Christi Holmes rarely shies away from a challenge. She thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail – by herself – after graduating from the University of Maine. And when she became increasingly concerned about where her food was coming from, she decided to learn how to hunt. That challenge led Christi to establish the Maine Women Hunters group on Facebook as a way to collaborate with and support other hunters. A design engineer by profession, Christi spends as much time as she can in the woods during hunting season and on the water, fishing, during other seasons. She’s a Registered Maine Guide and writes outdoors columns for The Maine Sportsman magazine and the Bangor Daily News. She’s also a brand ambassador for several companies that offer outdoors-related products and services.
I grew up in Machias, Maine, which is a small coastal town Down East – past Acadia, about 30 miles from Canada. I live in southern Maine now. I didn’t hunt or fish as a kid. It skipped a couple of generations, I guess – my great-grandfather was the last one to hunt in our family. But all my classmates hunted, and a couple of my girlfriends’ dads would teach us how to shoot guns.
When I graduated from college, I wasn’t really ready for a 9-to-5 job yet. So, I decided I would hike the AT, even though I’d never been backpacking before. I literally walked into L.L. Bean and signed up for a credit card and said, “What do I need?” I was there in the camping department for three hours. What surprised me about the AT is that physically your body gets used to it pretty quick, but psychologically it’s just a grind: waking up and doing the same exact thing every day.
After doing the AT, I was really burnt out on hiking, but I liked being in the outdoors. It was also about the time the documentary Food, Inc. came out and I started learning about how we raise meat in our country. I thought I’d start hunting and just shoot a deer every year and eat that. I figured it would be easy.
I also got a dog, and he happened to be a Brittany spaniel. I didn’t get him for hunting, but I figured we could learn together. I started with a shotgun and just started bird hunting. There’s a Maine Brittany club, and they helped me train my dog to point birds. Southern Maine has some pheasant release sites, and that’s a little bit easier, and it was great practice for me and my dog. It was a good confidence builder. I recommend it to anyone who’s new to hunting. My first year hunting I didn’t even shoot a bird. My second year, my friend who guides turkey hunts called in a turkey for me that I shot. It just slowly over the years got a little bit better and better.
Eventually, I borrowed a rifle, but I didn’t shoot a deer for my first six years hunting. I learned pretty quick that it is not as easy as people think. A couple of years ago, I started dating my fiancé, and I learned from him. His family has a hunting camp up north. I met a mentor who works at L.L. Bean, and he allowed me to hunt on his property. I shot a deer there last year, and that was my second deer.
I knew how hard it was for me to get into hunting, and I’m not shy about asking for help or going into Cabela’s by myself and buying a gun. I’m pretty confident. I knew if I was struggling, there were other women who were struggling. You’re dealing with firearms. You’re dealing with taking a life. There’s a bajillion rules, and that can be very confusing and overwhelming. And then what do you do with it afterwards? So, I started a Facebook group and invited some girls I knew who hunted. Then we started planning events. I’m part of some other hunting groups, and if you post a photo in there, someone is going to be rude and judgmental. A lot of guys don’t remember when they learned to hunt, because they were 8 years old. Sometimes they’re not super supportive. But the women’s group is wonderful.
I think, as women, it’s OK for us to say, “I’m trying to get into hunting, where do I start?” Women will post things like, “I have a 1-year-old. Do you guys have any tips for keeping my kid quiet while we’re in the blind?” Or, “I missed a deer tonight, and I’m feeling really bad about myself.” Everyone has been really supportive. We really don’t have anyone that looks down their nose. As women, it’s more socially acceptable for us to talk about our feelings when we shoot an animal. Women really add an important voice that maybe hunting hasn’t had much of.
I decided to go for my Registered Maine Guide license in 2018 just to see if I could pass and to give myself more credibility. I passed hunting and fishing. It’s a pretty rigorous test. It’s one hour of oral exams, where you’re being questioned by two people – either game wardens or Master Maine Guides. They just grill you for an hour: name all the flies in this fly box, what type of duck is number 11 on the board, can you dig up plant number 6 on the board, tell me everything you know about this firearm. Then there’s a 100-question, multiple choice written test, a mapping/compass portion, and a catastrophic event scenario. They want to make sure you can keep people safe in the woods. And they also want to keep up Maine’s high standard of requiring guides to have a breadth of knowledge and a depth of knowledge. They expect you to know a little bit of everything. I do some guiding with the Maine Women Hunters group – upland bird hunting with my dog and ice fishing.
There’s this shift of people learning where their food comes from, and I think there’s a demographic similar to me – I’m in my 30s, I have some income, I care about where my food comes from, I like the outdoors, I like learning about wildlife, so I’m going to get into hunting. For many years, I don’t think that was a demographic that was interested in hunting. It was more, you hunted because your dad did. But people are busier than ever. You can’t hunt on Sundays in Maine. If you work Monday through Friday, that means you have one day a week to hunt. In the month of November, if you want to deer hunt, that’s four days. And if your kids have a soccer game or something on Saturday, you might not even have that day.
Hunting is super exciting for me, and it’s hard. It’s crazy to think – here I am, going into where a deer lives, and trying to outsmart it. They try not to be killed all day every day. And I’m going to go in for one month a year and try to figure them out. The other night I was deer hunting. I was up in a stand. I didn’t have a doe tag for the area I was hunting, so I was hunting for a buck. I could hear these does walking, and I knew they were heading for the field. I told myself not to turn around, because they might see me move, even though I was up in a tree, and I was hoping a buck might follow them into the field. My heart was pounding so hard with nervousness and anticipation.
When I shoot and the animal drops right there, it’s just relief. I did it, it’s not wounded. Just relief. You definitely treat your meat differently. I’m pretty frugal anyway, so I’m not one to let food go bad. But there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to let the deer meat that I thawed out sit too long and throw that away. You have these nice memories. You usually work pretty hard. I’ve been hunting every morning for a week and a half now. When I finally get a deer, I’m going to be happy to sleep in, to shower with smelly shampoo again. And you have this special meal that you can share. For me, it’s a nice way to be connected with nature, even though it involves killing. If you’re going to eat meat, you’re killing.
Right now I’m up at 5 a.m. and at my spot by 5:45. Then I sit there until about 7:15 and get to work by 8. It’s not very long, but that’s when the deer are most active. Part of what I like about hunting is that it forces you to just be still. Deer hunting, especially, you really have to sit there and do nothing and just think in your head about everything. It’s kind of nice to spend that time alone with your thoughts. Another thing I think is good for me is just being a little uncomfortable and getting dirty. Especially as women, we’re taught to be polite, and as humans we live in such a sterile environment. To take a gun and go into the woods and be cold and hungry and uncomfortable – it’s just something we don’t experience anymore, and it just makes you feel alive, I guess. I would never wake up and watch the sunrise if I didn’t wake up to hunt or fish.