She didn’t grow up around hunting, blinds, or whitetail stories at the dinner table in Wisconsin. Her world back then was music stands and concert halls—playing oboe in a symphony, performing at Carnegie Hall, and touring seven European countries before she even finished high school. Hunting wasn’t even on the radar. But in her late 20s, a women’s group in Kansas opened the door to the outdoors—and she stepped through it with both boots on.

With a youth-model Mossberg pump 20-gauge, two dogs named Luna and Timber, and a stubborn drive to learn, Trista dove in. Her path didn’t follow the usual trail—she asked questions, leaned on friends and family she’d met through filming and mutual connections, and learned by doing—through bad shots, long sits, and a lot of heart.

Since then, she’s chased turkeys across three states, bow hunted whitetails, bowfished, waterfowl hunted everything from snow geese to ducks and Canada geese, filmed elk hunts in the Colorado backcountry, and shared her first father–daughter antelope hunt out west with her dad. Along the way, she arrowed her first solo bow hunt buck on just 2.5 acres, proving that persistence and grit can beat experience.

This episode digs into those firsts, the hard lessons, and the variety of hunts that shaped her into the outdoorswoman she is today. From Wisconsin roots to western skies, Trista’s story proves it’s never too late to start chasing something real.

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