Adult-Onset Hunting™ (AOH) was always meant as a joke.

In 2011, when I was writing my thesis—and, insanely, finishing my book at the same time—I kept stumbling over my own awkward phrase, “people who started hunting as adults.”

Something simpler was needed.

Cath encouraged me to make it playful. Out of our brainstorming came AOH, that first blog post, and the title of my thesis. (To their credit, my committee members at UMass-Amherst played along.)

The joke, like the syndrome itself, turned out to be contagious.

Over the past few years, the phrase has popped up in news reports from Montana to South Carolina to Minnesota and Wisconsin. At least once, it crossed the border, appearing in Outdoor Canada. In recent months, it appeared in a job description, a Becoming an Outdoors-Woman catalog, a symposium abstract for the next Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference, and a new Google Hangout video series offered by MissouriNet and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Shaking my head, I decided I had to have the T-shirt made—”Adult-Onset Hunting: It’s Never Too Late to Go Wild.”

Like early humans, of course, many of us aren’t just hunters. We’re gatherers, too. So I had a foraging shirt made as well.

If you’re a new hunter of deer, ducks, or mushrooms—or know someone who is—maybe there’s a holiday gift idea here. If you’re a lifelong hunter-gatherer, wear one and expect questions from the hunting-curious. (If you want to order one, just click here to send me a note.)

I hope you get a chuckle out of these.

It is still a joke, after all.