In the nearly 20 years I’ve been telling other people’s stories though writing, I have met a lot of fascinating individuals. Some of these encounters have turned into long-time friendships, some I may never talk to again, either way meeting them changed my life, in some way, forever. Each interview holds a special place in my heart and mind for years to come, for better or for worse. Every once in a while, an interview really strikes a chord and brings the world into a whole new perspective. That’s how it was when I hung up the phone after a two-hour conversation with Ann Jandernoa. While transcribing the interview, I was once again amazed at the life she has led. There are few women who can boast that they have competed in sled dog races, guided for woodcock and ruffed grouse, led logging crews, breed and train English Setters, and created world-class bird hunting GPS maps; just to name a few of her accomplishments.
“I just like being out in the woods. It’s peaceful, I’m calmer out there,” Ann says. “I think if you can find the things in life that really fit with what your own personal needs are, what you want out of life, that is important. I’ll gladly sacrifice a lot of things just to be in the woods with my dogs.”
Being a woman who works for an upland hunting magazine, it can be easy for me to forget how uncommon it actually is for women to be leaders in the outdoors industry, let along outdoors media, an area that traditionally had been male-dominated. I give thanks to all the fearless women such as Ann Jandernoa, who toss convention to the wind and march to the beat of their own drum, to blaze trails—intentionally or not—for all the other women who followed to have careers in the outdoors.
At the age of 24, Ann was running logging crews in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She was the first woman hired by Connor Forest Industries in the company’s history. At the time, there was only one other woman running logging crews in the UP.
“A woman running logging crews was basically unheard of back then,” Ann recalls. “There were bets going on in the sawmill that I wouldn’t make it through the winter . . . There were a few times they tried to scare me off with stuff like dropping a 16-foot-long huge maple log behind me. If it had bounced the wrong way, it would have killed me.”
It’s probably a good thing our conversation was over the phone because I’m sure the look of shock on my face would have been entertaining while picturing a several-hundred-pound log falling from the sky and landing on the ground. “Oh wow,” was all I could mutter in amazement.
“It's different working for the Forest Service because guys and gals doing this was way more acceptable, but when you went into the private industry at the time, you were setting a new standard. They just weren't used to it. I learned early on to bring them in on the decision-making because most of the things they are going to tell you will make their life easier out in the woods . . . It was a good experience. I wouldn't give those memories and those times away for anything.”
Love of Maps
Many readers might be familiar with Ann Jandernoa through the Project Upland podcast, hosted by Nick Larson, where she’s been a guest several times discussing her business Northwind Enterprises, LLC and the mobile hunt map app Scout-N-Hunt which provides details on habitat in various states for grouse, woodcock, pheasant, quail, sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge, and chukar.
Long before launching Scout-N-Hunt, Ann developed a love for maps at a young age in what some might consider an unusual way—by getting in mischief.
“Every time I got into trouble my mom would sit me on the steps going down to the basement. Instead of putting wallpapering up, she had taken the maps out of the National Geographic magazines and put them on the wall. On the left side of the steps was the world and on the right side was North America,” Ann says with a laugh. “I was drawn to looking at the pages, and that's where I started first looking at maps because I was in trouble quite a bit because I was rather rambunctious in school.”
It was during her time at Connor’s that Ann happened upon a couple of hunters who were unfamiliar with the area and asked if she’d seen any grouse around. After some of the usual chatter, she ended up scribbling some maps on the hood of her pickup indicating possible grouse habitat. The hunters were happy with the results and kept seeking her out each year. Little did she know that interaction would spark the beginning of Scout-N-Hunt.
It’s in the Blood
Growing up in southern Michigan, Ann was no stranger to the outdoors. Her family spent summers out on the waters of Lake Michigan fishing, her father took many trips out west in search of elk and mule deer—"before it was popular”, Ann remarks. Her mother ran traplines, checking the traps each morning before making breakfast. I guess you could say the outdoors was in her blood, but it wasn’t until she was in college at Michigan Tech that she first started hunting grouse. With a 12-gauge shotgun strapped to the back of her Yamaha motorcycle, a 19-year-old Ann would head off into the Northwoods to walk up ruffed grouse.
She’d tuck her motorcycle someplace where it couldn’t be seen and then she’d head off the trail. If someone came by, they’d never know she was there. That worked in her favor when she encountered a couple of hunters who were out chasing grouse in a less-than sportsman-like fashion.
“I’d hear these guys going by and I got frustrated because they were shooting out of their vehicle, just blasting the grouse right off the side of the road,” she recalls. “So, I tried my hand at a bit of taxidermy.”
Using a couple of grouse she had shot and breasted out earlier in the day, she stuffed them full of leaves and propped them up on the side of the road knowing the guys would be driving by later that day. Ann never witnessed their encounters with the stuffed birds, but she did overhear the gentlemen griping about “exploding birds” over breakfast at the local diner.
“I was laughing so much to myself at my table and the waitress came around to give me coffee and said ‘I’ve got a feeling you know something about that.’ “I would never do something like that’ I said. ‘Right… That twinkle in your eye says it all. Don’t worry, it’s good for them, those boys need to get out and walk.’ They were really well known for doing that I guess,” Ann remembers with a laugh.
A New Chapter
After years of working in the logging and forestry world, Ann was ready for a new challenge and accepted a job offer as a welder on race cars.
“I thought maybe it was time for a change and it would be cool to learn something different,” Ann recalls.
Fate, however, had other plans. The Friday before she was to start the new gig on Monday, Ann jumped down from a pickup truck and one of her legs buckled under her.
“And that was the end of any idea I had of welding,” she says. “I couldn’t walk.”
After surgery Ann found herself laid up in bed recovering and thinking about what to do next.
“My mind kept going back to drawing the maps on the hood of my pickup truck for those guys, I knew I could do something with that and went full into doing the research,” she recalls.
Now, Ann works fulltime with her company Northwind Enterprises, LLC doing what she loves—working with maps, birds, and her dogs.
“I think the strongest love that I have is for the dog work. The dogs make everything. Watching them work it’s like you know you have all these potential opportunities and it’s like playing a chess game in the woods, then the dogs goes on point and it’s like watching Christmas unfold,” she says. “Then when the dog cat crawls and creeps and you'll it swing its nose down on the other side of the log that will tell you that bird had been back there because they're ground tracking as well as winding and then seeing it all come together. You remember that dog as a pup and now where you're with your best friend, it's everything.”
