Yes. These Southern Girls Have Game.
We sat down at IHOP and waited for them to show up. When they did, they came ready to play. When you put 23 year old Ashley Jay and 12 year old (Yes. You read that correctly. She’s 12.) Danielle Worthen together, you get two uncontrollable balls of energy. You get friends. You get sisters by choice. You also get the stars of the soon-to-air “Southern Girls Got Game” (coming to Fox SportsSouth in 2013).
They took time out from an already hectic shooting schedule (pun intended) to sit down with CRESCENT and talk about their new television adventure. If their personalities are any indication, you’ve never seen an outdoor show like this…and may never see again.
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Right off the bat, this is going to be a different kind of show. How would you describe it? It’s not your regular outdoor show.
DANIELLE: No, it’s not.
ASHLEY: Basically, Danielle and I, we have a love for the outdoors, but being as young as we are, we want to experience all of it. We don’t want to limit ourselves so with that comes a lot of having to take in knowledge. So basically, especially on our first season, we’re doing a lot learning here. We have our strong points in the outdoor industry and we have our points that we are eager to gather more information on. Practice, learn, discover, however you would like to put it. But I feel that primarily this is us discovering the outdoors. Not necessarily us going out there and hunting and just doing the normal, we’re going out there and we’re on a discovery here. To learn everything about what it has to offer. And within that, it’s like we’ve discovered ourselves. Like who we are and what we love to do. Just about ourselves and the true emotion of it. And that reality is in our show and that’s what we love about it so much.
You’re 12 and 23, respectively. There’s a pretty sizable age difference.
ASHLEY: Oh, yeah.
How did you get together and decide to do this?
DANIELLE: To be honest, right here at this table.
ASHLEY: The owner of our archery range, Russell Cooper, had the idea. He came to the conclusion “Hey, I think if you’re going to do this, these are the two girls that need to do it. I know both of them and judging on their personalities, they’re going to click.” You have to have a match. You can’t just say “You and you” because you like to hunt and you like to hunt, have a show. We need the real emotion tied into this, and Danielle and I…there might be an age difference, but, at the end of the day, we’re people…we share thoughts and feelings and emotions and we can still relate to each other in some way because, at some point or another, I was 12. So I can relate to her and she’s going through a lot of the things that I’ve been through in life and we are friends and we can carry on conversations like adults.
DANIELLE: She’s not a normal 23 year old and I’m not a normal 12 year old. That’s practically how you explain us.
ASHLEY: Yeah, we don’t pay attention to the age difference and we look at each other as family. I look at Kenny (Danielle’s dad) as family, Katrina’s family (Danielle’s mom), and Danielle’s my sister.
DANIELLE: I think of her family like family, too.
ASHLEY: It’s just not a friendship or a partnership or an ownership. This is a family organization that we have here.
How did the show come from the conceptual stage to reality. What got the ball rolling? When did the process start? How long did it take?
ASHLEY: 5 months.
DANIELLE: Yeah, 5 months. It didn’t take long at all. After we got our name out there on the internet, it just like boomed.
ASHLEY: We sat down together, and Kenny pretty much let Danielle and I decide what we wanted to do with the show, and he was pretty much our backbone. He was like our rock. He stood there to support it and help push us through with our decision but from the T-shirts to the show concept to 90% about everything of this show, this man has let us completely take charge and make it our own. And everyone sees that we’re putting our hearts into it, they just love it and we love it because when we film, we’re not just filming a show, we’re not sitting there going, “OK, this is the layout. This is what we need to cover today.” When we wake up on a hunt, we say, “Let’s go out there and hunt.” And we’re going to be ourselves and it’s going to be filmed and we’re just going to pretend like the camera’s not there.
DANIELLE: Look at one of our videos that we have. I don’t think we put that one on the internet yet, but it’s…we both look at each other right when we wake up because they come in there and scream and wake us up. Well, after actually we get woken up, we both look at each other and like, “Let’s go enjoy the outdoors now.” So…we enjoy being out there, not just going out there and killing stuff.
Now, Kenny, when the idea was brought to you, you eventually said, “Yeah, this is a good idea.”At what point did that happen?
KENNY: From the start because we had been looking at it for several years to do it for Danielle. We were looking for the right partner. Like they said, once we sat down and we all talked, we felt like Ashley was the one for us to go with Danielle. We put it out there and like they said, five months and it’s topped a lot of shows that’s been out there for years. People have just absolutely loved it.
Who’s doing all the shooting for you?
KENNY: Detrick Little. He’s our producer. He’s got an office in Carnesville, GA, an office in Atlanta, and an office in LA. He does a lot of other shows also but he does it, and I do a lot of filming also. But he goes on a lot of the big trips with us and does the filming. He does all the producing. We just turned it over to let O’neal Williams see it, Fox SportsSouth and he absolutely loves it. He said we had everything going the right way.
ASHLEY: Basically, if you’re out there and there’s an extra camera, you’d better pick up the camera and start filming. This is pretty much outside of…it’s a family-filmed show, as well. And Danielle might pick up a camera, Kenny pick up a camera and we just go. So that’s what we have.
What drew you into hunting?
DANIELLE: I’ve been hunting practically my whole life. I started when my uncle and my dad taught me how to turkey call. I started turkey calling in competitions and everything, so I decided that I wanted to go turkey hunting after I started turkey calling. After that I just got addicted to hunting.
TRINA: At age 4.
DANIELLE: Yeah, at age 4.
Favorite weapon?
ASHLEY: Favorite weapon. Definitely, my 12 gauge. I love it. Benelli 12 gauge. I shoot a Mathews Jewel, a bow, and that’s pretty much all I shoot. Anything that’s necessary we use a gun for. Obviously, some big game, especially later on in the show…in a few years, we’re planning a trip out to Africa. Not this season, it’ll probably be the third season, maybe even a fourth season trip. But that would definitely be a trip that we’re definitely leaving the bows at home.
DANIELLE: We would get trampled hunting if we even tried. If we even pulled the bow back, we’d get…and they’re usually shooting a farther distance than like we can shoot with our bow.
What things are people going to be to expect in the show? Where all has it taken you so far? Where is it going to be going? You just mentioned Africa.
DANIELLE: Well, what people should be looking for is…if you watch any other hunt show, all you’re watching is every episode there’s going to be killing, killing, killing, killing, that’s all, but that’s not reality, for real. You don’t go every time and go kill an animal.
ASHLEY: I think what she is trying to say is that our show…a lot of times in reality, there really is no “real” in reality. In our show, there is. We do miss, we do have challenging times, but mainly, when you look for our show, we’re here to make a nationwide outreach, we’re not here to make a regional outreach. We’re not here to make a few states, we’re here to make a nationwide outreach to the youth of America, to the women and to people who are even on the edge about hunting just to give a greater understanding because the industry…not all parts, but some parts of the industry have been so corrupted that hunting is just killing something big and putting it on the wall. You lose all the value for it. We’re here to show that hunting isn’t killing something and putting it on the wall. You do it because you love it. You do it because you value it, you appreciate it. It puts food on the table. It’s something that brings joy to you and your family. No animal goes in vain, and no animal is taken just because it is a head on the wall. Every animal is used. It’s just not a malicious sport.
DANIELLE: I’m pretty sure I’ve let more animal walk than I haven’t…because I mean, there’s no point of me just going out there and just killing one. If I’ve already killed a couple, like one maybe, at least in the season, then I’m fine, I don’t have to kill any, just any animal that walks. I’ve let more animals walk than I’ve killed. And that’s a lot.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
PHOTO CREDIT: Southern Girls Got Game on Facebook
