If you're an outdoorsman or woman who has been looking for love in all the wrong places, Roxinne McPhail has a Web site for you.
It's www.huntersblinddate.com, and membership is free until the end of the month as the Carlsbad-based Realtor establishes the site and her ambitious program to match lonely hearts who hunt.
ED ZIERALSKI / Union-Tribune
Carlsbad Realtor Roxinne McPhail's goal is to hook up outdoors enthusiasts through her new Web site.
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In less than a month, more than 100 men and women have visited McPhail's site, looking for that special hunter or huntress. Most of her traffic has come from an article she wrote for
Sportsman's News, the official publication of Sportsman's Warehouse.
“The one thing that struck me was the quality of the people signing up,” McPhail said.
There's one 52-year-old woman dressed in camouflage, holding a shotgun and a dead duck who writes: “I love to shoot, hunt, fish, hike and explore. Was hoping you might want company to hunt with or just go along and have fun.”
Another, rifle in her hand, stands over a dead exotic critter, looking very much the part of Diana, goddess of the wild hunt.
McPhail, 40-something and never married, said she knows there are many women like herself who “are a bit tomboyish and outdoorsy and love men who are passionate about hunting.”
“I know there are millions of women out there who are looking for a man to share the outdoors with them,” she said. “They're just like me in that they support hunting activities, aren't opposed to guns, love being outdoors and are willing to cook wild meat. I'm hoping to attract women to this site who are looking for a touch of Neanderthal in their Mr. Right.”
McPhail says she's having the time of her midlife right now getting the Web site launched and running.
“This is a lesson to everyone that it's never too late to try something new,” McPhail said. “I was in a bit of a rut in my life before I started this, but now my life has blossomed like I can't believe.”
She remained in San Diego after her mother died and now is an agent and investor in real estate, dealing more these days with banks and foreclosed homes. Her life and career established, McPhail felt she was missing one important part – a good man with whom to share the outdoors.
Last November she set out alone for a Thanksgiving break road trip to Tennessee to visit her cousin, Heetor Wald, her Webmaster and technical guru. She was on I-40 heading back to San Diego when she stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast and to let Rascal, her Australian blue heeler, out for a stretch. Two hunters, taking a break from a deer hunt, struck up a conversation with her.
“Pretty soon we're talking about how to keep the inside of a truck clean when traveling with a drooling dog,” she said. “One of them pointed to the camouflage seat covers in his truck as the solution. We talked about hunting and all kinds of things, and then I got back in my truck and drove away.”
As she drove off, McPhail realized the two hunters were exactly the kind of men she wanted to meet on the Internet dating sites she'd been visiting. She thought, “Where in the world was I going to find a 49-year-old just like that?”
McPhail said the idea for her hunters' blind-date Web site came to her like “a flash of hot pink camouflage.” She began scribbling on a notebook on her console and didn't stop until she got to San Diego.
Membership is free until the end of August, and then there will be a charge, she said.
McPhail includes her own profile on the site and is more optimistic today than ever that she'll join others on her site in finding a soul mate who hunts and loves the outdoors.
Just talking about it gets her emotional.
“I'd lost hope there for a while about finding someone,” she said. “But this has given me so much already. Everyone has been so supportive. I know now that it's not silly to think a woman in her 40s can find the right man. Each day I'm becoming more and more the kind of woman who will make a great wife.”
Ed Zieralski: (619) 293-1225; ed.zieralski@uniontrib.com
