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By Dave Workman, Standing only 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing maybe 110 pounds wet, 43-year-old Bitsy Kelley has found her niche, and she is expanding her horizons outside the confines of Oregon, where she has become a credible outdoors personality to outdoorsmen and women in the Beaver State.
"When I became an adult," she told Women & Guns, "they tried to get me to change my name to Elizabeth, but are you kidding? It's the greatest marketing thing. They always remember 'Bitsy, that girl from Hawaii.' " It's on par with the "Little Sure Shot" nickname given Annie Oakley in a bygone era, and in Bitsy's case, there's been quite a bit of gunsmoke and lead in her past to justify an outdoors handle as catchy as "Bitsy." Bitsy comes from a family of hotel builders and operators. Her grandparents, Roy and Estelle Kelley, moved to Hawaii in the 1920s and her grandfather was an architect. He started building hotels there and the family operated them. Bitsy's father is a medical doctor, but the family naturally got involved in the hotel business, and now Bitsy is what she calls "a G3," meaning she is the third generation in the chain. The family now operates 50 properties all over the Pacific, including sites in Guam, Fiji and Australia, as well as Hawaii. The company, Outrigger Enterprises, also deals in real estate, and Bitsy has had key roles in the operation, and was involved in the development of Hawaii Sportsmen's Adventures, a full service sporting and outdoor activities service, according to her biography. So, how did she wind up in Oregon doing an outdoors radio broadcast that is now expanding beyond that state's borders? Well, let's backtrack a bit. Growing up in Hawaii taught Bitsy the value of land, which is very expensive. She is part of a hunting family, and the outdoors experiences were family affairs. Her mother was a pilot, and she flew the family to various islands for their outdoor adventures. In Hawaii, hunting is legal year around, because there are no natural predators to keep wildlife populations in check. It didn't seem to occur to Bitsy that hunting was not a traditional feminine pursuit. "I didn't realize until I was older that this is not what girls do," she chuckled. When she moved to the mainland, settling in Oregon in 2002, she began looking around for property on which she could "have my own type of hunting." She found that spot in the Wallowa Mountains in the northeast corner of Oregon. Her daughters enjoy the outdoors, and the younger one, 14-year-old Pualani, "loves hunting." The older daughter, 24-year-old Nani, "is more of a water person," but she also knows how to pull a trigger.
"I told my fiancé about this," she recalled, "and he knew a guy at the radio station and I called him up. We had this chat and I met him for lunch. We talked about how nobody does (a local program) and he said, 'Why don't you do one'? And I said 'Sure.' " "The next thing I know," Bitsy said, "I'm in front of a microphone." She had what she calls "a vertical learning curve." "I didn't know anything about salmon, coming from Hawaii," she said. "I had to call people for interviews." When her interview subjects heard a female voice asking about hunting and fishing, initially they thought she was after negative stories, but they started "coming around." "After a number of interviews, the way I did the show, I really profiled what they were doing," she said. "Once they found out I was here to make them look good, and help communicate to the public, they thought it was great." The show airs on Saturday mornings from 10 to 11 a.m., a time of day when people are sitting in boats on the Columbia River, or working on their cars in the garage, or taking their kids to soccer. The program was originally called the Oregon Sportsman, but earlier this year, that changed to Bitsy Kelley Outdoors, which allows her to syndicate the show outside of Oregon. Her website, www.bitsykelley.com, is loaded with information, and she uses it as a vehicle to encourage people to enjoy the outdoors. "I slant things toward hunting and fishing because I do a lot of hunting and fishing," Bitsy explained. "I hope it's something the entire family would choose to do." "People don't understand getting outside," she continued. "They look at hunting and firearms and it is just negative. They don't understand the positive side. Getting outside and enjoying nature, learning the skills of being outdoors; get kids outdoors and learn confidence, have fun in the outdoors. I like to reach the family audience that would like to learn how to do that sometime." Away from the microphone, Bitsy spends time at her 2,200-acre ranch. "My goal was to shoot my rifle and not bother anyone,"
she said. "I wanted to be close to a national forest of
some kind." And shoot she does, along with just about everyone else who comes for a visit. Bitsy has established a new tradition on her spread, a genuine Easter egg hunt.
"The annual Easter egg hunt is just hilarious," Bitsy observed. It's a terrific method for getting youngsters involved in shooting, she said. It also gets adults involved, and it can be a lot more fun than "sitting with dad in a duck blind," she noted. Bitsy has hunted big game and birds all over the map. Her favorite rifle is a Ruger chambered in .308 Win., and she has hunted with it down in Australia and here at home. For bigger game, she will use a .300 Win. Magnum. For shooting birds, either clay or the real thing, she has "a couple of great little shotguns," including a Remington Model 1100 in 20-gauge that belonged to her father, and a Beretta Silver Pigeon in 20-gauge that she had custom fitted to her small frame. "I've been hunting and shooting with adult men's firearms my entire life," Bitsy said. "To actually have this gun fitted to me; I'm so used to having to pull the gun out in front of me and pull it back. Boy, it makes a difference in your shooting. Women should have guns custom fit for them. It's worth it." What's on Bitsy's horizon? "I'd like to do television," she acknowledged. But it would be television with a difference, not just another hunting and fishing program that does not entice people outdoors. "My philosophy is to get people outdoors," Bitsy said. "They sit in front of the TV or a computer. They are not getting outdoors as much as they should. . . . I would love it if Disney had an outdoor show for kids, the 'how-to' stuff. "A lot of men who meet me say they used to hunt with their dad, but they don't own a gun (now) and don't know how to get involved," she added. "My challenge is to create that bridge, get them to step outside and start engaging in the outdoors and participate. "We are not bringing the skills and education to the next generation," Bitsy said. "They are so focused on technology. They are not picking up the lessons. We are losing our heritage with that." Bitsy is on a mission to change that. With her energetic approach, there is little doubt she will spread the message and get more people off the couch and outside, to the lakes, streams, fields, forests and gun ranges. |
Called
Bitsy since childhood-her real name is Elizabeth, but one of
her older sisters struggled with that and when she tried to call
her sibling by name, it came out "Little Bits" and
the handle sort of stuck. Kelley has discovered that the name,
combined with her small stature and perky personality, works
to her benefit.
Bitsy
had done some commercials for the hotels, and had been involved
in some video production, but she had no formal broadcast training
or experience. One day while jogging down along the Willamette
River, she was listening to a radio program on hunting elsewhere
around the country, and it occurred to her that she wanted to
know about hunting opportunities locally.
"We
put out Easter eggs at 50 and 100 yards and shoot them,"
she said. "We go through hundreds of eggs, and we put in
a few raw eggs just for the fun of it. If you want to encourage
people to teach kids to shoot, this is great.
