“Southern Girls” is More than Reality TV. It’s Bringing Families Together.
Sometimes interviews bomb. You get the occasional person or group who speak in one word answers and it’s like pulling teeth to get them to talk. No. That wasn’t the case with the “Southern Girls Got Game” crew. They may not have needed anybody to facilitate the interview, and that’s not a bad thing. From the trips they take, the things they get to do, the people they meet, and everything else, they’re excited about what they’re doing, and they want to tell people about it. They want to make sure you’re watching, too.
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Who do you want to watch it?
ASHLEY: I want everyone to watch it. I want anyone and everyone to watch it.
DANIELLE: Anything that you can watch and understand what’s happening.
KENNY: And that is a big thing. There has been a lot of ladies and a lot of men have been attracted to it.
TRINA: On our Facebook, the biggest percentage they have on their Facebook page are women.
KENNY: They have almost 3500 people.
DANIELLE: We have some people that think, just because we are women that men are only going to watch it but women…what she just said, we do have more women on our Facebook and that said whenever it comes out, they’re definitely going to watch it. But we also do have men that have their wives watch it and they watch it…
TRINA: Actually, just with them being out, you wouldn’t believe how many women and children have starting hunting because of them.
DANIELLE: Yeah, they say we inspire them.
ASHLEY: A lot of men are using Southern Girls Got Game as a tool to make a family activity more appealing.
KENNY: And it has. There are so many people who have come up…in Alabama, we had people asking…this couple come up and said, “Hey, my 2 young boys would love to hunt with y’all.” And they were like 8 and 10 years old so I gave them all our information and they gave us theirs and we told them when we come down to Alabama and make a show, that’s one thing we’ve reached out for, is to bring other kids into it because the sport is diminishing, no matter what people think. Our government and just today’s society is taking it out. It’s diminishing.
Why do you think that attitude is changing?
TRINA: Because they want to sit on the couch and play video games.
KENNY: They’d rather do that than be out there in woods. I think these two are showing kids there are more to being outside, just sitting under a tree…
DANIELLE: We want to get out in the outdoors rather than home. Yeah, we want them to be more outdoors than home, rather than being home like playing video games like … or either going out on the road and getting drugs. A lot of people are doing drugs.
ASHLEY: Yeah, it’s like they can use it as tool in their life to stay on track. That’s one thing I take pride in, that I’ve never smoked a cigarette, I’ve never taken a single drug. I mean, I’ve never done anything that could potentially harm my body as far as narcotics go, or anything like that. And I think one thing she’s trying to get a point out, is it’ll help you stay on that track to a healthier lifestyle because it gives you that pastime, and like we mentioned in the beginning, it’s a discovery. You go out there and it’s like an endless adventure. You never know what you’re going to see and you really learn to love the outdoors. You’ll find a lot of people who’ll say, “Well, how can you love animals? You kill them.” We have the most love for animals. I don’t look it as an animal is something down on the ground. I have respect for each animal. It doesn’t go in vain. It’s not laughed at and it’s taken very seriously. Animals ultimately were put here for people to eat and that’s their reason for being here. And not only for the people. You know, you have population control and all these other things, dangerous animals that ultimately could hurt the human race. So I think…
What’s your favorite to eat?
ASHLEY: My favorite to eat? Alligator.
DANIELLE: I love Alligator. I like alligator tail but my favorite to eat is deer or turkey.
KENNY: There’s one thing I want to say. So many of my friends have come back and wrote comments to me and said stuff to me I never thought I’d ever hear, as a guy, but it has been unbelievable, me going places like Alaska and being able to experience stuff with them I never did and I would…I would have the chance or her mother would have the chance to experience the outdoors like we have with them, it’s unbelievable. I mean, going to a ballgame and sit there with your kid is great, but when you go out there and you’re out there and there’s nothing out there but you and them, and you’re experiencing it. They’ve got a picture of us in a river in the middle of Alaska, out in the middle of nowhere, it’s unbelievable. The sights we’ve seen. We were driving around and all of a sudden, we seen this summit, this big huge mountain. Everything around it was green and we stopped and we were just all in awe and, to be able to do that with these two, especially with my daughter is just phenomenal. It lets you know God is truly and unbelievable God. I mean, it was unbelievable, some of the things we’ve seen and experienced. I wish a lot of parents could do that with them. And when you’re playing on a video game or on an iPhone or texting constantly and all that.
TRINA: They’re disconnected from their family.
KENNY: They are and hunting and fishing brings you back. You know, you go out there and sit in a boat with your family for 8 hours. I mean, Katrina, has got into doing it with us and before, she wouldn’t even think of it, so it…I truly think it is…I love sports as much as anybody but going out into the woods with these two has showed me there is more to life than just that.
The show aside, it has helped build y’all stronger as a family.
ASHLEY: Oh, yeah, like I said, we discovered ourselves and we’ve grown as a family. I literally look at these people right here as my family. Show or no show, at the end of the day, we’ll always have each other.
What’s your family back in Florida think about what’s going on?
ASHLEY: My family’s all here.
Oh, everybody moved up from Miami?
ASHLEY: Everybody but my brother. Yeah, they…at first, they were like “That’s surreal.” And I was like “No, it’s so real, it’s going through. It’s working and we’re having a show.” And now that they’ve seen how much it has progressed, they’re just in awe, too.
KENNY: Her dad’s not a hunter, never been a hunter but I heard her tell her daddy she wanted him to go back next time we go to Alaska and go kill bear and he said “OK.”
ASHLEY: My dad, and he’s going deer hunting with me this year, too, he said he’s let me take him…and my dad’s never hunted
DANIELLE: I’m pretty sure, from all of what mostly Alaska has gotten us to…not like all of our family, yes, but us two, so close, it’s like crazy. I’m not going to get into details how we got that close but we got very close.
ASHLEY: When you’re the only two girls out there, you know what I mean, and you have to really depend on each other and it gets to a point where it gets emotionally challenging, you’re just like…you need someone to talk to and we’re always there for each other.
KENNY: Put it this way, we were taken in a boat about 45 minutes to an hour trip from the landing and got docked on an island to hunt bears by ourselves.
ASHLEY: When you think about it, if something should happen, who do we have to depend on? If a bear gets on top of me, I have to know who to depend on because I’m not going to get it off. These 2 people are my lifeline, you know what I mean? So you really have to trust and really love the people that you’re going…when you go on…an expedition was what it was. When you go on these, to these places, if something were to happen to us, our team and Kenny, if something happened to Kenny and he couldn’t get away, who would he have to depend on? Us.
DANIELLE: I bet you if anything happens…
KENNY: Everybody is there to back each other up.
ASHLEY: There has to be that trust factor there.
TRINA: I want to add that, on their show, they do have other people that they’re asking questions to so the, in the…they’re really hard about feeling like having to ask a man how to do this, they’ll get a little embarrassed or something so the girls, they do ask questions. It informs other people…
DANIELLE: We don’t care if we embarrass ourselves. Do you not know who we are? Hello.
KENNY: They learned how to go out in crowds in Alaska. They learned how to do shrimp baskets. They were taught from ground zero, how you mark ‘em, how you tag ‘em, how you have to cut holes in them. They sewed their own crab baskets. They sewed their own shrimp baskets. We did all that. People will see that they did it and that show that they were learning how to do it.
DANIELLE: After every show, because we’re always going to have in the show that we’re learning. I mean, you’re always learning something when you go out in the woods. It just happens like that.
TRINA: They don’t go out and say “I’m a pro, watch me do it.”
DANIELLE: Yeah, we don’t want to do that because we’re not. We’re 12 and 23, we have a lot to learn because we’re literally not old enough to know everything. We’re never going to know everything. We’re always going to be learning. I know 80 year old people who try to go hunting who say they know everything but they don’t. But after every show that we have, we’re going to put on there, we’re going to have a tip, we’re going to have where we have people to send it like tips from our show. To have like, all different kinds of…we’re going to have trivia games on there, too. It’s kind of hard…to like get into it but…
TRINA: One of the things they had talked about doing, too, which is going to be kind of cute, it might not make this season, but the next season doing a kid’s tip.
DANIELLE: Yeah, have safety tips.
TRINA: Kids are so cute. You put them on camera, they’re so funny and they all want to give you a hunting tip. And they’re fun when they give their hunting tips. No telling what comes out of their mouth.
KENNY: One of my friends died in a hunting accident last year. He fell out of a stand without a safety vest, safety harness. And we met a young lady at a show in Columbia that her father just recently died and she wanted nothing to do with the woods or nothing. She bought one of the shirts and she spent a whole day over at our booth and she’s talking about going hunting with them again because they love it but she’s going to get on there again and we’re going to do a show with this young lady about the safety of wearing your harnesses and what it has meant to her family to lose her daddy. Because, her daddy, when he fell, he suffered very badly because he didn’t die from the fall, he ended up dying of a massive heart attack trying to crawl out. So that’s one thing they’re going to do. There may be a whole show that is not got any hunting at all. It’s just being out here with the kids showing safety things about why you need to have gun safety and harness safety and everything else. It’s not going to just killing every week. There’s a lot of reality.
For Part 1, click HERE. For Part 2, click HERE.
PHOTO CREDIT: Southern Girls Got Game on Facebook
