Kristie Swenstad was napping in the back of plywood deer blind on a cold fall morning when her father nudged her awake and handed her a shotgun.

She was 12.

“I was excited because I was doing what my dad did,” she said. “I was going to help fill the freezer.”

Ms. Swenstad is 36 now. A former high school basketball star and homecoming queen, she owns a tailor shop in Alexandria, a little lake town 130 miles northwest of Minneapolis. And she wants more people to understand the beauty and challenge of hunting for your supper.

That’s why on a frosty- October morning, I was crouched next to her inside a canvas blind designed to look vaguely like a hay bale. She had a shotgun in her hand and turkey on her mind.

The lean birds she was hunting are about as much like big-breasted Thanksgiving turkeys as a slice of aged Cheddar is like a Kraft single. As a holiday centerpiece, their lean carcasses would disappoint most Americans.