Beth Douglas of Wheatland knew she needed a gun when three side-by-sides full of men approached her from behind one day.
Douglas had stepped out of her vehicle to open the gate that leads to her home in the mountains when the vehicles drove up. She said the men were wearing helmets and masks that concealed their faces, causing her to panic.
“It turned out that once these guys got parked and took off their helmets and everything, I knew them,” Douglas said in a phone interview with Cowboy State Daily. “It made me nervous because I was the only one up in that area. It’s like 30 miles out of town.”
Since obtaining a concealed carry license, Douglas said that she still does not feel completely protected, but now has a greater sense of peace of mind.
“I would never say that at all, because you never know what they have,” she said of encounters with strangers. “When your nerves or fear take over, you can’t do what you need to.”
Douglas said she wishes more places around the United States were as gun friendly as Wyoming. She predicted that tragedies like mass shootings may be mitigated by increased gun carrying in public places like schools.
“I don’t think we would be in the trouble we’re in if it was like that,” she said. “I love that Wyoming is open carry.”
Douglas is among a growing number of Wyoming women who say they take advantage of state laws allowing the concealed and open carry of firearms.
Wyoming is a constitutional carry state and doesn’t require people to get concealed carry permits, but residents can still apply for one to be able to carry in other states.
Firearms ownership has been shifting toward women for decades, according to study results published on Ammo.com.
One study indicates that between 1980 and 2024, firearms ownership nationwide declined among men by roughly 25% but rose among women by 177% during that same period.
Heather Tisdale of Cody, right, said she carries a firearm while hiking because of the potential for encounters with bears and mountain lions. (Courtesy of Heather Tisdale) 
Women learn to shoot and about concealed carry in Wyoming at Female Basic Handgun Courses taught by the Wheatland Police Department. (Wheatland Police Department) 
Mywra Otte learns to shoot and about concealed carry in Wyoming at Female Basic Handgun Courses taught by the Wheatland Police Department. (Wheatland Police Department) 
Women learn to shoot and about concealed carry in Wyoming at Female Basic Handgun Courses taught by the Wheatland Police Department. (Wheatland Police Department)
A Knock In The Night
Kris Brock of Cody said she has owned and fired guns since 2014, but never took them out in public.
She said she came to regret that decision when she encountered a strange man while letting her dog out in the middle of the night.
“I was in a hotel, it was after 2 a.m.,” she said. “I’m walking down the hall and I glance back over my shoulder, and there’s a single guy in a black hoodie with his hood up walking down the hallway … and he’s walking fast.”
Brock said she considered taking the elevator down to the lobby or even pulling a fire alarm to deter the stranger until she decided to pretend her husband was waiting for her in her room.
“My fear was opening my door and having no one in there and him forcing himself in the door, and then I’m behind a locked door with him,” Brock said. “I go to my door, I don’t know how I thought of it, but I knocked on the door instead of opening it and kind of talked to Paul through the door, even though he wasn’t there.
“The guy at that point caught up to me and moved on by me."
Since that encounter, which she described as an “awakening,” Brock said she now always carries a firearm when visiting public places like rest stops.
Brock said she uses her hotel experience as a cautionary tale to encourage other women to become comfortable with carrying a concealed weapon.
“I think there’s a lot of apprehension in females to concealed carry,” she said. “I think that they think it’s, ‘I’ll never be in that situation, I’ll never need that.’
“I always tell people, ‘If you’re not comfortable with it, don’t do it, but get comfortable with it,’” she added.
Bears And Mountain Lions
Heather Tisdale of Cody told Cowboy State Daily she's used firearms since she first received her sportsman’s license at 16.
Tisdale said carrying a firearm feels natural to her given the fact that she is also married to a sheriff’s deputy who is “in a constant state of carrying.”
Tisdale, who hails from Massachusetts, said she feels safest while carrying given the potential for encounters with bears and mountain lions near her ranch in the remote areas around Cody.
She said Wyoming’s concealed carry laws give her much more freedom to protect herself than those in her home state.
“I live out of town, and we’ve had a couple of instances where we’ve had critters that we’ve had to put down,” she said. “We had a dog going after some of our animals and we had one of our rams attack one of my kids.
“Carrying something you can use in the moment, no matter what the circumstance are, has been helpful."
Tisdale explained a gun is a far more effective way to repel dangerous animals compared to other repellants like bear spray. Having distance from a target is a prime advantage of a firearm, she said.
“When you’ve got a bear charging at you and you’ve got bear spray or a .44, do you want to take the chance that the bear spray is not going to work because the failure rate is probably higher [than a gun]?” she said. “The same thing goes with mace or if you’ve got a personal defense like a taser.
"You have to be within an arm’s length of whatever you’re going to use that on, and a firearm gives you the ability to have distance.”
She also explained guns can be fun, such as when she and her husband play Battleship with their guns at the shooting range.
Gun ownership is rising among women in Wyoming, who are also increasingly taking tactical shooting classes to learn self-protection. (Wild Wyoming Outfitters via Facebook) 
Gun ownership is rising among women in Wyoming, who are also increasingly taking tactical shooting classes to learn self-protection. (Wild Wyoming Outfitters via Facebook)
Out Of Town
Mywra Otte, 72, of Laramie said she feels safest when she has a firearm on hand while her husband is traveling out of town for work.
She said she frequently watches crime news out of Denver on TV, which sometimes makes her scared that something similar could happen where she lives.
“I want it at the house just to make myself feel better,” Otte said of her firearm. “I’ve just always been afraid of something happening.”
While she doesn’t carry a gun on a daily basis, Otte said she brings one with her whenever she goes on a long road trip alone. While she told some friends about attending a firearm instruction class, Otte said many don’t know she keeps a gun.
Otte said her niece and close friend also carry guns, adding that they also do so for safety reasons.
“I think it’s really a good thing and I would encourage other people to do it too,” she said of concealed carrying. “I was hesitant, but then my daughter-in-law had gone through the class and once I knew a little more about it to put me at ease to take it.”
Girls Do It Better
Casey McFarland of Cody Firearms Experience said he regularly sees more female shooters seek instruction than men. Not only are they better listeners than his male students, they often turn out to be better shooters, he said.
“When you get a woman student, they will almost do everything the instructor says to a T,” he said. “Men try to recreate video games or what they saw in the movies or try to look cool when they shoot.”
Jason Crotteau, who runs the Riverton-based Wyoming Tactical shooters’ training company, told Cowboy State Daily in May he is seeing an increase in female students in his shooting classes.
“Right now, I would say 60% of my students are women,” he said. “Many of them are newer gun owners. They want to know how to shoot, and to become proficient.”
These students, Crotteau added, are acquiring their own guns instead of waiting on their husbands or fathers to do it for them.
Jackson Walker can be reached at walker@cowboystatedaily.com.
