After all, the Beretta 391 Xtrema2 shotgun was particularly heavy on my spaghetti arms the morning after paddling four miles in a kayak. My forehead was still a little sore from where I accidentally cracked it on the top bunk bed. And it was hot outside. Very hot.

But after the gun butt recoiled into my right shoulder -- leaving a budding bruise in honor of my first shot, ever -- a different word burst from my lips: "Oh!" As in, "Oh, wow."

Which pretty much describes my entire experience last weekend at the "Becoming an Outdoors-Woman" workshop at the Eastern 4-H Environmental Education Conference Center.

"The purpose of this is really to give women a chance to learn in a relaxed atmosphere ... away from husbands and boyfriends and fathers, who maybe aren't as patient,'' said North Carolina BOW Coordinator BB Gillen. "Some of the women here may have a lot of experience in the outdoors, some may have very little."

The latter being me.

Let's be honest: I was a little skeptical when a certain male outdoors editor approached me about embracing my inner hunter-gatherer for a weekend.

I'd never sat in a double kayak, much less executed a 26-point turn. Had never handled a gun, much less powdered a dozen clay pigeon targets. And couldn't bake a whole two-pound chicken in my oven at home -- much less under a coffee can, on the ground, with only tin foil, Crisco and coals.

Who knew?

Many of the other 58 women at camp didn't, either. Which was the point.

"Camping, outdoors survival skills ... have really become a lost art, I think,'' said 55-year-old Lois Poole, who has been volunteering to teach women how to cook over hot coals and in foil-lined cardboard boxes for all 10 summers of the workshop. "When people go outside these days, they have it easy -- with big air-conditioned campers, TVs, video games. We need to make sure those skills aren't lost."

The three-day, bug-spray-mandatory seminar worked like this: For $185, campers selected four 3 1/2-hour courses in which to participate.

The most popular were digital photography, kayaking and outdoor cooking, but the two-dozen-plus other options -- which are tweaked year-to-year -- included everything from fly fishing to basic camping to birdwatching to search-and-rescue to geocaching to rifle markswomanship.

Women ages 18 to 88 from all over North Carolina participated last weekend. About a third had attended at various locations before, and many newbies said they would follow suit.

"We'll definitely be back,'' said Chapel Hill's Donna Long, 66, who attended classes with her mom, Chavela Hernandez, 88. "There's just so much more to do."

Why come in the first place?

"Fun,'' said Hernandez, who had fished, packed for the outdoors, shot a bow and arrow and used a compass before -- but wanted a refresher course, considering she is eight decades removed from her Girl Scouts days.

Meals and (air-conditioned) rooms were also included in the tuition, and although repeat campers often choose to room together, Gillen tries to group solo gals with others of similar ages or interests.

I bonded with my roomies, attorneys Paige Rouse of Goldsboro and Joanna Carey of Chapel Hill, over the need for ibuprofen and the exhaustion-induced silliness of playing "Go Fish" with fish-faced playing cards that were part of our welcome bag.

"Do you have any Walleye?"

"Go fish."

Just another memory from what one student dubbed "Big Girls Camp."

Paige and Joanna participated in a range of courses, including a wilderness survival class that taught them how to make fire, how to pack a handy survival kit and how to make a small shelter from branches and leaves.

My four choices: kayaking, introductory shotgun, outdoor cooking and orienteering.

Thank goodness for patient instructors.

The 4 1/2 hours of kayaking along Bulls Bay on Friday afternoon was worth the price of admission alone, although I was particularly happy that my paddling partner, 60-year-old Anne Parker from Oriental, recognized that lush green foliage as poison ivy before I maneuvered us into it.

Ow.

All that arm work made the seven-pound shotgun feel like a ton the first time I held it Saturday morning, but it's funny how it started to become lighter the more orange discs I broke. Twelve out of about 150? Not bad for a beginner who loaded a shell in the wrong direction once.

Wow.

Saturday afternoon, it was on to outdoor cooking, where I quickly realized I should have skipped lunch.

The menu by the end of the session included: breakfast pizza cooked in the aforementioned cardboard boxes; stuffed cabbage heated over the coals; peach cobbler simmered in a dutch oven; broccoli-rice casserole; pineapple upside-down cakes; shaggy dogs (toasted marshmallows dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut); "magic" ice cream; and those two-pound chickens, which tasted better after roasting under those coffee cans than anything that has ever come out of my oven.

Wow -- for the mass quantity.

Ow -- for my full belly.

Sunday morning, it was an orienteering finale, a session I chose because of my directionally challenged nature.

I can now read a compass and pace myself to flags in an open field -- although I'm still not sure if that will help when I almost certainly get lost in Omaha, Neb., this week. (The College World Series beckons.)

Maybe if I return to BOW camp in the future, I'll take the GPS class. Just in case.

"I've been [to BOW] three times, and I'm just disappointed I missed out on the first seven,'' said Linda Dunn, 61, of Snow Hill, who may try the rock climbing course next summer "Will you be back?"

I'll think about it once the soreness in my arms wears off. But the "Wow" is certainly worth the "Ow."

(For more information on BOW camps sponsored by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, go to www.ncwildlife.org.)