It started as a joke. Four of us went on a Department of Conservation-sponsored women’s bird hunt here in Missouri and called ourselves “The Suburban Housewives,” because we all piled our guns and gear into my 1999 Suburban and hit the road.
These are real housewives from Atlanta.
If you’ve ever endured an entire episode of any of “The Real Housewives of Name-the-City-or-County” you’ll know how those reality shows smack of drama and more drama, as the women explore what it’s like to function as an adult in an adult world and often have the challenging decision of what to serve for a cocktail party or which designer handbag to choose. So, our moniker of being “housewives” is a joke on that. After all, one of us is a court reporter, another is a web designer, another gal is a farmer and I write for outdoor publications and publish The WON.
In fact, we’d like to challenge the other “housewives” to a day in the bird field somewhere, or in a bass boat. Bring it on, ladies. Now, that would be a reality show.
The Suburban Housewives: The writer, the farmer, the court reporter and the web designer at an all-women's bird hunt. No, we were not doing community service.
So, in the past three weeks, we’ve had three occasions for SH meetings. One, which I blogged about, occurred at a Bass Pro Shops when we went hunting for hunting boots. The other happened last week, when three of us met on the trap range for a few lines of trap, and just this week, I called the SH women into action to break in my new Browning Buck Mark Campers so that the women in my shooting classes won’t have to fuss with stiff slides or sticky magazines. We hardly had any malfunctions or dirty birdies in our magazines.
And all four of us showed up at my place yesterday for chicken salad and Weight Watchers biscotti. The web designer brought her mom, the SH “Housemom.” When she shows up to our activities, we always know she’ll bring her camera and baby wipes. Then, we went out to the nearby range for three hours and spent about 1200 rounds of ammo.
This week’s little shooting outing came on the heels of a National Shooting Sports Foundation Report based on findings of 1,498 new women shooters in the First Shots program, a great program for introducing people to handgun shooting. I recommend that you go to the page and see for yourself why the trends are looking good for women and the shooting sports.
We saw it firsthand. The farmer had never shot a handgun before. Sure, she’d shot a possum or two, and a pheasant on that bird hunt. She liked shooting a handgun. She liked it so much that she progressed to one-hand shooting with her strong hand after about an hour of working two-handed in a Modified Weaver stance (She has bursitis in her weak shoulder and this stance took some of the pressure off that achy joint).
The web designer also is new to shooting, and she practiced with her new Buck Mark because she’s going to attend a Babes with Bullets camp at Brownells in Iowa next week. She dropped to one knee and practiced firing over cover. She shot weak hand/weak eye; she shot one-handed.
The Housemom got into the act, since we had five guns and five gals, lots of ammo, adequate eye and ear protection to go around. She dropped to a knee, too.
The court reporter and I have been shooting for many years. We took a knee, shot one-handed, weak-handed, closed our dominant eyes, shot with weak eye/weak hand.
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Then, we cleared our guns and went downrange to change from the paper plate targets to tombstone targets. 
That’s when it got real interesting and I noticed that the women all seemed even more intent on making good shot placement. The web designer asked, “This really makes you think – to shoot at a form like this, doesn’t it?”
At one point, I looked to my right and to my left and couldn’t help but think this was better than any cocktail party, shopping trip or you-name-it that five gal pals could do together. Or at least, we thought it was.
~Barbara Baird
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Publisher/Editor Barbara Baird is a freelance writer in hunting, shooting and outdoor markets. Her bylines are found at several top hunting and shooting publications. She also is a travel writer, and you can follow her at https://www.ozarkian.com. View all posts by Barbara Baird
A GREAT day! Can’t wait for the next one. Thanks, Barb, Paige, Kathy for the best kind of friendship . . . pals.
It would be HILARIOUS to see the REAL Real Housewives in the country shooting guns 🙂