It was the adventure of a lifetime for Weston’s Lindsay Christensen, and it all culminated in her winning the title of Extreme Huntress on Friday.
Christensen’s title pursuit began back in April when she applied to participate in the Extreme Huntress competition. The applicants were vetted, and 21 women — including Christensen — were selected as semifinalists.
After a month of online voting, the final competitors were whittled down to six. And in July, Christensen went to Texas to compete in variety of skill challenges and hunts.
The challenges included handgun shooting, AK-47 shooting, a biathlon and public speaking. Christensen won the AK-47 challenge and the public speaking challenge, and placed high in handgun shooting and the particularly grueling biathlon.
“It was 108 degrees and the heat index was crazy,” Christensen said. “We ran with full camo with our packs and gun. … About halfway through I was like, ‘I need to walk,’ but I didn’t know how far I had to go, so I just kept on going. … It was pretty cool to be able to just push through that.”
For the hunting portion of the challenge, the competitors would go out into the field accompanied by judges.
“They judged us on how well we hunted,” Christensen said. “But they didn’t have a rubric or anything. They just said we’re getting judged on everything — how you conduct yourself, how you’re doing, if you’re being safe. But they never gave us specifics. They just came up with the score for each girl.”
With the skills challenges and the hunting out of the way, the final category for scoring was online voting. Between August and December, Christensen racked up 3,293 — nearly twice the amount of votes as the runner-up.
Christensen chalks up her high vote count to the work she did back home.
“I definitely worked hard to promote it,” she said. “I did a lot of events in the community. I had booths at the fair. In the derby I had derby cars driving with my stickers on them. I did the meet-and-greet at the high school — all sorts of fun things just to try and promote it.”
On Friday at an all-women luncheon at the Dallas Safari Club in Dallas, the winner was announced. Now, Christensen will have to figure out a way to haul her 60-pound trophy back to Idaho.
“I was so overwhelmed with emotion,” she said. “There were definitely a couple other girls I thought were well-deserving of the title as well. It was a really humbling experience.”
Christensen was told by Extreme Huntress judges and producers that the Extreme Huntress title can open doors for the winner. She plans on taking that to heart to help promote, grow and introduce people to the sport.
“As far as what happens from here, it kind of is what I make of it,” Christensen said. “The door is opening. … Hopefully I can make something great.”
