She spent two years working as a flight attendant before Covid grounded her career. Today, Idaho mother Courtny has amassed 95,000 TikTok followers and 2.8 million likes documenting her family’s bear hunting adventures — with her most popular video watched 8.7 million times.
When stay-at-home mum Courtny hit record on her family’s bear hunting trips, she had no grand plan. Filming from her home in Boise, Idaho, she was simply capturing “something cool and different” in her spare moments. Millions of views later, the former flight attendant — who posts as @courtnyk_ — has become an unlikely viral star, praised by some, criticised by others, and followed closely by a rapidly growing audience of young women she never expected to reach. In an exclusive interview with Truth Times, she spoke about her journey from the departure gate to the deep woods.
Lake summers and a soccer scholarship
Courtny grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with her sister, half-sister and parents, with little extended family beyond a set of grandparents who lived nearby. “We spent summers on the lake and I would say those are my most fond memories of my childhood,” she told Truth Times.
A performer as a young girl who loved singing, dancing and school plays, she later turned her focus to sport, playing soccer for 17 years and running track in high school. A soccer scholarship took her away from her hometown for college — but the love affair with the game didn’t last. “I fell out of love with the sport, so I decided to quit and move on with my life,” she says. She transferred to Boise State University, and a decade on, Boise is still home.
Finding her wings
The move into aviation came at a crossroads. Courtny had moved to Boise with her high school sweetheart of nearly five years, but increasingly felt she was in a dead-end relationship. “No part of me wanted to take the next step with this person and get married. I was feeling stuck and suffocated,” she admits. After months of deliberation, she ended it — and found herself, at 21, working out who she was for the first time in her adult life.
Her father had always travelled for work, and while job hunting online, “a random lightbulb went off in my head to look for jobs as a flight attendant”. As luck would have it, SkyWest Airlines was holding an open interview in Boise just two weeks later. She went, interviewed, and around two months on had the job.
She describes the reality of regional flying with striking honesty: “The most miserable, fun, exciting and frustrating time of my life.” New flight attendants, she says, are not treated kindly by the airlines, with long hours and low pay. But the trade-off was freedom. “It was the perfect job for a single, 21 year old with nothing keeping them at home. Flying gave me the wings — no pun intended — to find myself through new challenges and have the most fun while doing it.”
One night stands out above the rest: her first overnight in Nashville, about a month into flying, when a friend from training happened to be in the city on a separate trip. “Walking up on Broadway and seeing all the bars, music and people was like seeing a new version of Disneyland as an adult,” she recalls. “The energy was electric and contagious. We danced and partied all night. From that moment, I knew I was in for a fun ride!”
When Covid grounded the dream
The ride lasted two years. After twelve months in the job, the pandemic shut down the world — and stripped away everything she loved about flying. “The days were long, the passengers were angry, and the nights were a prison,” she says. Planes full of frightened or furious passengers gave way to solitary evenings in hotel rooms in cities that had effectively closed. “Rinse and repeat that process for four days in a row.”
The camaraderie and exploration that once made the long days worthwhile were gone, resentment set in, and she left the industry. By then she was dating her now-husband Michael, a pilot. As their relationship moved from dating to marriage to parenthood, staying home with their son made sense given his schedule and their income — and she embraced it wholeheartedly. “Being a stay at home mom is by far the most fulfilling position I have ever had.”
Falling for the outdoors — and a bull elk
Courtny loved the outdoors as a child — four-wheeling, horseback riding, fishing — but sport crowded those pastimes out, and as an adult she rarely ventured outside. That changed when she met Michael, an avid outdoorsman since the age of 12 who hunted archery elk every September.
In their second elk season together, he invited her along to “be his shadow”. Watching him in his element proved persuasive. “Once I saw my first bull elk bugle, I knew I had to at least give it a try,” she says. She spent the following year learning, preparing and practising in pursuit of her first elk. “The man I love has been the one to truly make the outdoors such an important part of my life. Now we get to share it together and with our son, and I can’t believe how lucky I am for that.”
Bear hunting followed in 2023, and the couple started together. The spark came a year earlier, when Michael — elk hunting with a black bear tag in his pocket — took an unexpected opportunity and harvested his first black bear. “We tried the meat and we knew this was something we wanted more of. It was the best wild game meat we had ever tasted. So the next spring we set out to hunt them.”
©Courtny/Truth Times
Going viral
What started as a few videos documenting family hunting trips quickly grew into something far bigger. Her bear hunting playlist now runs to 41 videos, her most-watched clip has racked up 8.7 million views, and her account has drawn 2.8 million likes — along with both passionate supporters and vocal critics.
Why start posting it all on TikTok? Courtny is refreshingly unpretentious about it. “I honestly don’t have a super defined answer for that other than I just thought it was something cool and different and I decided to hit record!” Already making videos in her downtime as a stay-at-home mother, she saw the family’s bear hunting journey as something unique to share.
She never expected it to take off. “I thought maybe after the first video went viral that I might get a little bit of traction but then it would die off as people lost interest and the controversy became less interesting. But quite the opposite happened!”
The reaction has been polarised — and she has developed a thick skin. “I take every criticism with a grain of salt,” she told Truth Times. “The hate messages truly mean nothing to me at the end of the day. I know who I am and I know I am a good woman, so some random person sending me hate when they did not take the time to learn about what I do and how I do it, is neither here nor there.”
What surprises her more is the warmth. Over 95 per cent of her viewers, she says, are women in her age range. “So many women tell me they’re now thinking of getting into hunting, they’re getting their hunting license, they love that I show a woman’s perspective on hunting and conservation, they are now paying attention to where their food comes from. I love even more the messages I have read from people saying that I have completely changed their view on hunting and hunters. It drives me to keep making content.”
©Courtny/Truth Times
‘Hunters have to care’
Asked about the biggest misconception surrounding her lifestyle, Courtny doesn’t hesitate: the idea that hunters simply “take, take, take” and care nothing for animals or ecosystems. “Hunters are typically the ones that care the deepest about conservation laws, wildlife and the animals that they are hunting,” she argues. “When you put in that much time and energy and physical effort into something, you HAVE to care about it. You HAVE to love it. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t care.”
Fame, such as it is, hasn’t transformed her daily life — the whole whirlwind has unfolded over just two and a half months. There have been perks, including a brand deal with boot maker Crispi and a fresh pair of hiking boots, and she gets recognised around town, “which is so fun”. But the family routine is unchanged, and that is precisely why she finds the balance easy. “Hunting and spending time outside is something I would be doing with my family regardless of creating content or not. We go out and do our thing, I record bits and pieces of our adventures to share with my community and that’s that.”
She films her non-outdoors content mostly while her son sleeps, keeping her “mom-hat on at all times while he’s awake and aware” — and admits the comment section can be a slippery slope. Her solution is an app blocker that locks her out of TikTok for a few hours each day “to make sure I stay grounded and stay present with my son and husband”.
Advice for intimidated beginners
Her message to women curious about hunting but nervous to start is simple: find a mentor, whether in person or online. “Watch, listen and learn. Build a foundation for what you want to get into so you have an understanding before you dive in head first. Once you have that foundation, go apply it! Go all in, 100 per cent.”
And expect setbacks. “Do not be afraid to fail, especially in hunting. Most of the hunting experience is failure. I’m still learning every single time I step foot in the forest — no matter if it’s about animal behavior, new hunting tactics or simply what a plant is called! Don’t doubt yourself, you are far more capable than you realize.”
A dream guest spot — and ‘the sexiest mom car’
Looking ahead, Courtny has one “lofty goal” above all: connecting with Steve Rinella and his show MeatEater. A fan for many years, she discovered the programme while she was a vegetarian between 2017 and 2019 — and credits it with opening her mind to hunting in the first place. “I would be over the moon to have the opportunity to be a part of it in some way, shape or form.”
Beyond that, she wants to keep growing her platform and stay open to whatever opportunities arrive — including one delightfully specific ambition. “I’d love to make enough money through content creation that I can afford to buy myself, without my husband’s help, the new Toyota Sequoia. I know that may seem silly but it’s the sexiest mom car I could dream of!”
Personally, the goals are simpler: staying happy and healthy, travelling more with her son as he grows, and, in the next decade or so, building a dream home with Michael.
‘The queen of failed endeavors’
If there’s one thing she wishes people understood about her winding road from cabin crew to viral stardom, it’s that success came late and after plenty of misses. “I am the queen of failed endeavors!” she laughs. Years of jobs, hobbies and side hustles never stuck, and she admits she “always sort of felt like a failure in the work and school department”.
For Courtny, success was never about overnight fame.
“I was never afraid to try something new,” she says. “I think that type of spirit is what led me to where I am today. No matter the failed endeavor, I always believed I would figure it out in the end and everything would work out for me. I’d say I am pretty dang happy with how my life turned out so far. The power of an optimistic outlook goes a long way in my experience.”
This article and the accompanying images are a Truth Times exclusive. Any outlet or individual wishing to republish or reference this interview or its images must credit Truth Times and provide a backlink to the original article.
