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"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
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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.
358 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
360 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
362 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 363
' 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.
364 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 365
"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.
366 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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;
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 367
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.
368 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBhIPb^*^'^^ ^^^^ '^^B^BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBt
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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).
370 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 371
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.
372 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 373
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.
374 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
Smalley / Our Lady Sportsmen 375
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
376 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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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.
378 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
380 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / October 2005
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.
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