WOMAN’S HAZARDOUS OCCUPATION

Lake County Mail, Issue 9, 23 July 1947, Page 7

WOMAN’S HAZARDOUS OCCUPATION

Lion-hunting in U.S. A.

Somewhere up the narrow gorge was a mountain lion, a killer, with a steel trap clamped to one of its paws. Cautiously the official hunter of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed the drag. A second’s inattention could mean death. It was a tense' moment in other ways. Because the hunter was a woman, the first to he employed, writes Murray Sinclair in the Star Weekly. If she was killed or mauled the Government might he prejudiced against all women as hunters in the future. Suddenly she came to the. end of the track made by the drag, and paused. She could almost touch the walls on either side. Instinctively she felt something was wrong. She walked on a few yards. Still there was no sound and no sign of the drag. Turning to check the last markings she looked into the baleful eyes of the lion glaring at her from a ledge a few inches above the spot at which she had stopped. Ber fore the lion could move she automatically clamped her rifle against her shoulder and a bullet smashed through the beast's brain. It thudded to the ground, dead. The hunter was Mrs Bess Kennedy McCarley, who looks more like a Hollywood starlet than a professional killer of predators. Yet her record compares favourably with that of any male hunter in the country, and, says Dorr U. Green, chief of the predator control division of the U.S. Government, her technique in killing mountain lions is deserving of the greatest admiration. Few people realise that the U.S. Government employs hundreds of hunters to combat the ravages of wild animals and rodents which until recently, preyed upon livestock to the extent of 20,000,000 dollars annually. Still fewer realise that women are now included among these hunting experts. It is one of the toughest jobs women have ever accepted. Men who had been in the service for years were sure it was too rugged for them. But they have proved otherwise. Most of the time they live in 'tents on the open range. They set and cover 50-mile trap lines over the roughest type of country, the same as the men. They have to be expert shots, know every foot of the area in which they work, and ride a horse like a Bed Indian. Mrs McCarley became interested in hunting because it was her husband s career and she often assisted him in riding his trap lines. Finally she too was appointed to the service and given the responsibility of about 4000 acres of Indio ranch. These women, none of them big; must stand the terrific heat of southern summers, know how to find water; brave sandstorms, always be on Continued on Page 8, Column 3,