Hunting mistake changes lives forever

MINNEAPOLIS -- The call came about 10 that Sunday night. Kimberly Van Tassel, then 30, already had put her two kids, Janelle, 8, and Brandon, 4, to bed. This was on opening weekend of the 1989 Minnesota deer season.

She had married her husband, Kim, 10 years earlier, and when she did she knew only in the abstract what it meant to be a "hunter's widow." She hadn't grown up in a hunting family, and when she and Kim became high school sweethearts at a suburban Minneapolis school, the notion that a boyfriend or husband would be gone for long periods during fall was foreign to her.

No longer. During their decade of marriage, Kim, 31, had ventured far and wide in autumn to chase deer and elk, pheasants, ducks and bear.

"He had warned me," Kimberly said. "He said he was a hunter, and there were certain things he would do in fall, and that I should know that before I married him."

Still, Kimberly was upset when the phone rang past 10 that Sunday. Kim had promised to call early enough to say goodnight to the kids. "How are you doing?" a voice on the other end said.

It wasn't Kim, but a cousin of his who was with Kim far up north, in Roseau County, hunting deer.

"What do you mean, 'How am I doing?' " Kimberly responded. "Put Kim on the phone."

Then the doorbell rang.

Kimberly didn't know it, but there had been a mix-up. Her mother, father and brother were at the door. By now, they were supposed to have told Kimberly about the accident -- about how Kim had been killed a few hours earlier.

Mistaken for a deer by another hunter, perhaps after legal shooting hours, Kim had been riding his three-wheeler back to camp. A shot hit him under his right armpit.

Kimberly could tell immediately that her mom, dad and brother had been crying.

She said: "Just tell me. Is he dead?"

Flash forward 20 years. On a day this fall, Kimberly Van Tassel -- now Kimberly Van Tassel Trapp -- sits in a coffee shop not far from the high school where she and Kim first met.

Remarried, she and husband Larry have a daughter, Jordan, 16, in addition to Janelle, now 28, and Brandon, 24. So on the eve of Minnesota's 2009 deer season, everything's different.

Time, it is said, heals everything.

Not really, Kimberly says.

"It's all still vivid in my mind," she says. "I still remember the phone call that night.

"And I remember removing all the guns from my house for many, many years.

"Brandon was too young to remember a lot about his dad.

"Janelle was older and she remembers more. But she didn't understand everything. I remember having to tell her that her dad wouldn't be coming back. She didn't quite understand."

Now these many years later, Kimberly still knows nothing about hunting. But she knows this:

"If you're a deer hunter and you're going hunting next weekend, you better think before you shoot. ...

"One shot and everything changes just like that. You never get over it."

The fun ends

Gerald Sizer is 64 and lives in Florida. He was 44 in 1989, living in Minnesota, and one of a dozen hunters in Kim Van Tassel's party.

"I've never forgotten that day," he said. "Other than Vietnam, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It changed all of our lives forever."

Sizer had left his hunting stand that Sunday, Nov. 6, 1989, and hiked back to the group's shack.

Darkness descended.

"If I recall, it was about 5:20 when we heard the shots," Sizer said. "Someone said, 'What ... was that? It can't be Kim. He wouldn't shoot that late.' "

Fifteen minutes passed. Then a neighboring hunter ran out of the woods.

"He was hysterical, saying he had shot Kim," Sizer said.

Police were called. The group spread out with flashlights, the fun of the hunting camp forgotten, Sizer said.

"I took him out there on my four-wheeler," Sizer said. "... It took us quite some time in the dark to get him across a field and across a large ditch. Then we loaded him into a hearse."

A camp abandoned

Sizer and some of the hunters who were with Kim Van Tassel in 1989 tried a couple years later to return to the same shack. By then, the man who had shot Kim had been convicted of second-degree manslaughter, a felony, and jailed.

But returning to the hunting grounds proved a bad idea and wasn't repeated.

Sizer bought 80 acres not far from Lake Mille Lacs, and he and his son and grandsons hunt there, along with a few others.

"Deer hunting is a great sport," he said. "I love it. But we take it seriously. If someone's in camp who we think isn't a safe hunter, we don't invite him back. ...

"I literally do ... jump now every time I hear a round go off."

A mother worries

Kimberly Van Tassel Trapp sips coffee and opens a file a few inches thick. In it are mementoes of her former husband's life and the long trail of paperwork that followed his death.

Paging through it, she tears up, apologizes and wipes her eyes.

"Brandon ... is 24 now and has just started hunting this year," she says. "He's grown a beard and looks like his dad. He's hunted only birds so far. He doesn't really have anyone to go deer hunting with, and that's not something you just pick up on your own. So maybe he'll do it in the future, and maybe he won't. I don't know.

"I know I will never stop Brandon from hunting. He was 4 when his dad died and never really knew him. But now he wants to do the same things his dad did. I guess if it's in your blood, it's in your blood."

Latest Comment View all comments