WHITEFISH — Outsiety is a group in the Flathead Valley that helps women connect, but this week's event wasn’t what you think of when you think of women’s groups; it was about hunting.
"Today's event was to get a lot of women together that shared an interest in hunting. And what I did was a reach out to a bunch of women that hunted and asked if they would be interested in being in a huntress panel. Because as far as I'm concerned, women learning from each other is a pretty powerful thing," said owner of Outsiety Lauri McCargar. "I actually had, I think something like twenty five women that reached out to me within forty eight hours of putting that post up."
Powerful is the perfect word. Outsiety partnered with Forloh Hunting Apparel, answering questions from the basics of hunting to how and why they got involved.
Celeste Pace, who participated on the panel said, "I have three daughters, they are hunters and they just love it. Our middle daughter is an avid bird hunter. She loves to duck hunting and pheasant hunting. She doesn't have a lot of girlfriends that hunt and so she was kind of looking to meet some girls that that do."
The majority of the women who participated own businesses throughout the valley and offer classes from hunting to fishing to how to shoot a bow and arrow.
"It's not surprising because I think that there are so many women business owners all over the world. But this valley, it's pretty intense. I think it's just that we're all so dynamic," McCargar said.
"I found people that are really good at what they do and they make me look good. Because they just show up and we get women together, we adventure all the way down tying flies, we do fly fishing retreats. I took twelve women to Texas, and nine of us shot Rams and they're beautiful. Three of them had never harvested an animal before," Amber Neater, owner of Rocky Mountain Front, added.
And that is the power of women leading women, they quickly found out it’s not just about what they’re teaching, but who and how it’s being taught.
"I think that as we started talking out loud to each other about how much it's a different process to learn from women than what some of the women had to go through to learn from a man," said McCargar.
