Kalispell-area woman in running for exclusive New Zealand hunt

Growing up in Libby, Angie Haas-Tennison thinks her school colors could have and should have been camouflage, because life has always seemed to revolve around hunting.

Now she is a contender in the national Primal Adventure Extreme Huntress Contest, vying for an outfitted red stag hunt in New Zealand worth $25,000 that will be filmed for an episode of the Primal Adventures television show.

Haas-Tennison, a 32-year-old MRI technician and mother of two young children, entered the contest after it was brought to her attention by her life-long hunting partner and sister, Mickey Carr.

“She said, ‘You would be perfect for this,’” said Haas-Tennison, who has amassed hundreds of hunting stories since she started going into the field with her father as a child in Libby.

“One of your main activities for many people there is hunting,” she said, recalling how she often went hunting directly after school and declined sports and other fall activities because they conflicted with hunting.

“I thought everybody hunted,” she said. “I thought it was odd that anybody didn’t do it.”

She shot her first black bear at the age of 12. Since then, she has taken down elk, antelope and many mule and whitetail deer. So far this year, she has harvested a black bear and a raghorn bull elk, and she is looking forward to the deer rut.

But for Haas-Tennison, hunting isn’t all about the kill.

“A lot of the time, it’s the ones that got away that give you more joy and more stories,” she said.

Hundreds of women entered the Extreme Huntress contest, and the field was narrowed to 10 by a panel of judges, including Larry Weishuhn of Winchester Whitetail Revolution, Guy Eastman of Eastman’s Journal, Sports Afield Magazine’s Dianna Rupp and Jim Ferguson of Great Outdoor Trails Radio Network.

Haas-Tennison was among the 10 finalists who will be judged by the public on the Primal Adventures website at http://www.tahoefilms.com.

“The winner will be picked from the online voting poll. Right now, I’m at number four. I’m really getting a kick out of this,” she said, sitting in her Kalispell area home that carries an all-hunting motif, decorated with impressive mounts, hides, furs and antlers.

Haas-Tennison said her husband, Travis, has ribbed her about the modest, three-point mule deer mount that is on proud display in her house, the first buck she harvested.

“He’s the one who started it all,” she said of the mount.

While Haas-Tennison went to school in Minnesota, she arranged for annual returns to Libby.

“I would come every year for the final week of hunting season,” she said.

Her husband, also a Libby native who went to school in Colorado, did the  same. “Every fall, we would meet back up in Libby,” she said.

With children, Haas-Tennison said getting into the field has been more challenging, with she and her husband often taking turns at watching the kids.

“This is the time of year when we’re begging for the grandparents to step in and watch the kids,” she said.

Last week, Haas-Tennison went hunting with her sister near Trout Creek, hiking into an area where they encountered two other hunters, men, who seemed surprised to see the women on their own.

“They always look for the guy. Like who are you with?” she said. “They just assume there has to be a guy around. We actually get a kick out of it.”

Soon after, Haas-Tennison spotted the raghorn bull and took it down with a 358-yard shot.

“We spent the rest of the night boning, skinning and packing,” she said. “We didn’t get out until midnight.”

Haas-Tennison is hoping to rack up more online votes in the Extreme Huntress Contest in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 1 deadline.

“I love hunting and it doesn’t matter if I’m in a hunting camp full of men or all alone in the woods rattling in a big whitetail,” she wrote in an e-mail campaign for votes. “There is no place I’d rather be.”

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com