Western Slope woman in Extreme Huntress competition

RBC | Once again, a Western Slope woman is vying for the role of Extreme Huntress, a competition dedicated to the preservation of our nation’s outdoor heritage and creating positive role models for women who want to participate in hunting. This is the contest’s eighth year.
Erin Clark, who lives in Collbran, Colo., and works full time in the oil and gas industry in the Piceance Creek basin, first learned about the Extreme Huntress contest through her friend and 2012 winner Jackie Guccini.
“She has inspired me to push my own limits and get out of my comfort zone to become a positive role model for women getting into the hunting industry,” Clark said via email.
Clark, like many men and women who grow up on the Western Slope (Clark is originally from Carbondale, Colo.), started hunting with her dad during childhood.
“I have been hunting for as long as I can remember. When I was young my dad would always take me out with him. I harvested my first animal, a cow elk, when I was 13,” she wrote.
Clark mostly hunts mule deer and elk, but harvested her first whitetail deer—a buck and a doe—this year, and said the experience was very different than hunting for mule deer.
Asked whether she’s a trophy hunter or a meat hunter, Clark said, “I always hunt for meat. I am all about providing the most organic healthy meat that I can for my family and there is no better way to do that then to harvest it yourself.”
Her family includes her husband, Steve, and three children, aged 17, 14 and 1-1/2.
Clark has made it to the semi-finals in the Extreme Huntress competition this year and needs community support in the form of online votes to move on to the finals in July in Texas. The six finalists will compete in a head-to-head skills and hunting challenge for a week.
To vote, www.extremehuntress .com/main/2017-voting. Select Erin Clark and click vote, enter your email address and click the vote tab again. Then check your email to validate your vote through Poll Daddy.
“I would love nothing more than to represent Western Colorado in July in Texas,” Clark wrote.
You can follow her journey on Facebook and Instagram at @hunting.fishing.everyday.