Sarah Sanford Rauch: “Learn to shoot. It will level the playing field.”
story by mary ellen thompson photography by john wollwerth
If you launched Martha Stewart’s Living, with her entrepreneurship,
creativity and considerable entertaining skills, smack dab into the
middle of the iconic Garden & Gun Magazine style then you would be
introducing yourself to Sarah Sanford Rauch.
Well, okay, just sort of. Garden & Gun Magazine has never covered
an Iditarod Sled Dog Race, or featured safari cooking in South Africa,
and Martha probably never had a belt made out of a copperhead snake,
but you get the idea. Or you will.
Congenial, articulate and creative, Sarah is as equally at home
entertaining in linen and pearls as she is in the field wearing a camo
t-shirt and cap, or hosting a television show anywhere in the world.
Sarah explains, “As an outdoors person, you hunt, you shoot, you
bring home food, you cook. You dress a certain way, you train your dog
a certain way, you decorate a certain way. I’m telling you women can
do these things; she doesn’t go to the grocery store dressed in camo,
she can still be feminine. I don’t have to eat nails for breakfast!
This life is very empowering, and anyone can live at least a little of
it. I want to give to other women what my father gave to me.”
Having grown up on Coosaw Plantation in Beaufort, as a child
Sarah learned to ride a horse, herd cattle, shoot, hunt and fish.
Today, she is endeavoring to teach women that the outdoor lifestyle is
accessible. This can start with the simple: go to the farmers markets
and buy fresh food, connect with the people who grew it; take it home
and preserve those things that are seasonal so you can enjoy them all
year long. Take it a little further: get a fishing rod or cast net and
catch yourself some fish or shrimp and have them for dinner. Take it
further still: get a guide and go hunting, learn how to shoot; learn
to prepare, and eat, what you kill. Wear the proper clothing, whether
you buy it from Barbour or Goodwill.
Her story: “Dad, (Marshall Sanford), was a heart surgeon but also
he was a frustrated farmer. My three brothers, Bill, Mark and John,
and I, along with the two boys who belonged to the farm manager, were
all the children on the plantation. Dad expected me to do everything
the boys did – I drove tractors, baled hay. Dad did nothing small so
we had a huge garden that could have fed Cleveland. We canned, dried
and preserved the foods that we grew. Now, I see how important those
things are and I love doing them with my children. (By the way, I’ve
perfected the recipe for strawberry jam!) My dad showed me there is
nothing like sitting in a deer stand when it is cold outside, shoulder
to shoulder with your child and watching the sun rise or set.” Eleven
year old son, Sandy, agrees, “What I like most about hunting is being
with Mom, surrounded by all the nature; it’s exciting to shoot but the
nature is what is beautiful and the best part.”
“Mom, (Peggy), was a concert pianist; she studied at Juilliard,
and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. It seemed unlikely that she
would find herself on a working farm in the middle of nowhere.” When
asked if she had liked to go fishing and shooting with the family,
Peggy elegantly shrugged and replied, as she studied her hands, “Oh, I
would go out with them sometimes, but really, I loved to play the
piano.” Sarah clarifies, “Mom would often go sit with us in the field
even though she wasn’t a shooter, but she did see hunting as great way
for the family to be all together.”
Sarah recalls, “My family was like the Junior Olympics, even a
trip to the mailbox was a race. One evening when I was about fifteen,
I was particularly exasperated and I sat down, teary eyed, with my dad
and said ‘I just can’t win against the boys.’ He smiled knowingly and
told me, ‘Learn to shoot, it will level the playing field. If you
shoot well, no guy can hit a target any harder or faster than you
can.’ Those words defined my career from then on; every job I had
involved hunting, fishing or being in the outdoors.”
Not so very long after that, when Sarah was a sophomore in
college, her beloved father died after a five year battle with ALS.
Sarah’s skills came into play as the family turned the plantation into
a quail hunting lodge in order to keep the land. She was one of the
hunting guides who taught guests how to shoot and hunt, and to this
day is still a shooting instructor.
“When I was a child, I helped round up the 200 head of cattle we
had on the plantation. I belonged to a pony club which was
instrumental in teaching me how to care for a horse, and I did a bit
of the show circuit but it didn’t suit me. I loved to ride bareback
through the marsh, I was just a cowgirl.”
“The day I graduated from Furman University, I took off to the
Australian outback. I went as an au pair but they had horses and
cattle and I wanted to be with the horses so I wound up riding with
the cattle crew. After that, I went to New Zealand to work on a horse
farm; from there I headed to Nairobi, Kenya where I made my way to
South Africa and worked for a safari outfitter as a cook.”
After awhile in the wilds of Africa, Sarah came back to the
states. Because of her background in Africa, and with shooting, she
was hired by Frontiers International guiding clients to exotic
destinations worldwide for fly fishing and wing shooting. What next?
World traveler, outdoorsy adventure girl, fearless, edgy, talented,
and more than easy on the eyes, Sarah decided on a change of careers
and proceeded to get her master’s degree in international management.
In 1995, Sarah moved to Manhattan and went to work for the
Outdoor Life Network (OLN). “I had no television experience at all but
the executive who hired me said, ‘We can teach you television but we
can’t teach you what you already know, the outdoors.’” Hosting Pull!
America’s Great Gun Clubs was a completely new frontier for Sarah –
and for outdoor television. “It was the first show about sporting
clays and I was the first woman to host a show like that. During my
years at OLN, I really came to understand the lifestyle and it again
validated what my dad had taught me. I saw the value in all the things
I had taken for granted growing up.”
In 1999, Sarah was hired away by ESPN2 to be the first female
correspondent for their outdoor block. During the course of those
shows she covered what she knew so well at shooting, fly fishing and
sporting dog events, but also the gamut from bull riding to the Triple
Crown. She was hosting, traveling and living the outdoor life, mostly
in other cities. During that time, Sarah says, “I didn’t really
appreciate what I was doing until friends made comments like: ‘You did
what? You ate that? You went there?’ So I started hosting things, like
venison dinners, in New York City. We all lived on a shoestring in
those days, so the resourcefulness of living on a farm came into play.
I decorated my dinner table with antlers and feathers, because I had
them.
“I left ESPN2 and started my own production company. Our team won
a Cine Golden Eagle award for a film we made for PBS, Sled Dogs: An
Alaskan Epic.” Never one to shy away from a challenge, Sarah ran teams
in two 300 mile sled dog races to prepare for the show. “It was a very
difficult film to make, the conditions were harsh.”
The next film she worked on was in New Zealand in 2001: Discovery
Channel Adventure Race – A Southern Traverse. Sarah’s job was to cover
the high altitude and more extreme terrain in the Southern Alps near
Mt. Cook. Helicoptered from peak to peak and camping overnight during
the race, Sarah worked in this job because of her experience in
freezing conditions, and climbing mountains such as Rainier and
Kilimanjaro.
Finally she got tired of being cold, in extreme places, and the
Lowcountry beckoned. Sarah decided it was time to come home, so she
did. She met and married the Mayor, Bill Rauch, had two sons, Sandy
and Nick, and feels she has come full circle. They are raising their
boys the way she was raised, to be outdoors as much as possible, to
stay close to nature, to understand what it is like to work on a farm
and raise, hunt or catch food for the table. “My boys have to know
that the meat we eat once had eyes with eyelashes. It’s important. We
eat everything we shoot.” The boys are picking up the traditions.
Sandy is now a hunter and Nick is still the bird boy at his mom’s
side, they are learning about etiquette and safety in the field the
way Sarah was taught by her father.
Sarah’s first and foremost way of sharing her vast and
comprehensive information is her blog: alligatorhall.com. You can find
recipes such as the strawberry jam, tips for entertaining, information
ranging from how to dress in the field to what to do if a poisonous
snake bites your dog. (In Sarah’s case, she wears a copperhead skin
belt.) It’s not only wonderful and informative reading, but also a
window opening onto the outdoor lifestyle that shows women they can
embrace that way of living with grace, and how enriching it is for
families and relationships. It’s also the greatest tribute Sarah could
pay to a father who left her life way too soon.
