The hunt has been going on a while, but with the passing of Rock, it became the memorial hunt. Every year between deer and turkey season, a bunch of feeders are set up in a huge track of swamp. Wild hogs are baited. Then, handicapped and disabled kids from around the state are called in to come whack some wild bacon - no charge to the kids and families. All they have to pay is the ride to the camp and home.
Only children with disabilities get to hunt. Adaptations are made for the kids ranging from stands with very close shots to a guide hunter who would hold the rifle while the child operated a pneumatic or hydraulic trigger switch.
Wheelchairs welcome.
In addition to hunting, the kids went bogging. For several children including siblings of the disabled hunters, the bogging was the highlight of the trip.
Kids killed hogs.
One of the SYC hunters, Drew Daniels killed a hog with a homemade spear, a knife mounted to a pipe. The boar was brought into camp live and restrained. Sitting in his motorized wheelchair, Drew pushed the spear into the hog’s chest. With the dead hog at his feet, your author suggested we tie it to his electric wheelchair and let him pull it around to the skinning shed.
Drew fairly flew backyard to get away from me and the hog.
Sometime that Saturday Drew and I sat in one of the utility vehicles. He decided to show me the gears.
“This is reverse,” he said. He leaned over and tried to force the gear stick out of reverse. He pulled and pushed. It wouldn’t budge.
“This is stuck,” I said quietly.
He started laughing. I laughed so hard my eyes watered. We must have laughed for a good 20 minutes about finding the stuck gear. I told the owner his vehicle had a reverse gear, two forward gears, a neutral and a stuck. Drew kept laughing.
16 year old Zachary Watson, form Acworth, dropped the second-biggest hog of his life Saturday morning, a 225 pounder. This was his second year hunting.
Sitting in the stand over the feeder, Zack watched the hog walk out.
“He’s a dead hog,” the young hunter said proudly. A single shot from a managed-recoil load in a .30-06 was all it took and the porker fell on the spot.
A first time Rock Dowdy hunter, James Troutman, dropped his first porker from one of the swamp stands with help from a guide. “A boy!” he loudly exclaimed back at camp. He is having the head mounted.
Eight hogs came out of the woods on his stand. James used a pneumatic trigger on a .30-30 held by a guide. The shot dropped the hog on the spot.
“I was jumping,” he said of himself when the hogs came out of the woods. As to where he shot the hog, well, James may only have one year of hunting experience, but he already knows what to say when someone asks where he shot it: “in the woods,” he said.
For a brief moment in time, these kids had attention focused on them and their abilities, not their disabilities. They were celebrated for being hunters. They exulted in the moment of their triumphs, whether they killed a hog or not. Their handicaps or disabilities were non-existent.
It was joy incarnate.
For more information about Special Youth Challenge ministries or the many events the group stages each year for handicapped and disabled children, visit www.sycofgeorgia.net. Donations are tax deductible. Places to let handicapped children hunt and fish are very much needed.
