Tessa Fowler might have been raised in California, but she never truly belonged there.
“I never fit in. As soon as could get out of there, I got out of there. I was one of those weird kids who was always out there, out in the hills tracking animals,” Fowler, who lives near Cody, told Cowboy State Daily.
She came to Wyoming as a young adult. She worked on a ranch near Kaycee and learned the art of hunting mountain lions with hounds.
“I was the first woman lion hunter in Wyoming that did it on her own, full-time,” she said. “I was a self-taught mountain lion hunter. All of my hunting has been self-taught.”
She mostly guided other hunters to big cats. But in 2003, she bagged a mountain lion of her own. And after relocating to Park County, she completed the “grand slam” of large Wyoming carnivores, bagging a black bear and wolf on solo hunts.
“I’m all about the old Wyoming way of life. That’s the way of life that I believe in, I’m as old-fashioned as you can get,” she said.
No Time For Gender Stereotypes
Fowler has spent much of her life in rough-and-tumble endeavors. In addition to ranch work and guiding hunters, she’s changed oil in semitrucks and worked in taxidermy – whatever it took to support and raise three boys.
Now in her early 50s, she makes a living as a wildlife photographer, but still finds time to help other hunters pursue Rocky Mountain goats and bighorn sheep in some of Wyoming’s gnarliest backcountry.
Along the way, Fowler said a few people tried to criticize her for supposedly going against gender stereotypes, but that never gave her pause.
“I did get a lot of, ‘Oh yeah, she’s just a girl,’ but I don’t listen to that,” she said. “I believe in doing what you need to do to survive. If you can do ranch work, then go do it. I’m very feminine, I’m a small girl, but I do believe you can do what you need to survive.”
What’s more, women hunting or working right alongside men is simply part of the Wyoming tradition, she added.
“It’s just like the pioneer women. They pulled together,” Fowler said. “If their husbands needed help with something, they were right there.”
It’s All About The Challenge
As part of her self-sufficient and healthy lifestyle, Fowler likes to at least get a deer in her freezer every fall. But her true passion lies with tracking predators, because she said they’re so much more challenging to hunt.
“Anyone can be an elk or deer hunter, but it takes a special person to hunt mountain lions and follow dogs into the country where a lion is going to go,” she said.
Over the years, she’s raised and trained many hunting hounds. One of her dogs, Charlie, was the first hunting dog in Wyoming to be killed by wolves in the early 2000s.
That got her interested in hunting wolves. But it took years for wolves to be delisted and wolf tags to be issued in Wyoming, and then years more to finally track one down.
“I hunt solo, and I do spot-and-stalk hunting,” she said.
Wolve are the most difficult animals to hunt because they’re highly intelligent and work together to avoid getting caught in a hunter’s crosshairs, she said.
People who aren’t familiar with large carnivore hunting sometimes think it’s all about ego or killing for thrills and a trophy, Fowler said, but that isn’t the case.
As she sees it, predators need to be managed like any other wildlife species. It’s all about maintaining balance and long-term conservation of wildlife in Wyoming, she said.
And hunting can also mitigate conflicts between predators and people, because it discourages bears, wolves and lions from coming near human settlements or livestock herds, she said.
“When you look at these large carnivores, there is no natural predator for them,” Fowler said. “From a management standpoint, we as humans are the only one who is going to manage them, we are the top of the food chain.”
Grizzlies Galore
There have also been recent efforts to delist Wyoming’s grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protection and open hunting seasons for them.
Fowler said she’s all for that. She’s frequently in the backcountry, and the grizzly population has been exploding.
During one recent outing, she spotted four grizzlies within about 100 yards.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” she said. “Some people will say, ‘Well, you’re in the grizzlies’ territory.’ No, I’m not. That’s everybody’s territory. It’s the humans’ territory, it’s the deer’s territory.”
An overabundance of grizzlies has put too much pressure on deer, elk and other species, Fowler said. It’s also increased the danger to humans, and it’s even made things more dangerous for the bears.
“If you get too many grizzlies in one area, those big boars (males) are going to kill each other, and they’re going to start killing the cubs,” she said.
A Good Dog Is A Lifesaver
Over the past 11 years, Fowler said she’s probably had at least 30 encounters with grizzly bears, and some of them have been quite frightening.
She recalls once while wolf hunting, a female grizzly came in on her, apparently trying to stalk Fowler as prey.
“She just kept coming toward me, and her eyes were fixed on me,” Fowler said. “I had my .45-70 (a big-bore hunting rifle) ready to go, ready to put one in her head. But then my dog chased her off.”
Her old blue tick hound Warden has proven himself time and again, chasing off grizzly bears, she said.
“I could see him hot on her heels all the way down the slope,” she said. “I’ve walked away (from numerous grizzly encounters) because I had a good dog with me.”
Not just any dog will do, she said. In fact, a poorly trained dog, or one of the wrong breed, can just make matters worse by irritating a bear, then running back to its owner in terror with the bear on its heels, she said.
A dog has to be of the proper breed be properly trained to deal with bears and other large predators, Fowler said.
Warden is getting old and is now “retired,” Fowler said. And she’s done raising and training hounds. Her new bear protection dog in training is a Great Pyrenees, another breed that excels in going up against predators.
‘I Became A Photographer Because I’m A Hunter’
Fowler’s current passion is pursuing mountain goats and bighorn sheep, mostly for her photography business.
She also helps hunters who are lucky enough to draw extremely rare mountain goat and bighorn sheep tags for “once-in-a-lifetime” hunts.
“It’s the challenge, I’m all about the challenge,” she said. “Bighorn sheep and mountain goat hunting and photography appeal for the same reason mountain lion hunting appealed to me, because it’s tough.”
And going those extra miles into the backcountry has made her a successful wildlife photographer as well.
“I became a photographer because I’m a hunter,” Fowler said. “I get the wildlife photographs that nobody else gets, because I go places nobody else will go.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
