Meet Queen Tara – North Carolina farmer, daughter, huntress

Growing up on a farm in rural Granville County, North Carolina instills a love of the land and animals like no other place on this earth.

My name is Tara and I am the only child of a tobacco farmer from Oxford, NC. I was born and raised in a small farming community called Providence. I am a 4th Grade Teacher in Creedmoor, NC, and I try to share my love of the outdoors with my students. Most people start hunting with their Dad, but that was not the case for me. The number one priority for our family was raising tobacco, bringing in the crop and getting it sold. Time for anything else was minimal. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started hunting.

At a very young age, my Mom and Dad taught me how to shoot. My Dad is an Auxiliary Deputy with the Granville County Sheriff’s Department. He made sure my Mom and I knew how to and could protect ourselves. I have always been a confident and competent shooter. I learned to target shoot with a 22 long rifle and shoot skeet with a 12 gauge shotgun. I received my first compound bow at the age of 8. I had a passion for shooting, whether it was with a gun or bow. I loved the thrill of shot placement and staying on target.

Hunting is a huge part of my life, it’s part of my love story. When I was a teenager, I began hunting raccoons with a family member. They ran Bluetick Coonhounds. I loved to watch and listen to the hounds do their job. I met my husband in the woods on a coon hunting trip. We sparked each other’s interest, and the rest was history. We still hunt together to this day.

My passion for the outdoors blossomed once I met my now husband. He was an avid hunter that was constantly in the woods. I began venturing out with him and expanding my hunting experience. He and I hunted turkey, dove, deer, coons, coyote, and squirrels together. If you could legally hunt an animal in our area, we did. We began managing the 400 acre farm that I grew up on. We planted dove fields, managed the deer population, and began really keeping record and taking notice of the wildlife around us and how to best take care of what we have.

The picture with this article is from opening day of Dove Season in 2015. My husband, a few of our friends and myself had an excellent day. We all met our daily bag limit and had to stop hunting at 10:00am. Our successful day would not have been possible without hard work and the time that my husband and I put in beforehand. We planted dove fields and watched the daily patterns of the dove in the area. We planned out where everyone would setup for the day’s hunt and in what positions we would have people. With any hunting of any animal, to be successful there comes a lot of time consuming preparation. That goes for hunting a big buck, to shooting a monster grass carp.

My husband and I have recently taken up the sport of bowfishing. We turned our pontoon boat into a bowfishing boat. This night time activity has become a summertime favorite of ours. We fish Kerr and Falls Lake, looking for Grass and Common Carp, Bowfin and Gar. I coach an Archery Team at the school where I teach. We’ve taken several of my student’s bowfishing with us. There is no feeling in the world like watching a child that you’ve worked with and taught, shoot their first fish. We scout areas of the lake during the day, so that we have an idea of where to start at night. Hunting equals time put in, but memories made.