GRAND FORKS, N.D. _ Kristine "K.J." Houtman is a latecomer to hunting, a passion she didn't begin pursuing until 2014.
It all started during a sturgeon spearing media event on Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago, which Houtman attended as an outdoor writer and angler with longtime connections to the fishing industry. She spent nine years running the Masters Walleye Circuit fishing tournament trail and also worked for the American Sportfishing Association and the North American Fishing Club.
Staring down a large hole in the ice waiting for a sturgeon to swim into spearing range, Houtman says she realized what she was doing was more like hunting than fishing.
"I wasn't sure I wanted to be a hunter earlier on," said Houtman, who lives in Crystal Bay, Minn., on Lake Minnetonka. "And as I'm staring down the hole in the ice in the darkhouse, I'm realizing, this isn't fishing. If a sturgeon swims through, you've got to make a decision on size, and then you have to make a quick decision on, 'Are you taking this?'
"And when you do, it's not like fishing for catch-and-release. This is now a harvest."
That was a thrilling prospect, she said.
"I thought, well, maybe I would enjoy hunting, too, because I really liked that," Houtman said.
Enjoy she does, and Houtman has bagged wild turkeys in Kentucky and South Dakota, shot an antelope at 295 yards in Wyoming and hopes to someday hunt ruffed grouse in the Minnesota Northwoods and big game in Africa.
"There's so much more to do," she said. "There's so much more."
