Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 20, 1995 TAG: 9511220009
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``I caught the glimpse of a deer, but no shot,'' he said.
Just seeing the deer through the trees, the curve of its neck, its brown fur, the twitch of its white tail, was an immense victory for Arrington during the recent muzzleloading season.
Like too many sportsmen, Arrington is a hunter whose life was rudely interrupted by a hunting accident.
It happened Oct. 30 a year ago, while he was preparing for a bow hunt, setting his portable stand 15 feet high in a wild cherry tree in the foothills of Flat Top Mountain.
He had heard deer in a nearby honeysuckle thicket and figured it would be an ideal spot to place his stand for an after-work hunt the next day. But he never got back. Not the next day. Not yet.
``I had my safety belt on,'' he recalled last week. ``I took it off to stand in the tree stand to cut some shooting lanes. In five more seconds, I would have been stepping out of the tree. But ...''
He plummeted from the stand, crashing to the rocky ground in a fall that paralyzed him from the chest down.
The wide eyes of about 40 eighth-graders were fixed on Arrington the other day as he told the story that changed his life forever.
There is a message here as the two-week modern gun season begins today. It is this: Never take a chance. No game animal, not even a 20-point buck, is worth endangering your life or the life of another hunter.
And it's also this: Hunting accidents aren't always at the hands of the inexperienced, the slob hunter, the poacher. Friends shoot friends. People shoot themselves or tumble from tree stands.
``I told those kids, it was not like I was out there for the first time doing something that I didn't know what I was doing. I had hunted for 20 years. It can just happen to anybody, any time. Just a couple of seconds of carelessness or nonthinking.''
That's also the message Jerry Jenkins has preached for years. An avid hunter-shooter who lives in Craig County, Jenkins recently received the Hunter Educator of the Year award from the Virginia Wildlife Federation. As a volunteer, he has trained hundreds of hunters, young and old, not for awards, but out of love for the sport, out of concern that one second of bad judgment can result in a lifetime of sorrow.
It is a particularly pertinent message when it comes from Arrington, his wheelchair parked before a group of youngsters full of life.
``Just look at me,'' he tells them. ``There is no waste of time when it comes to safety.''
There is an abundance of time when you are paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Time to think , ``What if?'' Time to watch certain unsettling dates come and go, like Oct. 30.
Time, also, to vow to get back out there, if not back on your feet, back in the woods where the bucks flash through the orchards and paw the rich soil beneath white oak trees.
``A good friend of mine told me right after my accident that he had sold all his hunting stuff,'' said Arrington. ``I told him, `Man, you love to hunt. What happened to me was a freak thing. Just use it as a safety reminder, but don't give up hunting.' I planned from day one to get back, some way or another.''
The road back has involved weeks of therapy at Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Staunton, where a device was fashioned to help Arrington pull the trigger of a gun, and where a four-wheeler was modified to help him get through the woods and fields.
The glimpse of that deer the other day might have been some of the best therapy yet.
by CNB