print page | send as email | email editor

Rachel Ravitz and hunting veteran Andy Romo search for mule deer in the Gros Ventre Wilderness in late September during Ravitz's first hunting trip. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ASHLEY WILKERSON

View our entire photo gallery >>

Moments after dawn breaks on a late September morning, Rachel Ravitz’s left foot lunges forward. A rifle rises, brushing her bulging belly in its last trimester of pregnancy.

About 20 yards away, a mule deer lifts its head, ears elevating, sensing a foursome whose feet stopped suddenly trekking deep in the Gros Ventre. Another deer appears through the thick grass.

Ravitz peers into her scope. Her finger pulls the trigger back.

Silence.

The safety is latched.

The deer leap deeper into the brush.

Her slight pause and newbie mistake cost her an easy shot. She would have to wait for another chance.

Neophyte hunters set out every season, hoping for a score. Few are 36-year-old single mothers-to-be wishing to fill their freezers.

–––––––––

Ravitz grew up Jewish in rural Pennsylvania in a town of 3,000 called Orwigsburg, surrounded by other kids who received guns for holidays and went hunting with their parents. Her small school even closed the first day of the season.

It was never a tradition for her family.

“Hunting isn’t popular with Jews,” she says. Keeping kosher includes rules about slaughtering animals to honor the mitzvot, or Jewish commandments.

For most of the last eight years she’s lived in Jackson, she didn’t look at hunting as a way to cut her food bill as a freelance architect. She’s thought more about it now with a baby on the way. She also sees it as a way to be a spiritual carnivore and eat organically on a budget.

“Most people think it’s not cost effective,” she says.

Meat is cheap because of the way it’s processed, she says. Her doctor told her to eat organic meat and dairy during her pregnancy, and the wild game is one way to do that.

“In that sense, if I’m successful, it pays off in health,” she says.

She also wants to spiritually know how it feels to kill. Others don’t bat an eye at spending $20 for a steak, but they would never think about killing a steer, she says.

“Most of us are pretty far removed from killing and eating,” she says.

–––––––––

She called her father in Pennsylvania when she decided to take up the sport. He was supportive and mailed her his shot gun.

It’s an all-right weapon for birds or squirrels but won’t take down a deer or elk.

So she heard about Vic Talmo, who has a gun shop behind Chinatown.

“If you know anything about hunting, you know Vic,” a friend told her. Talmo hooked her up with a .30-06, a common rifle used for game.

She sat through a hunter safety class earlier this year amid more knowledgeable participants whose parents guided them at younger ages.

The class stressed good behavior, ethics, conservation and good etiquette to improve the public’s view of hunters.

Aim for the heart and lungs and that will do the most damage quickly and take the animal down humanely, she says.

If she does hit her target, the later stage of pregnancy bars her from the tradition of dragging the prey to a vehicle. She would need the help of a hunting partner.

Ravitz, 36, decided to have a baby on her own because her biological clock was ticking, she says. A protective boyfriend or husband would probably say “no” to her new activity, but she said her father and brother, in their surrogate roles, expressed no worries.

Her doctor told her hunting was fine as long as she wasn’t hauling an animal.

Generally the reaction from someone is “good for you, but take it easy,” she says.

Her uncle, an obstetrician, told her “you picked a helluva a time to start that hobby.”

Eric Huyffer, owner of D & E Cabinet & Mill Work of Jackson, carried a cabinet door to her jeep and noticed her gun case.

“There’s a picture to send back home,” he teased. “A single, pregnant Jewish girl with a .30-06 in the back of her car.”

–––––––––

The first time she fired her rifle at Jackson Hole Gun Club’s range in mid-September, she felt a sudden tightening in her womb.

For 10 minutes as the gun kicked back on her shoulder, she felt the baby jump.

Or maybe she just imagined the baby was jerking.

Her neighbor of five years and hunting mentor, Andy Romo, helped her “sight in,” a process of measuring a target shot to see how far off her aim was and then adjusting her scope for a closer hit.

Romo started hunting “mulies” (mule deer) when he was 9 in his home state of Wisconsin and in Michigan and South Dakota with his father and grandfather. As he got older, he upgraded his guns to match the bigger game.

As she continued to practice at the range, Ravitz’s shots began clustering nearer the bull’s-eye. Then, she started hitting dead-on.

Ravitz wanted one more practice before game day.

–––––––––

On a Friday afternoon in late September, she and Romo head to the range again for practice. They would hunt early in the morning.

 Along the way, Ravitz talks of her growing baby, who is a month away from the due date but in a breech position, with feet and legs closest to the birth canal.

“I’m just waiting for him to turn,” she says.

The two meet another neighbor, Chris Jaubert, at the Gun Club’s entrance. Jaubert is nursing a shoulder broken from a mountain biking accident yet wants to see if he can shoot his gun.

“You’re not the first one with a sling I’ve seen,” Dan Dugan, the club’s range master, says to Jaubert.

He glances at Ravitz’s orb popping from her blue vest.

“You are the only one I’ve seen to come while that far along,”

 A smoky haze pervades the range view of distant, white target boards dotting the hillside. Sunlight funnels through a lattice directly behind the hunters’ stations. A rotten sulphur smell permeates.

“Let’s see if I can hit the gong right off the bat,” Romo says. He shoulders his rifle and looks at the shiny spot 100 yards away.

Ping.

Ravitz pulls her gun off the case. She puts on eyeglasses with a beaded jewel strap. She walks over to set up her gun rest and moves the sand bags.

Romo takes another sand bag to prop her gun.

After a long pause, she fires.

“Did you just shoot at someone else’s target?” Romo asks.

“I thought it was lanes,” she says. Like swimming.

Rookie error. Her target board was near the bench behind her, awaiting a cease-fire break so she could walk it out.

Later, with targets in place, Jaubert coaches Ravitz.

“Shoot at the bottom of the breath,” he advises.

She takes her position and shoots a handful more rounds.

The baby isn’t jerking as much as last time, she says as Romo, Jaubert and Ravitz walk to inspect their targets.

Ravitz has three shots just inches away from the center.

“That’s deadly, Rach,” Romo says.

They high-five. Next, she tries the 200-yard gong.

She hits it.

“Yah, Chris, we’re better than we look,” Ravitz says.

Now we just need some animals, Romo says.

–––––––––

Almost two hours before sunrise. Ravitz wears a colorful knit beanie and an orange vest as she checks her boxes of ammo and her backpack before loading into Romo’s vehicle. He drives his hunting student an hour into the Gros Ventre.

Ravitz rose at 2:30 a.m. with excitement and couldn’t go back to sleep. “It’s like the first day of school,” she says.

“Muzzle up,” Romo announces.

She pulls her ammunition out and checks her pack, and drops a few bullets in her chest pocket.

“It’s her first hunting trip,” she says as she rubs her belly, guessing the gender.

Starlight morphs to a light blue. Golden aspens blaze from hillsides.

As the sun climbs higher, she takes off her jacket, revealing a retro “Hot Wheels” T-shirt tucked over her stomach.

She tiptoes across fallen leaves, and they come to a clearing. Romo stands beside her and points to a hill. Another hunter’s orange jacket appears. Romo motions to go toward another area.

When two mule deer appear, she waves to Romo, who is standing a few feet away.

As a new hunter, her hesitation, and a moment of pulling the trigger stopped by the safety prevent her from firing.

“I was thinking, ‘Andy, there’s a deer,’ ” she says afterward about why she didn’t react sooner.

She takes the lead as they move on. Romo spots a bull moose standing prominently in the burned-out treeline. He points.

Ravitz takes a look through her scope. Romo leans in to whisper. “Don’t shoot it.” Ravitz lowers her gun and rolls her eyes at him.

The next two hours Ravitz creeps like a predator, pausing after a walk to a hill top and surveying the terrains.

No more animals.

“It was a good first experience,” she says. “We saw two, three deer and moose. It could be a good sport for me. I love hiking, and I like to eat meat.”

The following weekend, she and Romo pace through a steady shower in search of game. Three hours later, clothes dripping with rain, they head back. They saw a fox, but no deer.

Disappointment lingers. Ravitz’s due date of Nov. 2 is fast approaching, and Romo doesn’t want to risk a health emergency miles out on hunting ground.

–––––––––

Her aim soon shifts to her ballooned belly.

Ravitz goes to St. John’s for routine tests just a few days after her second hunting attempt. She learns her red blood cells are breaking down. She has elevated levels of liver enzymes and her platelet count is dropping.

All are signs of HELLP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzyme levels and a low platelet count),  a variation of preeclampsia. The condition affects a small percentage of pregnant women who are more than 20 weeks along, and it can be dangerous for the mother. The cause is unknown, but the remedy is simple: have the baby.

The baby is fine but is still in a breech position.

Ravitz hoped for a natural birth, and that is out of the question. A C-section is definite. She’s just after 36 weeks and the baby’s viability outside the womb looks good, but it will be small.

Her doctor wants to run other tests and keep her overnight.

Conversation drifts to hunting to lighten the mood.

“Andy and I talked about going out this afternoon or evening,” she says, lying in a hospital bed. “It would be unfair of me to ask him to take me out. If I got sick, it’d be very dangerous.”

She’s still thinking about the future possibility.

“If I had the kid tomorrow and waited two months ... obviously that’s on the back burner,” she says. “I was really trying to make it happen. I’m just relieved I don’t have to put Andy in an awkward position. It’s definitive. I ought not to be out there.”

She remembers the missed shot in the Gros Ventre. Twenty yards away.

“I would have taken it straight away had I not hesitated,” she says. “It would be such a good story if I got something.”

The narrative is beyond her control. Her amniotic fluid levels drop the next day. Doctors fear that the umbilical cord could clasp and cut off oxygen and nutrients to the baby. The C-section is coming sooner than she expected.

She sends a text message from her cell phone:  “All bets are off. Having this kid with scalpel. Elk still fair game in Dec.?”

Four days later, Ravitz brings home a healthy baby boy weighing 6 pounds, 5 ounces. She tags him Joel Simon.