On March 8, 1997, I was in a rodeo accident and broke my neck. I am now in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down, and on a ventilator to breathe. I have a shooting rig that mounts to my wheelchair, allowing me to hunt. Thanks to a great support staff, I still get out and about quite often.
I hunt quite a bit, but it had been a long time since I had shot a deer. Thanks to Jessica Holmes, Kacie Turvibille, and my two little spotters, TJ and Janie (who are both three years old), I got it done. After we started to make a loop around a riverbend, we saw a nice buck on the neighbor’s property. There was not much we could do, so we just looked at him for a little while. We got to a little hill overlooking the river, a brushy draw, and a sagebrush flat where we had seen deer before and waited.
We had just settled in when Jessica started to get excited. A really nice buck was chasing a doe right towards us. I have a shooting rig that has a joystick that goes to two little motors for the windage and elevation, and I use my chin to move the gun around. Once I am on target, I suck on a straw that activates a solenoid to pull the trigger. I get along really well with it, but it is not quick. Kacie was helping me, and I got the buck in the scope. He took a couple steps. I once again got him in the scope, and he trotted 20 feet and stopped. This happened four or five times until he was out of sight. We were all pretty excited and talked about what had just happened.
We settled in once again, hoping he would come back. We had a bunch of deer in front of us but no shooters. Jessica couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to sneak over and see if the buck on the neighbor’s property was gone and if it was possibly him that came by us. She came back and said he was gone, so we suspected it was him.
After a couple hours, we were running out of daylight, so we decided to make things happen. We went around another big riverbend in the direction the buck had gone. Jessica started to get excited again. She and Kacie could see the buck. He was in a really brushy area with three-foot tall sagebrush all around. The rangefinder said 320 yards. Not too bad. South Dakota offers a special license to handicap hunters to shoot out of a stationary vehicle, and I had one of those licenses. Kacie ranged the buck again, and he was now at 283 yards. We got everything ready and just needed him to stand up.
As luck would have it, the noise from an airline jet was just loud enough for him to stand up. When he did, he was perfect in the crosshairs and I shot. He took two jumps and we couldn’t see him anymore. We waited about 20 minutes to let everything settle down before we went looking. We all agreed we had heard the classic “thud” of a hit. It was too rough and brushy for me to go any further, so Jessica went and looked for him. Kacie and I knew he was down when Jessica started to whoop and holler. Jessica’s husband, Casey, and Uncle Dale showed up, and it was perfect timing. I took off the hunter orange, started taking a lot of pictures, and took care of the deer.
Thanks to everybody who helped me out. It is truly appreciated. A special thanks to Joe and Cindy for letting me hunt and to Dale for the processing.
Deer in SD
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