By Mike Arnold
Diana Rupp, Editor in Chief of the 137-year-old, Sports Afield, and Editor of the Rowland Ward Magazine, and Karen Mehall Phillips, Director of Communications of the NRA Hunters Leadership Forum and Senior Editor of American Hunter could not be more different in personality type. Diana has an understated delivery, with a sense of humor that is dry as the West Texas wind. Karen radiates an electrical charge as she smiles broadly and, speaks while vigorously gesturing with her hands like one of my Italian friends from Naples. And, yet as different as they are, both women are incredibly effective leaders, facilitators, and mentors for sportswomen and -men. This is not hyperbole. Over the past several years they invested a bunch of their valuable time taking a raw freelancer (me), and his serious dryness (read “boringness”) in storytelling, originating from decades of writing scientific papers, helping him morph into a decent communicator of hunting, conservation, and community outreach topics.
That servant-spirit is one of their main strengths, a willingness to help others reach goals in the hunting industry. Diana accomplishes this mainly through editing (thankfully, she acted as the copy editor for my book Bringing Back the Lions), and Karen through editing and Public Relations activities (e.g. Karen convinced Governor Mark Gordon to proclaim November 2023 “Wyoming Game Meat Donation Month” in his state of Wyoming in step with the NRA’s 2023 launch of National Wild Game Meat Donation Month in November). Yet, both women carry out their respective roles as leaders and mentors because of a common passion. They love the outdoors and especially hunting.
“I was eight years old when I helped my dad field dress a whitetail for the first time.” Diana Rupp smiled broadly at the memory, her eyes glazing over slightly as she transported herself back in time. “I was so excited holding the leg while my dad worked on the doe. I was very lucky because I grew up in a hunting family in northern Pennsylvania. Twelve years was the age at which kids could get their first hunting license. It drove me crazy as I waited to get old enough!” I asked what happened when she finally turned 12 and Diana smiled again and admitted that it took her until 14 to bag her first whitetail, a doe. I got her with a $15 surplus Springfield that my dad sporterized, with a Weaver K-4 on top. It was (and is) tough hunting in Pennsylvania because of the dense woods, even though at that time the State was known as a honey-hole for whitetail. To quote a buddy of my dad’s ‘It’s a great big wood and a little bitty deer!’ Even so, I loved every minute outdoors, hunting. And” again the huge smile, “my first job was wrapping deer meat for the freezer.”
Like Diana, Karen Mehall Phillips also grew up in a family in love with hunting, using their rural home located in southern Maryland as a base for outings. “My dad invited me throughout my childhood to come along on their whitetail hunts, but I really wasn’t interested. Then when I was 22, that all changed when I started working with the NRA. I went deer hunting and shot a doe. That was it, I developed a passion for hunting that got more intense as the years passed, and it just burned brighter from then on!” Also, like Diana, Karen’s face lights up when she relates stories of her hunting adventures. Her face transfigured when relating the story of her second deer. “My second deer was a nice six-point buck. On my doe the year before, my dad showed me how to field dress. On my buck I was determined that I would handle this myself. So, when I dropped the buck, I climbed out of the stand and ran back to our house located 15 minutes away and grabbed the NRA Hunter’s Guide that has a big section on field dressing. I told my mom I got a buck, and she was so excited for me. She had never hunted at the time, but she went back with me, and we used the instructions, the two of us flipping through the pages, my mom and I looking at the pictures and text, saying ‘Okay, you cut here, and you pull this back…’” Karen laughs at the thought, and rocks back-and-forth like a kid remembering the first home run, the first time behind the wheel of a car, or, as in this case, the first time they field dressed their own trophy.
The Writing-Editing path for Diana and that of Writing-Editing-Public Relations pursued by Karen were both underpinned by university studies; Diana graduated with a Journalism degree and Karen with a Public Relations major. Ironically, both considered career paths in the biological sciences, with Karen considering a career as a veterinarian, and Diana as a Wildlife Biologist. Fortunately for all of us readers of Sports Afield and the NRA’s Hunters’ Leadership Forum and American Hunter, they decided that writing and editing was where their passions resided. Diana related that her desire to write started very early, proven by her unearthing stories when clearing out her dad’s house, written when she was 5 or 6 years old. This carried on into college when she sold her first two stories, relating the hunt for her first whitetail buck, and the whitetail she took using a flintlock rifle.
Like Diana, Karen’s attachment to hunting literature, specifically through the NRA’s publications began in early childhood, surrounded as she was by her dad’s well-read copies of American Hunter. Her work with the NRA began in 1995 when she assumed oversight of the NRA Press Office for events such as U.S. Shooting Team tryouts and NRA-sponsored competitive shooting matches and helping to design and promote NRA programs for hunters. She counts among her mentors at that time the legendary Jim Zumbo. She expresses with affection his encouragement when she began her tenure with the NRA. Her work transitioned in 1998 when she became the Editor-in-Chief of the NRA’s American Guardian magazine, which she relaunched under the name America’s First Freedom in 2000. The name change reflected the viewpoint of the NRA President at the time, Charlton Heston that the Second Amendment should be the First Amendment given its protection of all the others.
The lunch meeting with her boss discussing the morphing of American Guardian into America’s First Freedom is worth the retelling. Karen ruefully remembers the year 2000 breakfast meeting with the then new head of NRA Publications when he announced, “Karen, you are doing a great job with American Guardian, but we are cancelling the magazine.” “Okay, I just lost my job,” thought Karen, as she tried not to spit up her eggs. Fortunately, her boss followed on with, “And we are starting a new magazine, America’s First Freedom and we want you to head it.” “Okay, I lost a job and got a job back,” Karen mused, while her food decided that, for the moment, staying in her stomach was the best plan.
Diana’s career path was no less interesting, beginning in the then-haven of all things publishing: New York, New York. I asked her what it was like in those days. She leaned back in her chair and asked first, “Do you know where I am sitting?” I looked past her shoulders in the Zoom display and guessed, “Your home office?” “Correct,” she answered. “I am one of just a handful of employees and contractors that make up the entire staff of Sports Afield, with most of us working remotely. When I started in the New York office, we had an entire floor, in a very large office building, full of editors (text and photographic), designers, production staff, advertising department, and more. It was an incredible experience, surrounded by all those talented people.” Diana’s first position was as Editorial Assistant to all the staff editors, including Editor in Chief Tom Paugh. “I was so fortunate!” Diana exclaimed. “I was working for one of the best editors in the business, and all the staff editors at Sports Afield were not only great at their job, but also great people. I progressed from Editorial Assistant to Associate Editor before moving back to work in Pennsylvania on various state-specific magazines, and later moving to southern California.”
Diana’s move to the West Coast was not what she expected, but considering the outcome, it was very fortuitous because in 2002, after going through its own circuitous path, the purchase of Sports Afield by Safari Press owner, Ludo Wurfbain, brought Diana back to the publication at which she began her editing career. A recommendation from a colleague led to Ludo reaching out to Diana for an interview. Like her description of the thrill of obtaining that first whitetail tag, she stated, “I couldn’t get to Huntington Beach fast enough!” The rest, as they say, really has been history making. Including her first three-year stint in New York, Diana has been with the venerable publication of big-game adventure hunts for 25 years.
During my interviews of these remarkable women, they both emphasized that my article’s so-called ‘hook’ was somewhat counter to who they are, and the professional positions they’ve earned through incredibly hard work. They both pushed back somewhat against the focus of them as women in a male-dominated profession. Though Karen admitted making a point of hanging a few wild game mounts in her office as a sign of her belonging to the group of passionate hunters, she also made it clear that she was a passionate hunter, not a passionate, female (deleted comma) hunter. She did mention how in those early days men occasionally put their foot in it by asking if the mounts in her office belonged to her husband! Yet, she and Diana voiced the shared opinion of wide acceptance, by men and women, as consummate professionals. “Besides,” as Karen quipped with a smirk, “it’s my ‘girlfriends’ who prefer vacationing at spas and on cruises, who at first didn’t understand my choosing instead a hunting trip to the Arctic Circle where I go to the toilet in the freezing cold.” We can all be grateful for Karen and Diana’s choice of the adventurous life!