When You Know You Have One Shot at Life

It started with a friend request on Facebook in 2009. Ali Johnson had never been hunting before, but after a conversation with a friend she made through social media she found herself in a field hunting geese. Then it was turkey and then deer. She loved it so much that she became a snow goose guide and later a writer for Midwest Outfitter Magazine.

When she won a hunt to South Africa at a banquet, she told her husband she was going on safari. “Do you want to come along?” she asked, perfectly prepared to go on her own.

Able to scout, set up and dress her own game, Johnson likes to show the guys she can do things herself. She researched the opportunity in South Africa, looking into the outfitter, the country, the species available and the costs involved in traveling to the other side of the world. She knew what she wanted to hunt and what it would take to do it. Her husband decided to go with her.

They hunted for springbok, blesbok, nyala and black wildebeest. Johnson enjoyed a long stalk on foot for her blesbok, setting up on a rock pile to take him on the edge of a field at 260 yards. The tables were turned a bit later, during her husband’s hunt for springbok. While sneaking up on a group of animals, Johnson says a nyala bull decided to stalk up on her. “My husband motioned for me to move quick,” she said. “The nyala came out of nowhere, charging right at me. I scrambled up onto the safari vehicle fast!”

That was in 2004. Emboldened, Johnson has started researching her next overseas hunt. She has her eyes set on a red stag in New Zealand.

“The start to my hunting journey was so random,” she said, “and each step a bit intimidating. But you only have this one shot at life. You don’t know what you are capable of until you step out and do it.”

She encourages other women to step out too.