Extreme Huntress competition: Meet finalist Cheyenne Dahl!

An article featuring interviews with the four final competitors in the Extreme Huntress competition ran in the December 2013 issue of Western Shooting Journal. We will be running each interview separately on this website this month. If you can’t wait to read them all, you can pick up the December issue of Western Shooting Journal in grocery stores and gas stations around the country for $4.99. Or, sign up for an electronic subscription for only $1.89/mth and get instant access. We’re running a special currently on the hard copy version of the magazine, only $19.95/mth for a full year of 12 issues, that’s 66% off the cover price (although it will be too late to get the December issue).  Click on SUBSCRIBE or DIGITAL on the top right side of this site.

Meet the Gorgeous Finalists of Extreme Huntress
Dazzling And Daring Women Compete For Top Honor

Each year, the Eye of the Hunter Extreme Huntress competition seeks to find the most hardcore female hunter in the U.S. Organizer Tom Opre started the event in order to portray women hunters as positive role models, especially for kids. “It’s all about preserving our outdoor heritage,” Opre says. “If mom goes hunting, so will her children.” The competition is in its fifth year, and is decided half by a panel of celebrity judges and half by online voting. Readers can vote at extremehuntress.com. The ongoing competition, where the contestants face off against each other in extreme shooting situations, is being featured on Eye Of The Hunter, airing Sundays at 7 a.m. on NBC Sports. A winner will be selected in January 2014.

Western Shooting Journal interviewed all four of the contestants. We asked them how they got into hunting, why they should be selected as the winner, what advice they have for other women, and what kind of gun or bow they use.

CHEYENNE DAHL (Alaska)

I got into hunting because of my dad. I’m a daddy’s girl and have been out in the woods since just 18-months-old on a backpack carrier, when he’d go out hog hunting and deer hunting. Later on when I could walk, when we lived in Hawaii at age five, I was hiking mountains after the Hawaiian Black Sheep as my dad’s hunting companion. That’s when he got me into shooting archery and at age five and six, I won the Hawaiian state archery tournaments’ youth division. For a long time I wished to kill a big game animal, and my dad told me when I was 10, I could get my own. He bought me a Remington .243 youth model rifle, and that’s what I shot my first whitetail with. Since then, I’ve been amazed with the outdoors and what it truly has to offer: peace of mind, test of your willpower on how hard you will try to achieve your animal, and the closeness that you attain with your hunting partner whether it be your dad, children, or significant other.

I believe I should be the Extreme Huntress winner of 2014 because I am the extreme. I will do anything it takes cross rivers for a black bear, climb 4,200-foot mountains for a chance at a mountain goat, and stay up there with the meat next to me, hoping a bear dares come into camp. I will hike five miles out into the Alaskan tundra in hopes of bagging a caribou. I’ve even got the patience that I learned to have at just age 10 sitting on a bucket at the end of a fire lane, waiting for the buck of my dreams to come.

I may not have kids yet to pass on the way of life I love, but I enjoy taking my friends out duck hunting for the fun of just hanging out with the decoys hoping a flock comes by. Showing my girlfriends who have never picked up a gun in their life, and teaching them the passion I have for the outdoors brings me great happiness.

My advice to the newcomers of the outdoors would be to first sign up in a class to get your hunter’s safety card. You shouldn’t be out in the woods without the knowledge of proper gun handling. Then research the game you are after, learn everything there is to know. Even watch some hunting videos of other women going after that animal. While you’re doing your research, make sure you go to the range a lot and become comfortable with your choice of firearm or keep slingin’ arrows until you are sure you can make the best shot. Patience is key, because odds are, that buck isn’t going to walk out the first time you sit in your stand. So don’t give up ,the stars will align and eventually and hopefully you’ll be rewarded with time.

My favorite gun I love to us is my Kimber 8400 Montana in .30-06. It’s lightweight and has gotten the job done on many of my hunts.