From Able to Disabled: The Seasons Keep Rolling On
By
Steven W. Baines

It’s strange the things you think about in an emergency. My first thoughts when I severed my thumb from my hand on a table saw on September 11th were that I had pretty well ruined my bow hunting season for the year and dramatically changed the quality of my life. As I stood in the driveway of our home and my wife wrapped a towel around the gapping wound, all I kept repeating was, “I ruined my hunting season! I ruined my hunting season!” Doctors at Rhode Island Hospital were unable to reattach my thumb, as it was too badly damaged, but they did what they could to form a partial thumb out of what was left. It wasn’t until I returned home later that day that I realized what I had actually done and the long road I had before me.

In the days that followed I thought about the writings of Paleontologist Steven J. Gould, who wrote extensively on the human thumb and how the use of that single digit separated us from other species. It’s the thumb that gave man the ability to manipulate his environment, to grasp and use tools. No other species has the degree of capability that humans have, and that truth became very clear to me in the days that followed my accident. Simple things like buttoning my pants or shirt or holding a knife and fork were now difficult.

While managing the pain and relearning to do simple things, I was losing sight of the things I held close. Hunting season was a few weeks away, but I was no more ready to hunt then I was to do many of the other simple things I had lost the ability to do.

While I still had a portion of my thumb, the pain in my hand and its limited functionality made holding a bow nearly impossible. The nerves that run along each side of my thumb and are usually buried were now exposed just under the skin so that every time I made contact with anything, a sharp pain shot up through my hand. I couldn’t hold a glass let alone a six-pound bow. I did, however, have an option.

Last year, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management's Division of Fish and Wildlife passed regulations permitting the use of crossbows or adaptive aids for disabled archery hunters. With the passage of that legislation, Rhode Island joined 42 other states in permitting crossbows for deer hunting by disabled hunters (Twenty-four of those states permit crossbows for deer hunting by any licensed hunter).

The new state law allowed DEM to issue crossbow permits to licensed hunters with a permanent physical impairment that prevents them from using a conventional bow and arrow device. The permit also allows disabled hunters to use adaptive aids on conventional bows. Adaptive aids include any mechanical device to help pull, hold, or release the string.

To qualify for a permit, applicants must include copies of their hunter safety and bow hunter safety cards and a physician's statement confirming the applicant meets the disability requirements. Another provision allows that all bow-hunters age 65 and older may use adaptive aids for archery deer hunting without having to apply for the permit, but this does not permit the use of crossbows.

After I received a crossbow permit from the state, I contacted David P. Robb, Director of Marketing for Ten Point Crossbows of Suffield, OH and ordered a QX-4 Crossbow package, which gave me everything from quiver to sight to crossbow bolts (arrows) in a nice package.

The QX-4 is a well thought out bow. It has a trigger that is set at 3 ½ pounds and is as smooth as most good rifle triggers. It also has two safeties installed on the bow, one primary push button safety set above the trigger and one secondary grip safety at the front of the handle of the bow. The secondary safety in the front handle forces the user to depress a button to fire the bow. This ensures that the hand is out of the way of the string when the bow is fired. For disabled hunters, a rubber insert automatically depresses the lever of the front secondary safety, so that the disabled hunter only has to contend with the rear safety. Because I no longer had the ability to depress the front safety, I used the rubber insert.

After I got use to shooting it, the bow produced great groups. Actually, the groups were so tight at 20 yards that I had to shoot at various targets to keep from damaging my arrows. My three-blade, 75-grain Muzzy broadheads flew as accurately as the field points, and after a few weeks of steady shooting, I felt confident enough to take the crossbow hunting, although I still had problems physically grasping the bow.

I missed all of the October season by the time I finally got into my tree stand on November 4th but the rut was heating up and I saw some good rutting (breeding) sign on my way through the woods. Because I use detachable tree steps and they take some maneuvering to use, I had a tough time climbing into my tree stand, but I took my time and used my climbing belt to climb slowly but steadily.

I settle into the stand and relaxed. It felt good to be in the woods and I was happy just to be out in the open air. Plenty of leaves remained on the maples and oaks and were a crimson and gold color. The smell of autumn was in the air; seeing any game would be a bonus.

Just as the sun was settling over the horizon at around 4:20, I heard moment behind me but was afraid to move and give away my location. When I did turn my head slightly, I saw a mature buck moving rapidly by me and into the surrounding bush. I brought the bow up but had trouble holding the front portion of it and it momentarily slipped from my hand. As the deer started into the thick brush around my stand, I rushed the shot and the arrow flew over his back.

He sensed something was wrong when he heard the arrow fly by and sink into the ground beyond him, and he stopped and looked my way, stamping his foot into the ground as a challenge. I started grunting softly with a deer grunt call and this seemed to calm him. He moved out from the thick brush and out of my sight, but I could hear him in the distance laying down a fresh scrap. I stayed in the tree until I heard him move off before I got down, as I didn’t want to spook him. If he knew he was being hunted, he would just move his rutting pattern to the nighttime hours.

I never got a good look at the deer’s antlers when he slipped by, as I learned years ago that once you identify it’s a buck and decide to take it that looking at antlers is a sure way to miss the shot. I was more focused on making the shot, but in my rush I simply overshot him. The chances of me getting another chance at this deer were slim.

It was Wednesday, November 9th when I climbed back into the stand around 2:00 pm. The sky was overcast and the weather looked threatening, but I just wanted to hunt.

At around 3:00, a light rain started to fall and continued off and on for the next hour. The ground was getting wet and not conducive for bow hunting, especially if I managed to hit a deer, as the ability to follow a blood trail would be negated.

At 4:00 a muzzle-loading rifle boomed in the distance, not more then 75 yards from my tree. I heard the hunter walking around in the leaves and heard him dragging out his prize. With all the commotion from the other hunter, I was discouraged and considered getting down and making an early night of it. In addition, the wind was blowing directly from me to where I thought the buck might enter, and thought my chances of success were dwindling with the fading light.

By 4:30, however, the other hunter was out of the woods, so I decided to hang in for another 15 minutes of the 30 minutes of legal shooting time. The rain had started to fall more heavily and the wind had picked up slightly, blowing strong from the southeast.

Like an apparition, the deer came in quietly from my left, but it had some destination in mind and was moving quickly. I put my grunt tube in my mouth and brought the bow up to my shoulder, settled into the sight and waited. The buck stopped behind a tree and raised his head to sniff the air, but there was no opportunity for a shot. I think he must have caught my sent in the swirling wind and jumped slightly forward, but I gave a short grunt and stopped him, just long enough to get the sight on him and send my bolt on its way.

I heard that familiar sound, like an arrow going through a pumpkin, but wasn’t exactly sure of my hit. When I found my arrow sticking into the ground on the opposite side of where the deer was standing, I knew I had hit it well, but with all the rain I couldn’t find enough blood to track it. Now that I’m over 50 I find it very hard to track a deer at night, let alone in a rainstorm. I searched in the darkness for an hour and a half, making as close to a semi-circle as I could before the skies opened and I had to abandon my search.

That night it rain hard and I had a restless night. I was up at 4:00 am, dressed and ready to go. I left my house at 4:15, stopped and got coffee, and arrived at my hunting area a short time later. I sat in the truck for over an hour listening to the radio and thinking about how hunting has helped me to mark the years.

I remembered the first deer I took on Prudence Island in 1973 in the snow and the big Pennsylvania doe that came out of the pines the season prior to my daughter’s birth, 1983, and fell to my muzzle-loader, as well as the call from a pregnant wife that wanted her husband home early. I thought about having to put down my trusted companion, a 12-year old Springer spaniel that had shared many a day in the field with me, in 1985, the year I sat in a Wyoming antelope blind with a good friend and took a Pope and Young antelope that came in to a water hole.

I thought about how the frozen dew shined in the morning sun as my Montana elk guide let go with a piercing bugle in 1991. I remember tracking Jim Willsey’s New York buck in 2001 during a star filled night and how the deer waded out onto an island in Manchurian’s Pond and we had to wade out in waist deep water the next morning to get it, breaking the ice as we went. Now it was 2005, and as I sat in my truck and wondered if I would ever find this deer after almost an inch of rain fell the previous night, I thought that this experience, no matter how it turned out, either good or bad, would help me to define this season.

I found the deer around 7:00 am. He had gone less then 100 yards before piling up in a thicket. Two hours later I had him out of the woods. His dressed weight was 201 pounds, and he wore a symmetrical eight–point rack. He was estimated to be around eight years old. Only two front teeth remained in his mouth, and he would have been hard pressed to survive another winter.

I’m having the deer mounted, and 20 years from now when I look at him on the wall of my home, I’ll know that in 2005, the deer and I shared something. Maybe it was fate that he came out of that particular thicket and brought a little sunshine to my gloomy year. Or maybe it was just his bad luck and my good luck. Whatever the reason that brought him to me-call it fate, call it divine intervention, or call it luck, it will help me to mark this year. And no matter what state I’m in 20 or 30 years from now, thumb or no thumb, healthy or unhealthy, the deer will be on my wall or on someone else’s, reminding us that whatever tragedies befall us, in the end, the seasons keep rolling on.