Hunting Through Another’s E Sightless Zero-In On Their Prey With Help Of Sharp-Eyed Partner
When 38-year-old James Meacham gets down on a knee and pulls back the string on his bow, he hopes his arrow will penetrate the vital area of the bird or animal he is hunting.
If his arrow is true, he won’t know until someone tells him. He’s blind.
The soft-spoken, handsome man is one of about 200 severely handicapped members of Physically Challenged Bowhunters of America. He was one of three blind and three one-armed men who hunted bear and deer near Sacheen Lake recently.
The blind hunters, besides Meacham, were John Rook of Youngstown, Ohio, a master hunter who has killed numerous big game animals and whose name appears in the prestigious Pope & Young record book, and Gary Scholl, Fort Madison, Iowa, who has taken a bull elk and several deer and wild turkeys. Scholl makes turkey calls.
The three men are not just legally blind.
They’re totally blind. How is it possible for a blind person to kill a turkey, bear, elk or deer with an arrow? Or even a rifle? After all, many hunters who have 20-20 vision miss their targets.
The answer is a simple one. The blind hunter works closely with a partner who has good vision. The partner is the eyes of the hunter. He or she looks at the game bird or animal through an inch-and-a-half circle or peep sight that’s on a bar that protrudes from the bow and is even with the arrow. Three pins in the peep sight enable the spotter to pinpoint the target.
The normal bow has sights over the arrow. The blind hunter must have full confidence in the spotter and the spotter must be a good hunter who is familiar with archery equipment and arrow trajectory.
When the spotter sees game that’s within an archer’s range, he quietly informs the hunter, who then drops down on one knee and draws the string of his compound bow. The spotter kneels down and places his chin on the archer’s extended elbow, sights through the peep hole, lines the hunter up with the target and then gives the signal to release the string.
When Meacham hunted near Sacheen Lake, his spotter was Michael Mathews, 17, a student from Montgomery, Ala., Meacham’s hometown. Mathews, an avid hunter, was aware that the success of his friend’s hunt depended upon him.
Mathews and Meacham practiced their procedure so many times that Meacham usually hit the target after hearing the teenager’s signal, a simple “Cht.” They felt Meacham would kill a deer or bear if he got a chance.
Meacham lost his sight 18 years ago. “I was hunting squirrels with my father and brother on Thanksgiving Day in 1978,” he said. “We were walking along train tracks when I shot and wounded a squirrel. It ran into a river swamp and we went in to find it.
“I jumped across a little stream and climbed up an embankment and was waiting for the squirrel to come. I was wearing camo clothes. My father made his way through head-high briers. , “When he came out of the brush, he saw me and thought I was a deer. He shot me in my face at 40 to 50 feet with an ounce of No. 6 shot from his 16-gauge shotgun. I got a half dozen pellets in my right eye and one pellet in my left eye. Other pellets hit me in my face and chest. I’ve been blind since that day.”
A dozen years passed before Meacham resumed hunting.
“Once you’ve become a hunter,” he said, “you can’t forget what it means to you. I took a hunter safety course and the president of the Alabama Handicapped Sportsmen convinced me that I could hunt with a bow, as well as a gun. I took my first deer ever with a bow and arrow that year.”
Last year he was the Safari Club of America Special Hunter of the Year and was flown to South Africa to hunt. He took four animals with a rifle and a nyala, a large antelopelike animal, with a bow and arrow. The latter animal ranks fourth in the world for a bow hunter.
Meacham and the other blind archers hunted on property owned by Don Hook of Newport, Wash., while they were in the Northwest. The hunt was set up by Biff Williams of Spokane, a co-founder and current secretary of the Physically Challenged Bow Hunters of America.
Men who worked with the hunters were Randy Dehnel of Potlatch, Idaho, maker of internationally known longbows; Mike Casteel, Newport, and Don Sweeney, Medical Lake. The Evergreen Archery Club and the Inland Northwest Big Game Council cooperated with Williams to set up the hunt.
The one-armed hunters tagged two buck deer and one bear. None of the blind hunters was successful.
Meacham wasn’t disappointed that he didn’t kill a deer or bear when he hunted near Sacheen Lake. No bears visited the bait and the spotters didn’t see any deer. He’s confident that he’ll take a deer or a turkey in his home state this fall.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.