Thirty years ago, women who hunted were considered odd, unless they grew up as country girls with a pack of brothers or in a family so poor that everyone was expected to hunt for meat. So says Whitney Wood Hurt, 35, of Outdoor Women Unlimited, an Alabama-based hunting school that she operates with her mother. “You still find some men in the 55-plus age group who don’t want a woman in their deer camp, but otherwise women are welcomed warmly now in the hunting community, especially in the South. There are so many of us that it’s become normal.”

It was her generation that started the trend, and they started young. She was hunting squirrels when she was 7, and wild turkeys at 9. “I was Daddy’s little girl,” she says. “He loved to hunt, and he loved to take me hunting.” It’s a common story. In previous generations, fathers took their sons hunting. During the 1990s, they started taking their daughters as well.

“I think fathers are more closely involved in their daughters’ lives than they used to be,” says Louie. “We have the idea now that girls can do anything boys can do, if they want to.” He has three daughters and no sons, which may have influenced his decision to take them hunting. They were snuggled up in deer stands with him almost as soon as they could lift a rifle. His eldest daughter soon lost interest. His middle daughter turned vegetarian and would have nothing to do with it. It was Cadi, the youngest, who became a skilled and passionate huntress. “I started doing it because it made Dad so proud,” she says. “Then I killed a big buck and got hooked on it.”

Fathers, boyfriends and husbands seem to have introduced most female hunters to the sport, but the male influence is now diminishing, as more women teach and inspire each other. Outdoor Women Unlimited has taught more than 5,000 women how to hunt, and some of their graduates are coming back as teachers. Whitney Hurt says that many of the new students are empty-nest mothers, who had never picked up a gun before and enjoy the social aspect of hunting with other women.

The hunting media have also driven the trend. Eva Shockey, the glamorous co-host of “Jim Shockey’s Hunting Adventures” on Outdoor Channel (Jim is her father), is a role model for young female hunters. Dubbed the “New Queen of Hunting,” she recently became the first woman to appear on the cover of “Field & Stream” magazine since Queen Elizabeth and her hunting dogs in 1976. Other celebrity TV hunters include Tiffany Lakosky, who has a show with her husband on Outdoor Channel, and the multisponsored Brenda Valentine from Tennessee, who has trademarked herself as the “First Lady of Hunting.”

Janice Baer is the vice president of WomenHunters, an online forum with advice, recipes and articles that attracts 80,000 visitors a day. Bowhunting is the hottest new trend, she says, and attributes it to the movie “Brave” and “The Hunger Games” trilogy, which feature strong, deadly, beautiful female leads pulling back bowstrings. Another major new demographic is health-conscious locavores who want to procure their own meat. “Wild game is naturally low in fat, and free-ranging animals have no hormones that have been added to their diet,” she says. “We know exactly what we’re getting when we harvest our own food."