1999. I went out opening day of bow season and on the way back to the car had something go wrong with my foot and had to crawl back to the car. Doc said I had a Muldar’s Neuroma and that surgery was the only thing that would take care of it. This is where a nerve gets pinched between two toes, and the only recourse is lots of steroid injections (which didn’t work) or removal.

I was nursing the foot throughout October, trying to stay working until Thanksgiving– figured I’d take off the whole week and then come back to work in December. Every few steps, the nerve would get rubbed and I’d have a religous experience. I crawled out and sat out behind work a couple of evenings, but nothing showed.

A buddy of a buddy heard about my plight and offered to ride me around on his ATV and put me up in a huge treehouse of a stand if I could just get myself to Pennsylvania. I was on the road right then– six hours. Bought my out-of-state license. At 0600 I hopped onto Jonesy’s ATV and off we went. The treehouse was perfect for a gimp. He gave me a FRS radio to call back with when I wanted a ride out. I’d never hunted with a radio, they were illegal in Ohio.

At 0950 a perfect doe came into view. At 0959 she finally moved away from the perfect bush and presented a perfect 20 yard shot, perfectly broadside, in a perfect shooting lane. I drew, held and. . .

. . .SQUAWK!!!! “SO SHAMAN, WHEN YOU THINKIN’ OF COMING OUT? OVER.”

She lifted her perfect little head and stepped back behind the bush. I never saw her again.

The surgery went fine, but deer hunting was out for the rest of the season. I tried shoving the dressing into a boot, but it didn’t work. The pain killers would have probably kept me from driving anyway. My doc was a deer hunter. He took pity on me and gave me a pound of ground venison when I came in for my dressing change on opening morning of Ohio Shotgun season.

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