For Sandi Beitzel, bowhunting caribou in Canada was the hunt of a lifetime. And the hunt came about because another woman had to go back to school.

Cathy Barnowsky, a bowhunter from Wisconsin, had hoped to accompany her husband when he booked a caribou bowhunt with DeLay River Outfitters. But Cathy is a schoolteacher, and the dates her husband was able to book fell after the beginning of the fall term.

"Cathy said, 'But I want to go!'" Sandi recalls. "So she talked to the outfitter and asked if he would take an all-ladies' camp." The outfitter agreed, and Cathy began organizing the hunt. By talking to women at various archery tournaments, she found a lot of interest in an all-women's hunt.

When Sandi found out about the hunt, she started asking around among her bowhunting friends. Before long she had recruited two other hunters. Between Sandi and Cathy, they soon had 10 hunters signed up to go. They arranged to hunt in the northern part of Ontario, 65 miles from the Arctic Circle.

Though not everyone got a caribou, the 10 hunters managed to get 14 animals among them. When they got back to the outpost they based from, they attracted a lot of attention.

"That week, we out-hunted all of the men's groups in the area who had guns," Sandi says. "We were the only all-women's camp, and we out-hunted them all."

IT'S A PHENOMENON GUIDES and outfitters are noticing. Galen Geer, an outdoor writer and former outfitter from Colorado, once swore never to have women in hunting camp. But at the request of a friend, he reluctantly agreed to take three women hunting for a week several years ago.

That experience changed the way he felt about hunting with women.

"Women are more patient, more persistent, and just generally better hunters," he says. "They're also more serious than men about what they're doing. I had two women walking through rough timber and snow trying to cut an elk track. I asked them whether they wanted to walk down the road or cut across the timber. They chose the timber. Most men would have walked down the road."

Despite the fact that the general public doesn't think of women as being hunters, the number of women who hunt is increasing, and interest in women as hunters is growing worldwide. In Germany, women have a long association with the hunt; Diana is the goddess of the hunt, and for a male hunter to refer to a woman as a "Diana" is without a doubt the ultimate compliment a man can bestow on a woman who hunts.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the definitive work on women who hunt is being written by an Austrian. Monika Reiterer, a professor in Graz, Austria, is conducting a worldwide survey of women who hunt and their experiences with hunting. The results will be published in a monograph titled, "Women and Hunting--the Huntress in Past and Present."

CLOSER TO HOME, we can find good statistics about women who hunt. In the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has statistics which show that in 1965, only about 779,000 women hunted. This represents about 6 percent of the hunting population. By 1985, the number was up to 1,489,000, which was about 9 percent of hunters. Today, the number is at 10 percent or a little above.

Statistics for women who bowhunt are hard to come by. A number of telephone calls to manufacturers and government agencies yielded no Canadian statistics for bowhunting at all. Even in the United States, where someone keeps data on almost every aspects of citizens' lives, bowhunting statistics are scanty.

However, using information from the National Sporting Goods Association in the United States, we come up with one figure that gives an indication of the number of women who participate in archery. NSGA data show that in 1993, 5.8 million Americans participated in archery. Of that number 21 percent, or 1.2 million, were women. If we try to extract any inferences about the number of those women who are hunters we're trying to compare apples and bananas, but it's clear from the statistics that archery as a sport is popular among women.

So how does a women become a bowhunter? Sandi Beitzel says she got started at a young age, hunting with her father. Then when she got married she hunted with her husband.

About four years ago, she became interested in bowhunting and purchased her first bow. So far, the only two animals she's bowhunted are white-tailed deer and caribou. But she says Cathy has also bowhunted turkey and wild hog.

MANY WOMEN MAY TAKE UP HUNTING to spend more time with their husbands or boyfriends. Over time, quite a few of them become very serious hunters in their own right. And some of us take up hunting on our own, over the protest--or at least the reservations--of our families.

When I began hunting 12 years ago, members of my family thought I was crazy. "You'll get it out of your system," someone said.

But I didn't. And after eight years of hunting with a gun, I turned to bowhunting as a more challenging, more personal way of getting close to the animals I hunt. Since then I've bowhunted in Florida, Alabama, and Africa, and I intend to bowhunt everywhere else in the world I can manage.

The reservations of family and friends are not the only reasons women who want to hunt sometimes don't. A number of years ago Sherry Fears and her husband Wayne built three hunting lodges. Sherry did the marketing and public relations for the lodges and worked at them during hunting season, doing everything from putting hunters on their stands to skinning deer. Though they sold the lodges in 1986, Sherry has continued her involvement in the hunting sports through writing and PR work.

Sherry says one reason more women don't hunt is that they aren't convinced it's all right for them to do so. "I've talked with lots of women who would like to start hunting, but say 'I don't know any women who do that. What would people think?' Or 'But I like to wear makeup!' They have to understand that they can be what they are and still be a hunter. They don't have to change, and they don't have to fit into a stereotype."

She says another problem is a lack of good equipment that is suited to women. "I don't mean just clothes. All equipment is designed for men--everything from the size of a backpack to the positioning of the straps. Every piece of equipment I get has to be adapted to me in some way."

Sandi sees other obstacles to women who want to take up bowhunting.

"Bowhunting is such a sophisticated sport," she says. "When I started out I didn't know anything about it. It was very hard for me to find people who could give me the right kind of advice. You've got a lot of know-it-alls out there, and it's hard to identify who really knows. People want to help you, but they don't always give you the right advice. So I struggled with both the equipment and the hunting, because I would think I was following the right advice from someone and it wouldn't be."

One example she cited was what happened when she went in to purchase her first bow.

"The salesman set me up with some real crap," she says. "Plastic, poor-quality equipment. Then he said, 'Well, for the kind of shooting you're going to do, this is good enough.' It really bothers me when people don't consider me serious, when they dismiss me as not being a serious purchaser."

THOUGH SOME COMPANIES and some retailers haven't kept up with the increasing numbers of women who bowhunt, quite a number of them have. Companies across North America are developing lines of clothing and equipment fitted specifically to women. Cabela's markets a line of women's clothing. A company in Pennsylvania is developing a clothing catalog called "The Lady Hunter." One bow manufacturer, Mountain Magic, has come out with a bow made particularly for women. It weighs only two and a half pounds, but is capable of similar performance to "regular" bows.

Besides these companies, several organizations cater to the needs of women. One U.S.-based effort is the Office of Women's Issues and Information of the National Rifle Association. Kitty Beuchert, the office's assistant director, points out that many people incorrectly assume NRA's programs are geared to men. Part of her job is to help women find out what services are available, and steer those women into them.

"We've put together a list of women hunters," Kitty says, "for women to use to communicate with one another, and to network with one another. If you want to go hunting in another state or in Canada, you can call and get a list of women who hunt there, and ask them about the clothing and equipment needed. There are a lot of things women would rather discuss with other women."

Kitty also has developed a list of manufacturers, suppliers, and catalogs who cater to women's needs.

"We're putting together a resource list of manufacturers that have equipment that they either have specifically designed for women, or that they recommend for women."

In hunting, as in other aspects of life, change comes slowly. But women are a growing force in the bowhunting community, and male hunters and sporting goods manufacturers are beginning to take notice.

And this is more than just an interesting phenomenon. The people who study such things tell us that 80 percent of anti- hunters are women. Let's face it--a woman hunter can respond to these women's criticisms in ways that no man can. That's not sexism, it's just a fact of life. Not only are women bringing new life to the sport of bowhunting, their voices may well be the force that saves it for our children.