

the archetypical turn-of-the-century hunter: an elite, white, urban easterner

beset with gender, class, and racial anxieties. Beyond the realm of culture,

historians also generally concur that the rising popularity of sport hunting in the period had direct political, social, and environmental consequences. Studies by Steven Hahn and Karl Jacoby, for example, reveal how white,

upper-class sportsmen wielded their social authority and political power to

prescribe and limit the conditions under which people could use environ

mental resources. In a final area of agreement, historians insist that women

hardly mattered in the hunting field. While scholars concede that women

might occasionally hunt, their participation is interpreted as either insignifi cant or, at most, vaguely threatening

to the manliness of the sport. In this

historiographical context, women's presence in sportsmen's magazines

appears as a minor anomaly in an overwhelmingly masculine pastime.6

5Paula Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York, 1977);

Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York, 1977); Lewis A.

Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930

(Westport, Conn., 1981). Fass, Lasch, and Erenberg identify the middle class as the locus of

cultural change. Studies that focus on the urban working-class and challenge this "trickle

down" model of cultural transmission include: Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women

and Uisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986), 4-8, 184; Roy Rosenzweig,

Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Eeisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge,

1983), 4-5; Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930

(Chicago, 1988), 116; Nan Enstad, Eadies of Eabor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular

Culture, and Eabor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1999), 6-14.

6Studies of gender and culture that advance this interpretation of hunting include:

Bederman, Manliness and Civilisation, 171-77', 207-15; Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A

Cultural History (New York, 1996), 7, 125; E. Anthony Rotundo, "Boy Culture: Middle-Class

Boyhood in Nineteenth-Century America," in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago, 1990), 17-18; Rotundo,

American Manhood, 227; Elliott Gorn, The Manly Art (Ithaca, 1986), 187-88; Richard Slotkin,

"Nostalgia and Progress: Theodore Roosevelt's Myth of the Frontier," American Quarterly 33

(Winter 1981): 612, 633; Roderick Nash, ed., Call of the Wild, 1900-1916 (New York, 1970),

Smalley / OurEady Sportsmen 359

Certainly men predominated in the sport, and women's presence in

sportsmen's magazines did not necessarily translate into gender equality in

the hunting field, or anywhere else for that matter. But the fact that women

appeared so frequently in the magazines that created, cUsseminated, and

popularized sport hunting's image represents more than just a curious devi

ation in an otherwise masculine story. The ways in which outdoor periodi cals positioned women in relation to recreational hunting reveals the con

nections between turn-of-the-century gender ideals, class-based definitions

of leisure, and the politics of progressive environmental policy. Hunting reformers wielded a gendered language in their magazines that included

contemporary assumptions about women's nature as a way to promote their

political agenda and to legitimate their conception of "correct" hunting. The

mixed-gender image of hunting constructed by sportsmen's journals also

complicates explanations of the social origins and historical significance of

heterosocial leisure. These magazines encouraged women to share men's

outdoor pursuits as a way of upholding, rather than undermining, Victorian

notions of respectable, family-centered recreation. Finally, sportsmen's will

ingness to include women in their picture of outdoor recreation suggests that the relationship between masculinity and recreational hunting was not

as obvious or as exclusive as historians have imagined. Elite sportsmen were

less concerned with protecting a "men-only" definition of hunting and were

instead more interested in establishing sport hunting's methods as the only

legitimate ways of taking game.

Game Butchers, Pot Hunters, and Sportsmen: Turn-of-the

Century Hunting Reform

Hunting differs from other popular recreations in that its origins as a

human activity are prehistoric, and over the broad sweep of time it has taken

a variety of forms. Even in the late nineteenth century some Americans still

relied on wild fish and game for a significant part of their diets, while oth

ers hunted for profit, killing game and selling it commercially. These differ

ent forms of hunting co-existed and overlapped with recreational hunting,

317. For studies devoted more specifically to hunting, see Thomas L. Altherr, "The American

Hunter-Naturalist," Journal of Sport History 5 (Spring 1978): 7-21; Dunlap, Saving America's

Wildlife, 5-17; Reiger, American Sportsmen, 25-49, 199; Steven Hahn, "Hunting, Fishing, and

Foraging: Common Rights and Class Relations in the Postbellum South," Radical History Review 26 (Oct. 1982): 37-64; Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature. For explanations of women's place in hunting, see Stuart A. Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual

in a Carolina Community (Princeton, 1991), 6; Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1990), 22-24. Daniel Justin Herman's

recent cultural history of American hunting devotes more attention to sport hunting women

than most other studies. He argues that women's participation in sport hunting was a chal

lenge to middle-class patriarchy and part of a broader movement for equality. See Herman,

Hunting and the American Imagination, 228-32.


making it difficult to distinguish between the kinds of hunting practiced

solely as sport and taking game for subsistence or for the market. But,

before the Civil War, few people concerned themselves with making that

distinction since wildlife populations seemed inexhaustible. By the 1870s,

however, concerns about rapid industrialization and the commercial

destruction of wildlife prompted recreational hunters to insist that the time

had come for hunting reform. Elite sportsmen took aim at subsistence and

market hunters, labeling them "game butchers," "fish pirates," and "pot hunters" in contrast to the "gentleman" who practiced

a British-style sports

manship. It was no coincidence that nationally circulated periodicals devot

ed to recreational hunting and fishing appeared at the same time. American

Sportsman began publication in 1871, and Forest and Stream appeared soon

after. By the time Field and Stream and Outdoor Ufe debuted in the 1890s,

sportsmen's magazines had already begun the work of creating and popular

izing an image of reformed hunting associated with recreation and

respectability.7 But sportsmen were not content with merely extolling their form of hunt

ing in the pages of a magazine. Redefining legitimate hunting as only a sport

required both rhetorical and political strategies. One way elite hunters

sought to advance and protect their conception of the sport

was to cham

pion game law reform in their journals. Forest and Stream's well-born founder

and editor, Charles Hallock, and his successor, George Bird Grinnell, used

the pages of the periodical to press for stricter regulation of hunting, includ

ing closed seasons, bag limits, licensing for hunters, and the protection of

certain non-game species. These magazines set out to do more than just

raise public interest in the goals of conservation, they also proposed wildlife

legislation, circulated petitions, and organized sportsmen's clubs that lobbied

for wildlife and habitat protection. Historians have noted the significant influence of sportsmen in these early years of conservation and agree that

sportsmen represented "the first organized group to press for wildlife

preservation." Hunting journals represented an effective vehicle for politi

cizing sport hunters and raising awareness of environmental problems. Forest and Stream's influence in the conservation movement extended beyond

its immediate audience to the general public through reprinted articles in

newspapers such as the New York Times.9'

Sportsmen's conservation campaigns, however, were colored by class

interest. Legal limitations on hunting and fishing advocated by Forest and

Stream represented an assertion of economic power designed

to reserve cer

7Reiger, American Sportsmen, 25-28, 30; Dunlap, Saving America's Wildlife, 10-11. American

Sportsman, renamed Rod and Gun, was absorbed by Forest and Stream in 1877.

8Reiger, American Sportsmen, 30-33, 39-40; Altherr, "The American Hunter-Naturalist," 13;

Smalley / OurEady Sportsmen 361

tain environmental resources for the recreation of upper- and middle-class

urbanites while denying the same resources to those who hunted for profit or subsistence. Early outdoor journals reflected this class-based prescription for the "proper" relationship between people and nature. These magazines celebrated the gentleman hunter?and the racial, ethnic, and class positions

which sport hunters generally occupied. As Forest and Stream maintained in

1888, training in the hunting field was necessary "to secure the survival of

the fittest intellectually and morally" over the incursions of "Sclav [sic] and

Tartar and Latin races," as well as to prepare for "sectional wars or class wars

at home." The magazine also attacked sport hunting critics, accusing them

of "setting class against class." It was clear, Forest and Stream's editor com

plained, "everything done or promulgated by the upper or authoritative

classes is keenly scrutinized by the inferior."9

As outdoor journals identified sport hunters as part of the "upper and

authoritative classes," they also distanced their audiences from the excesses

of lower-class "game butchers" and "pot hunters." Elites routinely linked

subsistence hunting to African Americans and the rural poor and claimed

that such forms of hunting and fishing only "demoralized man, and in many cases led to crime." Hallock's address to the second annual National

Sportsmen's Convention in 1875 drew a clear line between sportsmen and

those Hallock termed "unclean creatures." Hallock urged his fellow sports men to do "missionary work...among the unlettered. The great

mass of

those who shoot?the small farmers, bushrangers, frontiersmen, (to say

nothing of the negroes of the South, who all use guns)," he continued, "have not the instincts of sportsmen." As one contributor to Forest and

Stream noted with dismay, "any lazy negro" who was "probably in debt to

the man that fed him the year before on his promise to work" could "gather

together a

pot metal gun and one or two starved curs" and "range the woods

and shoot down whatever he sees." Only licensing fees and game laws,

Dunlap, Saving America's Wildlife, 9. See also James B. Trefethen, Crusade for Wildlife: Highlights in Conservation Progress (New York, 1961). Between 1873 and 1898 a number of Forest and

Stream's conservation articles were reprinted by the New York Times, including a petition for

the creation of Yellowstone National Park. See, for example, "To Preserve the National

Park," New York Times, March 18, 1888; "The Yellowstone Park Scandal," New York Times,

May 4, 1890; "How Our Forests Are Preserved," New York Times, May 6, 1890.

interestingly, Forest and Stream printed Fannie Pearson Hardy's polemic, "Six Years Under

the Maine Game Laws," in which she complained that rural people were oppressed by game laws that favored "out-of-state 'sports'." Hunter and Shettleworth, Fly Rod Crosby, 16-17;

Altherr, "The American Hunter-Naturalist," 1; Dunlap, "Sport Hunting and Conservation," 58-59; Reiger, American Sportsmen, 30-33; Slotkin, "Nostalgia and Progress," 612, 633; "The

Purpose of Field Sports," Forest and Stream, February 16, 1882, 47; "The Ethics of Hunting," Forest and Stream, November 22, 1888, 341. Grinnell created, in partnership with Theodore

Roosevelt, the exclusive Boone and Crockett club for well-to-do New York sportsmen. For

the history of the Boone and Crockett Club, see Trefethen, Crusade for Wildlife.


sportsmen believed, could prevent the taking of game for any other but

recreational purposes.10

Despite the fact that outdoor writers used a language tinged with class?

identifying sport hunters as those "gentlemen of means fond of outdoor

sport with gun and rod"?hunting and fishing magazines frequently claimed

that "something besides wealth and position" made for true sportsmen. Contributors bristled at accusations that the wildlife legislation advocated by Forest and Stream served only the elite. Editor Grinnell contended that "laws

prohibiting the destruction of game...are not for the advantage of any nar

row clique." "Mohigan" agreed, arguing in 1902 that "what is free to all and

for the benefit of all cannot be properly termed 'class' interest. It is idle to

suppose for a moment that the preservation of game and fish acts detrimen

tally to the poorer classes." In fact, sportsmen claimed, in

working for game

law reform and wildlife conservation, they were

assuring democratic access

to pleasures of hunting and fishing. But outdoor journals made clear that

they were protecting only recreational forms of hunting. In an 1881 editori

al, Grinnell denied that the magazine "favored measures which would make

the enjoyment of legitimate sport [emphasis added] by the poor man more dif

ficult." In 1912, Forest and Stream further explained the proper relation

between work and recreation. "The wealthy man and the hard working citi

zen seek the outdoors for rest, and are praised for their foresight," the mag azine declared. But "society, being

a straight-laced mistress, decrees that the

poor man must first provide for his own and his family's wants before his

shooting and fishing excursions shall receive her endorsement." It was

"society," then, and not elite sportsmen, who decided that legitimate hunt

ing belonged in the realm of leisure.11

Redefining hunting as belonging exclusively to the category of leisure was

a major part of the political project undertaken by outdoor journals to

reform hunting. Forest and Stream made the point clearly in its first issue,

declaring that the journal would consider and encourage only activity that

was "of value as a health-giving agent or a recreative amusement." Hunting

and fishing, according to these magazines, counterbalanced the "over-civi

10Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 89; Henry Hammond, "Beech Island Farmers' Club,

Minutes," June 1875, June 6,1876, 221-39; quoted in Hahn, "Hunting, Fishing, Foraging," 46;

"The Ethics of Hunting," Forest and Stream, November 22, 1888, 341; Charles Hallock, "Unclean Creatures," Forest and Stream, June 17,1875, 299; "Sports and Sportsmen," Forest and

Stream, April 5, 1877, 132; Tripod, "Sojourn on Buck Bayou," Forest and Stream, January 9,

1909, 49. 11

"Sportsmen vs. Poachers," Forest and Stream, November 20, 1873, 232; "The Purpose of

Field Sports," Forest and Stream, February 16, 1882, 47; "New Facts on Game Protection," Forest and Stream, January 26, 1882, 503; Mohigan, Forest and Stream, September 6, 1902, 185;

Altherr, "The American Hunter-Naturalist," 1; Reiger, American Sportsmen, 61; "New Facts on

Game Protection," Forest and Stream, March 24, 1881, 139; "Work and Sport," Forest and

Stream, March 16, 1912, 340.


' DEER SHOOTING WITH FASStFERN HOUNDS AT VIRGINIA HOT SPRINGS

Forest and Stream's cover photo from December 1912 shows how race, class, and gender fig ured into the magazine's definition of respectable recreational hunting. Courtesy of the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

lization" that threatened to degrade the mental and physical conditions of

urbanites. "Luxuriant living, congregating...in confined spaces, as must be in

all city life," and the "non-necessity of actual daily labor by the possessors of acquired or hereditary capital" required that the well-to-do engage in

some sort of physical activity to offset the psychic strain of purely intellec

tual exercise, Forest and Stream maintained in 1888. The effect of field sports on the "commercial classes" was similarly beneficial. Recreations with rod

and gun functioned to "keep our race sound in mind and body."12

Reforming hunting's image, however, required more than just identifying it as leisure. Certainly the "small farmers, bushrangers," and "negroes of the

south" that sportsmen railed against found recreation in their shooting and

fishing excursions. Sport hunting periodicals, therefore, had to identify their

methods of taking game as respectable and restrained in contrast to the

practices of lower-class "pot-hunters" and "game butchers." Again, editor

Hallock emphasized the point, writing in Forest and Streams initial issue that

the periodical would only consider those outdoor activities "in vogue among

12Charles Hallock, "Editorial," Forest and Stream, August 14, 1873, 8; "The Purpose of

Field Sports," 47-48; Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 16.


respectable people." Sportsmen did not consider working-class amusements

such as dog-fighting, cat-worrying, and pugilism to be acceptable sports. Hallock outlined these boundaries of respectable recreation, writing:

"Nothing that demoralizes or brutalizes, nothing that is regarded as 'sport'

by that low order of beings who, in their instincts are but a grade higher than

the creatures they train to amuse them, will find place or favor in these

columns." Outdoor journals reinforced this image of hunting as respectable recreation by grouping blood sports with other leisure activities of a genteel character such as bicycling, photography, and nature study. Forest and Stream

offered readers "Sporting News from Abroad," as well as departments devoted to drama, kennel, archery, book reviews, and yachting. Leisurely

pursuits covered in sportsmen's journals also included "athletic sports and

those out-door games in which ladies can participate."13 In fact, the participation of "ladies" proved to be critical to hunting

reform. The general, non-hunting public often found it difficult to distin

guish between sport hunting and other forms of taking game. On the sur

face, these activities looked remarkably similar. Self-proclaimed "sports men" might kill enormous quantities of wildlife, just like market hunters.

"Sportsmen" might consume the products of their hunting and fishing for

ays, just like subsistence hunters. So in order to identify sportsmen's meth

ods as "proper," hunting and fishing magazines used gendered language and

images, attributing to sportsmen the qualities of "manliness," but also using

turn-of-the-century assumptions about women's natures to mark sport

hunting as obviously different from subsistence and market hunting. When

outdoor journals advanced a heterosocial image of hunting, they communi

cated to their audience the virtues that made sport hunting worthy of legal

protection. While many historians maintain that men only reluctantly allowed women to join the sport hunting fraternity, the evidence from

sportsmen's periodicals suggests that men did not perceive the sport as an

exclusively masculine pastime. Instead, they created an image of hunting that reflected and embraced women's gendered identities. Male writers and

editors not only affirmed female hunting competence but also asserted that

women's participation would reform hunting, making it a modern,

respectable recreation. Consequently, women's presence in the hunting field

did not "challenge middle-class patriarchy" as much as it upheld middle

class respectability.14

13Hallock, "Unclean Creatures," 299; Hallock, "Editorial," 8; "The Sportsman's Plea," Forest and Stream, October 8, 1904, 301.

14Reiger, American Sportsmen, 22, 32; Altherr, "The American Hunter-Naturalist," 9;

Bederman, Manliness and Civilisation, 211-12; Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination,

229, 232.


"Good Sportswomen" and "Modern Dianas": Images of

Women in Sportsmen's Magazines An 1894 Forest and Stream commentary titled "Woman Out of Doors,"

made the connection between gender and modern, respectable recreation

explicit. The article began by noting that "it is not so many years ago since

in the minds of the majority of the better class of the community that there

was something disgraceful about the recreation of outdoor sports. Then the

man who went shooting or fishing was thought to be shiftless, worthless, and very likely given to drink." A woman "seen abroad with gun or fishing rod would have had small chance of escaping arrest as a lunatic. Her repu tation would have been gone." But times had changed, the journal argued, and "gradually field sports for men came to take their proper place as legit imate and wholesome recreations." Not coincidentally this change initiated

"woman's interest in field sports," and Forest and Stream insisted that "now it

is no unusual thing to see a woman fishing a stream, following the dogs, or

sailing a yacht." Outdoor magazines stressed the difference between this

modern, reformed picture of hunting

as a respectable

avocation and an ear

lier view of hunting as a lower-class occupation. These changes in hunting's

image meant, Forest and Stream claimed, that now there was "no good reason

why there should not be as many and as good sportswomen as there are

sportsmen."15

Despite the advantages of a mixed-gender image of hunting for sports men's political purposes, Forest and Stream conceded that some still debated

the social consequences of encouraging women's participation in outdoor

sports. Editor Hallock reported overhearing "an animated discussion upon the merits of deer shooting as a pastime for the fair sex" in 1880. One man

supported the idea of sport hunting women, arguing that he would enjoy female

companionship on his outdoor excursions. The other "contended

that shooting game was unladylike and not in accord with his ideal of wom

anly character." Hallock politely bowed out of the debate, writing "the FOR

EST AND STRFLAM having been appealed to maintained a discreet

silence."16

Hallock's diplomatic response notwithstanding, Forest and Stream rarely "maintained a discreet silence" about the propriety of female sport hunters.

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, male writers

routinely argued that hunting was an acceptable activity for women. As

proof, contributors cited precedents drawn from Europe. Sport hunting

journals reported that "though not yet introduced into this country, 'gun

ning' is becoming quite a fashionable sport with the ladies of the French

nobility." Forest and Stream editors noted that in Great Britain "many of the 15"Woman Out Of Doors," Forest and Stream, October 13, 1894, 309.

16Charles Hallock, "Editorial," Forest and Stream, August 30, 1880, 81.


Male-authored articles often included the experiences of female hunters, implicitly

acknowledging that sport-hunting women experienced the same thrills and frustrations as

did sportsmen. From "A Sojourn on Buck Bayou" by "Tripod." Forest and Stream, January 9, 1909. Courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

highest ladies in the land" had taken up positions "on the moor, gun in

hand, along with enthusiastic shooters of the sterner sex." Women in the

United States, like their male counterparts, could rest assured that in pursu

ing field sports and practicing British-inspired sportsmanship they were

emulating the behavior of the aristocratic classes in Europe. Outdoor jour nals also suggested that women, more often than men, sought

out

respectable recreations. "It is a little strange," observed Forest and Stream in

1911, "that so many women should be taking up sport, rifle shooting and

games at a time when the great mass of men go to look on at contests in

which they themselves play no part and of which betting is one of the most

objectionable features." While women could not "hunt the forests and rivers

as men hunt them, through thickets and over rapids unattended," sports men's magazines maintained that so long as "proper observance of the rules

of decorum and comfort" were followed, women could enter the hunting field.17

17Charles Hallock, "Editorial," Forest and Stream, August 30, 1880, 81; "Editorial," Forest

and Stream, October 30, 1873, 185-86; "Lady Gunners," Forest and Stream, June 3, 1911, 875;


Having established that sport hunting was an acceptable recreation for

women, outdoor journals proceeded to demonstrate the ways in which

women's presence elevated hunting into the realm of respectable leisure. In

the past "a man who went gunnin' or fishin' lost caste among respectable

people just about in the same way that one did who got drunk," opined Hallock in 1885. Even sportsmen could be accused of turning a camp hunt

into "a grand drunk." If men shared the hunting field with women, though, the result would be a more refined environment. "Women's presence,"

argued Forest and Stream^ "has almost entirely obliterated the use of bad lan

guage and hard swearing." Sportsmen, too, benefited from the improved conditions created by heterosocial hunting. As contributor C.L. Bradley told

men, "A camp that is not fit for your wife and children is not fit for you."18 This heterosocial picture of hunting envisioned by male writers in out

door journals, however, did not involve a promiscuous mingling of the

sexes. Rather, it conformed to a Victorian formulation of leisure as familial

and domestic. According to one male author, women's primary role in the

hunting camp was to make it "sunny and cheerful, and moreover, [to] keep the man animal on his good behavior." Contributor L.F. Brown encouraged

men to share their outdoor diversions with their wives, sisters, and daugh

ters, chiding men for "allowing your mother or aunt who has been wrenched

for months by household duties while making you comfortable to assume

that you do not desire her company in the woods." Forest and Stream further

argued that women would have "a benign and wholesome influence" upon their husbands "by becoming partners in their pastimes and exercises as well

as in their bed and board." If a "man's young love should accompany him

to his scenes of pleasure, his out-of-doors pursuits and natural studies," the

magazines suggested, her feminine presence would always act as a restraint

and inhibit ungentlemanly conduct. Indeed, argued Forest and Stream in 1873, "woman can never be out of her sphere; she must

always exert her soften

ing influence."19

Women's "softening influence" not only marked hunting as respectable, it

also distanced recreational hunting from the harsher, homosocial worlds of

hunting for subsistence or profit. By including women, early hunting and

fishing periodicals clearly identified sport hunting as a leisure activity that

"The Modern Sportswoman," Forest and Stream, April 22, 1911, 605; "Woman Out Of

Doors," Forest and Stream, October 13, 1894, 309.

18"Editorial," Forest and Stream, July 2,1885, 451; C. L. Bradley, "Woman and Field Sports," Forest and Stream, May 27, 1899, 404; "The Modern Sportswoman," Forest and Stream, April 22,

1911,605.

19Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 179; Erenberg, Steppin' Out, 5; "Podger's Commentaries," Forest

and Stream, February 10,1894,114; Brown, "Lady Campers," 451; "Our Ladies' Department," Forest and Stream, January 11, 1877, 360; "Women in Arcadia," Forest and Stream, May 8, 1879,

270; "The Lady Argonauts," Forest and Stream, October 23, 1873, 169.


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Sportsmen's magazine evoked the classical image of the huntress Diana when they enthusi

astically endorsed archery for women. From Forest and Stream, December 28, 1912. Courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Photo by E.H. Weston.

ought to be legally protected. In 1909 Forest and Stream's editor claimed that

an increasing number of women were "accompanying their husbands or

brothers on fishing or shooting excursions." Grinnell noted approvingly that

"up to within a few years it has been unusual for women to indulge in these

sports, it has been taken for granted that such sports were unsuited to

women, but we believe this to be wholly a mistake." Male writers classified

hunting among a larger category of outdoor recreations in which women

could engage. A woman could "ride horseback, shoot, row, climb mountains

and fish with the same ease and proficiency that she can preside at a social

function or indulge in a literary lucubration." Such a woman was "not back

ward in proclaiming her love for recreation and its allied sports." On the

contrary, as Outdoor Life argued in 1899, "if there were more young ladies

like her, the world would be a wiser and a healthier world."20

In fact, sportsmen's magazines contended, women could excel in the

realm of recreational hunting. Grinnell insisted that a woman could perform

20"Women in Camp," Forest and Stream, July 24, 1909, 107; Brown, "Lady Campers," 451.

Smalley / Our Eady Sportsmen 369

in the hunting field "as well as her male companion." Male writers offered

numerous stories that portrayed women as

"expert markswomen" and

accomplished hunters. One correspondent to Forest and Stream reported in

1873 that a "true Diana" existed "perfectly authenticated. Of course she

eschews the golden bow and silver arrow, at least for game, and takes to a

breech loader." The young woman "never missed a bird," killing forty-three

grouse in one day and fifty-one the next. Companies such as Ithaca Gun and

Winchester Shotguns often featured women in their advertisements, usually those who had won national shooting competitions which were also covered

by the magazines. In 1877 the magazine featured "a Western Diana" who

killed a panther with "a shot of which Leatherstocking himself need not be

ashamed," and E.A. Stange told Outdoor Ufe readers in 1904 about a

"Mountain Heroine" who calmly brought down a wildly fighting bear. These

stories of western women hunters carefully blended images of rugged fron

tierswomen with genteel respectability, much in the same way as upper-class

sportsmen like Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell combined

their recreational hunting with their fantasies of living as frontier "Indian

fighters," ranchers, and fur traders.21

Although outdoor journals offered stories of hardy frontier women or

"Western Dianas" that seemed to recall a female hunting heritage, they more

often insisted that women sport hunters represented what was modern

about contemporary recreational hunting. Magazines frequently portrayed men's hunting as a pastime that recaptured a primitive or pioneering male

hunting tradition. Quite different was the "modern Diana," whose hunting, while linked metaphorically to a classical origin, signified nevertheless a new

realm of feminine activity. The distinction was important, for the political reforms advanced by sportsmen required a break from the past and a new

standard for human-wildlife interactions. Grinnell and managing editor, Charles B. Reynolds, asserted this view in an 1894 Forest and Stream editori

al, writing that "as a civilized people we are no longer in any degree depend ent for our sustenance upon the resources and methods of primitive man."

In this context, the existence of sportswomen proved that modern hunting had diverged from previous "primitive" forms. Before this turn-of-the

21"Women in Camp,"107; "Letter to the Editor," Forest and Stream, December 25, 1873,

315; J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company Advertisement, Forest and Stream, January 30, 1909,

192; Winchester Shotguns Advertisement, Forest and Stream, January 30, 1909, 189; Ithaca

Gun Advertisement, Forest and Stream, December 1917, 625; Trapshooting Photo, Forest and

Stream, August 3, 1912, 150; "A Western Diana," Forest and Stream, September 13, 1877, 114; E. A. Stange, "A Mountain Heroine," Outdoor Life, February 1904, 89; See also, for example, Dall Deweese, "A Sportswoman in Alaska," Outdoor Life, October 1899, 45; Orin Belknap, "Her First Deer," Forest and Stream, March 4, 1898, 245. See, for example, George Bird

Grinnell, Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur Traders (New

York, 1913); Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman: Sketches of Sport on the Northern

Cattle Plains (New York, 1885).


century redefinition of hunting, "it was unheard of for a woman" to pursue such outdoor sports, Forest and Stream claimed in 1909. The changing times

were evident in the hunting field where, in earlier decades, "no woman

would have handled a gun, much less a rifle, or would have dared to beard a

Hon or a tiger in the field, or have dreamed of a day on the moors all to her

self or taken a hunting box with a string of hunters for the winter." Yet in

the twentieth century, the magazine boasted, women did all these things. The "modern Diana, with her zest, her joie de vivre and her independence," declared Forest and Stream in 1911, "has apparently come to stay." Casting

sport hunting women as new-fashioned allowed these magazines to negoti ate the tension between the modern and anti-modern impulses inherent in

both sport hunting and conservation. Sportsmen could associate certain

aspects of modern hunting with femininity while still envisioning men's

hunting as a direct link to some primitive past.22 If women made sport hunting modern, then sport hunting, in turn, could

transform women into modern beings. Contributor Arthur Rice approving

ly noted that "the young women of to-day are gaining in stature and robust

qualities, and while this applies probably chiefly to the class possessing

wealth, leisure, and the opportunities for physical development, it is a hope ful sign of still better things to come." Field sports prepared women for new

"liberties outside the parlor." As Forest and Stream argued in 1903, women's

position in society had been "that of an inferior." Woman's "lack of physi cal strength, to fight for the things she desired," the magazine opined,

obliged her "to take second place." But in the modern era, things had

changed, and "woman's position in civilization, and above all in America,

[was] constantly improving." Sportsmen took a prescriptive tone when they advised women to "practice [hunting's] arts for building up a strong consti

tution." Male writers argued that women should "share in the outdoor recre

ations of men," since "civilization's best promises and hopes for the future

are vitally interwoven with the dignity of labor by clear-headed, clean

minded women."23

Outdoor magazines also emphasized the Victorian feminine virtue of

nature appreciation and connected that quality to the romantic traditions

from which their formulation of sportsmanship was derived. The hunting reform movement advocated a scientific and aesthetic understanding of

nature that distinguished the sportsman from the "common" hunter. Male

22George Bird Grinnell and Charles B. Reynolds, quoted in Reiger, American Sportsmen, 71; "Woman in the Field," Forest and Stream, March 20, 1909, 427; "The Modern Sportswoman,"

Forest and Stream, April 22, 1911, 605; Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 16.

23Arthur F. Rice, "The Sportswoman," Forest and Stream, January 26,1895, 62-63; "Woman

in the Field," Forest and Stream, October 17, 1903, 293; "Woman in the Field," Forest and

Stream, March 20, 1909, 427; L. F. Brown, "Lady Campers: Beneficence of Angling and

Hunting by Women," Outdoor Life, November 1906, 444.


writers, however, portrayed women as being "peculiarly qualified to enjoy the lively experience and charming scenery which are the usual accompani

ments and accessories of hunting and fishing." Indeed, confessed editor

Grinnell, "most men are wholly blind to many things which a woman sees

clearly; she possesses certain intuitions which are hers alone, and which give her a ready and clear comprehension of many things that the average man

can approach only by slow and clumsy methods?if, indeed, he can

approach them at all." While a man might live, camp, or hunt in the wilder

ness, contended L.F. Brown in Outdoor Life, "by instinct of intuitive truth, woman beholds nature best. Men may love to festoon words and write of

gold-dusted air, ruby-tinted haze, emerald-tinged dusks...the rhapsody extended AD NAUSEUM. But the woman is not content with mere word

painting. She sees nature, but her faith and intuition make her see 'Him who

is invisible,'?her God."24

While sportsmen may have asserted that part of their formulation of

"correct" hunting included an aesthetic appreciation for nature, many men

felt that such sentimental attitudes about wildlife were at odds with their

masculine identities. In fact, outdoor journals derided sport hunting critics

for their "morbid over-sensitiveness and misplaced pity." Game, according to Forest and Stream, was merely "a good thing to eat, a part of the earth's

produce for the use of man." Theodore Roosevelt agreed, taking several

popular nature writers to task for their anthropomorphic animals stories in

the well-publicized "nature fakers" controversy in 1907. By including women in their magazines, however, sportsmen could show how reformed

hunting, rather than being barbaric and inhumane, was instead imbued with

women's romantic, nature-loving sensibilities. Sportsmen's periodicals could

contain sentimental or even anthropomorphic depictions of wildlife, so

long as they were attributed to women. Women might see God's face in

nature, but the male hunter saw "nature in the manner God meant he should

see it?namely, done to turn and with some wild grape jelly to go with it."25

"Not much of a woodswoman": Women's Voices in

Sportsmen's Magazines

Women, however, did not appear in turn-of-the-century outdoor

periodi

cals as mere images in men's hunting stories. Most sportsmen's journals dis

covered, as Outdoor Life's trapshooting editor, Ruth Alexander Pepple noted, "that the surest way to interest women in outdoor sports and pursuits is to

24Rice, "The Sportswoman," 62-63; "Woman in the Field," Forest and Stream, March 20,

1909, 427; Brown, "Lady Campers," 451.

25Altherr, "The American Hunter-Naturalist," 7; "The Purpose of Field Sports," 47-48;

"Editorial," Forest and Stream, July 2, 1901, 41; Theodore Roosevelt, "Nature Faker,"

Everybody's Magazine, September 1907, 429; Bederman, Manliness and Civilisation, 208; "Sport and Its Critics," Forest and Stream, July 20, 1901, 41.


let another woman who has 'been there' do the talking." Women regularly

participated in the sport hunting dialogue, often filling the gendered roles

sport hunting men had created for them. Contributing articles that displayed their "natural" predisposition for aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity,

women sometimes depicted hunting in sentimental and ambivalent terms

that clashed with male depictions of the sport. As one woman confessed in

Forest and Stream's ladies' column, "I dread to kill an insect, and have been

ridiculed for rescuing common flies from death." Nevertheless, this corre

spondent listened "with seeming interest and delight" to her husband's

"tales of bloodshed, wounded birds, etc." Nellie Bennett told Outdoor Ufe readers that she had sworn off hunting after she had killed her first deer.

Looking at the dead buck, she found she "wasn't a bit elated." Another

woman recalled that the sight of a wounded moose had made her so sorry

that she "could hardly keep back the tears." Forest and Stream contributor

Margaret Ridley argued that "it seemed cruel to slay God's creatures" and

concluded that "in reality man had no right to invade the domain of the wild

and disturb its citizens with his destructive engines."26 Women questioned the ethics of hunting not only in their narratives but

also in sentimentalized fiction and poetry that often used anthropomor

phism to personalize the animals they described. A 1906 Outdoor Ufe story

criticized the "would-be hunter" whose greed overcame "every considera

tion of humanity." The author, H. C. Wheeler, painted the fictional male

grouse hunter in an unflattering light, accusing him of leveling his gun "at

the anxious mother who stands unwavering before him, courting death

rather than desert those whom she loves." Hattie Washburn's story, "The

Widow of the Prairie," described the death of a meadowlark whose sorrowing mate was forced to care for her brood alone. "If her dear mate had been

spared," Washburn wrote, "how diligently would he have foraged until the

sodden field yielded him its richest store." In the end, the meadowlark

female was "left mateless, childless, and homeless. And all because a thing created in God's own image possessed a rifle and a savage pride in his

marksmanship."27

Even though such sentiments seem inconsistent with the overall message

of sportsmen's periodicals, women's empathetic descriptions of "cruel

sport" in their stories were not meant as condemnations of recreational

26Ruth Alexander Pepple, "Famous Women Trapshooters and Writers," Outdoor Life,

February 1916, 123; "Women's Column," Forest and Stream, November 13, 1879, 809; Nellie

Bennett, "My First Deer Hunt," Outdoor Life, February 1903, 85; A. W C, "A Woman's First

Moose Hunt," Forest and Stream, June 18, 1904, 502-03; Margaret Ridley, "A Woman on the

Trap Trail: Incidents of Outdoor Winter Life in the High Sierras of Idaho," Forest and Stream,

February 20, 1909,288-90. 27Mrs. H. C. Wheeler, "A Woodland Tragedy," Outdoor Ufe, August 1906, 129-30; Hattie

Washburn, "The Widow of the Prairie," Outdoor Ufe, May 1905, 403-04.


hunting. Rather, women were neatly filling the niche men had carved out for

them in the larger public relations project of hunting reform. Female

authored hunting narratives tinged with remorse conveyed the idea that

recreational hunters were humane individuals who acted with restraint,

respected wildlife, and understood its intrinsic value. A close reading of

women's fiction and poetry reveals that the forms of hunting they criticized

were those that sportsmen themselves campaigned against: hunting during

nesting seasons and the killing of non-game species, for example. So while

men made the scientific and utilitarian arguments for wildlife legislation in

their magazines, women's writings provided the moral and emotional justifi cations for wildlife conservation.28

Women also collaborated in creating an image of hunting as respectable, heterosocial leisure, compatible with Victorian notions of family recreation.

Female writers promoted shared outdoor activities as elements of a com

panionate marriage. An article entitled, "Woman in the Field," asserted that

any woman, "no matter how much of a 'town mouse' she may be," would

"enjoy standing by her husband's side on a sunny slope where the quail are

scattered, and see him make a good shot." Mrs. D. concurred in 1898, writ

ing in Forest and Stream-. "I go with my husband everywhere. No bush is too

thick, no stream too deep, no forest too dark, no hill too high, that I cannot

follow him, and the best part is that he enjoys having me go with him." Even

women who had no experience with hunting expressed a desire to share in

their husbands' hobbies, even if they were a bit unsure as how to proceed. "I do believe all the wonderful pleasures of the outdoor life are not and

never were intended for man alone," wrote one correspondent.

"I want to

go hunting with my husband. I get along very nicely fishing, but on the

hunting end of it I seem to be terribly inefficient. I am like other women;

many a time I have been called a 'good fellow' and the 'best chum he ever

had' on other sorts of trips, but I want to hunt."29

Like their male counterparts, female contributors to outdoor magazines

emphasized the health benefits of these outdoor activities, thus firmly situ

ating hunting in the category of recreation. "Intelligent people," argued Bertha McE. Knipe in 1909, "are glad to be reminded by no uncertain voice

of the right way of living, of the wholesome way to work and play, and build

up character and the home." Women who had "lost their health" in delete

28Ruth Alexander Pepple, "A Plains Tragedy," Outdoor Ufe, October 1914, 310. For an

example of men's arguments for wildlife legislation, see

George Bird Grinnell, "The

Audubon Society," Forest and Stream, February 11, 1886, 41. Grinnell founded the society for

the preservation and propagation of non-game species. See Reiger, American Sportsmen, 66-69.

29"A Woman Who Wants To Hunt," Outdoor Ufe, July 1915, 64-65; "Woman in the Field," Forest and Stream, July 1890, 126; Mrs. D, "Woman in the Wilds," Forest and Stream, March 24,

1894,245.


rious urban environments were encouraged by Ruth Alexander Pepple to

seek a cure from "the one physician who can answer every time as positive to a

permanent cure...old Doctor Outdoors." After her Montana hunting

junket in 1906, Alice M. Simpson encouraged other women to emulate her

example. "If women would only realize the benefits physically of such a

trip," Simpson maintained, "I am sure many would arrange to take it."

Hunting trips with their husbands also provided upper- and middle-class

women with opportunities for leisurely vacations, even if they did not hunt

themselves. As Simpson argued, "A woman need not go on every hunt and

can find many things to entertain her when the men are away from camp."

Sallie assured other sportsmen's wives that although she often accompanied her husband on shooting trips, she "did not shoulder a gun and march with

him over the fields and through the woods," but instead enjoyed her time

back at camp "with those of my own sex." Even those "sportsmen's wives"

who stayed at home recognized the difference between hunting as healthy,

respectable leisure and other, baser recreations. "There is a vast difference,"

wrote one correspondent, "between a

sportsman and a 'sporting-man'."30

While many of women's contributions to these magazines reinforced

sportsmen's heterosocial formulation of recreational hunting, other female

authored articles and columns reflected nineteenth-century formulations of

gender that situated women in the household, far from the hunting field. In

early installments of Forest and Stream's "Women's Department," female edi

tors advised women to limit their contributions to the column to issues that

fell within their sphere. Those subjects could reasonably be included in a

"gentleman's paper" because, as column explained in 1877, "we have never

forgotten [the hunter's] home and home interests. In bestowing a certain

share of our attention upon these matters we have inevitably touched upon much which comes under the ken of ladies." Some readers, through letters

to the editor or the specific women's columns, expressed hesitation in enter

ing what seemed to be "a publication so essentially belonging to the 'lords

of creation'." A request from Forest and Stream for ladies' contributions

prompted "Emily Jane" to ask: "What can we say that will do for the pages

of a paper that seems almost entirely devoted to sports pertaining to stream,

field, and woodland? Generally speaking we are not 'much' as huntresses,

and no great adepts at the art

piscatorial." Another woman confessed that

"gunning is beyond the abilities of either my brain or body." Though men

asserted that "good sportswomen" were as common as

"good sportsmen,"

30Bertha McE. Knipe, "The Out Of Door Life," Outdoor Ufe, May 1909, 467; Ruth

Alexander Pepple, "The Outdoor Woman," Outdoor Ufe, March 1914, 3-4; Alice M. Simpson, "The Woman as a Camper," Outdoor Ufe, July 1907, 20; "Women's Column," Forest and Stream,

November 27, 1879, 848; "Trials and Tribulations of a Sportsman's Wife," Forest and Stream,

September 11, 1879,626-27.


women expressed doubts that gender was insignificant.31

By the early twentieth century, women's writings in sportsmen's magazines

had moved beyond the boundaries of special women's columns, and female

authored hunting narratives became more common. But unlike male writers

who depicted women as proficient hunters, women more frequently described themselves as inexpert and measured their inadequacies against a

male standard of outdoor aptitude. In Forest and Stream's story of "A

Woman's First Moose Hunt," Mrs. A. W C. failed to fire at the first moose

she saw and allowed him to escape unscathed. "A man would never have

missed such an opportunity," she wrote. In a 1909 article, Margaret Ridley

derided her hunting abilities, commenting, "I was not much of a

woodswoman, it is true." A man, she wrote, "would be better qualified than

I could possibly be!" Even the "Outdoor Life Girl," Nellie Bennett, conced

ed that "what I didn't know [about hunting] would make a very long story."32

Women's hunting narratives in the first decade of the twentieth century

also depicted the hunting field itself as an inhospitable environment for

women. Following a rough trail on her first moose hunt, Mrs. A. W C. was

"paralyzed with fear." Yet there was "not one bit of danger," she discovered

later, "and [the men] all knew it." Even the inhabitants of those wilderness

landscapes could threaten women, according to Julie Caroline O'Hara's

Outdoor Ufe story from 1907. When O'Hara slipped away from her camp,

she found herself face-to-face with "a huge, genuine, live Indian!" Mocking her own "womanly fears," O'Hara reported that she cried out in terror,

"Take my life, but do not scalp me! It would be so frightfully unbecoming."

According to these turn-of-the-century women, hunting belonged

to "the

masculine realm of pastimes." If a woman wished to "invade" this domain,

argued Anne O'Hagan in 1902, "she must adopt the masculine virtues. She

must learn to regard discomforts with gayety, to reserve all her tears until she

is home again, and in the seclusion of her own room, to divorce her

'moods'?a woman of moods is a scourge and an abomination in a camp."33

Most women saw hunting

as part of the masculine realm, even as

sports

men denied that this recreation belonged exclusively to men. But the eager ness with which men courted their cooperation convinced many female

3 ^'Salutatory," Forest and Stream, January 11, 1877, 361; "Salutatory," Forest and Stream,

January 15, 1874, 361; "A Woman's View of It," Forest and Stream, September 29, 1894, 266;

"Woman Out Of Doors," Forest and Stream, October 13, 1894, 309.

32Women also began to write general interest columns in the early twentieth century,

including Ruth Alexander Pepple's trapshooting column in Outdoor Ufe and Cornelia "Fly Rod" Crosby's "Maine Department," which first appeared in Field and Stream in 1901. A. W

C, "A Woman's First Moose Hunt," Forest and Stream, June 11, 1904, 482-83; A. W C, "A

Woman's First Moose Hunt," Forest and Stream, June 18, 1904, 502-03; Ridley, "A Woman on

the Trap-Trail," 248-49; Nellie Bennett, "A Colorado Outing," Outdoor Ufe, August 1904, 511.

33A. W C, "A Woman's Moose Hunt," Forest and Stream, 482-83; Julie Caroline O'Hara,

"My Camping Adventure," Outdoor Ufe, June 1907, 559; Anne O'Hagan, "Camping for


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Miss Bollcs. Miss Thorpe. Miss Hyland. WESTERN CONNECTICUT TRAPSHOOTERS' LEAGUE.

Trapshooting reportage in sportsmen's magazines approached near gender equality7 at the

turn of the century with female competitors featured almost as frequently as men. In fact,

Outdoor Ufe's regular trapshooting column was written by a woman. From Forest and Stream,

August 3, 1912. Courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

contributors that women's position was changing, at least in the world of

sport hunting. In 1879, when Forest and Stream attempted to limit the

women's column to topics of a domestic nature, readers responded with

derision. "Rebecca" translated the injunction that "the Woman's

Department is to be practical" to mean "never jump the garden fence. Stay within the inclosure." On the contrary, she suggested that "when we are in

the FOREST AND STREAM we will be out of doors too." Editor

Grinnell, in turn, gracefully conceded women's rights to define their own

column, confessing that "when it comes to the Woman's Column he resigns

everything." By the early twentieth century, some female readers still won

dered if their interest in sport hunting and sportsmen's magazines was con

sidered socially acceptable. Jay Way, a "Sportsman's Daughter," noted in

Women," Forest and Stream, August 16, 1902, 125. For other examples see Laura A. Scott,

"Hunting Jervis Inlet, B.C.," Outdoor Ufe, February 1907, 155; Dorothy Doolitde, "A Girl's

Version of a Turkey Hunt," Outdoor Ufe, November 1905, 918; Delma Noel, "A Woman After

Grizzlies," Outdoor Ufe, October 1907, 347; M. S. W, "A Woman on a Game Preserve: A

Superintendent's Wife Who Tried but Failed to Become Reconciled to a Life in the Forest," Forest and Stream, October 2, 1909, 528-29.

Smalley / Our Eady Sportsmen ?>11

1918 that when "a middle-aged and very domesticated woman" stopped at

a newsstand, she was not expected

to buy

a "Gentleman's Magazine," espe

cially when '"Good Housekeeping,' 'The Ladies' Home Journal,' etc. are

staring her solemnly in the face." Yet, "with a shy, apologetic glance toward

the above-mentioned treasures," Way always "reach[ed] for a copy of Forest

and Stream!^4

Is the Editor of FOREST AND STREAM a Woman's Rights Man?"

Some women reached even further, interpreting sportsmen's invitation to

participate in the reform of hunting as a sign that other political and social

reforms might be in the offing. Early on, men's favorable depictions of

sport hunting women seemed to some as a step toward equality. The "prop er sphere of woman in the world" was one of the issues the first women's

column in Forest and Stream identified as a matter for discussion. "It

behooves us women," opined a Michigan sportswoman in 1880, "to

improve every opportunity that is presented for us to come to the front and

show that we are competent to write, speak or vote, just

as the case

demands. We as a class are not thought to be quite so inferior to the oppo site sex as we were in days gone by, yet there is still existing a feeling of supe

riority over us." She went on to wonder if "the editor of FOREST AND

STREAM is a woman's rights man. I do not think he would have been so

kind as to give us a column in his paper if he had expected it to be filled

with lines utterly devoid of sense."35

By the turn of the century a few female contributors to

sportsmen's mag

azines were taking

an even stronger tone, arguing

that women no longer

needed to be "slave[s] of conventionality." In two Outdoor Ufe articles in

1900, "Marjorie" likened women's obsequious behavior to that of a "spaniel beaten for chicken-kilHng" who "fawns at the feet of its chastiser and licks

the hand that agonizes it." The writer complained that there was still "much

that is spaniel-like in every good woman." Outdoor recreation proved to

"Marjorie" that a woman "unaided by anyone of the all-sufficient egotisti cal sex" could "hunt, fish, chop wood and most efficiently 'rustle' for her

self if she has to." The "bread and meat earned literally by the sweat of her

brow," she continued, could be "wondrously sweet and satisfying." Women's

ability to hunt and camp demonstrated that there were "but few things man

done which a good healthy woman cannot do?and generally do better than

34"To the Ladies, Greeting!" Forest and Stream, December 11, 1879, 890; "Women's

Column," Forest and Stream, December 25, 1879, 938; Jay Way, "From a Sportsman's

Daughter," Forest and Stream, March 1918, 190.

35"Salutatory," Forest and Stream, January 11, 1877, 361; "Woman's Column," Forest and

Stream, February 5, 1880, 17.


he with similar practice" In the end, "Marjorie" declared that women no

longer needed to be "obedient" to the "capricious and illogical dictates" of

gender expectations. If women could competently perform in this seeming

ly male domain, then the gender conventions that excluded them from other

spheres of public life also seemed open to question.36

Marjorie's dissatisfaction with turn-of-the-century gender roles, though, was not shared by all sport hunting women. Some of the women most

actively involved in promoting both recreational hunting and conservation

denied any interest in political equality with men. Ruth Alexander Pepple soothed male readers of Outdoor Life by assuring them that sport hunting

women had not "gone clean over to the suffragettes." Cornelia "Fly-Rod"

Crosby was a vocal opponent of women's suffrage throughout her long life,

despite her unreserved support for women's recreational hunting and fish

ing. While she thanked "kind Providence" that it was no longer considered

"unladylike for a woman to be a good shot or a skillful angler," she saw no

reason to change women's political status. Crosby insisted that she was "a

very strong anti-suffrage woman" and that she had "too much faith in the

men of the United States to want to vote." In fact, Crosby asserted, most of

the women she encountered hunting and fishing in the Maine woods

opposed suffrage, except for two women from New York. But while Crosby

rejected the vote, she was no political wallflower. "Fly Rod" was an activist

in the field of conservation, supporting stricter game codes for the preser vation of wildlife and licensing for hunting guides. Crosby's biographers

suggest that her anti-suffrage stance was crucial to her work in the "mascu

line spheres" of outdoor recreation and conservation. By eschewing politi cal equality with men, Crosby did not arouse the same kind of hostility as

did political radicals of the time. For "Fly-Rod," conservation was a far

more important reform than suffrage.37

Like Crosby, sport hunting men dismissed the premise that mixed-gender leisure necessarily led to mixed-gender politics. In 1879?one year before a

"Michigan sportswoman" asked if the editor of Forest and Stream was "a

woman's rights man"?the magazine had gone on record as being "opposed to 'woman's rights' in an Anthonian or Walkerian sense," although it sup

ported women's "rights to health and happiness." By the second decade of

the twentieth century, male writers and editors became even more deliberate

about separating heterosocial leisure from political reform. It was an incipi ent "sense of rebellion and revolt" that drove some women "to enter the

36Majorie, "A Breach of Convention I," Outdoor Ufe, March 1900, 331; Marjorie, "A

Breach of Convention II," Outdoor Ufe, April 1900, 398.

37Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination, 228-32; Ruth Alexander Pepple, "Where

the Ladies May 'Speak Up in Meeting'," Outdoor Ufe, March 1916, 314; Hunter and

Shetdeworth, Fly Rod Crosby, 24, 27, 62, 67.

Smalley / Our Eady Sportsmen 379

same sports as men," the editor argued in 1911. The modern "craze for

sport," Grinnell predicted, would result in "the masculine development of

women." Still, sportswomen were not to be found in "the ranks of suf

frage," the journal insisted, and if activists like "Rose Pastor Stokes had an

outdoor hobby," they would not "waste [their] time" agitating for social and

economic reform. In 1912 Forest and Stream made clear that heterosocial

leisure and heterosocial politics were antithetical concepts, arguing that

"man never yet objected to woman taking part in his outdoor recreation"

but "among this class of women, how many are suffragettes? None."38

Though sportsmen had no desire to change the gendered nature of the

political sphere, they were nonetheless quite interested in another kind of

political reform. The conservation campaigns initiated by sport hunters and

their magazines in the 1870s came to fruition early in the twentieth century, with passage of the first federal wildlife statute, the Lacey Act, in 1900.

Legislative cooperation between the United States and Canada led, in 1918, to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which was designed to strengthen the ear

lier federal legislation to protect migratory waterfowl. By the 1920s, most

states had adopted some sort of game regulations that preserved wildlife

and environments for recreational use. Conservation-minded hunters, their

organizations, and their journals had succeeded in raising public interest in

the protection of wildlife for aesthetics and sport. In the process, sportsmen reformed and redefined hunting, transforming its popular image from a dis

reputable, lower-class vocation into a respectable, upper-class avocation.39

Gender played a role in this cultural and political transformation. By

including women in sport hunting, nineteenth-century outdoor journals dis

tinguished this pursuit from the types of hunting conservationists wanted to

prohibit. Once sportsmen achieved their political goals, however, women

ceased to be critical to sport hunting's image and by the 1920s, women's

position in these magazines had shifted. The nineteenth-century effort to

depict hunting as heterosocial leisure faded as outdoor periodicals increas

ingly characterized hunting as an essentially male recreation in which women

might occasionally join. Gone were the women's columns and the discussions

of superior female hunting abilities. Forest and Stream's turn-of-the-century

"expert markswomen" were replaced in 1930s issues of Field and Stream with

"a snappy field of skirted scatter-gun swingers" who were "very, very eye

filling."^

38"Women in Arcadia," Forest and Stream, May 8, 1879, 270; "The Modern Sportswoman," Forest and Stream, April 22, 1911, 605; "A Hobby," Forest and Stream, June 22, 1912, 792.

39Thomas A. Lund, American Wildlife Law (Berkeley, 1980), 60-62; Dunlap, Saving Americas

Wildlife, 12, 37-38, 46; Altherr, "The American-Hunter Naturalist," 17.

^Bob Nichols, "10th Lordship Tops the Record," Field and Stream, September 1938, 52-53.


What were women doing in sportsmen's magazines? Paradoxically, they were there to construct the image of what may be "the most male-identified

cultural pursuit." While historians have stressed the connections between

"blood sports" and masculinity, turn-of-the-century sportsmen wielded gen

der in a far more complicated and contradictory way. Outdoor periodicals advanced a definition of sport hunting that included both primitive, virile

masculinity and modern, respectable femininity. While men represented the

long human history of hunting, women symbolized those qualities of recre

ational hunting that elevated the sport above all other forms of wildlife use.

It was on that basis that sportsmen argued for conservation legislation.

Using a gendered language of conservation, journals located legitimate

hunting within the realm of genteel leisure while characterizing other forms

of hunting as low-brow, disreputable, and unsportsmanlike. Only when sub

sistence and market hunters were legislated from the field in the twentieth

century did sportsmen begin to describe their sport in exclusively masculine

terms. Yet the perception persists that hunting has always been a jealously

guarded, male preserve. Women's presence in outdoor journals, however,

confounds the familiar stereotypes and adds a new dimension to conserva

tion historiography. In other words, the "modern Dianas" and "lady sports men" prove that sport hunting's history can reveal more than just "whether

men really

were men in those days."41

41Stange, Woman the Hunter, 1; Rae, "Long Live Outdoor Life," 6. During and after World

War II, sportsmen's magazines began to link explicidy hunting with masculinity and, more

importandy, began to suggest that women could not be legitimate hunters. For the connec

tion between World War II and masculinity in outdoor periodicals see Thomas Altherr,

"Mallards and Messerschmitts: American Hunting Magazines and the Image of American

Hunting During World War II," Journal of Sport History 14 (Summer 1987): 151-63; Andrea L.

Smalley, '"I Just Like to Kill Things': Women, Men, and the Gender of Sport Hunting in the

United States, 1940-1973," Gender <& History 17 (April 2005): 183-209.

our lady sportsmen': gender class, and conservation...

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