Wisconsin is the first state to legalize blaze pink hunting gear.
Most states require that all hunters wear blaze orange, also known as hunter orange, during deer hunting season. It’s believed that the blaze orange color will maximize their visibility to fellow hunters wielding firearms. Lawmakers say that approving blaze pink is an effort to provide hunters with another safe color option—and to recruit more women into hunting.
So are women hunters all excited about this new Blaze Pink color option?
Some advocates for women hunters say the pink agenda is misguided and even insulting. Women who hunt do so for food, fun, or empowerment—not because of fashion. Sarah Ingle, president of the Women’s Hunting and Sporting Association in Wisconsin, says, “We felt like it was demeaning to us.”
Here’s what Carrie Zylka has to say, an avid hunter who created the only female-hosted hunting podcast called Hunt, Fish, Travel. “I think that the money invested would have been better placed in some of the outdoor programs like Being an Outdoors Woman, because, realistically, blaze pink or blaze orange, it really doesn’t matter.”
Additional cities that are also considering blaze pink as legal hunting color are Colorado, New York, Minnesota and Louisiana. They are hoping the additional safety color will encourage more people to hunt, especially women.
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- Did you know: the number of people participating in hunting or fishing declined from 40 million in 1991 to 37 million in 2011.
- In many areas, deer have become so abundant that they’re damaging ecosystems, filtering into urban areas, and causing car accidents that kill about 200 people in the United States per year.
- Hunting is still primarily a male-dominated sport, and women make up only 11 percent of the demographic, according to Census Bureau statistics.
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