PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. – Swish, swish, swish … snarl.
“The wind did it,” laughed Tammy Combs, who was just beginning to catch on to the rhythm of fly fishing when the line caught on to her.
Combs came all the way from Louisville, Kentucky for a weekend of learning how to cast for fish, camp, canoe and carve. And add shooting to that list – muzzle loaders, crossbows, shotguns or rifles.
It’s a weekend of activities fit for the boys, but with one big exception. It’s all part of the Manitoba Wildlife Federation’s second workshop called “becoming an outdoors woman.”
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Combs wanted to make the workshop part of her holiday so she could have more fun on future hunting and fishing trips with her husband.
“I’m not as good as him, so he’s always so busy getting me out of trouble,” she said.
Before investment
Darlene Garnham, one of the organizers, said the course allows women to find out if they like various outdoors activities enough to invest in equipment. It’s a chance to meet other women who love the outdoors. And at $200 for the weekend, students said the course is a bargain.
Garnham and Nancy Lintott attended the same course in Wisconsin a few years ago. The program was developed by a university professor there. The couple liked it so much they held the first such workshop in Canada here last year.
The course was a big hit among students, several of whom returned for this year’s edition. Joann Hebert of Winnipeg, said she came back to learn about black powder shooting and nature photography – and because the weekend is a lot of fun.
“I just love clay shooting, it’s wonderful,” Hebert said, adding she found instructors to be top-notch. “They’re relaxed, patient and they know their stuff.”
Garnham said the instructors have said they like teaching women because they learn quickly and are willing to listen and take advice.
“Women don’t seem to have that ego problem … men have sometimes a preconceived concept of, ‘Oh yeah, well I know how to do that’ and they don’t … open themselves up to learning quite as well,” Garnham said.
Pat Graham, perhaps the ultimate outdoors woman, taught a class while wearing doeskin from neck to toe. Graham, who camps the way the fur traders did, showed students how to cook bannock over a flint-and-steel lit fire.
Students also learned the sport of tomahawk throwing. In some cases, it turned into tomahawk searching when the axe missed the stump and sailed into the bush. But there was the occasional sound of a satisfying chop as it hit its mark.
Pointers from a pro
Maurice Mazurat discussed the finer points of camping with some of the campers and he offered these tips:
- Tuck clothes under the bottom of sleeping bags so they’re warm in the morning. (Also a useful way to ensure they’re ironed flat.)
- You can never pack too many pairs of socks. (This after a detailed description of trench foot.)
- If you think you’ll be trekking through patches of poison ivy, spray yourself with anti-perspirant. It coats your skin and absorbs the oil from the plant before it gets to you.
But the tip that drew the most laughter was illustrated by a large green nylon dome sailing above the telephone wires and into the bush as Mazurat and two students chased it.
- Don’t forget to peg down your tent.
