Getting back in the hunt

Handicapped outdoorsmen take to the woods for a weekend

CALDWELL -- Joe Kirkpatrick knew that his injury wouldn't keep him from enjoying his favorite pastime. Now Kirkpatrick, the secretary and treasurer of the N.C. Handicapped Sportsmen, is focused on making the sporting life a reality for other disabled people.

That was the purpose of a three-day hunt in this small agricultural community over a weekend in mid November. Scores of volunteers provided fellowship, meals, lodging, prime hunting spots and hunting expertise, and the event was held at no cost to the dozen handicapped participants, some of whom were war veterans.

Each hunter's physical condition was accounted for so it wouldn't get in the way of a good hunt.

"There's not a man in this room that won't do what he needs to do to help you hunt," the group's president, Ed Mays, told the hunters, sitting among volunteers from the Caldwell Hunting Club, at the opening meeting of the event.

The hunt club offered up some of its private hunting spots, and Lee Miller, a local farmer, tapped other farmers to provide a total of about 2,000 acres of private hunting grounds.

"What a great bunch of guys," said Floyd Dixon of Apex, one of the participants. "They gave up their honey holes and said, 'Here, you guys hunt them.' Not many guys would do that."

When organizer Ed Richardson, also a member of the Wake County Wildlife Club, met Dixon earlier this year and learned of his condition -- degenerative disc disease -- he persuaded Dixon to get back into the woods.

Dixon's disease, diagnosed in the early 1990s, was brought on by weight problems he has struggled with since he was a child.

A few years ago, Dixon, 63, wondered whether he'd ever get to hunt again as his condition prevented him from getting out in the field.

"When hunting season rolled around, I would start getting depressed," said Dixon, who has hunted since he was a boy.

Last year, a friend took him on a few hunts, but there were no ground blinds, and Dixon physically couldn't get into a tree stand.

"All I could do was sit on the edge of a field and hope a deer would come in and not see me," he said.

That didn't happen.

He got another chance last month.

After hunting in ground blinds -- carefully placed in the hunt club's best spots -- throughout the weekend event, Dixon was simply grateful.

"It was just awesome," he said.

Among the 12 hunters, he was the only one not to kill a deer, though he had a few chances.

"They just helped me get back into the woods and back hunting," he said. "Right now, that's what I needed."

And one encounter with a buck with an impressive rack of antlers provided inspiration.

His glance at the specimen was fleeting; it quickly walked into a dip, exposing only its antlers to Dixon before disappearing altogether.

"It perked me up," Dixon said. "It made me feel totally alive. I don't care if I get a deer. It's enough just to be out in the woods."

Dixon said the weekend of fellowship -- and the thought of those big antlers -- changed his life. He now knows he can hunt.

He said he plans on spending a lot of time with the N.C. Handicapped Sportsmen, which has about 100 members, about half of whom are disabled.

And Dixon, along with eight new friends, will be back in the woods near New Bern this weekend, exercising his rediscovered freedom.

Something for himself

Kirkpatrick, 47, was with his then-9-year-old son at a Boy Scout camp in 1996 when the father broke his back diving into a lake.

The injury left him a quadriplegic and in a wheelchair, with only limited use of his body from the neck down.

In the hospital for three months, he said getting back to work, hospital bills and his family were the least of his worries.