Re: Thoughts and Prayers Needed
Thought you all might like this article about the brothers in this thread. It came out the srping of 2002<br />_____________________________________________<br />Disabled? Yes! Unable? No!<br />Paralyzed hunter<br />gets his gobbler<br /><br />By Bobby Cleveland<br />Clarion-Ledger Outdoors Editor<br /><br />Hunter Penn was on his way home from a turkey hunt this spring when he saw a giant bird in a field.<br /><br />Instead of turning around and hunting the gobbler, he headed home to get his brother Sterling.<br /><br />"He knew it was a perfect situation for Sterling," said Scott Penn of Canton, their father. "He went and got him and took him back out there."<br /><br />It had to be a perfect situation because Sterling Penn, 18, has been paralyzed below the neck since August of 1999. He was shot in the neck in an in-home handgun accident and has been restricted to a wheelchair ever since.<br /><br />"He came home and got me," Sterling Penn said. "We went back out and got set up. We put up a portable blind. It was close to an old road on this land we hunt near Sharon.<br /><br />"We got in there and got set and Hunter started calling."<br /><br />Sounds simple enough, but... Killing the turkey was the easy part.<br /><br />Sterling, Hunter and Scott Penn had been preparing for that day for several months.<br /><br />Hunter Penn had built the special gun mount that attached to the wheelchair and he had found rifles and shotguns that could be adapted to fit the mount.<br /><br />Sterling Penn, who had hunted deer since he was about 6 and turkey for two years before his accident, had spent hours honing his shooting skills. He killed a doe during deer hunting season. When turkey season came, he wanted a chance to get his first turkey.<br /><br />"We went to Wal-Mart the night before and got the decoys, camo, facemasks and everything else," Scott Penn said.<br /><br />Then they stayed up until after midnight getting the 20-gauge Remington shotgun ready.<br /><br />And then Hunter found the turkey, went to get Sterling and they prepared for the afternoon hunt.<br /><br />It didn't take long for Hunter to arouse the gobbler with his calls.<br /><br />"Hunter called him right in," Sterling said. "He called him close, too, about six or seven yards."<br /><br />Did the bird gobble.<br /><br />"Oh yeah," Sterling said.<br /><br />Did he get excited?<br /><br />"Oh yeah, I sure did," he said.<br /><br />The bird gobbled several times and was in full strut as he approached the jake and hen decoys.<br /><br />"I moved the chair to get aimed, and it was windy enough that he couldn't hear me," Sterling said.<br /><br />Then it came time to shoot, which requires blowing into a mouth tube.<br /><br />"I blew but nothing happened," Sterling said. "Hunter moved over and unhooked the mechanism from the chair's battery and reconnected it.<br /><br />"I blew again and the gun went off."<br /><br />Sterling Penn had his first gobbler. It probably won't be his last.
<br />M.Y.
