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By Ben Hovland and The Associated Press

Gov. Tim Walz had more pheasant hunting companions than usual for this year’s opener near Sleepy Eye, Minn., on Saturday.

Flanked by a team of earpiece-wearing Secret Service agents and roughly a dozen members of the press, Walz and his four-person hunting party set out into a golden, sunlit field on private land as soon as the season officially opened at 9 a.m.

Outdoorsman Scott Rall was the first and only person to take a shot that morning — after taking aim at a rooster, the hunting party couldn’t find the downed bird.

Walz, sporting a blaze-orange DNR-branded vest, appeared to enjoy himself, despite the additional company.

At one point, two hens, which are illegal to harvest, took flight directly in front of Walz. He held his fire, and remarked “It’s a beautiful sight!”

The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has been openly confronting the question of whether some men are reluctant to vote for her because she’s a woman. Key supporters are starting to make more direct appeals to male voters, hoping to overcome sexism — and apathy — as Election Day approaches. Harris disclosed during her debate with former President Donald Trump last month that she’s a gun owner.

On Friday, the Democratic ticket announced the launch of Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz, a national organizing program to engage sportspeople, conservationists and rural voters in key states.

The Trump campaign mocked the outing, accusing Walz of “desperately attempting to make up ground with male voters.” The campaign’s statement also falsely said there were no guns in sight during the hunt, calling it “a sign of the future under a Harris-Walz administration.”

While it’s true that a 36-second video clip from MSNBC tweeted by the Trump campaign didn’t show any guns, it was recorded before Walz and his party had donned their blaze orange safety vests and hats and headed into the field after a safety briefing from a conservation officer. They held their shotguns raised to avoid endangering the energetic pointers and Labradors that tried to sniff out birds for the hunters.

While Walz had a top rating from the National Rifle Association during his 12 years in Congress, he changed his positions on gun issues after a series of school shootings. As governor, he signed legislation in 2023 expanding background checks for gun transfers and a “red flag law” allowing courts to temporarily take firearms away from people judged to be in imminent risk of harming themselves or others. His wife, Gwen, has been a champion of gun safety legislation.

“Sorry Tim, men aren’t voting for a gun grabber,” the Trump campaign tweeted from an official account.

The Minnesota Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener has been a tradition since 2011, patterned after the state’s older fishing and deer season opener celebrations. It rotates through host communities in the pheasant country of southern and western Minnesota.

Walz went hunting the morning after attending a football game in Mankato, where he was once was an assistant coach.

Key Harris supporters are starting to make more direct appeals to male voters, hoping to overcome ingrained sexism — or just plain apathy — as Election Day looms.

Former President Barack Obama said he was speaking to Black men in particular when he suggested some “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Actor Ed O’Neill implores in a new ad, “Be a man: Vote for a woman.” And Walz, is helping lead “Hombres con Harris ” — “Men with Harris” — to help energize Hispanic male voters.

“I think, in many ways, it’s other people who need to be the messenger,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. She added of appeals to men by the vice president, “I don’t think she can get up and say, ”Shame on you.”‘

“It’s sad, but I think she needs these outside validators,” Walsh said.

The clearest example is Obama who, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, stopped by a Harris campaign field office to “speak some truths,” especially for some Black male voters who aren’t enthusiastic about supporting the vice president.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said, adding: “You’re thinking about sitting out, or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

Keith Edmondson, a 63-year-old retiree from the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert who is Black and attended a Harris rally in Arizona on Thursday night, said he’s worried about whether young Black men will turn out for Harris. He said he’s trying to convince his three grandsons to vote for Harris even though their father, who is Edmondson’s son, is a supporter of the vice president’s opponent, Republican Donald Trump.

“There are more Black folks supporting Donald Trump than I thought,” he said, blaming what he called misinformation surrounding Harris’ background as a former prosecutor.

Trump has a long pattern of disparaging women. At a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, this week, Trump reacted to Harris’ appearance on ABC’s “The View,” by saying, “People are realizing she’s a dumb person. And we can’t have another dumb president.” He also criticized on his social media site “the dumb women” who host the ABC program.

Next week, Trump is set to participate in a Fox News Channel town hall focusing on issues impacting women. But he has more often prioritized doing interviews with podcasts that are popular with younger men. The former president also entered the Republican convention this summer to the sounds of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” and the proceedings were built around promoting masculine themes, including featuring personalities from the wrestling world.

The Lincoln Project, a Republican group that opposes Trump and often produces ads meant to irk him, produced an online spot voiced by O’Neill, of “Modern Family” fame, that urges men, when it comes to Harris to “let her lead,” before concluding: “Be a man, vote for a woman.”

His message was far more direct than Harris often is. Despite making history as the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, she hasn’t publicly embraced the trailblazing nature of her candidacy like Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Instead, she used this summer’s Democratic convention to lean heavily into her experience as a prosecutor and promise that the U.S. has “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

“She is speaking, in those moments, to the people that may well not be comfortable, or trusting, that a woman can lead at this highest level,” Walsh said.

In 2020, women made up a bigger share of the electorate than men. According to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of that cycle’s voters, 53 percent of voters were women and 47 percent were men. And in that election, men were more likely to support Trump, while women voters were more likely to support Biden.

Polling suggests that electing a woman president isn’t a top priority for men or women, but men in particular don’t see it as important.

A Pew Research Center poll released last year asked Americans how important it is that a woman be elected president in their lifetime and found that only 18 percent of U.S. adults said this is extremely or very important to them. Some 64 percent said it is not too important or not at all so, or that the president’s gender doesn’t matter.

The same poll showed that 73 percent of men and 57 percent of women said the issue was not too important, not at all important or that the president’s gender doesn’t matter.

Among some key demographics, Harris’ support from men doesn’t keep up with levels among women. A majority of Hispanic women have a positive opinion of Harris and a negative view of Trump, but Hispanic men are more divided on both candidates, according to a poll released Friday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The Harris campaign rejects the notion that Harris herself can’t deliver a winning message to male voters. Instead, it argues, she is working to reach them personally and also complementing efforts by top male supporters and campaign advertising pushes aimed at things like top sporting events.

Rather than simply appealing to masculinity, the campaign says, it is presenting arguments that can appeal to men built around key issues, like the economy.

Harris is on the digital cover of the latest issue of “Vogue” and recently taped an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which is most popular with younger women. But she’s also sitting next week for a town hall hosted by popular radio personality Charlamagne tha God.

Senior Harris campaign officials nonetheless admit to being worried about Trump’s support among men — including white, Hispanic and Black Americans. They note Trump’s brash appeals to “bro” culture have resonated with some, especially young voters — and made some would-be voters more likely to support Trump or sit out the election.

In response, aides have also urged the vice president to explicitly mention cryptocurrency in her speeches and interviews, knowing its salience among men. Trump has a crypto venture with his family, though he differs from Harris in believing that it should be more lightly regulated than she does. The Harris campaign is also expected to launch an aggressive effort to have the vice president and Walz appear in male-skewing media in the race’s closing weeks.

Walz has already done some of that, helping launch the “Hombres” group in Arizona and having one of his rallies there livestreamed via Twitch as a streamer on the site played “World of Warcraft” and offered commentary on the event — a forum popular with younger, largely male gamers.

During a “White Dudes for Harris” fundraising call this summer, Walz said this about the prospect of defeating Trump: “How often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterward and know that a Black woman kicked his ass?”