Dressed in camouflage from head to toe, he sat in a hunting
blind at the edge of the woods on a seepage channel within
the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project, waiting for a
bull moose to appear.
For Hoskins, who has been confined to a wheelchair for 30 years as a result of a car accident, it was therapeutic. The birds and squirrels didn’t know he was paralyzed and neither would a bull moose if it happened to show up within shooting distance. The fact he was in a wheelchair didn’t matter. He was a hunter in the woods.
It was an hour before sunrise, but there was already enough light to spot a moose and discern if it had antlers, needed to make it legal. Every now and then, Hoskins peeked through his binoculars and scanned the landscape in front of him, more to pass the time than anything else. If a moose walked out, he would see it.
Chirping birds and chattering squirrels were all that broke the morning silence. Not a coffee drinker, Hoskins took an occasional swig from a bottle of Coke he stashed in a holder on the back of his wheelchair.
“Just being up here and having the ability to bag one or see one is awesome,” Hoskins whispered over his shoulder, reluctant to take his eyes off the landscape for fear of missing one.
Just the day before, the 56-year-old Hoskins had gotten a close-up look at a cow moose while sitting in another blind.
“She just meandered up and stepped in front of the blind and just stared at us,” he said. “I could have spit on that puppy.”
Hoskins, a Vietnam veteran from Pennsylvania, is one of three wheelchair-bound hunters from the Paralyzed Veterans of America taking part in a special moose hunt on the Chena Flood Control Project in North Pole. Through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the PVA has offered its members–about 30,000 strong–a chance to go moose hunting in Alaska each of the last four years.
Hunters are selected by random drawing from a pool that has grown to about 2,000 applicants over the last four years, said Doug Warren, program director for the PVA. Winners must pay their own way to Alaska and buy their own license and tags.
Tommy Baugh, 37, of Georgia, and Cory Heit, 32, of Minnesota were the other two lucky hunters who won the chance to come to Alaska. All three men were paralyzed in car accidents. Both Baugh and Hoskins are paralyzed from the waist down while Heit is a quadriplegic.
But all three continue to hunt, refusing to let their impairments take away something they loved to do before their accidents. The chance to come to Alaska was a dream come true for all three men.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Hoskins, who is also a national director for the PVA.
Early start
It was still dark at 5:30 a.m. when corps ranger Mike Insko backed a Polaris Ranger up to the wheelchair door on the VanTran. Hoskins rolled his wheelchair backwards into the bed of the four-wheeler and rangers secured the chair using tie-down straps that were attached to the wheelchair and frame of the four-wheeler.
“It’s quite an operation,” said John Schaake, manager at the flood control project, while looking on.
A few minutes later, after a short drive along the dike, Insko turned down a trail that led to the blind on the seepage channel. He backed the four-wheeler up to a drop door on the side of the blind that also functioned as a ramp and he and Tim Gallagher, who was serving as Hoskins’ hunting partner for the day, pushed him into the blind.
“This was the hot blind last night,” Insko said, handing Hoskins his rifle, a .280 Remington.
The night before Baugh and his partner had spotted seven moose from the blind but none of them were bulls. This morning, though, the action is considerably slower. Hoskins and Gallagher spend almost six hours in the blind without seeing a moose before coming in for lunch. Another six hours in the blind that afternoon and evening produced similar results.
Though the PVA hunters have killed only one small bull in four years, the hunts have been a huge success, said Warren. Even if they don’t bag a moose, hunters can go back home and say they had a chance to, something that most hunters in the Lower 48, paralyzed or not, can’t do.
Even for an able-bodied individual, though, it’s not an easy hunt.
Hunters are up at 3 a.m. for a 4:15 a.m. pick up in Fairbanks. They drive to North Pole and are in the blinds before 6 a.m. They come in around noon for lunch and a rest break before heading back out to the blinds for another six hours at around 3 p.m. If they get back to their hotel by 10 p.m. they are lucky.
“It’s physically exhausting,” said Heit.
But it makes them feel just like every other hunter, as does sitting around at lunch rehashing the morning’s hunt or trading stories in the blind, which is the whole point.
“When you’re part of a group doing something, you can share experiences,” Heit said.
Community effort
The hunt is a team effort.
The corps provides the land to hunt on in the form of the Chena Flood Control Project, transports hunters to and from the field and feeds the hunters lunch each day.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough provides transportation to and from North Pole in one of its handicap-accessible VanTrans.
Using materials provided by the corps, the Borealis Kiwanis Club built three new blinds this year that can be hauled in and out of the field. The 8-foot-by-8-foot blinds are elevated off the ground and have drop-down doors all the way around, as well as a bench to serve as a shooting rest.
A cadre of volunteers serve as backup shooters and spotters for the hunters, sitting in the blinds with them from sunup to sundown.
Ken Krieg has volunteered for the PVA hunt all four years. He originally got involved as a member of the Fairbanks chapter of Safari Club International, which has since folded, and has been back every year since.
Krieg is the one who arranges for volunteer backup shooters and spotters and handles many of the logistics involved in the hunt. This year, he recruited nine volunteers to accompany hunters during the five-day hunt. Some were veterans who liked to hunt while others were just hunters who wanted to help out other hunters.
The hunt has come a long way since the first year, Krieg recalled. There were no cushy blinds for the hunters back then.
“We had them all wrapped up in sleeping bags and camo material and they just sat out in the rain,” Krieg recalled. “Boy, it was miserable that first year.”
But the hunters stuck it out and had the time of their lives, demonstrating to Krieg, Schaake and others that the project was a worthwhile one.
The second year Krieg built some homemade ground blinds using a couple of pallets and plywood for a floor, some birch poles for railings and spruce boughs for a roof. Those were replaced by the new blinds designed by Krieg this year.
“We fine-tune it every year,” said Schaake, also an avid hunter.
This year, unfortunately, warm weather conspired against hunters. After a flurry of cow and calf sightings on Tuesday at two of the blinds, no moose had been seen since. Saturday marked the last day of the hunt and Schaake was hoping for some cooler weather to get the moose moving again.
“It’s like somebody turned off the switch,” Schaake said of the drop in moose activity. “That’s what this weather does.”
Opportunity knocks
Alaska could be more friendly to disabled hunters, according to Heit, the quadriplegic.
In New Mexico, where he drew an elk tag last year, the state devotes five of 1,000 elk permits to disabled hunters, he said. In his home state of Minnesota, disabled hunters who draw a deer tag can shoot either a buck or a doe.
Heit said he spent years searching the Internet for an opportunity to go moose hunting somewhere but couldn’t find an outfitter who would take him. When he stumbled across the PVA hunt, Heit called Warren to inquire, even though he had never been in the military.
He was pleasantly surprised to find out that military service wasn’t required to be a member of the PVA and that he could apply for the hunt as an associate member. While the PVA’s No. 1 priority is health care for veterans, the organization is dedicated to helping all paralyzed men, women and children through its programs.
“If we don’t give them the opportunity they won’t get the opportunity,” said Hoskins, a member of a PVA trapshooting team that includes five nonveterans.
While Heit and his father, Gary, saw four moose on the 3 1/2-day drive from Minnesota to Fairbanks, they had yet to see one during the hunt.
In the future, Schaake said he would like to arrange for a cow permit for the hunt to increase the odds of getting a moose, though that’s something that would have to be approved by the state Board of Game.
The moose hunt at the flood control project is the start of what Warren hopes is a bigger presence in Alaska for the PVA. Working with the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, the PVA got a $100,000 grant through its adaptive equipment program to build to build walkways and wheelchair lifts on docks along the Kenai River to make fishing more accessible for wheelchair anglers.
Warren is also trying to figure out a way to offer a caribou hunt, though the logistics for such a hunt would be greater because it would involve flying out somewhere.
“We’re trying to figure out a way to develop more opportunities in Alaska,” he said, adding that next year at least one spot for the PVA moose hunt would be reserved for an Iraqi war veteran. “That’s where everybody wants to go.”
News-Miner staff writer Tim Mowry can be reached at 459-7587 or tmowry@newsminer.com.