10/10/2026
WHO GOT YOU STARTED IN THE FIELD?
For me, it was my dad.
These photographs take me back more than 40 years, to where so much of my life began.
My dad introduced me to the outdoors when I was a little girl. But what he gave me went far beyond hunting.
He nurtured my independence. He taught me to be confident and capable. He gave me a strong sense of ethics, integrity, responsibility, and respect for the outdoors.
Those lessons shaped the woman I became. They followed me into wildlife biology and management, my work as a wildlife biologist, my career training hunting dogs, and eventually into building and leading my own business.
My dad also gave me an appreciation for conservation. His lifelong commitment to Ducks Unlimited helped teach me that enjoying wild places comes with a responsibility to protect them.
More than four decades later, put me in a field with my dogs and I am still that same girl.
It is where I am happiest.
That passion has taken me across this country and around the world in pursuit of upland game with dogs. But one of the things I am most proud of is helping other people discover this life for themselves.
Over the years, I have worked with many adult-onset hunters.
Often, it began with a dog.
They chose a hunting breed and wanted to give that dog the opportunity to do what generations of genetics had prepared it to do. I had the privilege of helping them develop that dog, learn how to work together, and understand the field.
Then something wonderful happened.
It stopped being simply about training the dog.
They became outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen. They learned the land. They became interested in habitat and conservation. They traveled. They found communities. They built an entirely new part of their lives around their dogs and the outdoors.
I am incredibly proud to have played a small part in that.
Someone did that for me first.
Thanks, Dad.
Now I want to hear your story. Who introduced YOU to the field, and what did that person teach you that you still carry today?
