When Brianne Stewart, 12, of West Newton, shot her first deer this fall she joined a sorority of hunters who are bucking a nationwide trend.
She is one 304,000 girls -- 19 percent of all hunters ages 6 to 15 -- who took to the woods last year, almost doubling the number of girls that hunted in 1996. According to the just-released 2006 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service five-year census, four times as many boys hunt, but their numbers have remained unchanged.
Stewart also is part of a Pennsylvania hunting surge, the survey says, in which hunting by adult males increased 7.6 percent and female participation jumped almost 10 percent, while numbers dropped 10 percent nationally in all but 20 states.
Read Original at: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette