By Cory L. Higgs
One local grandma is in no danger of being run over by one of Santa’s reindeer; if anything, they should be on the lookout.
Connie Sue Nester, of Meadows of Dan, is an avid hunter who uses her passion for the outdoors to help others.
Nester isn’t your stereotypical 73-year-old; you won’t find her knitting by the fire or putting the kettle on to boil. You will, however, find her deep in the woods, gun in tow, looking for a deer to take down.
Nester said she loves to be outdoors and spend time in nature. She comes from a family of outdoorsmen and women.
“Momma never hunted, but she built buildings,” she recalled, noting her family’s past living in the shadow of Buffalo Mountain. Her mother was one of the first to have a car in the area in the 1920s; they lived in a world where hunting for their food wasn’t a pastime rather a necessity. A family of rough, tough mountain people, she said, adding that yet she’s the “one and only” avid female hunter in the family.
Nester said her sisters think it’s funny that she still goes out on the hunt every year. But, it’s a hard habit to break.
Nester said she started hunting with her late husband many years ago, “I’m 73 now, and I was 18 when I started, so you do the math,” she said, recollecting about her five and a half decades of hunting.
When Nester and her husband, Dono, took to the woods, she said there weren’t many deer in the area. The two hunters would travel to surrounding counties in search of venison.
“I heard a rumor that they moved the deer from Radford to Patrick County and stocked Rock Castle, but I can’t swear to that,” she said.
Nester and her husband hunted for many years and had venison often, but as their tastes changed, they hated to give up their passion for hunting. They quickly decided to donate the venison to those in need, and now, more than 50 years later, Nester is still contributing meat to those who may need it.
“One woman told me that the venison I gave her was the only meat she and her children had for the winter,” Nester said. She was grateful to be able to contribute and give back to people that may need help stocking the fridge.
Nester, who only takes down as many deer as her hunting license allows per state laws, said she usually secures the animal and cleans it before delivering it to a family. She said she has a long list of people that ask her for venison, and jokingly added that she’d probably end up with an even longer list when her story is shared.
Nester has won awards and been featured in record books for her hunting prowess, as she rummaged through her photo album of past hunts that featured record-setting bucks. With decades of hunting under her belt, a notable constant to her hunting photo album is that Nester is rarely without a full face of make-up and her hair ‘fixed’ in her post-hunt photos.
Her charitable nature also doesn’t go unnoticed, but she cautioned, “Don’t make me sound like a saint.”
Nester said she never thought she would still be hunting at this age, and that she is grateful to be able to continue doing what she loves and help those around her.
She said she would like to eventually move into bear hunting since she has been encountering them for years on hunts and is always up for the challenge.
Her weapon of choice is a crossbow, which she said she has a lot of fun practicing with, but her alternative is her black powder gun or her rifle.
Chuckling, Nester said, “this granny doesn’t have to worry about any reindeer running her over on Christmas Eve.”
