Ewald Bags Ultimate Safari

If you’ve ever attended one of the Big Horn Shows, you’ve seen Ted Ewald. He’s the burly, smiling man in a wheelchair, usually near the ticket takers.

Ewald has come a long way since a snowy day on Sept. 3, 1968, when, while packing elk out of the Big Creek drainage in North Idaho, his horse kicked him in his head and put out his lights for more than four months.

Confined to a wheelchair, he nevertheless dreamed of resuming hunting. Finally, a few years ago he bagged a deer near Davenport. Then the next year, for the first time in 20 years, he killed an elk. Two years ago he brought down a black bear.

Now he’s looking forward to a hunt of a lifetime. The Safari Club International chose him and two other handicapped hunters for all-expense-paid hunts in foreign countries.

Ewald will hunt in June with Zulu Nyala Safaris in Zululand on the east coast of South Africa. The firm has access to record-book trophies of nearly every southern and east African species, including the nyala, the tiny suni, the red duiker and even the white rhino.

Ewald, who will be accompanied to Africa by a son, doesn’t yet know what animals he’ll hunt. He’s just happy that he’s getting a chance to hunt where he never expected to hunt.

After all, only those who are willing to pay thousands of dollars hunt in Africa, particularly in South Africa, where game animals are still plentiful. All of his trophies will be mounted without cost to him.

Ewald will never forget the day when his horse kicked him in his head. He and Leon Buckles, now a top official of Kaiser Aluminum in Africa, were packing elk out of Big Creek. The cinch on Ewald’s saddle loosened and Ewald dismounted to tighten it. He slipped in 18 inches of snow and his hat brushed the belly of the horse. Already nervous, the horse started bucking and kicking. One of its hooves struck Ewald’s head.

Buckles gave Ewald mouth-to-nose resuscitation, put him in a sleeping bag and rode out for help. Finally, 18 hours later, a helicopter arrived and flew Ewald to a Spokane hospital. Later, he was treated in Seattle.

“I never knew what happened,” Ewald said. “I was unconscious for four and a half months.”

His recovery period was a slow and frustrating one, at first made more difficult when his wife divorced him.

Ewald will long remember attempting to communicate with people during those first years after the accident. He had difficulty formulating words and making himself understood.

He realized that many people, embarrassed by their inability to understand him, avoided talking with him.

But he kept trying, always attempting to improve his speech. Gradually, the words came easier. Now his friends and strangers no longer have trouble understanding him.

Once a big, strong man, he’s accepted the fact that he’ll unlikely walk again. He’s reached the highest plateau of recovery.

All through those frustrating years he never gave up his dream of hunting again. He was made a life member of the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council and became a certified hunter education instructor and served on committees.

He also became a fixture at the Big Horn Shows, always cheerful and smiling.

Finally, hunting out of his wheelchair, he killed a deer, then an elk and a bear. His courage and his determination to hunt attracted the attention of Safari Club International. Dr. William Nerud of the club’s Inland Empire chapter nominated him for one of the club’s Special Hunter awards.

A club official recently notified Ewald that he had been selected to take part in an African hunt.

“Your perseverance in spite of overwhelming odds has brought you to the attention of Safari Club International,” Libby Grimes, manager of trophy records and awards programs for the club, said in a letter to Ewald.

“This program exists to recognize out-of-the-ordinary achievement in the world of sport hunting.”

The other two handicapped hunters who were awarded expense-paid trips are Ron Deets, a Californian and Vietnam veteran who saved a wounded comrade but lost his legs when he stepped on a mine, and Tim Pifher of Flint, Mich., who has cerebral palsy. Deets will hunt in Namibia and Pifher will hunt in Spain.

The three men were honored at a ceremony recently in Reno, Nev.

For Ewald, the hunt will be the culmination of a dream, not the kind of dream he had in mind before that fateful day in 1968, but nevertheless an acceptable substitute.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review