SubmittedBrenda Valentine displays a trophy double bearded gobbler. 

Electricity filled the air as young Brenda Valentine watched in amazement as her father’s hounds circled an oak tree in a frenzy, while barking, howling and trying to climb the tree to get to a squirrel. Filled with anticipation the youngster searched intently for the squirrel that was hiding somewhere high among the limbs.

“The dogs treed so daddy went around to the other side and made a bunch of racket and the squirrel came around on my side and flattened out against the tree,” Valentine said. “We put the lever action .22 rifle in the fork of a dogwood limb and I put the bead on him and shot off his tail. The squirrel went a little higher and this time daddy told me to put that bead a little higher and I did. I held that bead up high and squeezed the trigger.”

Tick-pow! The .22 cracked and young Brenda Valentine had killed her first squired. Barely 4 years old at the time, she’d started her hunting career out with a bang and provided succulent table fare for the family at a time they really needed the meat.

But that was not the norm in those times as girls just didn’t hunt. But Valentine did, and she quickly learned the ways of the woods and the animals that lived there. It just came naturally to her.

“We raised coon dogs,” Valentine said. “At night they’d tree coons and possums and during the day they’d tree squirrels. They were meat dogs and we harvested the game for sustenance.”

Later, Valentine was working the fields and was startled by a strange animal.

“I got to the end of a row and a deer jumped up and took off,” Valentine said. “I was about 13 years old and at first nobody believed me because nobody had ever seen a deer around here. but I found the deer’s track and people came from everywhere to see that track.”

“Seeing that deer put a burning desire in me to hunt one, but it was a few years before we had a season,” she said. “I don’t keep track of numbers, or score or put animals in record books but I love to hunt and the challenge it provides and the opportunity to provide for my family. I’d killed over 300 deer before I had one mounted. We’d just saw the horns off and hang them on the barn. The meat it provided was just sustenance for us.”

“My grandparents, aunts and uncles all hunted, and we’d kill a couple of deer and everybody shared in the meat,” Valentine said. “Once we ran out we’d go shoot some more, that’s just how it was back then in Henry County, Tennessee!”

When they finally got enough turkeys to have a season Valentine wanted to get in on that action, too.

“I didn’t know how to hunt turkeys but figured that I could learn so I went out and bought a box call,” Valentine said. “It had a little piece of paper that said yelp three times and wait 20 minutes so that’s just what I did. I sat down and yelped and waited 20 minutes and it got to be like taking medicine and it didn’t work too well for me at first.”

A natural born country girl and hunter, Valentine knew the ways of the woods and where to find the turkeys, so she devised a plan.

“I knew I was deadly with a bow, so I found some dustbowls where the turkeys were dusting on an old logging road and I climbed up high in a tree and waited for them,” Valentine said. “I hunted with a whitetail hunter’s mentality and when they came walking underneath my stand I just shot straight down, and it went through the turkey and pinned it to the ground. It might have been unconventional, but it worked for me.”

Later on, Valentine got a better shotgun and became proficient with it and learned to call turkeys and she quickly mastered that skill also.

Known as the “First Lady of Hunting” Valentine has hunted across the country and appeared on many television shows and conducted seminars. She is such a talented personality that she’s been a spokeswoman for Mossy Oak and the NWTF for many years now.

“I try to always be positive and promote our great outdoors opportunities for everybody,” Valentine said.

“At the time I thought growing up poor, working hard and hunting for table meat was a sorry life,” Valentine said. “I realize now it was the greatest foundation for a life filled with gratitude for every blessing. There was no gender bias in our family, everyone had to work hard according to their age and strength. I was the oldest, so of course I was the one that had the opportunity to do things first. Things like shooting the rifles and shotguns, running trap lines, skinning and stretching hides, running trotlines, training coon hounds and squirrel dogs. These things are the legacy and lasting gifts both my father and mother gave me.”

As a result, Valentine has probably touched more lives through her talents and life in the outdoors and it all happened because of her loving parents and a father who provided an opportunity for his young daughter. And for that better we are all far better off! Thank you, David Johnson, for making a difference in the life of a young girl!

Valentine continues to promote the positive aspects of hunting and the outdoors life and hopes it will create a spark in many people that will turn into a burning desire to Get Outdoors and ‘Make a Difference.’

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comast.net.