From Lisa Price: I didn't start hunting until about 10 years ago - I'm 42 now. No one in my family hunted, and I'm still the only one pictured with dead animals in the frames on top of my mom's t.v.

I was raised in suburbia in a northeast Pennsylvania town called Pottsville, which is also home to America's oldest beer brewery, Yuengling. I went to Shippensburg College in PA and graduated with a degree in English. 

I've held a variety of jobs: taught swimming lessons and coached swimming, managed delivery people for a newspaper, took phone orders for doors and windows, wrote commercials for a country radio station (quit when the song Elvira came out, it drove me over the edge) made sand cores at a foundry, was a shipping foreman for a big trucking company, was assistant manager of a warehouse, worked at an animal shelter. For one dismal two-week period I was even the Easter Bunny at a big mall. That was truly awful - they made me hop everywhere and carry a basket.

Through the trucking company, I got transferred to a rural area. A dairy farmer neighbor gave me some venison. It was a totally new concept to me - pursue game animals in the woods, process them into your freezer. At that time I trained heavily for marathons and tri-athalons, and the introduction to one more thing I could do outside appealed to me. Guns intimidated me and I chose archery. For some reason I never had any problem with the idea of actually harvesting an animal. Although no one in my family hunted, we knew where meat originated. 

I bought my first bow at a yard sale. It was bright blue and I spray-painted it. I was so scared of the dark woods that my first tree stand was located within coffee-smelling distance from my house. The first time I saw deer I was so interested in watching them that I forgot to even try to shoot. I think it was my third or fourth season when I finally got a doe.

Then good fortune came disguised as bad. I'd left the trucking company and taken a job at a warehouse. That company got sold. We all lost our jobs and got severance pay. I decided to use the money to take three months off and hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia and back to my hometown in Pennsylvania, about 1200 miles.

Of course, in my typical just-dive-in fashion, the fact that I'd never slept outside in a tent that wasn’t right behind a car didn't stop me. I took the two dogs I had then, Kliban and Maude (they have both since passed away), and drove to Georgia. I kept a journal during the hike, and after returning sold a story about that experience. 

Light bulb time. Have adventures, write about them. But the first thing you learn about being a freelance writer is that you need a regular job to support yourself. I worked for newspapers as a "stringer," not on staff, which was steadier income than trying to sell articles to magazines. When the regular outdoor writer at the newspaper hurt his back, I got to go on a hunt for boars at a game ranch in Pennsylvania. I showed up with my yard sale bow wrapped in a blue blanket - don't think the other hunters were impressed. But, I got a boar. 

Since then I've taken bear, deer and turkey with the bow, but I'd have to say I'm more an avid archer than a successful one. But I just got my second bear last week and hope it signals the start of a great season. In the past years the bulk of my writing work has changed from cops and courts for the newspapers to outdoor stuff for magazines - and I am thankful for that every day.

I think I'm blessed that I'm able to convey my thoughts, enthusiasm and feelings about the sport when I write, and also that I share many common experiences with the average bow hunter. I now have a regular slot in a column called "On Track" with Bow & Arrow Hunting magazine, and I've recently had articles in Buckmaster's, the Mathews Annual, Arrow Trade, Game & Fish, Mushing (dog-powered sports), Guns-N-Gear, Runner's World and others. I'm a columnist for The Maine Sportsman.

I moved to Maine five years ago, just a month after completing the Appalachian Trail. After my initial three-month hike, I chipped away at the remaining 1,000 miles in sections. I found work here as a reporter, but have supported myself for the past three years as a full-time freelancer.

In May I bought an A-frame which is on the Webb River in a town called Carthage. I've got a lot of remodeling to do but I enjoy that work. The house is private, one half mile down a private dirt road (which I plow in the winter months with a trusty 1985 Chevy truck). I have two dogs, Mitch and Sara, who came from an animal shelter in Pennsylvania. They are hikers who have their own backpacks, and we also skijor (cross-country skiing while pulled by dogs). 

I now have a Mathews (and a bow case!). I'm certainly not on Easy Street, but it does appear to be The Sunny Side of the Street. I love archery hunting and I love writing. I should say that I'm also in love for the first time in my life....but I think it's for the last time in my life... and he just got his first bow, much to my delight. Things are great, and I'm looking forward to a great hunting season this year.