Eva Shockey never thought becoming a hunter should require giving up the other parts of herself.
Apparently, plenty of people disagreed.
Shockey, one of the most recognizable women in the outdoor industry, told OutKick’s Tomi Lahren that she has faced pushback from within the hunting community almost from the moment she entered it — including criticism for something as simple as wanting to look feminine while doing it.
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Eva Shockey is one of the leading women in the outdoors industry. (OutKick / “Tomi Lahren Is Fearless”)
“Pretty much everything I’ve done in the hunting community, there’s been pushback since day one,” Shockey said during an appearance on “Tomi Lahren is Fearless.” “It’s never been where everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s doing it right.’ Like, it’s just never been like that.”
But fitting neatly into someone else’s idea of what a hunter should look like was never particularly appealing to her.
Shockey grew up in a hunting family as the daughter of legendary outdoorsman Jim Shockey, but she didn’t immediately follow her dad into the field. In fact, one of the things that kept her away from hunting when she was younger was that she didn’t see women who looked or lived like her doing it.
When she eventually began hunting herself, she wasn’t interested in trading one identity for another.
“I didn’t hunt because I didn’t know you could be this — have hair and makeup and care about your nails being done — and also love to hunt,” she said. “I love being in the mountains. I love hiking. I love wearing camo, but I also like still looking feminine.”
Her solution was pretty simple: Don’t choose.
“If I’m gonna hunt, I’m still me,” Shockey said. “I’m not gonna change who I am because I want to go hunting.”
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That became a defining part of her message as her profile grew over the years.
Shockey came into the outdoor industry at a time when hunting media was still overwhelmingly male. She started on television alongside her father before social media opened the door for women and other newcomers to find outdoor personalities who looked more like them.
She is quick to point out that she didn’t create the movement toward more women hunting.
“I got to really ride the wave of a big change in more women starting to hunt,” Shockey said. “It wasn’t me personally. Like, no, I’m not going to take all that credit. There was a bunch of other women before me. I just got to be a bit of a face of it and represent a lot of women through those last 15 years or so.”
A woman bird hunter stands outdoors. (Getty Images)
Still, she has seen the change firsthand.
Shockey believes social media, for all its faults, has made the outdoor world far more accessible to girls who might otherwise grow up believing hunting simply isn’t something women do.
“If young girls want to see someone shooting a bow or they live out in the country and they’ve never seen a girl hunt — which was little Eva back in the day — they can open social and see people doing what they want to do,” she said.
And they don’t all have to look the same.
“I’m by no means everybody’s style,” Shockey said. “Not everyone wants to see someone with, like, hair and makeup done. But there’s lots.”
That’s precisely the point.
For Shockey, expanding hunting isn’t about replacing one stereotype with another. It’s about showing women that they don’t have to adopt a particular personality, appearance or identity before they’re allowed to participate.
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Over the years, she said, that message has come back to her directly.
“I had a lot of girls, thousands and thousands of girls over the years, come up to me with basically relaying that to me,” Shockey said. “Like, ‘I’m so glad you said that we could hunt and not be embarrassed of who we are or what we look like or where we’re from or whatever that looks like.'”
And it isn’t necessarily about makeup or femininity.
“Maybe it’s not hair and makeup,” she said. “It’s just you want to be who you are and still enjoy hunting. You don’t have to transition into a hunter and leave everything else out. Like, we all have more elements than that.”
Shockey also believes the broader culture has moved closer to the outdoor lifestyle in recent years. More people, she said, are showing interest in gardening, sourcing their own food, hunting and generally reconnecting with where food comes from.
“It’s changed a lot in the last five years,” she said. “I think people are very interested in that lifestyle, and they’re very interested in growing things themselves, hunting things themselves.”
More women are getting involved in hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. (Getty Images)
Rather than policing exactly how deeply someone participates, Shockey would rather see that curiosity encouraged.
“The things that I believe so strongly in — like the outdoor life, the hunting, the gardens, the healthy food for your family, the fresh air, all that — I believe it’s such a great thing,” she said. “Even if they’re doing 10% of it, that’s 10% better than not doing it.”
And for Shockey, that may be the bigger win.
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Not everyone has to become a hardcore hunter. But if seeing women with different personalities, interests and backgrounds makes the outdoors feel a little less foreign — and a little more accessible — then she’s certainly done her job.
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