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Safari Club International holds Wheelchair Hunt
Local plantations host event
Published Saturday, October 29, 2005
By SANDRA WALSH
The Beaufort Gazette
Julian Ohmer, 20, checks his sights after his father, Jeff, stabilized his rifle
on a wheelchair mounted arm at Nemours Plantation during Friday's wheelchair
hunt. Megan Lovett/Gazette
SEABROOK -- In full camouflage, black Chuck Taylor high-tops and a Mohawk,
Bowen Smith sighted his rifle before a weekend deer hunt Friday at Nemours
Plantation.
Sporting a pair of noise-muffling headphones, Joe Brown, 15, flinched from a
camping chair a few feet away as Smith's gun popped.
"I want to get a buck, add it to the wall," Smith, also 15, said while
plugging his tracheal breathing tube with his finger. "A doe works, too; need
some meat in the refrigerator."
Bowen Smith, 15, of Mooresville, N.C., wheels alongside Ted Remley after a few
test shots at the firing range at Nemours Plantation during Friday's wheelchair
hunt, sponsored by Safari Club International Low Country Chapter
The schoolmates traveled from Mooresville, N.C., to participate in the
area's first wheelchair hunt, held at the 9,800-acre plantation within the ACE
Basin off U.S. 17 between Sheldon and Green Pond.
The Safari Club International Wheelchair Hunt was free. It was organized by
Safari Club International Low Country Chapter with the help of the S.C. Disabled
Sportsman Association, S.C. Department of Natural Resources, Nemours Wildlife
Foundation and several private companies.
The event is the first of its kind in Beaufort County, but many similar
excursions have been organized throughout upstate South Carolina and nationally
over the last several years.
Wen Bumgardner, 17, pops a wheelie as he rolls across the shaded lawn of Nemours
Plantation within Ace Basin off U.S. 17 between Sheldon and Green Pond during
the wheelchair hunt.
Fifteen hunters in wheelchairs, ranging in age from 15 to upward of 55 and
from as far away as Colorado, arrived at Nemours Plantation on Thursday
afternoon.
They were visiting to hunt deer at participating area plantations, which
allowed them free access over the weekend.
The hunters were split into groups of twos and threes and assigned to one of
six plantations: Nemours, Cockfield, Brewton, Mackey Point, Rose Hill and Bray's
Island. And while most of the hunters were there to go for the kill, Brown said
part of the fun is enjoying the great outdoors.
"Even if you don't shoot anything, it's still fun to watch (deer) in their
natural habitat," said Brown, who suffers from a congenital degenerative muscle
disease called Friedreich's Ataxia.
Brown maintains limited usage of his legs and can walk for short bouts using
a cane, but he said he will be dependent on a wheelchair by the time he is 20.
Ground stands in sparsely forested areas were set up over plywood boards,
making it easier for wheelchairs to gain access.
Many of the wheelchairs and rifles are customized to make hunting more
comfortable because several of the hunters do not have sufficient body and hand
dexterity to steady a rifle. Many of the hunters used shooting sticks and
makeshift braces created by Bobby Harrell, president of the S.C. Disabled
Sportsman Association.
Harrell organizes about eight wheelchair hunts in the state each year.
Confined to a wheelchair after a diving accident in 1993 left him paralyzed from
the chest down, he is an avid outdoorsman and is always thinking of new
contraptions to facilitate hunting for the mobility-impaired.
"A lot of these guys didn't realize they could do it," Harrell said. "When
you look back to the '60s and '70s, things have come a long way."
The hunters weren't the only ones who enjoyed the outing.
"I have as much fun doing it as he does," said Jessie Smith, Bowen's father,
as he taught his son to handle a rifle under a big, mossy oak. "This has been a
good thing."
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