“His front legs collapsed: Game Over”
Brenda Potterfield has won Safari Club International’s Diana Award for the world’s top female hunter. She has also won one of SCI’s top ceremonial awards for outstanding achievements, the CJ McElroy Award, along with her husband Larry.
It was the first and only time the award has been presented to a couple.
The Potterfields are founders and owners of MidwayUSA, one of America’s top gun stores. The business is a major donor to Safari Club International and various other hunting and gun rights groups.
They have given $15 million to the NRA’s lobbying wing, the NRA-ILA. They also helped found the Friends of NRA which has raised a staggering $740 million for the organization.[1]
Brenda Potterfield hunted as a young girl with her father in rural Missouri. She has carried on the family tradition by taking her own children hunting. Her daughter Sara has now become an equally passionate supporter of the NRA.
“All the Potterfields agree—to believe in the future of America, you have to believe in NRA.”[2] In 2024, Brenda received the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum Lifetime Achievement Award.
When she was presented with SCI’s prize for the world’s leading female hunter, Safari Club International said: “Brenda’s hunting success and industry support are remarkable.
“She has been on 141 trophy hunts spanning six continents and harvest led more than 100 different species.”
“For Brenda, hunting and shooting are synonymous with family. As soon as her children were old enough to shoot and hunt, hunting became the activity that brought the family together”, they added.
“Sitting together with family and reflecting, whether in the cabin after a whitetail thing or around a campfire on an African Safari, has a lasting impact on the bonds among family members.
“The bonds have now extended to her grandchildren, including plans for a three-generation girl’s hunt in Spain with her daughter and granddaughter.”[3]
In her acceptance speech, Potterfield said: “This is not the end of my journey but a new beginning to reach higher, to work harder for the Second Amendment and the things we hold so dear.”
Larry and Brenda Potterfield have organized events for elementary school children and their families which include shooting, animal calling techniques, animal tracking, and the chance to get close up to the skins, skulls, antlers and horns of various hunted animals.
In ‘Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in Contemporary America’, Brenda Potterfield credits trophy hunting with keeping her marriage strong and bringing the family closer together.
“I also realized the great possibilities for family time as we traveled to hunts and sat around the campfire at night sharing the hunt.
“I see couples married for twenty-five or thirty years separate because once the children are gone, they no longer have anything in common. Larry and I will always have a common love for the hunt.”
She also reveals their daughter Sara began shooting at the age of four and was 9 years old when she began hunting. Sara Potterfield, now in her twenties, says her favorite weapon is a Charles Boswell 450/400 double rifle. “My parents purchased it for me when I was nineteen, for elephants and buffalo hunting in Africa.”
“When you are on a twenty-one day safari, carrying your gun every day, you certainly develop a fondness for it.”[4]
Her husband Larry Potterfield has written an article about an elephant hunt the pair went on in Tanzania.
The couple manage to get to within a few yards of the unfortunate animal. Their hunting guide suddenly tells him: “Shoot him now!” Potterfield describes what happens next.
“I took another step forward to clear some brush and brought my gun into position, thinking about bullet placement, the shoulder or the brain.
“It was pure instinct; shoot for the brain – cross hairs between the eyes, keep the barrel moving and pull the trigger. At 25 yards, the bull and the Hornady 375 solid met head on.
“His front legs collapsed and he slid the full length of his body – game over.”[5]
The accompanying photograph shows Larry Potterfield leant casually up against the dead animal’s rump, his rifle held high in triumph.
Larry and Brenda Potterfield have won awards from a number of groups and companies including Beretta, the gun-makers, for their hunting accomplishments. Dallas Safari Club awarded them its top prize, the Capstick Award.
“Their generosity and benevolence will help sustain hunting and shooting for future generations,” said DSC Executive Director, Ben Carter.[6]
Brenda Potterfield was appointed to the Board of Directors of the National Parks Foundation by the first Trump Administration.
References:
[1] Safari Awards magazine, SCI. 2018
[2] https://www.nrawlf.org/our-members/the-potterfield-ladies/
[3] Safari Awards magazine, SCI. 2019
[4] https://ebin.pub/gun-women-firearms-and-feminism-in-contemporary-america-9780814786918.html
[5] https://media.mwstatic.com/cms/larrys-stories/2013_4/01_last-10-seconds_final.pdf
[6] https://www.biggame.org/dsc-presents-capstick-award-to-larry-and-brenda-potterfield/
