Finding Freedom: How Wild Chix is Empowering Women Through Hunting and Fishing

When Isabell Zitzelsberger takes a group of women into the bush for the first time, she watches them arrive as nervous wrecks, riddled with self-doubt. By the end of the weekend, she witnesses transformations that go far beyond learning to track game or read water.

"The biggest focus we've got is to slow down and just spend time in the bush and pause for a little," says the 40-year-old founder of Wild Chix, an organisation that has become a movement for women seeking to learn hunting and fishing skills. "We learn to be patient and slow and quiet, and try to engage your other senses rather than the constant stress we're in these days."

For Isabell, who moved to New Zealand from Germany with her partner Sascha in 2012, the journey to becoming an enabler for women in the outdoors began with realisations about the barriers women face in traditionally male-dominated spaces.

Working in the marine industry, she noticed couples spending upwards of $250,000 on boats, yet the women couldn't use them independently. "We are an attraction when we rock up at the boat ramp by ourselves," she explains. "People still have that perception like, 'look at the girls, they will not be able to do it'."

That observation sparked an idea. Isabell approached her local fishing club in Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, asking if she could run seminars to educate women about boating and fishing. The response was overwhelming.

The turning point came when she completed her hunts course with the Deer Stalkers Association. Despite finding it excellent, she noticed the same pattern: 95 per cent men. "It's really difficult for a woman to start hunting or fishing when you don't have a guy in your life teaching you," she observes.

Wild Chix was born from that need. Isabell now pursues the full spectrum of New Zealand hunting and fishing. She makes duck hunting an annual tradition, heading to a farm each Opening Day to shoot ducks and help with pest control on Canadian geese and turkeys. She regularly fishes the Rotorua lakes for trout and heads to sea when conditions allow. But whether it's deer in the hills or game birds on the ponds, the outdoor pursuits serve the same purpose.

"Duck shooting in May is one of those real Kiwi traditions — the boys rebuilding the māimai, cooking up a feast, hanging out, and marking the season together. I’ve always felt genuinely privileged to be welcomed into those weekends, often as the only woman, and to be part of something that’s such a true slice of New Zealand culture.

"Trout fishing is a whole different game for me, I’m hopeless from the boat, but fly fishing has my heart already. It feels so much like deer stalking… you’re eye-to-eye with the fish, reading the water, matching its rhythm. I’m keen as to learn it properly, it’s intimate, challenging, and such a wild kind of magic.

"Being on the water or in the bush, that is where I can recharge," she says. "I'm running 180 miles an hour all the time. When I do those courses for the girls, I pour everything out of my cup into their cups."

Through Wild Chix, she creates spaces for other women to discover these same experiences. Starting with introductory hunting weekends where participants learn everything except shooting an animal, Isabell helps women develop skills at their own pace.

The weekends focus on reading signs, understanding animal behaviour, navigation, and simply being present in nature. "We feel the mist in the morning, see the sun coming, and enjoy those little things," she says.

At a recent weekend, a 28-year-old woman named Sarah, freshly divorced with a three-year-old daughter, talked about the overwhelming positive feeling she experienced when she successfully navigated a group through thick forest.

"She said, 'I'm a mum, I'm a wife, that's my whole lief , and now I'm taking the time to find - ME,'" Isabell recalls. "That was such a powerful sentence. We so often have to pretend to be someone, always wearing a mask. Then you go into the bush with a group of girls you've never met before and you can just let go."

The challenges women face, Isabell argues, often stem from well-meaning but limiting dynamics. "In relationships, we're often not even allowed to make our own mistakes because the guys have that 'oh, let me do it, I'm here to help you' attitude," she explains. "That's great, but often we just don't get given the chance."

The result? Women become too scared of making mistakes. Wild Chix provides a space where making mistakes is not just accepted but expected, where every woman starts as a beginner, and where the focus is on growth rather than perfection.

The demand for Wild Chix programmes has seen it become a thriving business with waiting lists for courses. Isabell has quit her job in the marine industry to focus on Wild Chix full-time, running courses almost monthly and expanding into the South Island.

She offers introductory fishing courses teaching land-based techniques, butchering workshops where women learn to process their own game, and boating days focused on building confidence. Just recently, Isabell is has taken a group to Fiordland in collaboration with Pure Salt  for diving, hunting, and fishing.

“Wild Chix wouldn’t exist without the incredible women who stand beside me; the ones who believe in the mission, lift me up, give their time, their heart, and their strength. They’re the backbone of this whole movement, and I’m beyond grateful for every single one of them.”

The sense of belonging has become crucial to Wild Chix's appeal. As Isabell puts it, "It almost becomes that movement, that belonging."

She describes it as a pyramid: community and skills form the foundation, which leads to friendships and confidence, which ultimately achieves freedom. "Then you can just go, 'I do those things when I want to do it,' and not need to ask for permission."

It's a far cry from the intimidation Isabell felt during her first encounter with hunting in New Zealand. Backpacking on Clements Mill Road near Taupō in 2011, she and Sascha were sitting in the bush when three bearded men emerged carrying rifles.

"I had a heart attack," she recalls with a laugh. "I was just not used to what we are able to do here."

Now, over a decade later, she's the one emerging from the bush, rifle in hand, often with her multipurpose dog Skip by her side, leading a growing community of women discovering their own capabilities.

"I want to be an enabler," Isabell says. "I want the girls to tell their stories because they're all so different." 

And those stories keep coming, each one adding to the movement of women finding themselves, finding their strength, and finding their freedom in the great outdoors.