Shooting down barriers

 11 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

BY JOE DUGGAN / Lincoln Journal Star

A trophy-class whitetail buck and five does appeared about 7:45 a.m. on the final Saturday of the Nebraska rifle season.

Mitch Miller’s heart rate picked up a bit.

He sat inside a portable, plywood blind in a cornfield in Otoe County. The deer were easily 500 yards away, but their presence instantly transformed the morning into a hunt for Miller, his 17-year-old son, Travis, and his son’s friend, Trevor Boshart.

View Slideshow

This custom mount on Mitch Miller’s wheelchair allows him to accurately shoot a rifle. A diving accident in 1982 cost him the use of his legs and paralyzed his fingers, but friends and family helped him return to hunting. He bagged his first deer since the accident on the final weekend of the Nebraska rifle season. (Joe Duggan)

Before long, another group of deer appeared, consisting of two younger bucks and four does. They were closer, but still outside of Miller’s 200-yard shooting zone.

The 48-year-old Lincoln man focused on the second group of deer.

Gradually they came closer. One of the bucks finally walked within the 200-yard limit and turned broadside.

At that moment, it had been 27 years since he’d gotten a deer — the year before the accident.

Miller leaned forward to aim the 25-06 Savage. The rifle was braced against a mount on his wheelchair.

*** 

Miller grew up in Nebraska City. As a boy, he spent his springs in a fishing boat and his falls hunting pheasants with his late father, Bill Miller. As he grew older, he hunted deer and eventually got into bow hunting.

In 1981 he killed a deer with his bow. It was a special achievement.

The next year, a diving accident broke his neck and changed his life.

He lost the use of his legs and although he could still move from the chest up, the injury paralyzed his fingers. He was hospitalized for six months in Omaha. When he was discharged, he moved into the basement of his parent’s house.

That basement represented either a place to adjust or a place to hide. His mother, Anne Montag,  gently pushed her son to decide which it would be.

Back in the days when accessibility wasn’t a given in public places, she took the handles of Miller’s chair and got him out. He can remember showing up at a packed restaurant and wanting to go home rather than expect people to stand and give him room to pass.

“She would say, ‘Nonsense, people don’t care.’ And you know, she was right, people didn’t care. They were happy to move.

“From then on, I’ve always kind of challenged myself.”

He attended a school in Colorado that taught him how to drive. And he got an electric chair.  Both have given him an independence he never would have had otherwise.

In 1983, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he later obtained a degree in business administration. A year later, he married his high school sweetheart, Lori Ailes.

Miller, a freight broker, found ways to overcome barriers to the outdoor activities he always loved — fishing, boating, camping. But it took a close friend to get him thinking about deer hunting again.

Aiming a rifle represents one of the greatest challenges for a wheelchair-bound hunter.

Miller needed a chair mount that would hold the rifle steady while allowing him to move it easily side to side, and up and down.

Such devices simply aren’t for sale at the local discount store.

In 1996, Gene Matson, a friend and neighbor, offered to help Miller build one. Their mount consisted of straight pipe, an L-bracket and a Velcro strap.

They rigged a lever system so Miller could pull the trigger using his impaired hands.

It was primitive but functional. Out on the gun range, Miller could consistently rupture 20-ounce plastic pop bottles at 250 yards using the mount.

That fall, the men hunted on private land near Clarks along the Platte River. Miller sat in the front seat of his van.

Near sundown, they saw a group of deer jumping a fence about 50 yards from the van. Miller couldn’t get into position to shoot, but he relished that old familiar thrill of seeing deer.

Each hunt was a lesson.

Miller now uses a steel mount that attaches to his wheelchair and features a smooth-sliding bracket. The mount was designed and built by Travis Frerking, who owns a custom gun shop in Cortland.

He and Matson went out in the van for a few more years, but they knew they needed something that offered more mobility.

For several seasons, they hunted from a pop-up ground blind. It allowed Miller to easily hunt from his chair and provided a better range of movement for shooting, but with his poor circulation, Miller found it difficult to stay out in the cold.

This year, they built a plywood box blind, which they mounted to an old boat trailer. The 12-foot-by-9-foot box provides room for three hunters and enough space for Miller to turn his chair completely around. Plus, with space heaters inside, he can sit in it for hours.

His son and his son’s friends all helped build and paint the blind, for which he is grateful.

He also owes a lot to Matson, the friend who encouraged him to deer hunt again. And to his wife, Lori, for all those years of getting him out of bed at 4 a.m. and making the toast and coffee.

Like all hunters, Miller owes a huge debt to the landowners who allow him to hunt on their property.

“Without them, none of this would be possible,” he said.

The buck turned a little until it was almost quartering away at 200 yards.

Miller was ready.

All of the practice on the range, all of the trial and error of past hunts, prepared him for this moment.

He peered through the scope and gently moved the lever into the trigger.

Travis told him the deer was hit, but not down.

Miller fired again and this time the buck fell.

When it did, the plywood box erupted with jubilation.

Travis hugged his father around the neck.

“I was so happy. I said, ‘Way to go, Dad, you got your first deer.’”

The father and son smiled for a good long time, even as tears hit the plywood floor.

“It was pretty emotional,” Miller said.

“We hunted a lot of times, but to finally fill that tag, that was pretty special.”

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com.