Rachelle has spent most of her life outdoors. Born and raised in the mountains of western Montana, she comes from a working-class family of avid hunters and anglers. From an early age, her family instilled a love of the outdoors, wild game, and a genuine sense of her Montana roots. Fortunate to spend a large chunk of her early years on the family’s small subsistence farm, isolated in the middle of the Rattlesnake Wilderness, she was untethered to roam, fish, and explore in a way youth often aren’t able to anymore.
Fishing became a staple of her early life as the oldest child to a dry fly fisherman. Though she never picked up a fly rod herself until later in life, she certainly spent some time drowning worms in her early days while watching her father fish into the dusk of a cool Montana evening. To this day, she prides herself on her mediocre-at-best fly cast.
After a decade or so removal from the hunting world, she wears the off-beat label of a hybrid “raised-doing-it/adult-onset” hunter. As the mother of two teenagers, her drive to keep the freezer full of healthy, humanely harvested meals pushed her back into the hunting world. Having the skills and ability to provide for her family gives her a true sense of accomplishment, security, and connection to her surroundings and more importantly, to her food.
Being able to call just about every corner of Montana home at some point, has given her an appreciation for the vast array of landscapes and wildlife the state has to offer. She strives to not only protect those places she’s grown to love, but to ensure the next generation is able to experience the same. Her dedication to conservation is truly derived from the desire to see the traditions of her family passed on for years to come.
When not meandering into the backcountry, she spends her time designing custom homes, cooking, writing, and volunteering. She occupies a seat on the board of the Montana chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, had the honor of lobbying in D.C. for the Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition, and is a Co-Lead for the Montana Alliance of Artemis Sportswomen.
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