Irene Cooney, a loyal reader in Penn Township and a longtime hunter, sent me a gently prodding letter the other day.

"You do a lot of articles on men hunting," she wrote. "Hope you will run a woman's story because more and more women are finding out what I have been experiencing for more than 53 years now."

Cooney is right. In recent years, the rise of females entering the shooting sports is one promising demographic in a general decline in the nation's hunting population.

Nationwide, the number of female hunters has risen 42 percent from 2001 to 2011, from 1.8 million to 2.6 million, according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

The percentage increase in females participating in target shooting is even more dramatic, up nearly 52 percent.

Here in Pennsylvania, women are the fastest-growing hunting group, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Using statistics from mandatory hunter-trapper education courses, the number of males taking the courses has dropped from 30,591 in 2001-2002 to 24,534 in 2011-2012. At the same time, the number of females taking the courses has risen from 7,441 in 2001-2002 to 8,401 in 2011-2012.

That's an increase of 13 percent for females at the same time males taking hunting-trapping courses declined by nearly 20 percent over the 10-year period.

Of the first 131 photos submitted to this paper's online deer-hunting slide show in the last few weeks, 22 were of successful female hunters.

Hunting always has been a decidedly male sport. But when Cooney started hunting at age 12 in 1958, a young girl heading into the woods seeking game did not raise eyebrows in Slate Run, Lycoming County, in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.

Her father and grandfather were big hunters. But both her mother and grandmother had shot deer.

"That was our way of life. We ate venison all winter," says Cooney, whose uncle, Bill Wolfe, built and ran Wolfe's General Store, a Pine Creek landmark.

Hunting was such a mainstay that hunter education was taught in high school, just like driver's education.

At 13, she shot her first buck, a spike.

When she married her high school sweetheart, Bill Cooney, 47 years ago, one way the couple was compatible was their love for hunting. It also was a necessity for a young couple struggling to make ends meet.

"We went pheasant hunting and rabbit hunting when we were first married," notes Cooney, who turns 67 on Wednesday. "When we were first married, we were so poor we hunted everything."

To this day, the owner of Irene's Beauty Salon, which she runs out of her Penryn home, has a credo that she doesn't shoot anything unless she eats it.

The couple does a lot of hunting, particularly deer hunting, at a Sullivan County farm near Shunk that has been in the Cooney family for 90 years.

The couple's daughter, Stephanie Cooney, 43, who lives in Lancaster's Hamilton Park neighborhood, has been a hunter since she was 12. Another daughter, Lisa Priester, 47, of Lititz, used to hunt but now shoots wildlife with a camera.

In 2005, as their 40th wedding anniversary neared, Bill suggested they celebrate with a cruise.

"No, a moose hunt," Irene replied.

Since then, the couple has made four hunting trips to Red Indian Lake, Newfoundland, for big game. The latest was in October with the couple's longtime hunting buddies, Tom MacVaugh of Landisville and Mark Hoover of Narvon.

On Oct. 9, Irene Cooney shot a splendid 17-point moose, shooting freehand with her Ruger .308 rifle. She dropped it with one shot while it was running at 75 yards.

Her husband and their friends each got a caribou.

The Cooneys brought back hundreds of pounds of meat for their two freezers. Many crock-pot roasts, spaghetti, meatloaf and chili dinners will follow.

"We hardly ever buy any beef," Cooney says. "I love moose better, and caribou even better. Venison is last."

She loves taking and eating game. But when she expresses her strong desire for more women to try hunting, it's not the shooting she has in mind.

"It's not always about killing an animal," she says. "I think that a big part of hunting is being out there all by yourself and it's so quiet and all the things you see and hear."

She talks about sitting motionless in a tree and seeing a box turtle shuffling through the leaves.

And the time a bear came over and plopped down on the base of her treestand ladder. She yelled and stomped her feet, but it didn't budge. To go home at dusk, she finally had to break off a hemlock branch and whack it solidly on its head.

She never goes afield without her camera.

Just get out and try hunting and see "another side to our world," she implores women.

"I have been in places where I sit on a rock and look at this vast, vast land and I think how many people have never witnessed this.

"I just hope more people with their families get involved with hunting. That its' not going to be a dying thing.

"This heritage — we've got to keep it alive."

acrable@lnpnews.com

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For a listing of outdoors events throughout Lancaster County this week and beyond, click here.