Long-time Ladner resident Shannon Lansdowne beat out five other competitors earlier this month to be named winner of the 2016 Extreme Huntress Competition.
Lansdowne, who grew up in Ladner but moved to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island in 2013, was back in Texas for the awards gala. She was on stage in front of 1,300 people with her five fellow competitors, many of whom have become good friends, when her name was called.
“I was shocked,” she said, adding she managed to pull a speech together and say a few words to the crowd.
“It feels great. It’s fantastic,” she said. “It’s an honour to receive a trophy like that and being recognized by my fellow hunters.”
Lansdowne had to make it through several stages of the contest to reach the stage in Dallas.
This is the sixth year for the international competition that aims to create positive role models for women who want to participate in hunting.
To enter the contest, each woman had to submit an essay describing why she is an extreme huntress. A panel of judges considered all the submissions and chose 20 to move on to the semi-finals. Lansdowne made the cut and then made it to the finals based on a combination of judges’ scores and online voting. She was one of two B.C. women who made it to the finals. The other four finalists all hail from the U.S.
Last July, the six finalists traveled to the famed 777 Ranch in Texas where they spent an intense week competing in a series of challenges. Everything was filmed and then aired on the Extreme Huntress website over 13 weeks. Following each episode, viewers were able to vote for their favourite competitor.
Going into the awards gala, the competitors knew the results of the public voting and the skills competition, which combined accounted for 60 per cent of their final scores, with the judges’ scores making up the final 40 per cent.
Lansdowne said she felt good going into the gala. She had placed fourth in online voting with 12,000 votes and knew she had come in first in the skills competition.
Lansdowne was introduced to hunting at an early age. Her father was an outfitter and owned 10,000 square miles of hunting territory on the province’s central coast where he would guide clients on hunts. She followed in her father’s footsteps and worked for a time as a hunting guide.
She said she would like to parlay her contest win into working on promoting the industry.
“I plan on working with different organizations promoting hunting with youth,” Lansdowne said.
