USU hunter loves mountains and meat

By Irene Hannagan

March 4, 2004 | The raw smell of liver and guts waft over the ridge as Tina Stringham, her sister Lisa, and her father Gary slice through the thick hide of a 5 point buck. The smell is reminiscent of a dead skunk lying belly up on the freeway entrance. The Stringhams are well aware of the care they need to take as they gut the deer Gary just shot and prepare it for a trip to the butcher down in Bridgerland.

"It's easier to get a big elk than a big deer," she said. "So this was a big deal."

Bulls—adult male elk—are big all the time Tina said, so shooting this big buck—an adult male deer—was an awesome success. Female, adult deer are does, and female adult elk are cows.

Hunting since he was sixteen, Tina's father Gary is the manager of a cattle ranch in the town of Tabiona, Utah. Formerly a mathematics schoolteacher, Gary started his career into the ranch managing business by escorting weeklong camping trips for summer tourist groups into the Uintah Mountains, which stand toe to toe with Tina's backyard. She remembers camping and hiking up there during the summer on her father's trips.

"It was so much fun. The mountains are great. It's beautiful," Tina said.

The best time to head out for a hunt is the break of day, with a cool breeze, and the sun just on the edge of the ridge waiting… for the next possible moment when Tina's family will gently roll down one of the man made paths in their dusty pink and cherry Bronco. A Deseret Morning News article in Lexis Nexis from last October said summer like weather is not the best time for hunting because the deer usually stay in the shade.

"Mornings are the best," Tina said, "because it's cooler, quieter without the city hunters."

A tomboy at heart Tina has a love of the mountains and community she's grown up in. Most of the time she's seen on campus, a long dirty blonde ponytail hangs naturally down her back. When she's heading to her part-time job at the University Inn Tina's dressed like a professional, black pants and conservative tops, an ensemble she will grow accustomed to when she becomes a school teacher; nothing like what she'd wear at daybreak hunting with her father and sister.

"It's always been so much fun to get up at five in the morning and go up in the moun'ain," Tina smiled.

Ever since she was 5-years-old and hunting with her grandfathers, exhilaration bolts through her every time Tina hunches down in a bright orange vest waiting for her father to take a shot. Before the Stringhams could afford a butcher, Sherry would cut the meat her husband brought home into steaks and roasts. Her mother Sherry didn't have to grow into a love of the outdoors and hunting as an adult. She, like Tina, was raised around animals. As a child she grew up on a dairy farm, and later to pay for college she sold a bull once and awhile for tuition.

Tina's never sold a bull. Her family doesn't own any. They do raise elk on their 200 acres and she's never sold one of them to pay for her Utah State University tuition either.

"We sell them into the Asian market," she said. "Their antlers are used to make diet pills.

She never made a profit off the Rainbow Trout she helped her dad to spawn in the five ponds on their land either.

"We put the sperm and eggs together and did the work," she said.
The Stringhams have since stopped spawning trout due to Whirling Disease that reached their ponds by way of fishermen coming from Provo.

"Whirling disease makes [fish] go crazy, they just kill each other off," Tina said.

She's never sold a bull, an elk, or trout, actually Tina's never killed any big game or even gotten a tag to do so.

"It's too much meat," she stated. "That's what we do, hunt for the meat."

Before Tina can put in for a tag her older siblings Jeremy, 24, a computer science student at Utah Valley State College and Lisa, 22, an elementary education student at USU, get first dibs and by then there isn't room enough in the Stringham freestanding freezer for any extra meat.

"We're still eating the meat from my sister's elk she hit when she was 16.

It's been five years and that elk Lisa hit was her first tag she ever got. The hunt—area allowed for hunting big game, named usually by nearby mountain range or highway boundaries—Lisa picked was the Wasatch Mountains right near their home, a restricted hunt that Tina's father has been waiting more than 40 years to get a tag for.

"My dad was shocked," Tina said.

Cache Valley Hunter Education Center Manager, Kirk I. Smith explained that hunting in Utah is restricted because there are fewer animals than in other areas of the country. In general most hunters send their name in with a list of their top hunts a year in advance and once their name is chosen for a hunt they receive a tag for one deer or elk. They shoot one and it's over for the season.

Lisa's chance for her first hunt was astounding to her family and she made the best of it. Of course Gary guided Lisa and helped her after she shot her elk twice in the butt. It ruins the meat Tina added, "when you shoot them in the butt," so Gary and Lisa had to rush the 7 point elk to the butcher as fast as their Bronco could carry the couple hundred pound, 7 pointed antler animal. Then on to the taxidermist where they picked a pose for the head of elk that now hangs in their home.

"It was awesome," Tina said. "Not perfect, but awesome.

Not perfect? A 16-year-old girl shoots a 6 by 7 elk and it's not perfect? Boone and Crockett, the facility that scores big game and keeps accounts of the state record holders couldn't score Lisa's accurately because one antler had 6 points and the other had 7. Perfection is not the summit to the Stringhams, their hike to the top of the mountains behind their home is about survival. Food, not sport, and although Tina hasn't been able to get a tag and claim her own fiveyear meat supply, she loves being a part of the Stringham traditions.

"I don't mind," she said. "I was able to help my dad when he got that buck. Ropes and all we dragged it up the ridge and into our Bronco."

Tabiona is a small town with strong hunting traditions. Some people move in and can't stand the hysteria over elk and deer season and then there are the 15 or so hunters that sit on the edge of Highway 35 watching and waiting for a bull to reach the 50 yard mark so they can shoot him all at once and then argue over who's it is.

Tina and her friend Trina, were driving home after church one time and a group of anxious hunters were hunched down on the side of the highway. The girls yelled out the window, just kidding of course, that they would call the cops if they kept shooting closer than the 50-yard limit.

"We looked at ‘em, and then all their gun barrels were pointed at us," Tina smiled.

The girls drove home away from the bright orange vests glaring at them.
Those vests and controlled hunting areas keep the activity as safe as possible. Tina attended hunter education class at 11-years-old and received her "blue card" to pilot a hunting rifle following graduation.

"It's like a driver's license," she said. "You can't drive without a license—you can't hunt without a blue card."

Utah ushered in hunter safety, as it was first called, in 1957 after an uninterrupted rise in hunting accidents. The Cache Valley Hunter Education Center helps teach about 11,000 students a year in Utah. A responsibility that cannot compare to the six daughters Kirk helped to raise.

"I've always been aware of the female interest in hunting," he stated.

Tina had a roommate last year who thought it was wrong to kill and eat deer, which was a first for Tina who's never even had a boyfriend who didn't support her hunting; so Tina kept her interest to herself even when she'd serve elk burgers at dinner.

"I knew it wasn't beef, but if you don't grow up with it you can't tell the difference," Tina smiled. "I didn't tell ‘em."

It's not as common to hear about girls taking weekends to go out hunting, but in Cache Valley the desire is noted and the Hunter Education Center offers a female only class each spring Kirk added.

The safety of hunters and non-hunters alike is a huge issue in the minds of those who do not enjoy it. The anti-hunting movement isn't very strong in the mountains of Utah; the capital building sees more of them. Kirk said anti-hunters usually work through the legislators in Salt Lake City, not in hunter's faces.

"Even then, there aren't that many," Kirk said.

In 1957, when safety course began, there were 126 accidents, that means 126 wounds from a gunshot, and 22 of them were fatalities. Within four years, Kirk said, there were 52 accidents in one year. In the last eight years there have only been four fatalities.

"You have to respect a firearm like you do a vehicle."

Her father has never owned a handgun. "They're for cops." Tina knows the importance of being educated with a rifle unlike many of the disrespectful and ignorant "city hunters."

"People come in from Provo and Salt Lake, and they just don't know what they're doing," she said.

Although it is good business for the community's cafes and restaurants city hunters often destroy the meat of big game in the process of trying to make a good shot. Poaching is also problem in Tabiona but Tina's community has a family that is known for their love of missing tags.

"They hunt for sport and usually leave the animals to die," she added.

Tina remembers seeing field of does where poachers had been through and just left them to die. Hunting is not just a family tradition or a passion of Tina Stringham's. It's not just a money saving and healthy alternative to store-bought beef.

"It's how we survive."

MS
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